oOo
"We should talk about it." The silence that had reigned over them lasted all of five minutes before Irene broke it.
Diana looked up from the unfocused, unblinking, one-sided staring contest she'd been holding with a particular mud stain on the side of the motorcycle that shared their traveling space.
She blinked at her mother, eyes stinging and immediately filling with tears. She rubbed them with her unhurt hand until stars and random swirls flickered in and out of her field of vision. Her heart fluttered nervously, hoping she didn't mean what had happened to her while she'd been gone.
She didn't want to talk about that. Hopefully, she would never have to talk about that.
Sam eyed his wife in silence, naturally furrowed brow knitting closer together until they almost merged, until Felix voiced the thoughts apparent on the man's face.
"'Bout what?" the boy asked, shortly mimicking his father's expression and pushing a loc away that the wind had blown in his face, "There's so much shit going on, mãe, you gotta be specific."
"Sobre todo." Irene gestured around them with her arms, almost hitting her husband due to the close quarters. "We haven't really actually talked about how all this affects us. I mean, it's the end of the world, for Christ's sake."
"It affects us like it affects everyone else," Alice stated, unapologetic, and shrugged. "We're being fucked with. That simple."
Sam gave a warning look at the swear, but there was no real meaning behind it. Who cared about cussing at this point?
"We were supposed to leave today," Diana chimed in, and turned her gaze to the skies, imagining the airplane they were meant to be on drawing white lines against the great blue expanse. "Now we're stuck here. No plane, no boat, no way of going back home. And what would we even be going back to?"
Irene nodded. "I know it's hard, God knows it's very hard, everything we busted our backs for just… but...we have to name the facts and face them," her voice was melancholic, but she inhaled deeply and carried on, "There are things going on we don't or can't understand. Things we- we know nothing about. I mean, zombies? Jesus Cristo, I'd sooner expect aliens! But this is the new truth, we can't avoid it. This, this is everywhere."
Everyone agreed with wistful hums and small, dejected nods.
Irene continued with a shuddering breath and emotion in her voice, "We'll never go back home. That's what we know, that's a fact. But we have each other – you're my family, we're each other's family - and it's sad, devastating, that we will never see the others again-" She stopped to take a deep breath. "The truth is, even if we end up all alone, Dios nos ayude, we will make it through."
The woman looked each member of her family deep in the eye, fierce and dauntless, and spoke her next words with conviction, "If we have to adapt to survive, we will. We don't know how long this might go on, God might have our work cut out for us, but what we do know is that this world is different from everything we've experienced; it will change us; I have no doubt of that. Maybe more than we expect, maybe not.
In six months, one year, two years, we won't be the same people sitting here, not entirely. It will happen, it will, we can't fool ourselves otherwise. And because of that, we need to stay true to our fundamentals. Only so do we stay grounded, only then do we remain human."
Diana's jaw slackened with a loud pop of her lips, and it brought the others out of their amazed stares. Diana cleared her throat. "Well- well said, mami."
"Yeah, amor. That was... I hadn't even thought about it like that." Sam sounded completely astounded at his wife's wisdom. Not that he didn't know what she was capable of, just that it had been so insightful and profound and well thought out that it had taken him aback that he hadn't heard word of it until now.
Reflective silence fell over them.
"It's still shit."
A few chuckles and the atmosphere was lighter, charged with a strange sense of relief and commitment. They had all been desperate, in one way or another, for answers, for a guiding hand, and Irene's words had lightened some of the heaviness in their hearts and gave them focus, a goal.
The grief over their old lives was still there, carved deep in their souls, but they were aware that being together, anywhere they were would be home. The zombies were still an issue, that much was sure, but they would cross that bridge when they got to it.
Diana sighed, a bit alleviated. God bless her mother, for real. Never in her life would Diana be able to top that motivational speech – mostly because she was a shitty motivational speaker. It had acknowledged their pain and affliction, and given it a purpose; it would be a reminder of what they lost and what they would try their damnedest to hold close and never let go.
The occasional bump in the road caused them to jump in their perches, as well as the objects in the back to rattle loosely, motorcycle included. There were a few times Diana was scared it would tip over and crush them.
She moved around in the small space allowed to her, sitting with her back against the bike, securing it, and putting her legs up to rest on her backpack and the brother's own stash. That way she could see everything they drove past and still peek at the road ahead through the windowed partition.
A sudden movement of the truck caused her to use her hurt hand to hold herself steady, and she hissed out a string of curses in all languages she knew.
She held the appendage to her chest; she had yet to clean it, and she wanted to bandage it to avoid contact with dirt and germs to her broken skin. Whatever blood there'd been, she'd dabbed away with the shirt under her hoodie, and she could see the small cuts and bruises on her knuckles.
Diana happened to catch her dad's eyes as she grimaced at the world, and he tilted his head at her hand, eyebrows knitting closer together. "You wanna tell me whose bones to break?" His voice was soft and considerate despite his words.
She risked a glance at her siblings, who were aware of her omission of facts, and swallowed the guilt. "Nah, what I said before was the whole gist of it, I guess. Nothing happened, really. I- we… we handled it." She left it at that; the more she talked, the more she would have to lie.
He respected her request, but then scolded her once more, "You shouldn't have gone alone, we have motherfucking rules for a goddamn reason. You should've at least taken the fucking bow, that thing's there for something, ain't that right?"
"Yeah, I know." There was no reason to argue with him, Diana knew whatever she said would go against her.
She knew they did it out of concern and that was one reason why she couldn't tell them the truth and needlessly make them worry them even more – not to mention give them more reasons to not let her out of their sight, which was ridiculous –, which meant she had to keep lying.
It made her stomach twist. She understood their worry, of course; to their knowledge, their daughter had been attacked and had escaped by the skin of her teeth with the help of one of the strangers they'd met the day before.
But letting her parents know details would only make them aimlessly angry, especially her dad.
Really, what was there to talk about? If she hadn't thought quickly, if the two men had been more physically prepared to retaliate to her attacks or hadn't been caught by surprise by her strikes, she would have walked away with more than just a hurt hand. Probably wouldn't have walked away at all, to be realistic. She could've lost more than her sexual innocence and her integrity and her trust in mankind. The whole ordeal could've cost her life.
A chill down her spine caused Diana to shiver.
She had been stupid to have gone so willingly with such a suspicious stranger. Thinking back on it, he must've watched her go about her bathroom business and waited to ambush her. What a fucking creep.
She'd been so eager to help, to be of worth to someone, that she had foregone safety and had just let herself be dragged away.
Such a fucking moron! If she were a character in a show, she'd be the kind people at home yell frustratingly at the TV about, incredulous about her lack of common sense. Hell, she'd do that. About herself.
But even now, after experiencing what she had, she still wanted to believe that most people had at least a bit of goodness inside them, that there was no way everyone could have cruel intentions or a hidden agenda. She saw the world through rose-tinted glasses, she was optimistic at heart. Those were her fundamentals, just like her mom had mentioned.
Did she really want to compromise that?
The answer was no.
But she would build herself stronger around that soft core, she wouldn't let cruelty affect her idealistic beliefs. It would take time and perseverance, and people continuing to abuse her good will, but she would fight for it. She would fight for herself, for her family and for the smidgen of decency left in the world.
As for now - she clenched her fist - she was satisfied with the knowledge that she had one battle down, and no matter how bad it could've ended, the pain was a reminder that she had fought, and she had won.
The sudden switch to gravel under the truck's tires and a rap to the partition brought everyone to alert.
Diana quickly eyed the change in the scenery before focusing on Daryl on the other side of the window.
"We driving up to the quarry now," he informed and his eyes fell to the fist on Diana's lap, cradled by her other hand.
He gave a subtle nod to it, wordlessly asking how she was doing, which she curtly returned, and each pivoted to their previous positions.
Diana heard Alice translate the short sentence to her parents, and mouthed a thank you at the girl for her taking over the interpreting whenever Diana didn't do it herself. Alice mouthed something back, which Diana only understood by the third time, go fuck yourself. She smirked and jokingly mouthed not here, to which Alice cringed and shuddered at and flipped her the bird.
"Hey, by the way, why was he where I uh- where I was?" Diana asked, suddenly reminded and curious, and pointed vaguely at Daryl over her shoulder with her thumb. In all the commotion she'd forgotten to ask.
Irene looked at Sam and they shrugged at each other. "I don't know, querida, if he said something I don't remember."
Diana looked pointedly at her siblings with a raised brow and a half shrug.
"I dunno, he was already gone by the time we realized you should've already come back," Felix remarked, "We didn't notice 'cause Merle just talks and talks and talks and only merda comes out of his mouth. Ha, Merle-merda, get it?"
"Good one," Alice commented, and even Sam seemed amused. "Yeah, I was in the middle of rolling my eyes at Merle's barely disguised racism when suddenly Daryl was gone like a redneck ninja."
Diana glanced at the back of Daryl's head and shrugged off her thoughts. "You know, whatever."
Diana took in what little she could see of their destination.
She had never seen a quarry live before; it was just a man-made hole in the ground. What could possibly be so impressive about it?
She managed glimpses here and there through some sparse trees on the side of the gravel road that overlooked said hole. She caught a wink of something shimmering on the bottom; something cerulean and flickering with reflections of white sunlight that caught the eye and blinded momentarily.
The trees cleared, and Diana saw a lake deposited at the bottom, like a blue eye staring up at the skies, reflecting whatever it saw.
For something man-made and quite ordinary, Diana saw raw beauty there that made it aesthetically pleasing to her, and she once again regretted not having invested in a solar charger.
A brief glimpse of something metallic reflecting sunlight brought Diana out of her amazed state and made an urgent thought pop up in her mind. She turned to her family and voiced it, "You guys think they're taking us to their group?" Her tone was desperate and words rushed.
"If they have one, it's not gonna be here," Irene relayed calmly, "You sister saw the place on the map. The suggestion came from us."
Diana sighed in relief. "Oh, okay then. It's just, I thought I saw-"
"What the hell?" Sam interjected.
"-that," she ended.
Apparently, they hadn't been the first to think of the quarry as a Haven. Driving down around the curves to the entrance of the plain that overlooked the lake, the first thing they noticed was the vehicles, all spread out throughout the place in a seemingly aleatory way, but upon closer inspection, looked to be covering the weak spots of the field, along the tree line and adding coverage to some of the tents that were set up.
A Recreational Vehicle marked the approximate center of the place and the highest point. A figure stood on top, with binoculars in their hands, watching them.
Driving in, there were tents set up and clotheslines and some fire pits, and the entire place looked absolutely lived in, completed with the people living in it. They had heard them arrive and had come to gawk at them, morbid curiosity and possible alertness forcing them off their routes.
Merle killed the engine, and one by one, everyone climbed out of the truck.
The wave of people, little less than two dozen, met them in front of the pickup; all of them whispering, but none daring to raise their voice in neither greeting nor damning. Diana shied away from their gazes, feeling out of place and unwelcome, and cracked the knuckles of her good hand nervously.
It wasn't until a man strutted his way forward, parting the sea of people like freaking Moses, with a cautious, yet confident gait, that they were verbally acknowledged.
He had a pistol at his waist and an axe swung over his shoulder, in what Diana supposed was an approachable friendly-lumberjack pose, that still managed to intimidate.
"Hey there, strangers." He smiled, pulling his lips over his teeth in a way that reminded Diana of the threatening smile of a dog about to bite. "Name's Shane, what business brings you here?"
oOo
This Shane seemed on the edge of territorial, and Diana had to whisper to her dad to look as non-threatening as possible. She was met with a 'fuck that', as expected, and accepted it.
Once again taking the role of mediator, Diana assumed her professional personality, accepted the bow's thrum of encouragement and swallowed the knot in her throat to introduce her family and the two brothers. She knew it wasn't her place to do so, but she didn't want the brash men to say something that could compromise their welcome.
And if they came to her with complaints later, well, she'd just have to deal with them then.
After names had been exchanged, Shane started asking some questions. Honestly, Diana felt so uneasy under so many eyes, that she hadn't only not been able to listen to and answer half of them, but also hadn't managed to bring the words out her mouth without choking on air every two seconds.
Noticing her discomfort, Shane had dispersed the crowd and brought all seven newcomers, plus a woman and child that followed him, to a less populated part of their neat little camp, and there he asked his questions again.
Half of what was said had gone over her head, she just mindlessly translated back and forth without really acknowledging it. There had been something about why they were there and what lead them to find them, but nothing too incriminating. At the end of it, her mom and dad admitted to the family to feeling insulted by his behavior but had no other choice than accept it.
Merle and Daryl had kept their 'interview' short and had only revealed the absolutely necessary to satisfy Shane's caution measures like she'd thought they'd do. She noticed some animosity there if Merle's bitchy responses and Shane's bulging neck veins were any indicators.
It was smart and subtle, the way Shane had done it, but it had still held a tone of interrogation, which had given Diana the impression he must work- or must have worked in law enforcement. She was proved right by the man himself when he properly introduced himself as Shane Walsh, Sheriff Deputy of King County, and the woman and child as Lori and Carl, no last name there.
The kid was cute, all shy smiles and baby blue eyes, and the woman held herself with confidence and a welcoming sad smile.
The three directed the Lobos to a free portion of land by the tree line, where they could set up camp; it was away from people's peering eyes, so it was nothing short of perfect.
The brothers chose a spot as far from everyone else as possible, like the antisocial beings they were proving themselves to be. Merle parked his truck there, marking their territory, and everyone unloaded their belongings.
On the Lobos' side, they set up the tents, and everyone made themselves as cozy as they could in a strange place with strangers walking by every two minutes to sneak a peek at them.
Irene had made herself busy by starting with the laundry they'd accumulated over the past two weeks, casting her husband to help her with it. Alice and Felix barely escaped by saying they would scout the grounds and get to know the place.
After some time, shortly before midday, some actually stopped by and introduced themselves and talked a bit about themselves and that should they need anything, they should stop by here or there, or talk to this guy or that person.
Diana had heard her mom admit that she no longer remembered anyone's names while she hanged the clothes from the clothesline Sam had built with borrowed material, and the woman would only refer to them in her family circle by either what they were wearing or any outstanding physical attributes.
Diana remembered translating to a woman who had casually mentioned she was a lawyer and joked about how useless her degree proved to be right now unless the zombies learned any concept of crime and justice. That gave Diana the idea to tell Shane about her occupation. She might've only been a student, but a nurse was still a nurse, and she'd been in her last year, so she could be useful. The thought of the responsibility frightened her, but she would just have to overcome that.
She told him at lunch when she and her family grabbed portions of food generously offered to them. He looked surprised and told her she didn't look like a nurse. Diana had to bite her tongue to keep herself from replying with 'you didn't look like an asshole until two seconds ago'. He spouted some apology, saying that he didn't mean it "that way", but… c'mon. Buddy.
She decided to keep her interactions with Shane to the bare minimum.
After lunch, Diana meant to ask why they hadn't joined the other survivors for the meal, but was able to bite her tongue before the question slipped out. She realized how ill at ease her parents would've felt to be the outsiders, to not understand what was being said and not be understood by anyone other than their children.
It was unfair for them, they probably felt isolated. But when she gingerly broached the subject, they laughed it off and said that they didn't want anything to do with them anyway, so it meant shit to them.
At first, Diana thought they were just putting up a façade so they wouldn't be pitied. Then she remembered that back home they also kept their distance from neighbors and co-workers alike, never letting their relationships develop past the basics, and only ever surrounded themselves with family. So, why would now be any different? Her parents kept to their circle small; they knew what people were capable of once they didn't need you anymore.
In the afternoon, Lori invaded their little space to ask Alice and Felix if they wanted to take part in the school set up she'd created for Carl and some other kids so they could continue their studies.
After assuring her that she was on a much more advanced level, the equivalent to college in the US, Alice had actually volunteered to help with the tutoring, even if it was only to stroke her own ego. Felix, for lack of anything better to do, and after whining that he missed his video games, had tagged along and played with some of Carl's toys while paying zero attention to his sister's explanations. It was half English and the other half struggling to translate the German concepts she'd learned into words the kids would understand.
The rest of the day was somewhat of a blur to Diana. Once people heard from Shane of her branch of occupation, they came to her with their ailments and questions regarding health and prevention.
There was nothing serious to pay mind to, some harmless scratches and the occasional cough, and their questions had been within her knowledge, so was glad about that. Not that the pressure of succeeding was already weighing down on her or anything, psh what? Impossible.
Besides, messing around with their medkit had given her the opportunity to clean and bandage her hand and make an inventory of the material they were running low on or were yet to acquire if she were to become the camp's official nurse.
All in all, she kept herself busy and kept her mind off things.
In the evening, once again sitting by themselves, and eating from their own low reserves - Sam and Irene hadn't wanted to impose too much on the first day - they all caught up on the bits of gossip they heard from around camp.
Diana, having come in contact with so many people, had heard quite a lot, as people tended to loosen their tongues in the safe and empathetic environment she provided. She was used to it; at work, her patients had always been eager to talk if she proved willing to listen. And Diana was a great listener.
Now, she shared whatever she deemed interesting enough. Nothing too exciting came from her side, though. Even though many people had talked to her, they still seemed hesitant since she was a newcomer and practical stranger. She could relate.
The most valuable piece of gossip had come from the two teens, regarding Shane - the self-proclaimed leader of the camp - and Lori. Apparently, Alice had made an off-hand comment to Carl, something about his dad - thinking he was Shane - and then the kid had started crying. Then they found out from Lori that her husband was recently deceased and that Shane was a good friend of the family.
Irene rolled her eyes at that. Even a blind person could see that the familiarity between those two surpassed that of just a family friend and was more along the lines of people who were intimately acquainted, to put it gently.
Other than that, they'd found no loop holes in anyone's stories. No covered up lies or omission of facts.
It was for real. The camp was legit.
Finally, something good.
I loved Irene's speech, but the last part at the camp was kinda boring to write tbh, but I thought it was necessary to put it down on the record, so here it is. The next part is much more fun, tho.
please leave a comment. tell me your thoughts, i'd really appreciate it
