EDIT: SORRY... Updated one sentence...
Again, thank you for all the support. Your reviews keep me motivated.
And to show my thanks, I'm posting two days in a row. Things are starting to pick up. I am also on an abundance of pain medication, but this has been bouncing around my head for a few days now. But I apologize for any mistakes. Please continue to leave your feedback!
Claire was dreaming.
She did not often dream; nightmares more commonly won out for control of her subconscious.
Standing alone, she could not identify her surroundings. There seemed to be only sky and earth. The ground under her feet was indistinct, but the sky was overwhelming. There were no trees, no landmarks, no rocks or vehicles or buildings, nothing marring the landscape, no marks on the horizon. There was nothing between earth and sky but Claire.
It wasn't the desert sky. Not the clear, sullen blue sky that she was so accustomed to. It was day, there was ample light to see, but the sun was lost underneath the solid clot of clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon in all directions. It was gray, all shadow and unmoving swathes of clouds. Claire felt swallowed by the enormity of sky on all sides of her, as if it only by sheer force of will that her feet managed to stay planted to the ground, that she did not float up into the nothingness. She could gaze in any direction and see into the infinite nothing, into the blankness without end.
It began to rain at once. It was a fast, steady rain that pelted straight down in fat drops. There was no wind to blow it sideways or in sheets. Unaccompanied by thunder or lightning or thunder, the rain continued to fall. Claire was not bothered by the rain; instead she was enamored with it, unable to recall the last time she had felt the rain on her skin. The world turned grayer.
Without any bearing on the passage of time, it might have rained for hours or minutes, but Claire did not move from where she stood. Abruptly, the rain in front of her seemed to roll towards her, like a sheet of sheer fabric being pulled towards her and in its place was left a curtain of silver. It shone like glass, seeming to catch what little light there was and reflecting it, like crystal or a mirror. Yet unlike a mirror, it did not reflect her image. Still pelted by the rain, she reached towards the silver glass.
And then she saw it. Peace beat in her heart and swiftly spread to her chest and to the rest of her body. She no longer felt the rain falling against her skin or face, no longer saw the shadow of the clouds. Calmness dawned upon her like a swift sunrise, and she was warm and safe. Tears streamed down her cheeks with a happiness as poignant and heart-aching as grief.
"Claire!" The scream that ripped her from the dream was shrill and desperate. She reached for the handle of the Hummer's door and stumbled out before she had even fully opened her eyes. K-mart screamed again, and Claire forced herself to shake off the dream, the last lingering effects of sleep and snatch her shotgun from the backseat.
Her mind was already racing with a million possibilities of what could be wrong. More crows? Had the horde from Las Vegas found them already? No, that was impossible. Besides, the camp was too quiet for there to be a horde present, and the perimeter alarms would have sounded, waking them all up with ample time to prepare a defense. No alarm sounded. Besides sounds of a scuffle coming from near the tanker truck and muffled, masculine voices, the camp was relatively quiet with most people either not wakened by the scream or locked in their vehicles waiting for Claire's orders.
Why had K-mart screamed for her?
Alice fell into step beside Claire, and they raced toward the only source of sound in the camp, the direction where K-mart's scream had emanated. Of all the scenarios that Claire had ticked through her mind, none had come relatively close to what she actually found.
K-mart had flattened herself against the side of the tanker truck, fear paralyzing her in place. Next to her, the passenger door was still flung open. Chase's upper body hung out of the open door, his arms dangling uselessly above his head, which was cocked at a sickening angle, most of the flesh at his throat ragged and torn. Blood streamed from the wound down the side of his face. One sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt was shredded to the elbow. He was already dead.
At Claire's feet lay a pistol. And several yards away Mikey and LJ wrestled and thrashed in the sand.
No. It was not LJ. One glimpse of his normal caramel skin told that it had ashed to white-gray, sallow and waxen. Claire was close enough to see that the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, the pupils already milky and dead.
Without thought, she skidded to a halt and raised her shotgun, her cheek pressing against the cool stock. But there was too much movement as Mikey fought to throw LJ off of him; she could not shoot without hitting the Australian. LJ already had size on Mikey and now fought with the heedless strength of the Infected, who never grew winded, never tired.
Alice had kept moving when Claire had stopped, one of her kukri blades already in her hand. Apparently it was the only weapon she had grabbed in her urgency. Her weapons belt, duster jacket, even boots had all been left in the backseat of the Hummer.
Somersaulting over the two men, she reached out with her free hand and snagged the back of LJ's shirt. Untucking her body, she nimbly landed on her feet and used her backward momentum to pull the Infected man backwards with her. It was just enough to allow Mikey a split moment to crab-crawl backwards before Alice swung her kukri blade in a blurring arc over her head.
Severed just below the chin, LJ's head thudded and rolled to the desert sand. Releasing her hold on his shirt, Alice let his body slump down next to it.
Everything seemed to freeze for a moment as Alice, Claire, K-mart and Mikey held their breaths, as if expecting the headless Infected to rise yet again. When he didn't, K-mart threw herself at Claire, impacting with enough force to cause Claire to stagger backwards a few steps.
Throwing her shotgun to the ground, Claire hugged the younger woman to her, one arm wrapped around her shoulders, the other around her waist. K-mart buried her face in her shoulder. The heaving of her chest was unsteady and labored, but the teenager was not crying. Her resilience amazed Claire.
Looking over K-mart's shoulder, she saw Alice kneeling next to the corpse, wiping her blade clean on LJ's shirt, her face painted with impassive stoicism. Carlos stood beside her, raking his fingers through his close cropped black hair. When had he gotten there?
Another glance at Chase's body, and Claire gently extricated herself from K-mart's arms.
"K-mart, what happened?"
Inhaling deeply, K-mart shook her head, refusing to meet Claire's intense, questioning eyes. "I… I don't know. I was sleeping in the truck with LJ and Chase… Chase was telling me some of the old Greek myths he had read about in high school, and I figured I'd just stay with them and give you and Alice some time… y'know… alone and LJ was already sleeping…" She said in a rush, barely pausing to breathe. Claire stiffened at the mention of her and Alice spending time "alone," but dismissed her discomfort. There would be time enough later to correct the teenager's perceptions.
"…and when I woke up LJ was already on Chase and he," K-mart sobbed dryly and swallowed hard. "he was already dead and I guess I climbed over him and got out of the truck and screamed. Mikey showed up first and pulled him off of me but LJ knocked the gun out of his hand and… and then you got here…"
Pulling her into a crushingly tight hug, Claire kissed the top of her head. "It's okay, it's okay. You did good." But her face was dark with fury, even as she reassured her. How could this happen? LJ knew he had been bitten but he hid it from everyone, let everyone think he was fine. How could he endanger the entire convoy like that? That selfish fucking bastard had rather risked killing the people he called friends than put a bullet through his miserable skull. He should have ate his gun the moment he realized he was Infected. That's what Claire would do, rather than become one of those things, rather than turn on the people she cared about.
"Claire." Alice said softly.
"What?" She snapped.
"Claire." Mikey said this time, his voice quavering. He was still sitting on the ground where he had scampered back to, but his pistol still lay on the ground. One of his hands was clamped around the opposite forearm, but Claire could still see the blood oozing between his fingers, leaking onto the sand.
"No." Fear lurched in her gut, and releasing K-mart, she knelt in front of him. "No, you're fine. Let me see."
His face white with fear, Mikey still smiled shakily and tentatively offered her his arm. "What do you think, Doctor? I think this merits a prescription of medical marijuana, do you think?"
She peeled his fingers away from the wound, and her heart sank lower. The circular wound was doubtlessly a bite; the skin had raggedly been pulled away from the upper half, but there were distinct bite marks in a semi-circle along the bottom.
Behind her, she heard Carlos curse in Spanish and K-mart cry out.
"Oh, Mikey…"
"Don't," His uninjured hand sought out Claire's. He shook his head vehemently, the skin around his mouth pinched and white. "I'm already dead. Don't apologize."
Claire closed her eyes, willing it not to be true. When she opened her eyes this would be a cruel joke and she would be furious with the others for playing it on her, but ultimately relieved that it wasn't true. But when she opened her eyes, Mikey was still staring at her, his bloody hand still tightly clenching her own.
Mikey always had a crush on her, an innocent sort of infatuation. But Claire had never allowed him the chance to even consider acting on it or professing his feelings. Not that he needed to; it was obvious how he felt, how his face lit up whenever they spoke, how he flashed that dazzling white smile at her. But she had made it utterly clear that she had no interest in romance. Then Alice had come along. How it must have tortured him to see the two of them interact. Had she been as obvious in her feelings as he had been?
"Will you do it?" Mikey asked through clenched teeth. "I don't want to be…" He spared a look at LJ's body. "I don't want to be one of them. But I don't think. I'll just botch it up. Never was any good with a gun." He grinned, still joking despite what he asked of Claire.
Her gut reaction was to deny him, but when she opened her mouth she could not. Biting her lower lip, she nodded. Not taking her eyes from his, she slowly nodded. "Get K-mart out of here."
"Claire-" Carlos began, the pity in his voice clear.
"Go!" Claire shouted, and then whispered. "This is my responsibility."
When the shuffling of feet faded, Mikey squeezed her hand reassuringly. "It's okay, Claire. Promise." His voice was genuinely compassionate.
"You're reassuring me?"
He released her hand and reached for his pistol and pressed it into her hand. "Just promise me. The only choice we have, the only decision we can make is what to do with the time we have. Promise me you'll remember that?" The pistol was cool against Claire's palm, heavy. Their eyes locked one last time, and Mikey nodded, withdrawing his hands. "Okay," He nodded as if trying to convince himself. "I'm ready."
Everyone was awake in the camp by now, but it was deathly silent, like a grave before the first shovelful of earth fills it.
A shot cleaved the silence with a deafening crack. Silence passed with seconds before a second shot followed.
A cliff-hanger? Perhaps.
Sorry for the edit... I tweaked Mikey's final words.
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