Chapter XXV: Rebuild (Part III)
(Music: "In Hell I'll Be In Good Company", by The Dead South)
The Lazy Bison's interior looked just the same as it did when I first entered it weeks ago, except much emptier than before. I was a bit puzzled, and so walked over to the tired-looking bartender washing out a mug. As soon as his eyes drew upwards to the sound of my boots, his gaze lit up like a floodlight and he bowed graciously.
"Lucky Jack. I couldn't have expected a better patron. Welcome again!"
"Hey." I responded stiffly. I didn't know the guy's name, and didn't really care for it. However... I made a pledge to myself that this community and I were bonded at the hip at this point, so I might as well have made an effort. "I didn't get your name."
The bartender, a burly man with smooth-cut black hair and a big bushy mustache, smiled warmly. When he spoke, his voice was accompanied by a gravelly, yet honey-curdled tone.
"Name's Rainey. Tom Rainey. Been running this fine establishment since the town was founded- after the Infected, that is." He said with a sly chuckle. "What can I get for Jackson's hero?"
"How old are you?" I asked rather abruptly.
"Thirty-seven." He declared proudly, apparently unbothered by my interrogation.
"When was this town founded?"
"1821." He said, staring with a straight face. I couldn't tell what he was playing at with that answer, but I let it go.
"Right." I muttered.
He cracked a mischievous grin.
"It was about 15 years ago. I was but a young pup when I took over this big empty space, transformed it into what it is now."
I nodded curiously. I had learned two new things about Mr. Rainey, and the origin of this town. From the calendar I'd studied in my room...
Well, I couldn't read numbers. So I didn't know what year it was. And I hadn't really thought to ask anyone in passing about the current date. So in reality I only learned two things, and both of them were just about one person. From what I last recalled, there were roughly 300-400 people (left) in this city...
300-400 people, and it would take more than a few questions to get to know them all...
And I couldn't do math at all, aside from basic arithmetic like addition and subtraction, and only up to around 100 max...
Wow. In moments like this, beyond all the threats of death and fighting tooth and nail for survival, I was beginning to realize just how utterly fucking intellectually vacuous I was.
I shook my head in shame and took a look at the menu. Thankfully, after getting some reading lessons, I could...
...
...
Nope. Still couldn't read properly. It had only been two weeks. GAAAH!
"What would you... rec-o-mmend?" I muttered, trying to spell out the word without sounding extra stupid. The bartender scratched his chin in contemplation.
"Sounds like you're unfamiliar with the brands of alcohol, so I'll serve you something simple. It's called a Moscow Mule. It's got vodka, ginger beer, and limes in it. A mixed drink, so won't taste like that poison I saw you gulping down when you eyed up Ellie a few weeks ago."
"EYE UP?" I remarked in outrage, just a little too loudly. I instantly quieted my voice and spoke low, trying to disguise my humiliation at being found out so damn easily. "How... how the fuck do you know what I was doin' that night?"
Despite my crass and virtually threatening demeanor, the bartender simply smiled slyly and chuckled to himself.
"Jack, come on now. You may hide it decently, but I've seen those eyes a thousand times over. You got that look of passion. Pierces through air and steel alike. Can't hide it from someone who's been hit with it."
I released a hefty exhale of air from my mouth; the most amount of external emotion I'd shown to someone other than Ellie or Joel.
"Though I will say," The bartender remarked in a low voice. "I've never seen that much fire in anyone's eyes before. It'd be good for you to temper yerself and yer expectations, or yer gonna burn that little heart out in no time."
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts.
"Alright. How much for the drink?"
My words clearly took aback the bartender.
"To you, it's free. For life."
"Oh." I muttered. "Well, that's good at least."
As I took sips from my drink, the bartender began pouring out his own cocktail to join me. I was highly pleased by the flavor of the mixed drink he'd given me; every other alcohol I'd tasted was akin to gulping down gasoline.
"Ya like it?" He asked plainly.
"Yep. Tastes like what I imagined alcohol would taste like when I was younger."
The bartender chuckled softly, and the moment fled into a short silence.
"..."
"..."
Only a few minutes of talking with this man, and I had already held him in higher regard than most of this town and practically everyone I'd ever met in my life. Was it the drink's doing? Or did this man have tendencies and behavior that I meshed with well? Truly, the breakthrough into the world of social interaction was a daunting yet exciting one. Being with someone who shared my energy was infinitely better than being alone, as I'd come to discover just now.
"So..." The bartender began to speak softly, filling up a highball glass with some concoction I knew nothing of. "With, uh, Ellie an' all that... wasn't sure if you knew about Din-"
"Please, don't say that name."
My growling mutterance, followed by a tense silence. I had relaxed considerably in this parlor bar, and at acute moments like this, letting down my mental barriers, was when I had a revelation of just how twisted my psyche was becoming from the impact of this infection on my body and mind, especially after the mental break of that recent siege. I was held aghast at myself that I'd not somehow lost my sanity after the horrific experience, but I could see it was trickling its way into my mind palace with each little callback.
The name of Dina had become a trigger to my psyche; the hatred brewing in me had been translated by the fungus into my brain as subconscious aggression akin to the same rage I felt during that siege. A tar-black, froth-boiling, unrelenting tide of rabid malice and concentrated hatred; all seventeen years of misery, anger, regret and madness funneled into a singular target- Dina.
Somehow, thinking about it myself didn't induce this anger, only the mention of her name or events related to Dina said by others or seen by myself. There was a mental and physical disconnect; my mind carried mixed feelings, but my body, soaked for days in broiling wrath and seething hatred, had created stimuli similar to PTSD, which reacted only to Dina or any mention hereof. One thing I knew for sure was that after the siege, I had no clue of what to think about her.
It needn't be said that her death was the only thing holding back the paradise I envisioned in this quiet little town; with her gone, I would be able to slowly but surely romance Ellie, or at the very least take euphoric comfort in knowing she was not bound to some imperfect creature. On the other hand... Dina was a great teammate against a massive tide of heavily-armed, well-trained soldiers. She'd proven her worth through bullets and quick wit. Since I had been practicing the art of murder from the age of four (or was it five?), I had adopted a form of warrior culture that instinctively led me towards a "Might Makes Right" mindset; simply put for this specific instance, anyone who could survive in this hellhole of a world and keep a smile on their face was someone worth fearing. And Dina was one of those people.
But at the same time, I felt a most unnatural violence that tempted me to eviscerate her from head to toe and throw her flayed skin onto an Infected runner so I could kill her again. The duality of these thoughts, coupled with the physical PTSD ingrained into my body, led to a messy internal civil war that could only be suppressed by a heavy dose of communal acceptance and a love interest.
Nonetheless, these micro-fits of rage I underwent from the mere mentions of Dina were beyond atrocious, in a practical sense. Though it only lasted a mere second or two, this was a debilitating weakness to have. Not only would my rational thinking and strategic mindsets be at risk of random spurts of rage, but if I didn't exert a serious amount of self-control in those precious seconds...
I had to find a way to cut back this growth inside me to release its hold on my brain, but in the meanwhile I needed to avoid interactions with people that were more likely to utter the word.
But... Ellie was included in that list...
NO!
It didn't matter to me what ailments afflicted me. There was nothing that would separate myself from Ellie. It was up to me to crush this affliction into bits and dust. At this stage in my life, with the community I was blessed with, there was not a chance in hell I would risk losing myself to murdering someone in a frenzy and getting outcasted or shot.
Absent-mindedly, I gazed toward the only table occupied in the tavern; a group of three older men who were rolling dice on a board and placing the die on various squares. The game took my intrigue, and before long one of the onlookers noticed my gazing and beckoned me over cheerfully.
"There he is! Come try out this game, Good Jack. I think you'll find it amusing."
I shrugged nonchalantly, downing the last of my Moscow Mule and placing it on the counter.
"A cold beer to the table." I requested indifferently (still wholly unaware of social conventions) before leaving to join in on the game. I stood over the table, peering down at the die to try and figure out what was happening. I eventually conceded that I had no clue, so I asked the other non-player at the table.
"What is this game?" I asked.
"Knucklebones." The man replied with a toothy grin. "Lotsa die, two boards. If yer keen, I'll explain more, Good Jack."
The continual use of nicknames was starting to irritate me, but I was more intrigued by the look of this game. As Rainey came over with an uncapped beer and placed it at the table next to me, I leaned back instinctively to get a quick look at my surroundings; to determine there was no one who'd try and take a gander at my back with a knife while I played this game.
"Alright." I said, leaning back in to give my attention. "What's your name?"
The swarthy man took a breath before replying, readjusting his coat and vest.
"Saul Mayner. My associate here-"
"Hush Montgomery." The other fellow replied, dressed in rather fancy attire and sporting a voice with a peculiar accent that sounded as if he was speaking from his throat.
I subconsciously raised an eyebrow at the... unique nature of his name.
"I see. Well, I'm all hears, Hush."
Hush nodded, clearing his throat.
"So," Hush began. "Each board has three columns and three rows. Nine tiles. Each player has, coincidentally, nine dice. The game starts with both players rolling one die against each other, and whoever has the higher number will start their turn first."
He handed me a dice, and I took it, rolling it in my hands onto the board. Everyone recoiled at the number it landed on.
"A six, by the stars! Your nickname is starting to fit like a coat."
"It's really not that serious." I remarked rather bemusedly. Was everyone in this town a fucking character out of a movie?
He rolled his own die, ending up with a 4, and placed it in the far-right and frontmost box of his board.
"So, you would go first in this case. Now, the goal of this game is to get the highest score by matching dice numbers with the same value. If you have three die that land on a 6, you want to put them all in the same column for the max amount of points. The score will be kept by our two friends here, since they're just watching for now."
He gestured to the other decently-dressed fellows around him, who were already holding pencils over notepads, eyeing the game with a familiar and long-enduring interest.
"Now, here's the kicker. Let's say you have two 4's in one column, and I put two 4's in my column which happens to be across from your same column. Those dice you had in your column would get thrown out of the game and set back into your hands to roll again. So it's a race to whoever can fill their entire board and get the highest amount of points at the same time."
"...I... see." I said semi-confidently. I understood most of the rules, but some things remained murky in my mind. Nonetheless, I decided to press on. "Well, I think I'm ready."
The older man grinned, gesturing to the board with an open palm.
"Your turn."
(Music: "Knucklebones", by River Boy)
Deciding to muse myself with this small game, I rolled the dice, waiting to see its result.
It landed on a 1. For some reason, that pissed me off slightly, maybe because it was one of the few numbers I could actually comprehend in written form. I placed the dice in the center middle column.
"No, no, lad." Hush interrupted. "you gotta place the first dice at the very front of one of those columns. Then you build on top of them like a ladder, preferably using the same number to get a higher score."
I nodded, moving the dice up to the center-front row. Hush rolled, getting a 4 again. He placed it behind his other die, which was also a 4.
"How we do scoring is by multiplying the numbers of the dice in the same column. So if you had a 6 and 2, it'd be 6 x 2, so 12 points. Since I got 4 x 4, that's 16, but since they're the same number you would add a +4 to the score. The bonus points for same numbers is added based on the numbers that you matched; so if you had two dice with a 3 on them, it would b + 3." He commented.
What the fuck is this guy talking about? I thought in bewilderment.
"Good thing these guys are doing the scoring." I remarked tiredly, looking between the men seated studiously on my left and right, jotting down notes after looking at the board. They were writing a lot more than I thought needed to be written about.
"Your turn." Hush said, and I rolled another dice. A 3. I placed it at the far right column. Hush rolled his dice. Another 4...
He grinned, placing the die behind the other two in the right column.
"Game's all about luck, I'm tellin' ya." He remarked slyly.
I gave him a false smile, intending to crush him. I had a rather competitive nature, cultivated by the years-long efforts of killing people out of self-preservation. Most of the time. I rolled the die onto the board, watching it bounce around on its edges and faces.
"Wh..."
"Huh."
"Damn."
The huddled around the table let out slight expressions of surprise. It landed on a six again.
"Well then..." The older man who'd been teaching me replied. "...Place it where you please."
Hesitantly, and eyeing the others suspiciously, I placed the dice in the top right corner of my board. This luck was beginning to make me paranoid. Was this just a genuine coincidence, or was there something larger at play here? Did they rig the dice? Sure, it rolled on a 6 only twice now, but their reactions were giving me reason to provoke thought in myself.
My opponent shook the dice in his hand, letting it drop onto the board. A two. He placed it at the front-center box of his board.
I rolled the die in my hands, eyeing it suspiciously, then tossed it onto my board.
...
...
...
It was a six. At this point, I glared at the others at this table; Was I being made a fool of?
"These dice shouldn't be loaded." I remarked menacingly. Their reactions, however, perplexed me. They scratched their heads, looking between each other like they could barely comprehend what was going on.
"Do you know probabilities, Jack?" Hush asked.
"No." I said simply.
"Well... basically, every time you gamble, or in this case roll a die- with each time you roll that dice, the chance that you get the same number decreases in likelihood significantly. Getting three sixes in a row... 1/216... that's a 0.4% chance of happening."
"Okay." I replied simply. I didn't know fractions or percentages nor their implications, so I couldn't really understand the gravity of the situation. All I could interpret from this was that I had some kind of unholy luck following me, but once I reached that line of thinking I was beginning to wonder if my internal infection was somehow connected to this.
"Well..." Hush said more hesitantly than before. "I guess I'll roll now."
He rolled. It was a five. He placed it in the only column which had no die.
"You must've absorbed my luck for yerself, lad." He chuckled, waiting as I shook the dice in my hands. "I saw you were drinking a Mule over there earlier. A good mixed drink, but you look exhausted from the recovery. Try some whiskey to keep your eyes open for the day, perhaps some of the antique Woodford Reserve-"
-!
I sensed it. Ever so subtly, the fungus was using nerves and tendons in my hand to flick the dice in such a way that it would land on a six. What... what kind of sorcery was this? Was the fungus sentient? Or was it just responding to my mind's intention?
And it landed once more- a six. At this point, the three men were left gawking at the dice, so dumbfounded that they couldn't manage to form words.
"What the hell is going on?" The fellow on the far right muttered. Perplexed as much as he was, I reached over and took a shot from the glass Hush poured for me, wincing at the burning that erupted as it cascaded down the sides of my throat. Yet only a few seconds after it tasted rather pleasant; it had certainly woken up and reinvigorated me, which was almost certainly what I needed to get through this forum meeting that was coming up.
"Let's try this instead." I stated, cupping my hands around the dice and shaking it. My fingers wouldn't be able to manipulate the dice's movements this way. Luckily, it seemed to work, as I didn't feel the subtle movements tingling in my hands, and the dice rolled onto the board-
Another six.
"Alright, I think I'm going to head to the forum." I said tiredly, getting up from a table of slack-jawed boardgame participants and walking back to the bar.
"Rainey, please fill a flask full of the Woodford." I told the bartender. "I'm gonna need it."
(Music: "Start a Cult", by River Boy)
A couple minutes later, I found myself at the doorsteps of the building where the forum was said to be meeting. I took a breath and entered. The lobby of the building was well-decorated with banners, makeshift tapestry, and murals dedicated to the recent victory that was achieved; it was perhaps the most intriguing sight I'd bore witness to. That these once-passive, lackadaisical, slow-striding survivors had transformed into fanatical semi-soldiers after a great siege was astounding to me. Every single time I'd seen a settlement raided, pillaged, ransacked or sieged, its citizens were left despondent, grief-stricken and suicidal- even if they had won.
The behavior of these people was surreal, but not entirely unexplainable; It was rather braindead-easy to deduce that this town's morale and people had only survived because of the miraculous chain of events that unfolded starting from my introduction into this town.
.-A figurehead icon for resistance against overwhelming odds, coupled with an easily-impressionable young populace left over from the siege-.
...
What was that? That wasn't my thought. Why did I hear that in my head? It sounded like my thought, but I knew it wasn't. What the fuck?
There were quite a few people who were anticipating my arrival- primarily young men and women with guns, all of whom immediately placed their fists against their chests and bowed in respect.
"King Jackson!" One of them said rather ridiculously.
"Where did you get Jackson from? It's JUST Jack! Fuck's sake." I groaned aloud. "Just take me to the damn place!"
Once I stepped through the doors into the city forum, I could immediately feel hundreds of eyes move towards me, and almost instantly a raucous cheer erupted in the cleared-out pub where this meeting was taking place. Dozens protruded out from the crowd to gawk and shake my hand as I followed the guide to where I was supposed to sit. My danger instincts kicked in for a moment; this felt akin to a ritual murder I'd witnessed in another faction's settlement, but that was a topic I didn't want to mentally address right now.
I was practically swept through the crowded meeting towards a set of chairs placed at the far end of the building, with full view to the entire gallery of hundreds of (still armed) citizens standing around the place idly. I could see that Tommy and Marie had already found their seats as head of the settlement, along with a few managerial people and- for some reason- Joel, who was sitting right next to the empty middle chair with Ellie standing to his side nonchalantly.
"There's your seat, Good Jack." One of the soldiers beckoned politely, gesturing to the center chair in the middle of this entire gathering. I was insanely uncomfortable with being so prominent in this meeting, but I had already known these bastards would not stop idolizing me for all the wrong reasons. Without protest, I took my seat next to Joel and Marie, who sat to either side of myself. I looked over the hundreds staring back at me.
All that my mind on was how I looked in front of Ellie.
"Seems most people are here." Marie spoke up, taking command of the opening statements. "Let's get to the point, as I'm sure everyone has more than plenty to do today. We're gathered to talk about the next steps to our community, and-"
"THE GODDAMN WLF!" Someone shouted from the gathered crowds, which caused a raucous cheer to erupt once more in the building. It was quickly quieted by the searing glare Marie pointed at everyone around her.
"That was the next topic on my lips, idiots!" She chastised them rather curtly. "But I suppose it's gonna be the first thing we talk about. Firstly, if everyone wasn't clear on this, the group that attacked us was the Washington Liberation Front, a large and well-equipped organization from Seattle, Washington. After interrogations of their injured and taking a look at their belongings -and especially considering just how well-equipped they were- it's made clear to us that they've been planning to hit us for a while now."
I half-expected to hear the room to burst out into whispers and mutterings of worry and concern, but looking over the grim and battle-worn faces in front of me, I was not surprised that silence and stoic listening became the result of that bloody siege.
Taking out my flask, I tried to subtly take a swig of the whiskey inside, but the unexpected intensity of the liquor's taste caused me to cringe and release an audible groan. I felt a flood of embarrassment wash over my body as the hundreds of onlookers cracked smiles and chuckled softly amongst themselves.
"The question on everybody's mind, I'm sure- what's our next plan of action?" Marie spoke again. "It's been two weeks and no sign of any reinforcements or plans for a second firefight. Considering we've taken all of their heavy artillery and weapons, and with the amount of manpower they used to assault us, we can expect it will take them several months, if not years at the very minimum to recover from those losses. Their loss of manpower alone likely crippled them, so I'd place confidence in the assurance of their recovery being far longer than ours."
She walked over to a nearby table, picking up a rifle and WLF outfit, presenting it to the auditorium.
"Their gear is far more advanced and well-crafted than that of any other settlement we've interacted with in the past. It's clear they've got more resources, industrial assets and manpower to leverage for mass production than we do."
"Why don't we start makin' cannons an' stuff?" Someone spoke up from the crowd with an almost-illiterate undertone, followed by a raucous cheer of a quarter of the present audience. I had to suppress the urge not to throw something at the idiot. Was he able to grasp how fucking insanely difficult it was to make something like artillery? Even an improvised mortar was no easy feat, since it would require welding, predisposed knowledge of how to make a functioning gun-mortar, and knowledge of how to make the shells that get fed into a mortar emplacement.
"We don't have the resources and fellas with an understanding of this stuff to make anything like that," Marie replied to the question. "My guess is, they found a college or something and recruited a ton of people with engineering degrees, or they have former military in their ranks. Either way, even now they have an advantage on us, technologically. So our plan has to be shaped around the understanding that we are still the underdogs here."
I was impressed by Marie's situational assessment and analysis. She was well-versed in the sense that she could speak to common people in a way that was easy to digest but lost none of the contents of what she said. I could only dream of being that verbose; most of my speech consisted of getting frustrated at the other person for not reading my mind, since I was unable to articulate the words my thoughts were trying to encapsulate. I continued listening in on the discussion, trying to avoid eye contact with the hundreds of Jacksonites that seriously insisted on gazing at me with expressions of wonder and awe; I knew that expression before.
I'd met settlement and faction leaders with a cult of personality; those with great charisma took advantage of mentally broken survivors and brainwashed them into thinking those people were gods. The looks in their eyes were the exact same I was bearing witness to right now, magnified by a hundredfold.
It wasn't hard to realize why. I had survived dozens of bullets, faced down death and despair against a seemingly-unbeatable enemy, and won. Multiple times. I was infected but had an immunity that was far in excess of what Ellie had. I saved the town from a fucking siege.
I wasn't trying to toot my own horn. It's just what happened, and none of it was good for me in the long-run, aside from finding my community and meeting Ellie and my father and discovering the raw power I was able to harness...
Okay, maybe some of this was good for me in the long-run. But there would no doubt be people traveling from across the country to meet me the moment one of those WLF cunts started spreading the word to other settlements of what happened.
The one good thing about the post-apocalypse; it forced people to become much more sedentary in larger groups, and nomadic in smaller ones. The chance that a settlement would believe the tales told about me, much less travel hundreds of miles just to fuck with me was insanely minimal. They had lives to tend to, just like these Jacksonites did before the siege. It would be highly unrealistic for a person to just pick themselves up and go risk their life for no good reason.
Nonetheless, it wouldn't be great for Jackson City's image. We still had bigger issues to handle right now, though.
"Now," Marie began, unfurling a number of documents and flattening them against the podium on the stage. "Let's talk numbers."
Two hours later...
The discussion had quickly descended from a formal meeting into a glorified trap house; halfway through Marie's controlled discourse, someone in the gallery had busted out a smoking pipe and several bags of weed, and a chain reaction of drug fiends started ingesting a variety of narcotics; before long, most of the younger Jacksonites were high off of some kind of drug. What shocked me was that Marie, who was still giving the speech about 15 minutes in, had noticed the drug bonanza and elected to say nothing about it. I had thought that this was some kind of common tradition for this town, but another thought led me to believe that she was simply giving them a ton of slack- after all, even an idiot could see the trauma these people had endured only a few weeks ago. Resorting to drugs and alcohol to get away from that kind of fucked up event was the most common thing a person would see in this environment. In fact, I'd seen it since the day I'd been abducted into the Vultures.
Every settlement. Every small camp or massive faction; every layman and every warlord, every human being in the aftermath of whatever happened to this world had found some sort of coping mechanism, and the most common choice was drugs and alcohol.
I felt differently, however, in that I consumed alcohol that tasted good and knowing I was surrounded by hundreds of soldiers ready to fight against any domestic or foreign threats that presented themselves. No matter how much I had endured, suffered and been betrayed, there was a certainty in this assurance of my safety that I felt little need to constantly keep my guard up.
Were this feeling of assurance in those around me not present, I would not be drinking.
(Music: "Not A Beanie", by Connor Price & bbno$)
"...And that wraps up the command restructuring. Let's hit on our final subject..." Marie said, her head tilting downwards to see me right as I had elected to take a swig from my canteen. I instinctively flinched at the sudden attention and choked on the liquor, coughing and groaning at the burning sensation of liquor particles running through my throat and nose. Clearing my throat plentifully, I painfully resisted the urge to kill myself as Ellie's amused expression passed by my eyes.
"Ahem! Ahem! Fuckin'... what, Marie?"
Marie raised an eyebrow, turning her head to face the auditorium once more.
"Only a month ago, Jack was introduced to our community-"
"WHOOO, BLESSED JACK!"
"LUCKY JACK!"
"KING JACKSON!"
Immediately, the audience erupted in a wild fervour, jutting their rifles into the air, whooping and cheering, chanting incoherent slogans and mottos. After a dozen or so seconds had passed, the crowd had eventually subsided into listening to Marie once more.
"...Jack... was introduced to our community without much explanation or background. In the time he's been here, he's worked hard, helped others, and mostly kept to himself. Yet in these last few weeks, Jack has done things which I don't need to explain here today, and which we are all more than aware of."
Another wild cheer from the crowd, complete with someone firing a gun by accident into the ceiling.
"I didn't think this was necessary to bring into the forum, but due to an overwhelming number of requests, Jackson City is now considering a reward to give Jack for his deeds during the Wyote raid and the WLF siege."
Yet another massive cheer erupted and reverberated through the chamber, which was beginning to annoy the shit out of me.
"The thing is," Marie shouted. "We don't know what Jack wants. So..."
She gazed at me once more, leaving me to stare uncomfortably around the hundreds of expectant eyes.
"What do you want, Jack?" She asked indifferently.
Before I could respond, someone burst through the front doors of the forum all the way at the back, trying to quickly sift through the dense gathering of people to get to the front. Marie recognized the voice and shouted out to him.
"Higgams! What's with the urgency?"
Higgams shoved through to the front, heaving tiredly and speaking his piece.
"Group at the front gate... *huff*... says they're diplomats..."
Marie tilted her head curiously.
"Diplomats? From what settlements?"
Higgams caught his breath, standing more upright and finishing his sentences more concisely.
"The group says they want to talk about the recent siege on our city."