"I spy with my little eye…," said the brown vixen.
"Oh boy, here we go," Clementine interjected before she could finish.
"...something fishy!"
"Like, actual fish, or just something suspicious?" asked Judy.
"Can't say any more hints other than that," Skye said, her eyes closed as she smiled.
"Knowing Skye, it's definitely a fish," said Clementine.
"Oh come on, Clementine, have more faith in her," said Judy. "I'm sure it's something more clever than-oh yeah it's a fish."
Looking in the direction of the doe, Clementine saw the answer to Skye's childish spy game. A shop with a giant fish figure on the roof, aptly named Otterlie's Fish Cannery.
"Darn, it was too easy," Skye lamented.
"Told you she's too predictable, Judy."
"I'll be unpredictable next time. You'll see," said Skye. Clementine feared when the next time might be.
"Okay, my turn next," Judy said as they were walking to their next location. Clementine sighed silently. "I spy with my bunny eye…"
"Wait a second," Skye interrupted. "Bunny eye?"
"Yeah, that's how us bunnies say the phrase," Judy explained. Skye was amused at the knowledge of that, but she let Judy continue. "Anyway, I spy with my bunny eye, something red."
"Me?" asked Clem smugly.
"Sunny, we love you, but not everything revolves around you, I've told you this before," joked Skye.
"Not you, Clem. It's an object."
"There's a ton of red buildings here, are those it?" asked Skye.
"That would be way too easy."
"How far are we from this thing?" asked Clementine this time.
"Not too far and not too close."
"Are we walking towards it?" asked Skye. The group was still traveling through the streets of Capitol Hill.
"It's pretty much in the same place. We can't get any closer to it."
"This is making absolutely no sense," said Skye.
"Give up yet?"
"Absolutely not," declared Clementine. "Say, Judy, as long as we keep going, this red thing will still be following us, right?"
'That is correct, yes."
"Then I'll keep thinking about it as we go."
"Fair enough. Just tell me whenever you're ready to give up."
"Never," said the red vixen.
It was late afternoon on Capitol Hill. The sun still hung brightly in the sky, but it wouldn't be for long. They had already wasted enough time being captured and having to escape the school, but now they had an entire army aware of their location. If Abby knew this, she'd have an idea of whoever was causing ruckus in the city.
That's right, Abby, Clementine started thinking. I hope you know we killed two of your friends already. We won't stop until you're next. She couldn't wait to meet her again.
"Is it the sun?" tried to answer Skye. "I mean, it's in the sky, and it follows us everywhere."
"That is a possibility," Judy said. "But not the right answer."
Skye made a low growl in frustration. "Damn it, Jude."
"There is honor in withdrawal, you know."
"We already said we won't," said Clementine. "You can never outsmart a fox, nevermind two of them."
"That is factually incorrect," Judy said smugly. "I'll have you know I did my fair share of outsmarting Nick."
"That's because Nick considered you a deity in mortal form," said Clementine. "He always had the dumbest face when you were around."
"That was part of the hustle, Clem. My own feminine beauty was but an asset in my long game to torment the living daylights out of him," she said playfully.
"What were you doing to that poor fox?" Skye asked.
"Oh yeah, did you know Skye had a crush on him, Jude?" Clementine said, which elicited a slow turn from the white vixen. Her eyes and cheeks were red with rage (and embarrassment).
"Oh, really now?" Judy asked with a chuckle, following Clem's thread. "Sorry, Skye, but I'm afraid he would've been off-limits forever."
"I know that!" she yelled, worried Judy might not believe her. "Your daughter is the devil."
"You know you love her," said Judy. Obviously, Skye couldn't say no to that.
Going past a basketball court, the group approached a roadblock, courtesy of their military friends. A humvee was parked beside the entrance, which consisted of full height turnstiles blocked by grass and a small tree. Clementine tried to force her way through, but the turnstiles never budged.
"Gotta get in there," she said frustratingly. "We're gonna have to go around."
Back in the direction of the basketball court, the group noticed two mammals in the distance.
"More company," whispered Skye. Clementine kneeled and made her way silently to the basketball court. Maybe it would be a good vantage point to let them pass through.
"How do trespassers even get in?" asked the female Wolf. They had been too far away for any of the group to truly notice their species.
"Same way the deserters get out," spoke the other soldier.
"If you ask me…deserters are the worst."
"I don't give a fuck. They don't want to be here, then they don't want to be here."
Clementine and co. descended the steps into the court, silently waiting for the mammals' next move.
"They're fucking traitors," said the female. "At least with Scars, you know what you're getting."
"Well…like I said, I don't give a fuck."
"They have such a way with words," whispered Skye.
The trio went prone behind a sofa left abandoned in the court, hoping that they could evade that patrol. With her sense of hearing, Judy noticed they were nearing their location, now interested in walking to the court.
"C'mon, just go past us," whispered Clementine, pleading with the mammals to just walk away. The number thirteen must've been around there somewhere, because the mammals headed to their exact location. As they entered the court, she could see it was two gray wolves. Not even the mildly grown grass protected them from their sight.
"What the…?" Said the female wolf, before getting popped in the head by Skye's silenced pistol. She shot at the other wolf but missed, and now he was alerted and trigger happy. Before he could pull out his own gun to shoot at the group, Clementine ran at him and beat him with the pipe, ending the bout.
"Damnit," cursed Skye. "My silencer degraded." Clementine looked in her direction and saw the bottle used as a silencer, now on the ground and burned off from the multiple rounds shot from her pistol.
"I think I got more supplies to make another one," Clementine said, taking out a bottle and other necessary materials, giving them to Skye. "You should teach me how to do those."
"Sure," she said. "I'll teach you when we're out of this mess. Thankfully, I don't see any more Wolves."
"Yet," Judy spoke.
There was a Channel 13 news wagon in their proximity, indicating they were closer to their target. To keep going, they were going to have to go down into a grocery store through a hole from a roof window. The group sought to first explore and get whatever they could find before moving on.
Skye was worried about one fact. "How are we gonna get Leah alone? This QZ is swarming."
Clementine looked around for supplies before heading down. "We just need a minute to talk to her," she answered her girlfriend.
"You gonna make her talk?" Asked Judy.
"If I have to," Clem said drily.
"Just…let me do it first," Judy began saying. "If she doesn't budge, you can do whatever you want."
"Are you okay with that?" Asked Clementine. The doe was never too happy about torturing anyone, preferring to use her wits to interrogate someone in a smart fashion. It was evident that this group wouldn't accept normal conversation.
Judy nodded at her daughter. "I can do it. Better me than you."
There it was. That solidarity and kindness that the female rabbit was used to giving. Clementine wouldn't mind torturing Leah, especially being one of the people that killed Nick, but if Judy was offering to take the emotional bullet, it would be hard to try to convince her not to do it.
"Okay," Clem said. Skye looked at the two of them with a hurt expression. She did her best to hide it from them.
Now at the opened window where they had to drop down, Clementine waited for the bunny and brown vixen to be beside her. "You guys ready?" She told them.
"At least I'll be voluntarily dropping down a ceiling this time around," said Judy with a chuckle, reminding them of their not so fun time in the school. Some furs stood up on both vixens as they remembered the creepy black hare.
"Let's go, then," Clementine finalized, jumping into the hole, the crew following her. What they immediately saw were empty shelves from the grocery store they could hide behind. What they heard, though, was much less pretty.
"Damnit. Howlers," noticed Skye. Clementine could hear many of them around it, with Judy corroborating that fact by listening intently and making circles with her hands, implying they were surrounded. Right next to the group there was a door where two Howlers resided. With the slowest steps she could muster, the red vixen began trying to pass in between the two howlers, who were both bunnies.
Fuck, she thought. If Howlers could already hear well, Bunny Howlers were even worse, their god-given gift of hearing already advanced. Judy noticed that too, which made her want to tell Clem to turn back. She was too far away from her now, and she kept moving.
"Gyah?" Articulated the Howler in front of Clem. She looked down at her feet, seeing a dried-up bark of wood. One single crunch. One she hadn't even heard making. She was now sandwiched in between two of the Howlers, now closely getting to her location.
With a simple sniff, one of the rabbits found her.
"Raaaaagh!" Screamed the rabbit howler, alerting the rest of the savages in the grocery store. Behind her, one of the bunny Howlers grabbed her by the tail, forcefully moving her towards it and punching her in the lower region of her back, causing a wince on the red vixen. Beginning its process of biting her in the face, it got cut short by Judy's bat connecting with the rabbit's head, dying on the floor.
"Run, Clementine!" Judy screamed, running to the exit of the grocery store. This time, Clementine followed the doe as she and Skye managed to dodge a few other Howlers going for the attack.
"Move it!" Judy said hurriedly, already at the entrance of the store, the two vixens struggling to catch up.
Now outside, they were still being chased by the savages inside, maddeningly coming out into the light to catch them. The girls didn't get a break. They had to keep going. It couldn't get any worse.
They were wrong. It could get so much worse. Running towards a building they needed to cross to keep advancing, a patrol of Wolves was already there, inspecting the area.
"God fucking damnit!" Clem screamed in frustration as she kept running from the savages behind them, Skye running close to her.
"Just keep running!" Judy said. "Go inside that building."
A rabbit WLF with a turkey vulture spotted them running towards the building. He tried to scream to alert the others, but he couldn't see one of the rabbit Howlers bumping into him, sending him to the ground as he began biting his neck, infecting him with Night Howlers. The other Howler bunny took care of the vulture.
"Watch the savages!" Screamed one of the Wolves on the top floors of one of the buildings, shooting at them with a sniper rifle. With a higher sprint, the group managed to reach the inside of the building, but they weren't out of danger yet.
"Down there! The trespassers! One of them's got a ribbon on her tail!"
To that, she couldn't help but do a double take. None of them had a ribbon on their tails. Unless?
Hiding behind a cabinet on the first floor of the building, the trio took a few breaths before moving on. Clementine went straight to her tail, and there she saw it. There was a red ribbon tied expertly to the white-colored tip of her tail. She looked at Judy judgfully, which she understood.
"Surprise?" Judy said, feigning innocence. Skye looked at the ribbon as well.
"How the heck did I not see that?" She asked.
"Uhm, we kinda have more important matters right now!" Clem screamed, as a bullet ricocheted on a wall behind them.
"Are you hurt, Clem? You, Skye?" asked the worried doe. Both vixens shook their heads.
"That stupid Howler punched my back, but it's not that bad," said Clementine.
"We'll look at it after we're out of this!" Judy said, starting to gather loose ammunition from the nearby tables of the building, which seemed to have been a restaurant.
Judy heard rustling of leaves behind her, and finally noticed the open area where they could be seen by one of the Wolves.
"In the building!" the Wolf shouted, shooting at the trio. As they ran to their safety deeper into the building, a bullet managed to grace Clementine's right forearm. They approached a counter and hid there for the moment.
"Fuck!" Clementine cursed, touching her new wound. It wasn't bleeding, but it had graced her enough to burn off her fur in that area. The brown vixen and doe checked her for other wounds, and also checked themselves to see if they had forgotten what pain felt like. They were clear.
"Here, let's use this," Skye said, untying the red ribbon, which was actually a handkerchief. She tied it to her forearm, clearing the wound from getting exposed to any infection. "Good?"
"Yeah, thanks," Clementine said with a smile, but they were not out of danger yet.
"They're fucking dead," screamed a soldier, approaching their location at the counter. Peering up at the enemy for a second, Skye managed to get out of cover quickly and shoot him in the head with another round from her unsilenced pistol.
"We can't kill all of them, let's get out of here!" Judy ordered, motioning them to get out of their hiding spot and seek a way out of this Wolf-infested nest.
"Move in!" screamed one of the soldiers, running at them with killing intent. Clementine stopped him on his tracks with her pipe, making his head bounce on a sharp surface in the corner of a wall, cutting his skull from both sides.
"There, guys! The stairs!" screamed Skye, pointing at a way to move up towards the second floor. Sprinting, the girls took the stairs towards the second floor of the building, hoping to not get in any more precarious situations. They knew such a thing was too much to ask.
The second floor of the building was surrounded by cubicles and broken computers. They made sure to steer clear off the windows while gathering everything they could. There was no one on the second floor yet looking for them.
"Up there!" Screamed one of the Wolves from below, shooting through the windows the girls worked hard to evade. They could see a bank to the other side of the street, which was where most of them were posted.
"There's a guy in front of us," Judy whispered while the group was covered by one of the room's walls. "I think he's got a rifle."
Nodding, Clementine got out of cover and ran to another table, taking a quick glance at their new obstacle. The pig wasn't moving, just sitting at a table while holding his rifle, ready to shoot whatever crossed his path. Getting out her rifle, Clementine aimed carefully at the pig and shot, hitting him in one of his hooves, which knocked his rifle to the ground. While the pig moaned in pain and struggled to collect his rifle, Skye went ahead and finished the job, headshotting him with her own rifle.
"Through the hole!" Screamed Judy, this time running towards a broken part of the wall that made for a perfect exit.
"Over here!" Clem could still hear the Wolves, equally struggling with the infected and trying to kill them. Going over the wall, they touched ground on a grassy ground, and they immediately noticed the turnstiles to their left. They had succeeded in going around the perimeter.
The joy did not last long as two camels busted through a fence in the wall to their right, carrying two pistols, ready to shoot at the bunch. Judy, being the first that was out, quickly covered herself in a concrete barrier and tried shooting at them. Clem and Skye sprinted towards that same barrier, careful not to get hit by any of their bullets. Now prone in the ground next to the barrier, Clementine loaded her shotgun, and without seeing, shot two rounds at the camels. She heard one of them yelp in pain, but the other had said nothing, making a thud on the ground with his nonexistent head. Clementine got out of cover and finished up the other camel with another shotgun round. Silence greeted them again.
"Okay…we got over," said Skye, panting. "Now what?"
On their way forward, they saw a small gate they could easily get over with some cooperation. Joining her hands together and arching them down, Clementine looked at Judy to go first. With a simple jump with the help of her paw, she was on top. Next came Skye, and she had more difficulty to get through due to her height and weight, but they managed. Lastly, Skye offered her paw, and Clementine took it, all three of them now at the top.
"Hey, that round building," said Skye, pointing at a building in front of them with a noticeably large antennae. "It looks like the TV station from your map."
"Yeah," Clementine agreed. "C'mon." The three girls climbed down from the gate into another patchy terrain, continuing their journey to the TV station.
Now seemingly out of danger, it was time to bring up the elephant in the room. The handkerchief in the room, if you will.
"So, Judy, can you explain this?" Clementine said, pointing at the red handkerchief covering one of her wounds.
"It's Nick's," she said. "I thought you should have it."
The sentiment was more than accepted, of course. It was the methods that were to be questioned.
"A simple 'Here ya go, Clem, this belonged to Nick' would have sufficed, instead of it being a scavenger hunt," Clementine told her.
"Where's the fun in that?" Judy asked, rhetorically. "You looked so cute with it on your tail," she snickered.
"I actually agree, Jude. Sunny, tie it back on your tail!" Skye said giddily.
"In your dreams, Snow. I'll keep it here, thank you very much." Skye made a loud huff and began sporting a spouty face to Clem's response. "Aww, come on now, Snowdrop. I couldn't have done any of this without you, don't get sad on me."
"You are not gonna soften me up," she said.
"I bet it would look great on you, Skye," Judy said. "Maybe you and Clem should share it."
"You know what? That's a great idea!" Joked Clementine, finding the best ways to embarrass her mate.
"Whatever Judy wants me to wear, I will wear!" Skye said, exasperating the red vixen.
Their banter got stopped by the screeching sounds of a Howler running towards them, getting out of an abandoned liquor store close to another FEDRA checkpoint.
"Oh shit!" Clementine said, pointing the gun at the running savage. She didn't need to take a single shot as an explosion from underneath the savage took him apart limb from limb. The group was startled.
"What the fuck was that?" Asked Skye. "Was that a trap of some kind?"
"I think so," Clementine answered. "Probably trip wires. Watch where you're walking."
The vixen's command made Skye tense up, now walking carefully through the tall grass, which made it more difficult to see the ground. The doe did the same, worried that an explosion like that would turn her to dust.
A few more stealthy steps led them to the entrance of a military zone, visibly sporting more trip wire. Beyond the gate were two panther savages, looking and smelling for new prey to slaughter.
"Right here, dumbasses!" Clementine told the panthers. Growling, the two savages began running on all fours toward them.
"Why did you alert them, Clem?" Asked Judy, who had not yet seen the trip wire.
"Just trust me," she said. The panthers, only focused on their three prospective meals, also failed to see the wires. With a simple touch, by the savage, the wire broke, giving the panther a taste of sulfur on his face, the shockwave damaging and taking apart most of its limbs, blood pouring down on the ground like rain. The next savage suffered the same fate, ridding the group of the wires blocking their way.
"Okay, I'm not gonna lie, that was kind of awesome," said Skye.
"In a morbid kind of way, but I agree," replied the doe.
Crossing the door to the military zone, the group cut through another door to the right, nature taking its course and blocking almost all exits. Through that door, they arrived at another semi open area where the TV station showed itself closer. A small valley where a highway originally was, along with a thicket of trees, were still their biggest obstacles to their goal.
"I think we gotta get down this," said Skye, looking at the area below them. The slope downward was slick with mud, which could make the journey down less painful. Coiling her tail around one of her legs to keep it clean from the dirt, she kneeled in the slope and began descending.
"Ow, shit!" A small rock hidden in the mud hit her rump as she descended, provoking a not so nice feeling. Overall, her way down came with no difficulties.
"Clementine?" Screamed Judy above her.
"I'm okay! Come on down!"
With a sigh, knowing it won't be a good feeling to get muddy, she slid through the terrain, mimicking Clem's way of protecting her tail, making sure not to cause any burning wounds from the friction.
Judy Wilde, being the badass that she was, didn't even kneel, instead opting to slide down with her feet, riding the mud like a wave. All she needed was a board and some beach clothes. With a quick jump and a roll to break the fall, the bunny came out of the slope completely clean.
"Show-off," Skye said, looking at her muddy backside. Clementine grinned at the two.
If it wasn't for the fallen trucks and cars, one really wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a real forest and this. Trees and grass grew everywhere, and Clementine never stopped being amazed at it. Even if their entire species went extinct, life would still move on in other ways.
"This Leah chick…" Skye began saying. "What if she's gone by the time we get there?"
"I don't want to think about that right now," Clementine said. Skye nodded and stopped the questioning.
"Even if she isn't there, we can probably find some more info. It is still one of their bases," reasoned Judy. The answer satisfied Skye.
A small river formed where the street should've been, traveling below the broken highway on top of them, giving them a clear path forward.
"We should put some of those trip wires up around Bunnyburrow," said Skye. "Might be a good way to deal with the hordes."
"Yeah, that'd be smart," agreed Judy. "Although we'd probably blow up some stragglers."
"We'd put up signs…warning them," said Skye.
"What if they can't read?" Asked Clementine.
"We'd make drawings, then! A foot tripping over a wire and then a big fire. I bet I could even build them."
Clementine chuckled at Skye's enthusiasm. "I like you," she said.
"I want that in writing," Skye demanded. The doe didn't have any quippy remarks to them, letting them have their moment. She wondered if that's how Clementine felt every time Nick and her were flirting while she was around. Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard her own name, uttered by Clem.
"Me and Judy met this fennec fox once, a friend of Nick's, who trip-wired a whole town."
"How'd people get around?" The brown vixen asked.
"It was just him."
"Wait, he lived alone in an entire town?"
"He had trust issues, and also wasn't much of a charmer. He cuffed both Judy and me to a pipe, can you believe that?"
"Wow. That's kinda sad, living by yourself."
Clementine noticed Skye's change in tone. "To be fair, it did keep him alive."
"It's not like you have to choose between being alive and being close to people. It's not black and white." she countered.
"You take a risk, though, right?"
"Being alone is a risk. What if he got hurt? Or sick?"
"Well, what if other people got hurt or sick? Then you have this added, you know, burden that puts you in a worse position."
"Burden…" Judy muttered under her breath, quietly thinking about that conversation. She didn't have anything to add to it, but Clementine's opinion bothered her. It was only five years ago that they'd both taken care of a sick Nick after being impaled by a piece of rebar. He wasn't a burden. They loved him, so they had to save him. She didn't want to listen to what she was saying anymore.
"Hey look," Skye suddenly said, focusing her attention on a drawing in a concrete wall. "It's the Feel Her Love assholes again."
The drawing was much more detailed than any of the others they found before. In this one, the vixen was looking slightly up at the sky, one of her paws lifted in the air. A group of otters were behind her, also holding that pose.
"This is pretty creepy," Clementine said.
"Starting to think this cult isn't any fun," said Skye.
"Gee, ya think?" Clem asked sarcastically. "I hope we don't find any of these people. One army against us is enough already."
"We need to move quickly and find Gideon," said Judy. "Let's go."
They were now underneath one of the highways, the environment suddenly darkened by its shadow. Clementine found a partially ransacked truck that she went to explore. There wasn't much in it except for another note. It related to the same family she had read about in the balcony of Capitol Inn.
Viv- I hope this gets to you. I saw what happened.
The WLF broke into your place and carried out all the stuff Jimmy took-jewelry, IDs, Ration cards…He wouldn't answer their questions, just kept saying he didn't know where any of it came from…I tried to talk to them, explain how hard it's been here. How FEDRA forgot about us and we've all had to do things we're not proud of. They seemed to calm down, then they found a Seraphite prayer in his pocket.
We tried to stop them. I'm so sorry.
-Rowl and Heather.
"Ruthless fucks…" Clementine muttered. She directed her sight to the two women. "Apparently the Scars are called Seraphites. Seems these people really hate them."
"Well, I'd assume so," Judy said. "They could be fighting for control of Seaotter. That's how most wars go."
"If they even suspect you're one of them, they kill you," the red vixen said, seething at the injustice that was happening.
"There's nothing we can do about it now, Clem," said Judy. She understood how the vixen felt, but they all knew that it's impossible to save everyone. "Let's keep going."
The vixen nodded, getting out of the truck and continuing through the nature-made tunnel. It didn't take them long to see traces of the fox they were looking for as they came into an area full of death, the stench of blood and rotten meat permeating.
"Holy shit," Clementine said, looking at some of the dead savages and the half-devoured ostrich. "These were all shot."
Getting closer to the ostrich, Clementine saw the brown bag that it was carrying, recognizing it instantly. "Hey, look. It's Gideon's. Ugh, infected did a number on this one," she said, opening up the bag, finding it was empty. Judy tried not to get too close to the ostrich due to the smell, but Skye had already gotten too close, retching and vomiting from the awful smell. It did bother Clementine, but she had nothing to throw up. She went to her girlfriend, tapping her back in comfort. "You okay?"
"Yeah, just the fucking smell," she said, cleaning up the thin line of vomit coming out of the side of her mouth.
"Alright," Clementine said, now looking at the doe. "He must've taken off on foot. You good to keep going, Snow?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Let's go," the brown vixen said, jumping over a rock formation, which got her outside of the tunnel. Judy followed her out, passing quickly through the horrendous smell of the dead ostrich. Clementine went last. The river was still flowing strongly through the dilapidated streets.
"How'd this city get so wrecked?" Skye asked. "Your Quarantine Zone wasn't like this, was it?"
"My QZ didn't have a full-blown civil war," answered the red vixen. "Bellwether never put up this kind of resistance."
"This cult must be pretty strong, then," Judy added. "The Wolves are well-armed. You'd think nobody could stop them."
"They could be getting tired after so many years of fighting. People won't do their best when they barely see an improvement," Skye said.
"I hear that," agreed the doe.
They stopped following the river, now heading straight into another thick forest area. The TV station was slowly closer and closer to them.
"I don't see any Wolves," uttered Skye.
"No," agreed the red vixen. "Let's not count our chickens, though."
Managing to escape the forest's gaze, the trio arrived at a part of the city again. "Whoah," Clementine exclaimed, looking at more savage corpses. "More bodies."
"More shot bodies," corrected Skye. "Gideon definitely came this way."
"I bet he went through there," said Judy, walking to a metal door, unable to be opened from the outside due to some obstacles blocking the way. "Damnit. Solid barricade. Well, not going this way." Judy began walking to their left, starting to traverse the path riddled with cars.
"Stop!" Skye called to her, making Judy stop on her tracks from the sudden scream. "Trip wires!"
Judy looked down at her foot, which was mere centimeters from a wite in between two cars. Taking a few steps back, she looked at the vixen. "Shit. Good catch, Skye."
"No problem, Jude," she said, grabbing a nearby brick from the ground and throwing it at the contraption, managing to set it off with a loud bang, making both of the cars it was latched to move from side to side.
"Good idea, Snowdrop. That works," said Clementine, making Skye smile in gratification.
There was a concerning amount of trip wires covered very stealthily by the tall grass, making the trio extra careful when they walked. Everywhere they walked there would be at least one of them, hoping to blow their legs right off their bodies. With the many bricks in the area, Clementine began opening up a path, while also exploring some of the establishments in the vicinity, one of them being a school of Martial Arts.
"Did you ever train in one of these, Judy?" Asked Clementine.
"I actually did. Learned some Judo and Karate. I trained by myself most of the time, but being around people who shared your same drive did feel nice."
"How many times did you win against the others?" Asked Skye.
"It's not about winning, Skye. It's about passion, perseverance, and respect above all."
"Still didn't answer my question," insisted Skye.
Judy sighed. "Undefeated Black Belt for five years." Skye's eyes glowed at the doe's words. Clementine also looked at Judy with pride. Judy would be lying if she said she wasn't enjoying the attention. She hadn't thought about her academic life in a while.
"You are just absolutely wicked, Jude. Never change."
"Don't plan to."
While still exploring the dojo, Clementine was able to find a workshop through a hole on the wall, intending to keep on upgrading her weapons, which had been stopped short at the gas station by unwanted visitors. She decided to increase the capacity of the magazines in her bolt action rifle, letting her carry far more bullets for their future encounters. Being the only upgrade she could do with her unlimited supply of resources, she shut off the light of the workshop and went back to the group, this time through a hallway at the back of the workshop. She found another note tacked onto a wooden board.
Rebecca- By now you've realized I didn't get on the bus. I love you, but I don't understand how you can stand by these fucking fascists. They killed one of my neighbors -dragged him on his knees and shot him in front of his own home. His name was Jimmy. I've known him since he was thirteen, when I caught him swiping a magazine from my shop. I was the first person he came out to, He said this weird prayer before he died. I keep replaying it in my mind.
"May the current be calm, may she guide me home."
I'm gonna head up to the cabin, figure out what to do next. I hope you'll come to your senses and meet me there.
-Fran
That was probably the end of that story. A terrible, hopeless ending, like the many stories that surrounded this world. She wondered if they'd find her own notebook someday, if she died. Would they keep it and hold it to the same regard that she does with these letters? She wouldn't know, but she hopes that they at least leave it somewhere safe for someone else to see it.
Another partition at the wall allowed the group to come out through the front of the store, giving them less tripwires to get through.
"They really got this area covered," said Skye, looking at the many wires that they still needed to get through."
"They probably don't cut much through here with all this," said Clementine.
"There's that silver lining," Skye added. "This tall grass is making me nervous, though."
"Don't be," said Judy, comforting the vixen. "As long as you look hard at the ground, you'll be able to see it."
They were heading right. A few more paces forward, and they would be at their destination. First things first, they needed to get through the swarm of wires that surrounded the area. The first thing they saw was the back of a truck, with a drawing of the now very familiar vixen, telling them to feel her love once again. This time, a weird symbol had been drawn where her neck should be, like a collar. They were two semi-circles interjected with each other in an oval shape, a horizontal line cutting them in two parallel pieces, the top and the bottom.
"Wait, I just noticed something," said Skye. "What's that on her cheeks?"
Clementine didn't know what her girlfriend was talking about until she looked harder at the vixen in question. She had two cuts on both sides of her cheeks, reaching the lower part of her ears. They were clearly self-inflicted. "Great," she said. "Self-harm cult. If we see any of them, they'll probably have those scars on their faces."
A light bulb turned on above Skye's head in realization. "Ohhhh, that's why they're called Scars."
"We cracked the case on this one," Judy said. "Now, let's just hope we don't get anything more than witness evidence." Clementine grinned at her use of police lingo, but she silently agreed. She was only here for the Wolves, nothing else.
Opening the metal sliding door of the truck, the girls saw a clear path inside of it, lacking any of the dangerous wires they'd come to fear and loathe. Coming out through a broken side door, she found a garbage truck with even more wires beside it. Looking around, there also weren't any bricks to throw at it, and she wasn't gonna use her precious ammunition for it. Looking intensely at the scene, Clementine saw a way forward through the bottom of the truck, which was wet with muddy water. Skye looked smugly at Judy, who was now hating the fact that all her hard work trying not to get dirty would be laid to waste.
Finally getting back up at the other side of the truck, Clementine saw more tripwires with another news van behind it. With another brick she happily found on the ground, she threw it at the wires, clearing a path, albeit very loudly.
"There's the TV station," Skye said. They were finally at the first steps of the building. Their journey through Capitol Hill had come to an end. It was time to pay Leah a visit.
Going around the news van, Clementine saw the final stairs that would lead them to the station. It wasn't clear all the way up due to the vegetation growing madly on the steps. Using the climbable structures beside the stairs, she tried to cut through to a part of the stairs she could actually walk through. She did manage to find a walkable part of the stairs, but two tripwires were not unluckily surrounding her from both sides.
"Shit. Stay down there. These stairs are wired up." Slowly climbing back where she came from, Clementine used one of the bricks on the floor to activate the wires. Climbing on a different vantage point than the one she went to, she located herself on the perfect view of the wires, throwing a single brick that managed to make both bombs go off.
"We're not being subtle right now," said Skye, climbing the empty stairs now.
"Maybe Leah will come to us," Clementine pondered.
"Yeah…or they're just waiting to ambush us," proposed Skye. With a few more flights of stairs to climb, the girls reached the much-desired building, the glint of the disappearing sunlight reminding them that it was getting late.
"There it is," said Clementine. "Stay low."
Approaching the foreboding building, they quickly realized there were no stairs to climb, instead having to climb the concrete steps that belonged to the design of the building, and didn't serve any other purpose ten years ago other than making it look flashy. Quickly enough, the three girls managed to get on the concrete walkway outside of the building, not sure what floor they were exactly on.
Death once again greeted them, as a trail of blood led them to a gray fox who lacked the bottom part of his mouth, his tongue sticking out grotesquely.
"Fuck…" muttered Clementine.
"Ugh, that's brutal," commented Skye. "Did Gideon do this?"
She couldn't say no, and that's what stung. Clementine wasn't sure if Gideon could actually do such a thing. She could probably do worse if it were someone like Abby, but to think that someone like Guideon would be as murderous as this broke her heart. She could tell Judy felt the same, looking at it with sadness in her eyes.
"Let's get inside," she ended up saying, not wanting to look at that anymore. To the left of the gray wolf laid a tigress with an arrow to her stomach. This made her doubt that it was Gideon, knowing that he barely used a bow and arrow, preferring to use his sniper rifle. Using a rope in front of the dead wolf, she climbed to the next floor, finally seeing what was inside this building. It looked like a rest area complete with a TV and a snack bar. Going right, there was another dead soldier facing down on the ground. Deeper into the floor, there was a door with a hanging vent that she easily ducked through, passing through a long hallway that turned sideways to the left. The doors were either barricaded or locked, and she could see no other way forward.
"Clementine, this way," Skye said, pointing at a broken vent above them. Going first, she climbed the vent, finally reaching the main lobby of the building. She did not imagine the sight she was going to be met with.
"Oh my god," Skye muttered, looking shockingly at the scene. Judy also looked silently, covering her mouth with one of her paws.
She counted three. No, four. Four bodies ascended in the air with ropes around their necks. That wasn't the worst of it, as all animals had their guts hanging out, blood still trickling down onto their feet until they fell to the ground.
"This was definitely not Gideon," she said, looking at the symbol in one of the walls that was written in blood. It was the Scars. They had massacred everyone inside.
"Well…that answers my question," Skye said. "They're the kind of cult that writes the walls with our blood…"
"Why can't it just be a fucking orgy cult?" asked Judy, frustrated.
"We might get to ask them if we stick around here long enough," said Clementine. "Come on, let's keep going."
They climbed the stairs of the lobby to the next floor, filled with cubicles. The bodies were hung high enough that they could see their faces from that position. Some of them still had shocked expressions, like it had happened suddenly. Serves you fuckers right, Clem thought. Whatever they did, they definitely deserved it.
Exploring more of that floor guided them to an outside area again with a room they needed to enter. The door was locked, so they had to enter it from the outside. Clementine noticed a broken window by the side of the circle-shaped room and began carefully walking to it on the narrow walkway, balancing herself with the other windows.
"I don't like this," said Skye, following her. "We're too exposed."
"We have to search all of it," Clementine insisted. "I want to find Leah."
"Okay, just be careful," said Skye, also trying to balance herself on the narrow structure.
Now at the broken window, Clementine went inside, seeing two more dead bodies. A dead female deer was leaning on a white door. One of the arrows thrown at her had hit her with enough force to also stick her head to the door, as if it had been used for mere target practice. Being a double door, the vixen used the other side of it and climbed the stairs that led to the next floor. More sets of cubicles and arrow-barraged bodies were all they could see, wondering if this is how it was gonna go if they had been there to get Leah first.
At the final room of the floor, the half-opened door called to Clementine like never before. Opening this door slowly granted her the sight of Leah, now dead on the floor from three arrows to her chest. She cursed silently, mad that she hadn't been the one to torture her.
"That's her," she said, as both girls approached the body. "Leah."
"You sure?" asked Skye.
"Yes," answered Judy, her eyes fogging up with wetness, remembering the gray she-wolf's face from that day. She was enjoying the torture of her poor fox. Now she paid the price for it.
"Guess the universe really wanted her dead, huh?" said Skye as she started rummaging through her body, trying to find anything they could use to track down either Gideon or the rest of Nick's killers. "There's nothing on her."
Clementine was looking in another direction. She could see a blue duffel bag below her bed, and quickly got it out to inspect it, hoping that the Scars didn't take anything from it. It was still zipped up, which was a good sign. Unzipping it, she started checking out its contents, when a sudden voice was heard in their room.
"Six, this is Two, do you copy? Six, acknowledge, over." It was a radio. Skye was currently looking at it, hearing for any hints of their location. Judy looked at what Clementine found on the bag, frozen. Clementine got up to show Skye.
"Skye…" she told her, in almost a whisper, looking at one of the polaroid pictures she had acquired, her paws trembling. Skye turned to look at her. "It's all of them," Clem said, showing her the portraits of everyone that had taken part in Nick's murder.
Leah and Jordan: The first picture. They both seemed to be a couple, one of the rare predator-prey couples like Judy and Nick had been. A black hare and a gray she-wolf, both deceased.
Manny: The second picture. He was the other gray wolf from the group, also having a major involvement in Nick's death. He was the asshole that spit on his corpse with no remorse. She would make sure to spit on his.
Rick and Nora: The third picture. Both of the arctic foxes, one female, the other male. The male was already dead, courtesy of Gideon. Nora was next. She helped restrain Clementine during Nick's torture, preventing her from killing Abby.
Mel: The fourth picture. She was the vixen doctor of the group, who had put a tourniquet on Nick's leg after Abby blew it with a shotgun. She was just as evil as the rest, even if Judy had said she had a hint of remorse in her eyes.
Abby and Owen: The fifth and final picture. There she was. The fabric of all of her nightmares. All of her pain and sorrow, focused on a single mammal. Abby had completely destroyed everything she cared for, no longer securing any future where she would ever be happy. She looked at the picture with hate, but most of all sadness. It reminded her of that day. Those crunches. Those cries of pain. Judy looked over Clementine's shoulder, also seething at the sight of the vixen, letting out a few tears from her own eyes.
"It's her…" Clementine stated, taking that picture and holding it above the rest. It seemed like the vixen was looking back at her, mocking her with that smile. "That's the one who killed him."