24
Thor was sitting with Ianto and Jack by the river as he told them of his journey.
"I was writing in my den. Back then… before… I had aspirations of being a crime writer. Lot of good that's done me" he laughed softly at himself "I was a mere twenty five years old and thought I was king Dick. Newly married, the wife with child and a mortgage on the house that was gonna twist my gonads for at least another fifteen years but I felt on top of the world. I was eating ice cream. I remember it so damned well. Neapolitan. I loved that shit. Always ate each colour individually… drove my wife mad. She would yell at me because I always ate all the chocolate first."
He stopped talking, his smile fading and Ianto looked at Jack as they both knew the wife likely fell early on too. After a while Thor started to talk again "Well anyway… eating chocolate ice cream in my underpants and the TV changed channel on me. Damn, I was watching a game so I went over to flick it back to the match but… each channel was the same. Then I stopped obsessing about the score and listened to the message. I must'a listened to it repeat at least five times before I remembered that I needed pants for this shit."
Soft laughter as they shared the memory and Jack resisted the urge to reach out and comfort the man. They all have their ghosts now I guess.
"I got dressed and tried to call her but the phones were overloaded, cell service sucked anyway so I decided to go get her from the bloody library where she'd gone to get some baby books. Bloody baby books. I thought it was nothing really, like when they say a wildfire is coming and you can't smell it on the wind so you know it's going in the other direction. Ya know? Felt like that. Told myself it was like that. So I was about three blocks from the library when the first one struck my truck hood. Fuck me, I almost had a heart attack. I hit someone. I stopped and went to get out to see if they were OK when I saw someone running… someone else rung after them that looked… wrong. It was the guy I had hit. He had bounced, got up and kept going only with one arm dangling. Fuck. I had dreams about that… man." He rubbed his hands on his pants as he blanched and took a breath.
"We all vividly remember that day because not only did the world change… so did we" Ianto said softly "We were in a bog ankle deep in mud. On a search for something in the mud that had… been dropped. It didn't seem real. Owen thought I was playing a video game when he heard the screaming on the phone."
"No. Yeah. That's it. It was surreal like… some sort of joke. An elaborate hoax to try and trick me. A hidden camera thing… but not. That blood was real... the little girl running alongside my car with half her face gone… Jesus. We holed up in the library as best we could that first night. Then one of them in there with us turned and shit went south. It was only then we really understood that this was not something that would blow over."
Jack patted his leg gently "we all hoped for the best but knew deep down we were pretty fucked."
"Yeah. Demi was so pregnant and … I did my best. But twenty went to fifteen real fast then twelve… then … we had to run. A heart attack showed this took people who had not been bitten. This scared the fuck out of me." He shook his head "Of course… we were in the city. The effects were less as it fanned out… I think in the outskirts only bites could pass it on but in the actual radius of the contagion's release… death mead turning."
"Zombies" Ianto snorted "We did not want to say the word out loud."
"No. One of the old guys was a pilot so we made our way to the air base and he flew us out of there. We thought somewhere basic and sparse like the barrens would be the go. I lost my wife in the landing. Three died on impact. Saved the baby… felt sick cutting it out of her but… my son… he was my saving grace. We picked people up… lost people… kept moving. I feel guilty now. We were last holed up in a tiny town to the west of the valley before this one. An elderly couple and a pregnant woman had to stop. Her partner was bit and we cut off his hand… seemed to work. But they needed to hole up and we had to move on. We promised we would go back but… the spring thaw was more crazy than the last and … the bridge back is gone. We are trying to make our way around, search for another way back to them but it's been almost two years now."
"You fear they are not even still there?" Jack asked.
"Four… no it would be five people there?" Ianto canted his head as he stared the man down.
"No… others agreed to stay. Young and strong … able to support the older ones who were too scared. Twenty odd stayed behind" Thor looked at his feet and Ianto guessed.
"Your son? Would have been eighteen? Full of vim and vigor telling you he would protect them?"
Thor sighed as he rubbed his face and then said in the most mournful way "Yeah. If he's still alive he will be twenty now. A man. Well… I guess he was the day he waved me goodbye knowing as well as me that we would likely never see one another again."
Ianto's hand slid over to Jack's, and then he glanced at the black dong listening intently in the shadows.
Damn.
Sounds like they are not done gathering lost souls before the winter breaks after all.
