A/N: Your enthusiastic responses must really have motivated me, because here's another chapter in record time! As usual, I thank my amazing beta, LeMasquerade, for everything she's done. (She must think I'm nuts sending her another chapter within a week.) This chapter, as the last one, is dedicated to Swinging Cloud, who is still being a raging bitch. This one's for you~

Chapter 6

7 days since last feed

Today is fix-up day.

The rest of the compound had complained bitterly when Rachel said that work needed to be done, but in the boredom that comes with the apocalypse, things have begun to slide. Trash litters the corners of the rooms, dirty clothing is strewn across the benches in the showers, and half-done projects (mostly of Artie's doing) are scattered in various rooms across the space. From now on, all Sundays are Fix-Up Days—they're so important, in fact, that she has marked them down upon some calendar that she managed to scrounge up. None of you could really remember what day it was, so you picked a random Sunday in July and stuck with it. You think it's right.

Shadow is making gleeful use of the respirator you brought home days ago, strapping it onto her face tightly and taking great joy in the way her strange, robotic breathing makes Finn jump ten feet in the air when strategically placed by his ear. You've been seeing her creep around the compound all day, slinking up to his side and roaring with laughter as he drops whatever he's been doing. Quinn eventually pulls her away with a smirk and gets her to work with the ammonia that almost killed you some time ago.

You, on the other hand, are stuck with Kurt, rummaging around in the dark basement for a key to unlock the upstairs. The cutters you'd found earlier had been of no use; Puck had strained and strained at the handles until he'd nearly popped his shoulder, but the large shears had refused to go through. Whoever had locked up the place did so with the intention of keeping it that way.

You'd be content with working in silence; Kurt, not so much. You appreciate that he wants to know you better, but the world has once again taken on that sharp quality, hanging on the edge of a honed knife, and every loud noise breaks your waning concentration.

(It's been a week since you've gone out. A week since you ate that man. The hunger is returning—with it your irritation, your paranoia, your madness. You fear for what you will do now that you know what it is you seek.)

"So, you just woke up here one day?" He asks, shifting through piles of debris accumulated in a former life. Junk from what looks like some sort of lab has ended up here, impressive looking microscopes and tools and things of which you don't know the name gleaming but useless to all of you.

"Yeah," you affirm, wiping your brow. Going through all this metal to find something that might not even be there is an arduous task. Your eyes, fully adjusted to the darkness, narrow as you scan through everything left.

Kurt gingerly picks up a nasty looking examination tool, placing it on the workbench that Artie has claimed and wishes to be brought upstairs. "That's pretty scary. Did you remember anything?"

"I still don't." You mutter, overwritten by his loud exclamation of, "Oh my god, is that blood on this thing?" You flinch at the sound, ears ringing, but walk over to him regardless.

A quick scan reveals he's correct. "Yup. That's normal." You pick it up and turn it around with your fingers. Saturated. (You have to resist the urge to lick.)

He slaps it out of your hands before you can blink, and you turn to him with a blank expression that seems to be vaguely menacing because he backpedals. "There could be diseases on that thing," he explains with a crinkled nose. "Who knows what used to live here before we moved in."

I did, you want to say, but he'll only have more questions than you do answers. (Humanity is so tiring sometimes.)

So instead you return to your scavenging, tying a rogue bandana you found across your forehead to push errant strands of hair from your face. "Have you ever been to the morgue?" You ask instead, kicking aside a rusted hunk of metal that screams as it slides across the ground.

"No, why?" He asks curiously, his too-big shirt hanging from his lean frame. He even sweats prettily, you muse thoughtfully, unaware of your staring until he waves his hands in front of your eyes. "Earth to Britt? You were saying something about the morgue."

"Oh, um..." Flashes of cold metal and needles and brown liquid. "There's a lot more blood there. I haven't gone to see it since Finn shot the man." You sigh at the endless task in front of you, adding as an afterthought, "That's where I woke up."

Kurt stops what he's doing abruptly, staring at you as if you'd told him about the eating. (Did you? Sometimes you don't hear what comes out of your mouth and it makes others uncomfortable.) "You woke up in the morgue?" He demands, tone disbelieving.

"Yeah," you say, not recognizing his tone. "That's where dead people go, right?"

"Britt, sweetie." He touches your forearm and you jerk away abruptly, stumbling back a few paces and holding it close to your chest. "Oh, is that your bad arm? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you," he apologizes, but how can you explain it's not about that, it's about the touching and good hands and people who aren't Tina or Mercedes (or Shadow).

"You're using that voice again," you accuse him, watching his (still) perfectly plucked eyebrows raise to his hairline.

"Which voice?" He asks, and you open your mouth a few times, jaw working soundlessly in frustration.

"The... the one!" You exclaim, nearly stomping your foot when no recognition dawns on his features. "The one that Puck always uses, like he's saying something I should know a-and you think I'm stupid! All of you do!"

"No, Britt—" But you pay him no mind, flinging your arms out so that they almost smack him in the face.

"You do! You're just like them!"

Your fists curl so hard your muscles strain and something warm slides through your fingers; you'd forgotten you'd picked up a piece of metal and now its sharp, ragged edge has sliced its way through the meat of your palm, red, red blood pouring from the gash and dripping onto the floor. It reminds you in a way of the man last week, but it smells wrong—tainted, almost. Its sweet smell covered by another presence that renders it worthless.

Kurt gasps quietly and you look at your hand, glistening now, dripping down to your knuckles and splattering to the floor. How did you not notice that? Maybe you are what they say...

"Stupid," you mutter over and over again, clenching harder and forcing it deeper, "stupid, stupid, stupid."

(There's a male voice that comes to you in memory, tells you never to use that word when talking about yourself, but you don't trust it. Not now.)

"Tina!" He calls, eyeing you warily. "'Cedes! Anybody!"

It's Shadow that saves the day.

A hand clamps firmly around your wrist and the strength in it stops your assault, brings sense back to your mind. You sway bonelessly on the spot for a moment, blinking, turning your face to her where she watches you with those abyssal eyes of hers. (Eyes that hide secrets. They match yours.)

"Not here." She says firmly, using her other hand to draw you in by the hip, her fingers finding purchase on the groove of your pelvis like an artisan making a statue out of clay. You follow her manipulation as she wants you to, drawing you carefully up the stairs as if you will shatter at any moment. She throws a glance to Kurt that you can't decipher but you are soon out of the basement and away from him. Instantly, your madness fades.

"I'm not angry," you mumble under your breath, seeing the confused glance she sends your way.

"I never said you were," Shadow replies, drawing you into the bathrooms. She spies Rachel cleaning one of the sinks and unceremoniously snatches her by the collar, tugging her back and nearly sending her to the floor. "Out, dwarf," she dismisses, drawing you and your bloody hand closer. It's dripped all over her fingers now, staining her beautiful skin, and you are captivated by the image.

Rachel looks up, indignant rant building, but it dies seeing your condition.

"Oh, Brittany! How did you do that? Did you slip helping Kurt?" She looks closer at you, your fist still curled around the metal lodged in your hand. "That seems to be a fairly moderate amount of blood you lost... do you want me to fetch Tina? I assure you she will have no problem administering stitches after last week's... incident."

Shadow puts down whatever she was fiddling with in exasperation, her hand leaving a bloody print upon the porcelain sink. "Did I ask you to speak?" But she pauses anyway, thinking over her words. "Actually, you could be helpful. Go get me some thread and a needle."

Rachel eyes her doubtfully. "Do you even know how to perform a suture, Santana? I believe this requires a more practiced hand."

"If you don't get me what I wants, this hand will be practiced in the art of breaking your face," she threatens, glowering the best she can with their meager height difference, and Rachel cowers briefly before running off to find what she needs. You look at her for a few moments, right eyebrow slowly floating higher upon your face.

"What you wants?" You say with a hint of a tease, keeping a straight face when her glare turns to you.

"It's my Lima Heights Adjacent voice," she grumps, tugging you forward a little harder than necessary. "It always sent all the assholes running for cover."

Somewhere that has an adjacent in its name doesn't sound really all that frightening, but you keep your mouth shut as she instead scans your hand. She crinkles her nose, tugging gently at the metal, studying the way the meat of your fingers has also given away to seal it into your flesh. "How you're not screaming right now, I don't know," she muses, guiding your hand under the spray of water from the sink. The heat burns in a good way. A clean way. For a while, the water runs red.

"I don't really feel it," you reply, wincing a little when the metal bangs against the side of the sink. This sharp world brings some feelings to the surface and buries others under the waves—you feel every touch of her skin against yours, every breath that brushes against the back of your neck, every wave of her scent that sweeps across you. It blinds you to all else, even as she pries your fingers out of the ragged metal, spraying blood all over the faucet.

Upon inspection, you know it could have been worse. You don't see bone, and your fingers still move—the rest is simply... unfortunate. Shadow doesn't think so if the way she grimaces is any indication, wiggling the remains of the junk stuck in your palm and apologizing with her eyes when you hiss. (You're quickly learning that she, like you, doesn't do words. Yours get lost in translation, but hers simply refuse to leave.)

Your moment is broken by Rachel rushing back in with a needle, thread, and a frazzled expression. "Santana," she begins hurriedly, "I really must warn you against this course of action. What if you unwittingly set infection in her hand, and it has to be amputated?"

Shadow rolls her eyes, snatching the supplies from her grasp and placing them upon the sink lip. "Then I'm sure Tina will love to bitch to me the whole time. Until then, kindly fuck off and let me close this gaping hole in her skin."

Your lips quirk up into a little smile, staying up until she gets firm hold of the metal and looks at you with something that could be classified as a sympathetic smirk. You've never seen that before.

"I'd tell you this will hurt," she says, "but I think you've already gathered that."

"Gathered what?" You ask her cautiously, about to look around for a basket before she abruptly grabs your wrist with her other hand and yanks so hard she takes a piece of your flesh with her.

You don't scream, but you come really, really close.

"Fuck!" You gasp, arm trembling as its held under the water and the whole sink stains red with your tainted blood. "Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck." You're not sure who's swearing at this point, catching glimpses of the crevice in your hand that looks like some sort of little crater before the water fills it and takes away the image. She keeps your appendage under the stream long after you begin to lose feeling from the cold, eyes watering. Rachel stands in the corner with both hands over her mouth, watching you as you hunch and bow in pain around the sink and Shadow in turn.

(Shadow, for her part, only looks vaguely uncomfortable as you hang off her shoulder and shake. Does this make you friends?)

You take solace in the fact that it doesn't hurt nearly as much as your head, and after a few minutes the pain becomes manageable. Slowly, you draw your arm from the water to cradle it close to your chest, numb fingers freezing against the heat of your collar. Your eyes track Shadow as she loops the thread through the eye of the needle, tongue bitten in concentration, eyes narrowed. Her fingers are calloused, strong, baring scars and stories. You touch her nails and she jerks back from you with a scowl.

"The hell are you doing?" she snaps, protectively drawing her hand closer to herself. In the movement you see all the things left unsaid.

"Sorry," you say, even though your tone is flat and insincere. "You have nice nails."

She looks down at them, chipped and cracked, and raises her eyebrow doubtfully.

"They're strong," you try to explain further, "kinda like you. Loud, too."

Shadow looks at you with a hint of that expression but it never fully manifests; her head shakes and she takes you again by the wrist, more gently this time, turning your palm to the ceiling. Her skin looks good against yours.

"You might wanna look away, dwarf." She cautions Rachel gruffly, pressing the needlepoint to your flesh. You hear a pattering of footsteps that run out of the door, fading slowly into the silence of the hallway, and all of a sudden you are alone with her. (Again. Always.)

She licks her lips and has the decency to look mildly sheepish, twiddling with the metal caught between her fingers. "I've never done this before, so it might not be the prettiest patch job." She admits, glancing briefly to you but looking away almost instantly as your blue, blue stare meets hers.

"I'm used to ugly things," you say softly; she takes it as permission and pushes the needle into your hand without hesitation—you bare your teeth in surprise but don't move. After a few false starts on her part and quiet yelps from yours, Shadow picks up a slow, methodical rhythm that has your hand slowly closing back up into a rough estimate of the way it was originally. Perhaps the stitches are lopsided and sometimes go to different angles but you are grateful none the less; weeks ago it would have remained as it was, an open hole leading to a festering wound. How your head or your arm remained intact in the first place, you'll never know.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence she finishes up the work with an awkward knot that pinches slightly at the skin, but you flex your hand and note only a slight pain. A bandage is wrapped, pristine white, around your palm and tied off at the wrist. It brushes against the other dressings, situated higher up on your arm, and her fingers trail against it curiously as you pull away.

"What's that?" She asks, rinsing the needle with a sort of solution after passing it under the tap. You deliberate upon telling the truth, but you still don't trust her. Not entirely. Her hands have done healing, but you know what harm they can also do. (She writhes in her sleep sometimes, knuckles white and snapping invisible necks. You watch her silently from the doorway, barely breathing, as she whispers out names of people lost to another life.)

So you reply with a muttered nothing and avoid her gaze until she gives up drilling her suspicious glare into the side of your head, wiping the remnants of (your) blood upon her jeans and giving up on the spatter on the tiles. You watch her try not to watch you with your arms crossed over your chest until her resolve breaks and she turns towards you with an angry frown.

"What?" She snaps in irritation, slamming down the tools harder than necessary. You flinch.

"What's what?" You reply, noting how much her eyebrows dip when she is frustrated. (But they crinkle when she laughs, too. You can't be two different things at once.)

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She asks in exasperation, mirroring your stance if not for the aggressive way in which her shoulders square.

Your fingers pick anxiously at your bandages and you shrug, plastering an innocent smile on your face. "Like what?"

But she'll have none of it; her scowl deepens, her nails sinking into her biceps as she stares you down. "Oh no, you don't get to play that game with me. You know exactly what I'm talking about this time."

It's unsettling the way she can read you, but she is still an enigma in the best of ways. Every turn of her lips can mean something different, every shift of her hips a story to tell. (You watch Puck watch her hips, too. He sees something else in them, something hungry and carnal. Sometimes you think you remember the feeling.)

"I don't understand you," you blurt out instead. "You keep saying you don't like me and you don't trust me but you help me. Those things don't match. Kind of like shrimp and chocolate milk."

She looks at you for a long, long time, until her eyes cut you down straight to your bare bones and you think she can see the sickness in your head, the thing that turns your thoughts to glass and your memories to dust. You feel opened up like all those weeks (months?) ago and you gently trace the seams of yourself under your shirt with your fingers, running over the glossy lines like a maze to which you never found the exit.

"Something's wrong with you," she says bluntly; your face twitches in hurt but it is a delayed thing, a dulled thing. You knew what she thought of you a long time ago. "Something's not right, maybe here," she points to her head, "or maybe here," her heart, "or everywhere. Who the fuck knows? But you've managed to survive this far even if you keep making these decisions that basically put you on the shuttle bus to Zombie Land and I wanna know why. I wanna know why you get to survive while Puck's sister got eaten like a... a..."

She exhales through her nose in frustration, running her hand over her head. "God damn it, see, this is what you do to me! I can't even figure out a suitable slap down because your staring is so fucking creepy it's putting me off my game."

"What game?" you ask, and she narrows her eyes at you.

"I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic right now," she mutters, shaking her head. "Whatever. Point is, I want to know why the hell you're not dead, and that won't happen if your hand rots away and falls off."

That sounds painful.

You look at the silhouette of her roughshod stitches fondly, clenching your hand the best you can. Her eyes are dark, swirling with unease, but in them you sense an animal fear that masks itself as ferocity. She's afraid—why wouldn't she be? Caught in a world that tries to kill her day after day, fighting with herself and other people as much as she does with the sick. Yet she's still right, even after all the insults and the yelling and the mixed signals.

"Something is wrong with me," you admit quietly. She turns to you then, not surprised by your admission, but curious none the less. "I don't know what it is, but it's there. Maybe the sick people sense it too."

An idea forms behind her eyes, brightens them. Galaxies bloom within her mind and you ache for the light.

"You said they like you, right?" she says slowly, body inching towards the doorway.

You blink, curious now. "Yeah. They grumble a bit but I think they're just grumpy."

She grins, a feral thing with dubious intent. It makes her whole face seem sharper, angrier. You don't like it.

"Come on Britt, we're going on a field trip."

Turns out your field trip is just to the back courtyard, the scent of the air now cloying with the dead. She hooks her shirt over her nose and even you frown in distaste as you take in the rows upon rows of bodies lying motionlessly on the cement, having nowhere to decay except outwards. No soft earth greets their bones and they weep for the embrace of their first mother.

Their voices are so loud you almost cover your ears with your hands in fright.

She scrabbles her way onto an overhanging ledge, feet kicking in the air when she attempts to haul herself up. It's amusing how short she really is, her stature often exaggerated by the posture and intimidation that follows her every footstep. You smother a laugh when she ungracefully rolls herself up and over the side with a strained huff of air, resting there for a moment before peering down at you.

"You said that they like you, right?" She calls down, mindful to keep her voice as low as possible. You hear a few lungs but no hearts except the two of yours, beating alone together in this wasteland world.

You nod warily at her and she points off to where a woman sways on the spot, her addled mind debating entering the courtyard.

"Go say hi for me then." There is a challenge in her words, something you can't pick out from the whirlwind of her eyes. You bite your lip momentarily, shifting on the spot, before taking a few hesitant steps towards her. The woman's head swings slowly to the sound but she makes no move to advance.

Eventually you stand in front of her. She's one of the less wounded, physically speaking—her skin is grey but unblemished, her delicate brown hair matted down to her forehead. If not for the blood drenching her front and the glassy quality of her eyes, you could almost convince yourself she has a heart that beats too. Even her teeth are straight.

She stares right through you even when you wave your hand in front of her face. "Hi?" You say tentatively, holding your ground when her face turns towards the sound of your voice. "What's your name? I'm Brittany."

Upon impulse you hold your hand out for her to shake. The sick don't bother you with their touches, their cold skin that feels too close to fake, cheaply done leather. There is no malice in their caress, no ulterior motive in their embrace. Not for you. She stares at it for a moment before she clamps down on your wrist with an iron hold, tugging you forward until you collide with her shoulder in an awkward hug. So close you can smell the rot that has taken up home in the deepest parts of her, radiating outwards from hidden pores and the gaps in her ears. You grimace, but stay still as she brings your hand up to her mouth and chews at your new bandages, gnawing at them with her blunt teeth in an attempt to rid them from you.

You glance over at Shadow—her frown is cautious and she slowly raises her rifle (the only one in the compound), slung over her back, to eye level. You shake your head in disagreement and shuffle so that you block her line of sight; she'd have to put (another) bullet in you to kill the woman. Vaguely, you hear her huff of exasperation.

"That's a waste of supplies, you know." You scold the woman who now has your bandages hanging in shreds from her mouth. She moans quietly and grips at your fingers so hard it crushes, bringing your broken palm to her face. Her tongue snakes out and licks a long, freezing stripe up the length of your wound and you grimace as her saliva wets the stitches. The sick all have the same spit, thick and cold and so unpleasantly slimy that it sends the hair on your arms on end, shuddering as you rip your hand away. She moves her mouth a few times, the taste of your blood heavy on her tongue; something in it must displease her for she releases you and makes to move further into the courtyard.

Until the bullet sent from Shadow's gun rips off half her face.

You watch numbly as her body spins in a clumsy pirouette before falling to the ground, what remains of her face splattering onto the concrete. She twitches a few times, wheezing, her mangled jaw scraping upon the ground as she moves it. Her skull has been blown away on her right side, an uneven mask, and you see her brain slump from its cavity a moment before she goes still.

Everything is silent for a moment and you take the time to look upwards where Shadow is just lowering her rifle, grip still tight, with an unreadable expression that looks vaguely apologetic. A scent wafts through the haze of rot and it triggers something primal in you, the thing that aches so strong ever since the man last week. Shadow, in her hurry to line up the shot, had positioned herself wrong and received recoil strong enough to split her lip in two; blood dribbles from the wound and you smell it above everything else, above the rot and the smoke and the brain matter steadily leaking from the woman's head. You know what you need and you've temporarily given up on denying what you want, not until the cycle repeats itself. Hopefully Shadow won't blow out your brains either.

You run to your bike and mount the saddle, kicking up the stand and ignoring the shouts for you to return. The gunshot will have drawn attention to your home, such a loud sound against the silence, and Shadow will have to retreat if she doesn't want to risk becoming a corpse upon the sidewalk. But you? You have something else. Your legs pump as you wheel from this place in a desperate attempt to distance yourself from the smell of her essence that makes your gums ache.

It follows you, lodged deep in your nose, haunting your tortured breathing as you tear down the broken roads at breakneck speed. She is the phantom in your fractured dreams, and you shake your head so hard you wobble on your bike before flying off, rolling over the sidewalk a few times and skinning your hands where you fall. The new wound in your hand cries outrage but the stitches hold as you come to a stop lying motionless on the pavement. A few of the sick wander past but pay you no mind as you stare up at the blue, blue sky.

You entertain the fleeting thought that you could simply lay here forever until you become one with the derelict buildings that now make up New York, but even so far away you still smell it, smell her. With a low groan you roll on your stomach and pound uselessly at the ground, pulling at your hair and grinding your face into the concrete.

"Go away." You mutter to yourself, staggering to your feet and dragging your bike back on two wheels. You debate going further but instead spy the subway stairs; descending steps lead to a great yawning abyss underground, where even from here you can hear the wheezing lungs of others whose bodies have steered them to the tracks. It seems as good a place as any to disappear for a few hours until you can regain control over yourself again, so you lean your bike up against the side of a nearby building (not like anybody is going to try and steal it) and cautiously start your trek into the dark, cloying tunnels.

They are dank and smell like stale human fear, the tiles of the floor sticky with unknown substances that you skirt around as you descend deeper into the depths. It wipes away all traces of her from your nose and you breath a short sigh of relief; the hunger is still there, yearning, but it has lost its focus and its drive. You inhale and chase the scent of fresh blood.

Maybe you are an animal, maybe you are something more. These endless passageways, coded by color and numbers, confuse your addled mind and you duck through corridors that you never knew existed. If what you once were lived here, wouldn't you remember at least some of this? The polished tiles, the stainless steel, the winding tracks. Your fingers trail upon the walls as you reach the trains themselves, recoiling slightly as they run through a splatter of wet something stuck to the wall. You don't really want to know what it is and the darkness has not yet lifted enough to render a proper verdict.

Emerging by the tracks, you can see where the true panic started. A train lies abandoned at the station, its lights still on after so long, blinking and casting intermittent shadows upon the floor. Its doors ding helplessly as it attempts to close, only to be halted by the bodies that spill out of the cavity and into the station, legs and arms and heads and shoulders sticking out and blocking its path. Every few seconds is a chime followed by a hissing noise as it reopens; it threatens to drive you insane.

Peering into the train shows more of the same thing. People had run, obviously, tried to escape whatever had found itself on their subway route; they are sprawled out on the chairs, over the floor, caught from the ceiling. One little boy nearly made it out, protruding out the door if not for the mess of bone and blood that had become of his ankle as he was running. You gently roll him back into the train.

All this flesh is rank, unappealing; people had come here to die, not to live. Bodies are curled up on the little benches, cradling wounds to the head and sides, all dressed up with nowhere to go. A few shufflers walk amongst the rubble, mindlessly kicking up dirt clouds and the few rodents that skitter across the achingly empty station. Your nose crinkles in distaste as you imagine trying to eat the meat blackened by rot and disease alike.

(It's so nice to know you still have standards.)

You quietly hop down on the tracks and follow their route, your feet crunching the boards underneath them. It's so nice and quiet here, no booming heartbeats to ruin your silence. You could live here, you think, here with the darkness and the silence and the dead. At least they don't eat your food and use your bathrooms and wear your clothes.

A shuffle breaks your concentration. You stop and hold your breath, listening as the rapid crunch of footfalls hitting the wooden boards invades your ears. Something inside you forces you to a crouch, plastering yourself against the wall; your vision sharpens and you make out the silhouette of a person hurrying their way down the tracks, pack jingling ever so softly on their shoulders. There's only one.

Alone in such a place? It's a death sentence.

(You ignore the irony.)

The person has a flashlight—they slow to a halt and shine it around them in a desperate attempt to illuminate their surroundings. The beam of light catches your shoe and the wild flailing freezes ever so suddenly, flicking upwards to distinguish your face. They're too far away, and you sense their terror as readily as your own.

"Who's there?" The voice trembles—a woman, then. You lick your lips anxiously as you smell blood leaking from various wounds across her body, soaked up by bandages but there none the less. That primal thing in you rears and screams as it attempts to break itself from the cage you have so hastily trapped it in.

But this is no place for a person. You advance into the light with your hands raised placatingly by your ears, squinting into the strong beam of light cast by the large flashlight in her hand. Her shoulders visibly relax when she takes in your appearance, unarmed and unbitten, your eyes blinking rapidly in discomfort.

"God, I thought you were one of them." She lowers her weapon of choice—a large knife, sharp as a sword—with a long huff of air, taking another once over of your figure once she catches her breath. You feel the disapproving gaze from miles away. "Why aren't you armed?"

"I forgot it at home." You say, eyes flicking down into the darkness of the tracks where you hear the faint echo of footsteps approaching, the familiar and distinct shuffle of dragging feet that are unique to the sick. She hasn't noticed them yet, not with the way she's looking at you, but staying here much longer will ensure there's nowhere to run.

"You have a place to stay?" She asks curiously, moving forward and away from the noises. They follow her.

You debate your response because you don't trust her at all—she has loud hands, drenched in the fluids of her enemies and gripping still so tight to her weapon. If she so wanted to, her knife would sink into the flesh of your neck without a concern and you would be left here, alone, dying on the tracks with nobody there to help you. Sometimes you don't value your life as much as you should, but nobody wants that to be their last memory.

"I never said that." You mutter, attempting to step away, but she grabs hold of your wrist so quickly your heart stutters in its cage.

Her eyes are the ones of an animal trapped with nowhere to go. "Yes you did," she snarls lowly, tugging you forward until your hips nearly bump with hers, "now tell me where, or I'll put this through your face."

"You don't want to do that." Your warnings go unheeded as her grip becomes impossibly tighter. You begin to panic, your breath escalating until it bounces harshly around the tunnels. "You really, really don't want to do that."

"Why's that?" she sneers at you; your eyes focus behind her shoulder and you feel a brief regret for what you're about to do.

"Because I won't hurt you," you say, stepping forward until you've trapped her in a bear-hug that smothers, "but they will." You propel yourself forward, sending both of you stumbling into the darkness beyond. Her heel catches on one of the tracks and she begins to fall, a scream caught in her throat, but cold hands catch her by the shoulders and drag her backwards still. You untangle yourself hastily with your heart beating loudly in your ears as the first of the sick manage to sink their teeth into the tender crook of her neck, blood spurting all over the walls and floor. She cries out with a hoarse, tortured sound you know will follow your footsteps long after you leave this place.

Sitting down as you are, her blood soaks your flimsy sandals and bare toes until your nails are painted an uneven red. She gurgles a few times, attempting to draw herself away as others join the frenzy, her legs dragging uselessly upon the ground. She stares at you with accusing eyes that burn until the first sick one flails for purchase and finds it on her face, his fingers digging into the sockets of her eyes and erasing that stare forever. It is her last sound of protest.

Long after they have wandered away, you crawl to her remains. The curve of her spine is visible from where they have torn away the muscle and ligaments, a sea serpent void of its ocean. The ugly glint of her innards bulge from a gaping wound in her stomach that spill out onto the ground and leave a bitter scent to the otherwise sweet smell of blood. One of her legs at the knees has been torn away; it reminds you so much of your sister that you bury your face in her back instead to rid yourself of the memory, allowing yourself to be swept away by the welcomed taste of her flesh and the way it erases all vestige of thought.

(You are slowly coming to terms with the fact that you might not be as you once were, before this happened. Different. Perhaps the sickness in your head has spread to your body?)

The clashing thoughts inside your head have calmed and the world has fallen away from that glass edge you so often walk. Now, free from the burden of your senses, you are able to straighten up and look around properly. The annihilated corpse of the woman that breathed only minutes before instills no sympathy or pity within you; not with her loud hands and angry eyes.

Nothing but darkness greets you in both directions. You attempt to figure out where you came from, but your altercation with the woman has succeeded in spinning you around so thoroughly that any sense of direction has been lost. Sighing, you wipe at your mouth with your hand (only managing to smear more blood over your face) and begin the trek in a random direction, hoping beyond hope it's the correct path.

It isn't.

The trains look the same but the placement of the bodies is different, the wrong people spread out in the wrong places. You haul yourself over the lip of the tracks and clamber dazedly to your feet, awkwardly shoving a sick man out the way when he attempts to knock you off balance. The station is almost identical to the previous one except the colors are different, the lines that paint it wrong. You aren't worried enough to panic, not with her flesh so heavy and warm in your stomach, but your concern mounts slightly as you walk up to the street and find no bike leaning up against the nearest wall. All the buildings look different, too; skyscrapers jammed together rather than the lower lying buildings you are so used to. You grimace, descending back into the subway hastily with your footsteps bounding off the walls.

Running over to a kiosk, after a few tries you manage to break through the flimsy wooden entry door with a bang. Your hands make bloody prints as you shuffle through the pieces of paper, pulling out little folded tourist maps that are useless when you realize you never figured out what street your compound was on. Even the subway maps are a maze of different colors and winding tunnels that make no sense; you bang your head on the wall in irritation as you flick your bloody hair away from your face and stare out into the station. Should you stay here or attempt to navigate a place that all looks the same? You glance upwards towards the outside world that has begun to darken with dusk, dimming the meager light that filters into the subway. The overhead lights have all but burnt out after weeks and weeks of little to no upkeep, and your (in)human eyes struggle to make out details in the gloom.

So instead you step hesitantly onto the train, gingerly rolling some of the overflowing bodies onto the station floor. They leave smears on the walls as you murmur your apologies, picking up the limbs that fall off as you drag them out. The lights flicker but still function, casting invisible shadows upon all of the surfaces. Once you clear a space big enough for you to lay down you sigh, dropping down and using the torso of a dead man for your pillow, his chest gone squishy with decay. It smells unpleasant but is far preferable to the hard floor.

It's strange that even though you often wish they would be quiet, you miss the heartbeats and breathing of your new companions in the compound. Without it, the station takes on an eerily silent lilt, like a world holding its breath. Your sleep comes uneasy and fractured without their constant cadence drowning out the whisper of your own thoughts that seethe around your mind. You still taste the woman on your tongue and feel her blood drying on your face, a sticky mess that clings to your clothes and your hair. Eventually you'll have to clean yourself up if you want to keep this facade of normalcy around the others, but now, wallowing with the dead, it seems the least of your concerns.

Not like they think you're normal anyway. You're convinced Puck is going to try and kill you in your sleep.

Closing your eyes, you force yourself into a deep sleep until morning. For the first time in a long while, you don't dream of who you used to be.