Chapter Three
November
Chris is shivering slightly when he wakes mid-morning, and it's a new sensation for him. He starts to full wakefulness, squawking, and grips at the ground with his claws in order to steady himself. But the ground gives way, and is much colder and wetter than he remembers it being the day before. This is a New Thing, and to any wild animal, a New Thing is often something to fear. In fact, Chris is already growing nervous, and he growls at the cold, wet ground.
His nose tells him that there's a lot of water around. But he's confused; not only is he not drowning, but the water's scent has a more…solid property to it. He lowers himself almost flat on his belly, and his face meets the strange, transformed surface beneath him. He can still breathe, but the water scent is especially strong. When he lifts his head, he can feel chill spots all over his face, even in his empty eye sockets. When he shakes his head vigorously, the spots disappear, leaving only lingering moisture.
The realization dawns on him slowly. Solid water…everywhere. All over. Harmless, but…cold!
He paws at the solid water beneath him, snorting. At least, he figures, his pack won't go thirsty.
His sister's voice catches his attention. He sniffs the air again, this time to find her scent. She's about a block away and practically exuding excitement. His curiosity is piqued, especially as the noises she's making are the same play-sounds she makes with him. Another breath tells him that she's not alone; a small pack of three Jockeys are with her. Their voices don't carry as well as Lexi's, but traces of their constant laughter drifts to his ears on the mild breeze.
Chris stands and picks his tentative way through the solid water. He can feel it soaking into his fur and settling onto his skin. Although uncomfortable, he isn't suffering as a human might; the cold merely annoys him, and he's shaking the stuff off of his legs every time he lifts them to take a step. It slows him down, and the result, by the time he reaches Lexi and the Jockey pack, is his darkening mood.
Though the small, hunched Infected are always laughing, they have the same excitement as Lexi in their tones, and their voices are higher in pitch than low, killing cackles Chris often hears from the strain. The sound annoys him even more, and when one of them approaches him to greet him, he growls and hisses warningly. The Jockey snickers and backs away, moving to rejoin his fellows.
Suddenly, Chris is slammed into the cold wet, surprising another squawk out of him. Lexi's pinned him to the ground, and more of the water soaks through to his skin. This serves to anger him further, and he snarls and claws at her, fighting to get his strong legs between them to kick her off. She, however, snarls at him to quiet him, and takes his wrist in her jaws firmly. She isn't breaking the skin, but he can't free himself without pain.
As such, he's forced to creep along with her—reluctantly—as she drags him a few feet. When they halt, he can sense that they're on the edge of some precipice. It's a hill, he surmises, but a small one and one covered in the solid water. Lexi releases him, but just as he's about to creep off again, grumbling, she pounces on him again.
Their momentum carries them over the side of the hill. Chris can feel the solid water beneath him as they—fall? No, it's not falling, but the adrenaline rushes through him and the air flies past him as though he had pounced something himself. It's a controlled fall, with all the excitement of a real pounce, but without the hard impact of landing. Instead, he and Lexi roll to a stop at the bottom of the hill, and his heart is pounding.
He likes it. No—he loves it.
The twins spend the rest of the day playing on that hill with the Jockey pack. The smaller Infected sometimes steal rides on the backs of the Hunters; the first time one hops onto Chris, he considers rolling over and snapping at it. But his sister doesn't seem to mind; in fact, she lays herself flat on her belly as she and her passenger fly down the hill. Chris instead follows suit, and finds that it's just as fun with or without a Jockey riding him.
Above the raucous, Blake stands on a rooftop, watching the Hunters and Jockeys. He's a little confused as to their behavior. None of them ever had a real childhood (that they can recall), but he still thinks they're acting like they're pups. He can't understand what's come over them, and after spending a few minutes trying to figure out why they're acting so strange, he gives up and limps off to find some food. It's obvious to him he's not getting anything out of the Hunters today.
His confusion doesn't help his mood. He had woken covered in the solid white water. While most of the dirt and blood had been washed away when he managed to brush himself off, the moisture stayed. He hates getting wet; just as humidity suppresses wood-smoke, so too does water prevent him from giving off as much of his own organic smoke. He often feels dizzy and sick when he's wet, and his coughing worsens. That's how he's been feeling all day, which has put him in a terrible mood.
By sundown, the Jockeys move on. Blake and the Hunters settle in an alley several blocks from a large wall that towers over most of the buildings in that part of the city. The twins curl in together, and Blake slumps against a dumpster nearby. Yet just as they start to drift off, a startlingly familiar scent shoots them all back to full wakefulness.
Chris knows he's never smelled it before. He has no conscious memory of ever encountering it before. But there's an alarm going off deep in his brain, not of fear, but of urgency. This scent is important. It comes from someone that is "half of me." Beside him, Lexi starts making a soft keening sound at the back of her throat; she feels the same way he does. Even Blake's anxious, the smoke pouring from him as much as it can.
Lexi gets up and starts off in the direction of the scent. She doesn't seem concerned about the solid water, and truth be told, neither is Chris. He follows after her, with Blake bringing up the rear. They take to the rooftops to move faster, where the water isn't so deep. As they approach the source of the scent, they can hear sobbing; it's faint at first, but the closer they get, the louder, until the sound is echoing around the buildings.
Chris knows the strain of Infection; he's encountered a Witch or two in the past month. They're rare, and only the hulking Tanks have nothing to fear from them. But this one is different from the others.
This is Chris and Lexi's sister.
They have no conscious memory of her. Neither Chris nor Lexi have encountered her since "waking" as Hunters. But deep in their most basic of memory, they remember that they have a younger sister, who had been Infected with them. They remember her name: Caroline. And now, they know that she's below them, wandering in the empty street, Infected as they are.
Lexi, the bolder twin, jumps down from their perch above the Witch. Caroline doesn't stop moving, but her sobs fade to growls. Lexi lets out a soft, submissive whine, crouching to make herself seem smaller—but doesn't move out of Caroline's path. The Witch finally stops, lowering her foot-long claws from her tear-stained face and revealing her blazing red eyes. Those eyes glow with a bioluminescence that none of the other Infected hold. The sight is lost on Lexi, but the confusion and anger tinted with sorrow, which those eyes hold, isn't.
Lexi whines again, and then Chris jumps down to join her, making the same sound. Caroline's growling grows louder, and she starts to spread her arms in a full threat display. But she stops about midway, her growling cutting off, as she suddenly recognizes the Hunters in front of her. She can smell them, too, though her olfactories aren't as strong as theirs; she recognizes their scents just as they recognize hers. Her eyes dart between the twins and her arms slowly lower.
"Abugu?" She tries to speak, but though her brain can work with vague words—better even than the twins and Blake—she has trouble actually forming them. But the twins know what she means—at the very least, they can hear and smell the hopeful curiosity in her voice and her manner. They both give joyful cries, and Lexi pounces on her sister, bathing the Witch's face with her tongue like a dog. Caroline screams, but her tone holds only an ever-present undertone of mourning; instead, the scream is of delight, and her deadly claws curl delicately around Lexi's body in a tight hug.
Seeing that Caroline isn't hostile, Blake jumps down, too. Like the twins, he has no conscious memory of her. Unlike the twins, he doesn't think he has any reason to know her—but then again, it's the same with the twins. None of the three are blood relations to the Smoker, but there's a deep sense of familiarity about them that's kept him with the twins since their first moments as Infected. Now that sense extends to Caroline; he's confused, but he doesn't think too hard on it, just as he's stopped thinking about how he knows the twins. It gives him a headache.
The four of them return to where Blake and the twins had started to settle for the night. The Smoker returns to his spot against the dumpster, but the twins curl up around Caroline. The Witch has sunk to her knees, starting to cry softly, but there's no real sadness in her sobs, or even tears; they're merely reflex, a built-in feature of her Infection strain. The Hunters drift to sleep with her gentle rocking, and Blake closes his eye to doze to her sniffling.
Author's Notes: And here we have HR3! I apologize profusely for the amount of time it's taken me, despite promises I've made. Hopefully, I won't be as terrible with future updates.
I'm thinking that the pack here will start meeting the lovely Garnet here fairly soon. Keep an eye out!