Disclaimer: I wish Twilight belonged to me, along with the hot redhead named Fred in the seat next to mine, oh well. Today's song is No Feelings by The Sex Pistols.
"Bells you've got to give me some answers here," Rosalie pleaded through the closed door from her spot, slouched against the wall. "What the hell happened back there?"
Her questions were met with silence, just as they had been for the past fifteen minutes and she wasn't going wait around any longer. Rather than wait for answers that may never come, she decided to be proactive and use any means necessary to extract her information.
After a quick scrounge through the supplies downstairs, she found what she was looking for, a metal shish kebob skewer.
"Alright Isabella," she mumbled under her breath as she trekked back up the stairs, "I guess we're going to have to do things my way."
As quietly as possible, the precocious blonde began to fiddle with the tumblers in the doorknob before finding a sweet spot and releasing the lock.
"Gotcha mother fucker!" she exclaimed triumphantly as she threw open the wooden door and hurried inside. "Alright Bella, time for some answers!"
Bella looked up from the small desk she was working at and pulled a pair of headphones out of her ears, the music so loud it was audible even to Rosalie from across the small room.
"What was that?" Bella shouted before lowering her voice. "Sorry, I mean what was that?"
Rosalie squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples in frustration. "Have you heard anything I've been saying for the past fifteen minutes?"
Bella furrowed her brow before shaking her head. "Nope sorry," she shrugged. "I've been up here trying to figure this crap out and I turned on some music to help me concentrate," she replied gesturing to the tacks of maps and ledgers scattered across the small workspace.
"Concen- never mind," Rosalie shook her head. It truly was inconceivable to her that anyone could actually concentrate on anything other than the bleeding in their eardrums with the volume turned up so high.
"I want answers Bella and don't think you're going to get out of it," she demanded while seating herself on the small, unmade bed. "What happened back there?"
With a sigh Bella turned off her music completely and carefully wound up her headphones before looking back up. "I was just surprised is all, it's nothing to worry about. I'm good."
Rose let out a snort of disbelief. "Good? Good! Are you fucking kidding me right now Bella? I've never, never heard you say fuck, ever and you said it not once but twice! Do you hear me? Two goddamn times!"
"Look Rose what do you want me to say?" Bella huffed getting agitated. "Do you want me to tell you that I'm so mad that I want to bash some heads in or that everything is hunky dory and I'm great now that I got that out of my system because I'm not. Okay? Honestly I don't even know what to do with my hands right now!" She declared throwing her hands up over her head.
"I'm pissed and hurt and freaking shocked right now and yet amazingly still pretty numb all at once and I'm not really sure what to do right now. Did I let a few f-bombs fly? Yeah. So what? It's not like I can't say that word, I just don't like to. It makes me feel dirty. I'm just- ugh!" she leapt to her feet and began pacing the small room, her hands still in the air as Rosalie watched in stunned disbelief.
"Nothing is making sense right now," Bella ranted. "None of this should even be possible. The dead shouldn't be walking and Edward Cullen shouldn't be within five hundred miles of me and yet here I am, hiding from zombies on a mesa amidst the ruins of an ancient civilization in the middle of the desert with Edward frocking Cullen. Fmuck!" she shouted before throwing herself backwards onto the bed next to Rosalie, hands still in the air.
The small bed groaned and let out a sickening metallic squeal before collapsing onto the floor with a loud thud, the combined weight of the two women too much for its ancient aluminum frame to handle. For a moment there was complete silence before Bella snickered with Rosalie quickly following suit.
The snickering soon changed into giggles with quickly transformed into gut busting laughter. "This is not real life!" Rosalie gasped out between laughing fits, "that scared the begeezus out of me!"
Immediately Bella stopped laughing and cocked her head to the side, a sure sign she was pondering something earth shattering. "Rose," she said, "what exactly is a begeezus?"
Rosalie gasped for breath as she considered the small brunette's question. "Eh, I don't know actually," she admitted with a shrug, "it's just something I've always heard people say."
"Hum," Bella replied quietly as she mulled it over, "I'm pretty sure it's a small squirt of pee." She declared finally.
"A what?" Rosalie laughed.
"A small squirt of pee. That would explain why it can get scared out of you again and again. It has to be something that replenishes itself doesn't it? And when people get scared sometimes they pee a little. It makes sense," she reasoned seriously.
Rosalie face palmed before answering. "I swear you're from a different planet you know that? A small squirt of pee. Where do you come up with this crap?"
"Dunno," Bella replied airily as she sat up and struggled to get off the crushed bed, "I'm just special I guess."
"Oh you're special alright," Rose conceded with an emphatic nod and a roll of her eyes as she too got to her feet. "Now, stop trying to distract me and give me some answers."
Bella just stuck out her tongue and walked back over to her desk. "I don't know what to do Rose," she admitted as she began shuffling papers around. "You know what he did, how am I supposed to react to that?"
"Actually Bells," Rosalie replied crossing the room and perching herself carefully upon the edge of the desk, "I don't know what happened between you two, not really anyway. Now if you told me maybe I could…"
Bella shook her head, "I'm sorry Rose I just can't. If I get into it right now it's going to bring up old feelings and now's just not the time for that."
"Well when will it be the time for that?" Rosalie demanded. "Because it's pretty fucking obvious to me that you two have some unresolved issues and the sooner you get them out there the better."
The woman beside her was silent for a moment while she stared out the window into the clear blue sky beyond. "I wish it were that easy Rose but it's just, not. I don't have the luxury of being able to get in touch with my emotions right now or any of that touchy feely shit. Right now I need to focus on surviving and making sure everyone else up here does too. Besides you know that's not really my style. All you need to know is he left okay? That's it. I'm over it. Right now, I'm over it."
"Bells-," Rosalie scolded.
"No Rose, I'm serious," Bella cut her off and looked her square in the eye. "Those kinds of emotions are a luxury I just don't have time for right now. I'm just going to – god I don't know. Ignore him? Treat him like nothing ever happened? I don't know, it doesn't really matter. I just need to keep my head in the game. The past is the past for a reason you know? Right now we just need to focus on making it to tomorrow."
"But," Rosalie was suddenly interrupted by a loud banging coming from downstairs. "Uh, what now?" she moaned as Bella jumped up and bounded down the stairs obviously glad to once again escape the conversation.
Rosalie climbed down the stairs more slowly than her best friend and paused for a moment to listen to the conversation drifting up from the floor below.
"Picked it up about an hour or so ago," a man's voice said, "Sam told me to ask you to come take a listen."
She didn't hear Bella's response but her questions about what was happening were soon answered when Bella's face appeared at the foot of the stairs.
"Sorry Rose, I've gotta split. We're picking up some kind of radio broadcast and they need my help."
"Sorry my ass," Rose retorted with a small smile. "Don't think you're getting off that easily Swan. I will have my answers one way or another," she shook her finger threateningly.
"Sure, sure," Bella replied dismissively over her shoulder as she hurried out the front door behind a dark haired teen leaving Rosalie feeling frustrated and wholly unsatisfied.
As Bella followed Seth to the small communications center Sam had set up in one of the unoccupied houses, she couldn't stop herself from crossing her fingers as she sent a silent plea into the universe for some sort of good news. Seth had come to inform her that Sam had picked up some sort of government broadcast while he was scanning the airwaves.
Since the outbreak had started, the survivors on the mesa had been scanning the airwaves for news from the outside world while maintaining radio silence. To broadcast their location would only invite trouble and they already had more than enough of that as it was.
Upon arriving at Sam's house, Seth didn't bother with knocking before through the door and plopping himself down in an unoccupied recliner.
"What've you got for me?" Bella questioned as she perched on the arm of Seth's seat and focused her attention on Sam's hunched form.
"News broadcast," he replied with a sigh, leaning back in his chair as he rolled his head back onto his shoulders trying in vain to relieve some of the tension that had built up there. "It's a little garbled because of our location but they've been replaying it every fifteen minutes so I've been able to piece together the message."
Bella hopped up from her perch and joined him by the radio equipment. "And?"
"And it's not looking good. The military is retreating to the north trying to circle the wagons if you will. My guess is this thing spread so quickly in the south that they're scrambling for a foothold. The stations are all broadcasting the locations of so called 'safe zones' but from the chatter out there on the short wave, it seems as though most of those have already been overrun."
"Shit," Bella breathed as she processed what this meant for their survival. She had really hoped that the government would launch a campaign that would stop this madness but it seemed as though that would never happen now.
"There's more," Sam continued, interrupting her thoughts. "There are civilian broadcasts flooding the airwaves about which areas have been overrun and it's spreading faster than we thought. The numbers they describe," he trailed off.
"But we're going to be okay right?" Seth piped up anxiously from his seat reminding the adults of his presence.
Bella and Sam exchanged a worried glance before she pasted a reassuring smile on her face and turned to address the worried teen. "Course we will," she assured him with a grin. "No way anything could find us all the way out here and even if it did we're so well protected it's ridiculous." Seth seemed content to take Bella's word for it and sank back into his seat.
"Uh hey Seth, could you uh go check on Esme for me?" Sam asked trying to find an excuse to get the kid out of the room. No reason to worry him any more than necessary. "Make sure she's getting along okay and see if she needs anything."
"Sure man," the teen replied as he hopped to his feet and scuttled out the door, happy to be of use.
"Nice," Bella complimented the older man who just shrugged.
"No need to get the kid all riled up over something we can't do anything about. Anyway, I'd like you to take over for me for a while, don't want to miss anything important. I need to see a man about a horse if you catch my drift."
"Ew," Bella wrinkled her nose and shooed him out the door. "Go. Do what you have to do, I'll be here when you get back." With a smirk Sam stood and stretched before out the door. "Get yourself something to eat while you're at it!" Bella shouted at his retreating form before turning her attention to the set-up before her.
With a glance towards the heavens, Bella offered up another silent prayer for good news before donning a pair of oversized headphones. After a few minutes of listening it became very clear that what she was hearing was not good news, in fact it was far from it.
Just as Sam had said, the airwaves were flooded with canned government issued messages about safe zones and survival tips that were sure to get people killed. Bella hung her head in disgust before switching over to the short wave broadcasts where things were no better.
As she listened to the desperation in some of the peoples' voices she felt her heart begin to break. While she wanted desperately to rush out and help the poor souls begging for help as zeds surrounded their houses she knew there was nothing she could do but prey that their end would come swiftly.
The weapons they had on the mesa wouldn't put even a dent in the hordes some were describing and it would be far too dangerous to send such green fighters into a fight like that. Besides, she reasoned, they were all so far away that by the time she reached them it would already be too late. It was thoughts like those she knew would haunt her until her dying day, however soon that may be.