Hey there. Please accept an apology for any errors I didn't fix when proof-reading but in my defence I have been awake for over twenty-four hours and I'm running on caffeine and sheer stubbornness alone.
This chapter references: panic attacks, implied/referenced suicide, radioactive fallout, the Chernobyl disaster - I think those are all the major upsetting scenes/trigger warnings but please let me know if there are any more and I'll add them to the list. Stay safe and know that my messages are always open 3
Scott made the executive decision to pull over to get some much-needed rest in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere whilst also in the middle of yet another crisis. He'd known returning to Earth would raise some issues he wasn't equipped to deal with, but he hadn't expected his mental state to nosedive quite this fast or quite this far. It didn't bode well for the future. Then again, he'd been doing a perfectly good job of not thinking about the future at all, so he knocked back a strip of painkillers and dove into the military method of falling asleep. He was awoken by dull light, a distant howl, and Alan's awed, almost fearful whisper.
"Woah."
Woah could mean many things and, knowing Alan, most of them weren't good. Scott struggled out of the strange, crumpled position he'd fallen into against the car door during the night, gripping the wheel to haul himself upright. Alan didn't look away from the windscreen. His gaze remained steadfastly fixed on the horizon.
"If someone asked me to describe a scene from the apocalypse," he murmured. "Like, a dystopian road or something…" He cupped his chin in his hands, elbows propped on the dash, and pressed his nose to the glass, eyes wide and revering. "Then this is exactly what I'd say."
The road ahead led into a town – scattered houses and a few office blocks. To either side lay endless fields, blank and slated grey. Several scorched cars were discarded across the mud. An old road-sign had been knocked down by a van that stood abandoned, the bonnet still crumpled from the collision. Tell-tale streaks of parasitic green gurgled in the empty sockets where the tyres had once been.
Old telephone poles lined the tarmac, stretching into the distance. Wires strung between them dangled loosely. Some of the poles had collapsed and their corresponding wires trailed across the road. Scorched concrete showed where sparks had eaten away at the stones when the wires had still held power. Everything was covered in a fine carpet of ash. And as for the sky – it wasn't just grey, but a sickly pallor of yellow. Cloud – thick, choking cloud – buried the blue. What little sunlight made it through was weak to the extent that Scott had to switch the headlights back on.
Alan hunched his shoulders beneath his hoodie. "This place feels like death."
Scott took a second to recover his ability to speak. His words were all tangled up, much like those wires, swinging like nooses in a non-existent breeze.
The Hood cleared his throat and leant between the front seats. "If I may…"
"You may not," Alan immediately cut in, but for once his voice lacked heat. He didn't complain when the Hood spoke up again.
"We've still got a long journey ahead of us. There's nothing left here. We don't need any more fuel yet. I suggest we leave this place far behind us."
Scott reached for the wires to restart the ignition, but something in the Hood's voice sounded off, like a fire struggling to burn without oxygen, or a clear sky without sun – seemingly natural but missing a crucial detail. He turned in his seat to catch the man's neutral gaze.
"You're unsettled by it too. Seeing this… it scares you."
The Hood didn't immediately reply. When he did, his voice was level without a trace of emotion, not even that trademark sneer. "Like I said, we should leave this place behind us."
Alan remained silent.
Scott drove on without further comment.
By the third day, Scott wasn't even certain of which state they were in, let alone which road they were on. The vast majority of signposts had been dragged down by original rioters or by panicked drivers fleeing a horde or had simply fallen prey to the carnage wrought by abnormal weather events that were ever increasing in intensity. The damage that had been done to the atmosphere was immense – the sheer mass of debris thrown into the air by colossal fires would have been bad enough but then there were the other events that hadn't even crossed anyone's mind to begin with… explosions at energy plants and old nuclear sites without anyone to run maintenance. The temperatures may had started out mild on the Californian coast, but they soon plummeted inland.
Underneath a desolate grey sky, Alan sat up and frowned. Soft flakes were drifting from the clouds. "It's snowing," he breathed.
Between the seats, where Alan had lodged his console into a cupholder so that they could both see it without needing to ask, the screen lit up with a red warning holo. Scott flicked his gaze from the road to the alert and sucked in a sharp breath.
"It's not snow," he reported, checking to ensure all the windows were secured. "It's ash. And it's radioactive."
Alan paled. "W-what?" He coughed, almost as if on cue, and tried to speak again, but his voice was strangled by fear. "Are we safe in here?"
Honestly? Scott wasn't convinced. But this was a good car – a modern model which came with automatically sealing doors as a safety feature in most vehicles sold in areas that experienced wildfires so as to prevent inhaling toxins from smoke – and it wasn't as if he could do anything other than drive onwards as quickly as possible. But that wasn't what Alan wanted to hear, so he summoned a reassuring smile.
"Yeah, we're safe in here. Just don't roll down any windows, okay? If you want to feel extra safe, maybe put that suit back on. It'll protect you from any radiation so long as the Geiger counter doesn't stray into the red for too long – Brains installed that feature in all our gear."
"I don't have a helmet," Alan pointed out. He swallowed and screwed his eyes shut for a long minute, breathing ragged with the suggestion of hyperventilation.
"Mercury?" Scott queried, very quietly, almost as if he were remarking on the colour of the clouds, but Alan exhaled in a rush.
"I'm g-good." He clenched a fist and released the tension a second later, splaying his fingers across the dash. "I'm good," he repeated, as if convincing himself it was true.
The ash fell thickly. The roadside was quickly submerged. Scott almost wished the car was a manual rather than automatic just so he would have gears to focus on rather than simply smooth driving and the radiation swallowing them whole. He shifted his gaze to Alan for a brief moment.
"Put your suit on," he ordered. "Even without a helmet, it's better than nothing."
"I thought you said we were safe in here?" The Hood demanded, voice rising in something that could have been mistaken for anger but rang too shrilly to be anything other than fear.
Scott met that yellow gaze in the rear mirror.
"We are," he said firmly, willing the Hood not to argue further. "But Alan, I'd like you to put the suit on anyway, just as an extra precaution." He glanced over to where his brother was framed against the sickening sky and softened his voice. "Please?"
Alan reached for the obsidian fabric with trembling hands. His voice was muffled as he yanked it over his head. He slipped on the gloves and wiped them violently across his knees as tiny crusts of dried blood flaked off the metal knuckles. A bottle of water rattled by his boots. He lifted it into his lap, taking a tiny sip.
"Did you ever learn about Chernobyl?" he asked, sort of detachedly. "I did, in history and then we did a brief unit on it in Chemistry too. The fallout was so radioactive that it literally turned the forest red." He lifted his feet onto the seat and wrapped his arms around his knees. "It looked like this."
Scott hadn't registered that the leaves were red until now. He'd noticed it, sure, but his brain had assumed oh, it must be nearly Fall, only to remember now with a start that it was January in the US. These leaves weren't supposed to be red. They were supposed to be vividly green. The radiation had poisoned them. Panic coiled in his lungs. Even if you can cure the infected, what about the planet? He tightened his grip on the wheel.
The Hood cleared his throat. "I would like to point out that the radiation seems to be just as toxic to the creatures as it is to us. We haven't seen a trace of them since we reached this area. Maybe the radiation kills the parasite, or perhaps the creatures still know instinctively to keep away."
Scott filed that information away for later. Because – no. The infected didn't have those survival instincts to flee the radiation. These were the same creatures that happily flung themselves from great heights, smashed their skulls into glass, tore themselves apart all to reach a single healthy human. As John had put it all those months ago, the infected were willing to run through fire and burn themselves alive if there was a food source on the other side. They had no concept of danger. By that logic, the thing keeping them from this area was the parasite living within them – it was what feared the radiation.
Radiation kills it too, just like us.
"I don't like this," Alan whispered as the tyres crunched over the radioactive ash with concerning crackling sounds.
The Hood's response was neutral, not meant to be taken as a taunt for once. "Then don't look."
Scott reached out blindly, unwilling to take his eyes off the road now that the markings were concealed beneath ash, and found his brother's shoulder with a gentle squeeze. "What do you need right now?"
"I don't know." Alan drew his hood over his face. "I want to go home," he whispered into his sleeve, and his voice sounded damp and strained with tears. "I hate this. I hate all of it. I want to wake up. This isn't my world anymore. I don't know how to live in this one. Do you think… do you think even home is like this? If all this radioactive material is in the atmosphere then… it's probably fallen there too, right? Shit, Scott, we probably breathed in some of this back in the city, or at literally any point we've been out in the open. We could be dying right now and we wouldn't even know it."
"We're not dying."
"You can't know that!" Alan drew in a sharp sob that broke on a strangled wheeze. "Oh s-shit, no, n-no, no, not…"
"Hey!"
Alan had been a part of International Rescue long enough for commands to register with his subconscious mind, so Scott was really hoping that raising his voice to an order would snap Alan out of his spiral towards a fully-fledged panic attack, because he couldn't pull over right now to calm the kid down but equally he couldn't listen to Alan panic his way into unconsciousness in the fucking passenger seat right next to him. Shit. This… shit.
"Alan." Scott hated himself for shouting but it was the only thing he could think of that could possibly work. The fallout was never-ending – billowing ash falling thicker and thicker until the wipers could barely keep up and the headlights barely penetrated the gloom. It was growing darker as if night had come in the middle of the afternoon. If they stopped now, he wasn't convinced they'd ever move again. "Hold your breath, now. Count to seven with me, alright?"
They got to three.
"Three's good. You're getting there. Still with me? Let's try that again. C'mon, Allie, you're doing great, I promise."
The Hood wasn't saying a single word. Not even so much as a cough. If anything, he was trying to pretend that they didn't exist, staring out of the window stonily.
They made it to five this time.
Scott wasn't sure he'd ever been this tense in his life.
"In for seven," he coaxed, drumming the count against the steering wheel.
In. Seven. Hold. Seven. Out. Seven. Repeat.
Grounding. Shit. Not Scott's forte. He commonly let himself drift through the day on autopilot whilst knowing he was dissociating – fucking therapy – just because it was easier. He knew vaguely – five things, five senses – but this wasn't… Hey, Alan, name five things you can see other than the death outside the windows – clearly it wasn't the route to take right now.
"Tell me a fact about each of our family," he said instead. "Anything you like."
"Um…" Alan didn't question it. His breathing was still ragged but he collapsed into his seat, eyes kept shut to avoid spying the ash. "When I was still at boarding school, John used to write me emails and he'd always finish them with a book quote. Virgil's always wanted a cat but Grandma's allergic so he can't have one. Gordon watched the original Buffy series in his freshman year and had a crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar for like two months. Brains loves to watch sci-fi movies so he can point out all the fake science. Grandma's favourite colour is purple. Kayo steals all the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms. Penelope secretly had a crush on you when she first met you."
It took a lot of strength to ignore visibly reacting to that one.
"Parker keeps dog treats in his pocket even though he pretends to hate Sherbet. And you… You have a secret supply of Jaffa Cakes in a locker on One, your favourite colour is blue and you know all the words to Maverick: Top Gun."
The ash was still falling but the road had straightened out sufficiently that Scott could take a hand off the wheel.
"And a fact about yourself?"
Alan knocked his head back against the seat. "Um… the first time I broke the top score for flying Three on the simulator I secretly cried because that was Dad's score and I felt guilty about knocking him outta first place." He slumped a little further, yawning, still shaky. "But then Virgil told me that Dad would have been happy about it. Probably would have challenged me to a rematch, see who's really the better pilot. But he wouldn't have been angry."
Scott was fairly certain that Alan had forgotten about their passenger in the backseat, but he wasn't about to point this out. He caught his brother's hand and let Alan hold on as tightly as he dared.
"He'd have been proud. He'd be proud. And I know that for a fact because I'm proud too."
Alan was quiet for a moment. "Is the ash still falling?"
"Yes." Scott tugged one of the hoodie drawstrings just to glimpse Alan's tiny smile. "Keep your eyes shut. Try to get some more sleep. I'll wake you if anything changes."
"'kay."
Scott crossed lanes to avoid a low-hanging branch. As it passed, he noticed that the leaves were not only red, but they were beginning to curl up and, as they sped further on their lonely journey, the leaves left behind dropped, one by one, to the ground.
"They're dying," the Hood noted, quietly, in a surprising show of consideration as Alan was well on his way to dreamland.
Scott pressed down a little harder on the accelerator. "Maybe," he acknowledged. "But we're not."
Not yet, anyway.
During ordinary times, they would have reached the ranch within a two-day drive, (including pitstops for snacks and bathroom breaks) especially given Scott tended to leave speed limits in the dust – a trait also shared by Gordon who was arguably worse and drove like a maniac, to the point where Virgil and John refused to get in a car with him and Alan was simply banned. Now, it had taken them three days to reach this point – and they still had another full day of driving to go – due to the state of the roads. Some stood impassable, forcing them double back on themselves and find an alternate route, adding time to a journey that would have been lengthy anyway as they were deliberately avoiding all major highways to steer clear of any hordes.
The next time they stopped to refuel and raid for supplies was on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The warning light had come on the dash and Scott was reluctant to travel any further and run out completely. The main gas station in town was not only infested by infected but was also a smouldering heap of wreckage, so they drove on. A herd of wandering cattle drew attention to a farmhouse and his childhood had taught him that such a place usually held emergency supplies of fuel. He turned off the main road onto the bumpy track, flattening tall grasses that had shot up in the middle of the path, proof that no one had passed through in weeks.
The cloud was thinner here and they had left the radioactive ash several hundred miles back, but they covered their mouths and noses with makeshift masks just in case. At any rate, it helped to ease the painful coughs that had taken root in their chests, a result of all the dust – and it was everywhere, clinging to absolutely everything, finding its way through gaps no one had even known existed, somehow seeping into the very seams of their clothes. It even got into the water so that a single sip coated the tongue in a thick, scratchy layer. When Scott ran a hand across the dashboard, it came back filthy. In the brief snatches of sunlight, it could be seen in the air – swirling in dazed circles, just hanging there, suspended in motion.
Alan yanked his suit higher to serve as a mask, clambering out of the car. His boots sank into the dust. He kicked each foot, watching the dust slowly settle back across cracked mud. Around the farmhouse, endless crops rustled in the breeze. They were grey, suffocating under the dust just like the rest of the land, and, as the wind buffeted their leaves, they tossed weary clouds into the air.
Alan studied them for a moment, unspeaking, then reached for his knife. "I'm going to check the house for supplies."
"Be careful," Scott called after him reflexively. Alan didn't bother replying. His steps left casts in the dust, like lunar craters, deep and undisturbed. The knife glinted in his hand, although even now he had yet to actually use it and Scott could only pray that it stayed that way.
Scott tied the scrap of cloth he was using as a mask around his mouth and nose and trekked into the barn. The door was slowly flapping in the breeze. It looked as if it were frozen in time. He took each step cautiously, gun grasped between his hands, ready to fire. There were no movements beyond a sudden explosion of wings as a pigeon fled. Adrenaline kept his senses on red alert. He moved silently and swiftly, retrieving a cannister of fuel from a storage unit and lugging it back to the car where the Hood was waiting, already having popped the cap so that they could fill up as quickly as possible.
Strange clouds had formed along the horizon. The bank rose into the sky, towering higher and higher so that Scott had to crane his neck to spy the top. He emptied the rest of the fuel into the tank and lodged the empty container in the trunk for future use. The Hood remained by the side of the vehicle, suit jacket discarded across the backseat, his torn shirt billowing in the breeze.
"The wind's picking up," he noted.
Scott went to close the trunk and yanked his hand back with a startled yelp.
"Static shock," he offered by way of explanation as the Hood arched a brow. He rubbed at his stinging thumb, frowning at the patch of reddened skin. "Sonuvabitch."
"Tell me," the Hood mused aloud, leaning back against the car. "Have you ever seen clouds like that?"
Scott finally secured the trunk and stepped around to join him. The cloud bank was stained a deep ochre and it seemed to writhe like a living creature, tiny turrets spiralling into the deeper skies beyond. It was creeping closer by the second. The wind swept across the fields and the rustling of plants grew louder until they were almost roaring.
The Hood side-eyed him. "We should get out of here."
"No kidding," Scott murmured. He turned back to the house where the curtains were flapping so violently that they threatened to tear themselves from the windows and fly away. The door banged open and shut like a heartbeat. He fought a shudder. "I'll grab Alan."
Alan wasn't in the kitchen, but the rucksack sat on the table in a cleared circle, filled with newly acquired tins and long-life packeted food. Fingerprints smeared trails through dust on the countertops. A faint tapping sound echoed from the sink. Scott crossed to the faucet and twisted it on but after a minute of shuddering the pipes remained dry and the only thing dripping into the drain was dust, clogging the tap.
He reached for a curtain and held it back to peer at the darkening sky through a dirty window. Several birds took flight and fled eastwards. Instinct scuttled down his spine, uneasy and urging him to run. He turned away and followed footprints up the stairs.
"Alan?"
There was no immediate reply. Panic rushed to the forefront of his mind. He shoved the spiral aside and focussed on the real, physical aspects, such as the sweat soaking his palms or the cough tickling his throat or the way each step brought dust welling to the surface of the carpet in a foam-like layer. Alan's footprints led along the corridor to a wooden door that stood ajar at the very end. It was a classic horror movie scene, Scott thought to himself wryly, examining the paint boils that had formed around the handle as he pushed it fully open.
The first thing he saw was a white wall smothered in blood. Dried blood, old, turned brown with age and extended exposure to the oxygen in the air. It had dripped from the immediate point of impact, leaving rivulets across the paintwork. The carpet appeared to be moving, crawling or perhaps breathing, but a closer inspection revealed that it was actually alive with flies. Slumped sideways on the bed was a body. A neat bullet hole marked the centre of the forehead, but the way the gun had fallen proved that the injury had been self-inflicted. The bedsheet was stained with brain matter.
Scott stopped short. All of a sudden he had gone from spiralling to experiencing no cohesive thoughts whatsoever. His mind remained blank for a full twenty seconds. He gripped one wrist in the opposite hand and squeezed until the sting of pain brought his world back into focus.
Alan was crouched on the carpet in front of the dead woman, gaze fixed on her face as if drawn by magnetism, unable to drag himself away. Scott stepped closer and put a hand on the kid's shoulder. Alan didn't react.
"Alan."
"She shot herself," Alan whispered. He swallowed, then lifted a hand to the woman's discoloured wrist where a chunk of flesh had been torn away, mauled by human teeth. "To keep herself from turning into whatever did that."
Vivid auburn hair still clung to the scalp. The skin was grey and distended but it was moving. Scott took a closer look and immediately wished he hadn't. The flesh was writhing with hundreds of maggots.
"Alan," he repeated, more sharply this time. "We're leaving. Let's go."
Alan rose to his feet as if in slow motion. "She had a name. And a life. And she loved and was loved in return. But none of it was enough to save her from this. No matter how much her family and friends cared about her or wanted to protect her, it wasn't enough."
Scott caught Alan's wrist and tugged him gently away from the scene. "What happened here won't happen to you, alright?"
"It nearly happened to John." Alan took Scott's silence as confirmation. "Didn't it? That's what happened on board Two, right? That's why he sent Virgil and Gordon back up to the cockpit to sit with me. I'm not an idiot. It's not difficult to figure out. It makes the most logical sense."
The wind was wailing now.
Scott closed the door behind them to leave the woman to her eternal silence. "What did happen or didn't happen in the past doesn't matter now. It's history."
Alan reached for the rucksack robotically. He couldn't lift his gaze from the floor. "Right. Except it's not history yet, is it? Those of us who aren't immune – we either turn into monsters or end ourselves."
There was never supposed to be an us, a separate people, a sort of barrier which Scott couldn't cross. It felt as though there were a chasm between them and, even though Alan was only an arm's length away, the distance felt as great as that between Earth and Mars.
The front door slammed against the wall like a thunderclap. Scott jolted. Alan didn't even flinch. He stood on the step, shrouded by flying dust, and stared into the face of the storm. Scott moved to join him.
A minute passed with only the wind to break the silence.
"I don't feel real," Alan confessed.
"Am I real?" Scott asked him quietly, just loud enough to be heard over the wind.
Alan turned to look up at him. "Yeah," he choked out at last, stepping back to tuck himself under Scott's arm, suddenly trembling uncontrollably. "Yeah, you're… you're real. You're the most real thing I know."
Scott wrapped his arm around Alan's shoulders, tightly, a protective bracket to withstand the sweeping darkness and a shield against the lonely woman in the upstairs bedroom. "Good. Just focus on me then."
Alan stared at the roiling clouds. "I don't want to feel like this."
"I know."
"I miss the others."
Scott exhaled shakily. "Me too."
"Can we get out of here?" Alan's face was wet with tears. "Please?"
Scott held him close for another minute to satisfy his own selfish impulse to assure himself that his kid was safe and here and protected. "Sure, Allie. We can get out of here right now. Come on." He guided Alan down the steps. "Let's go."
Alan's console had enough data stored on its own remote drive to be able to identify the weather phenomena without needing Five's input. It detected the alien clouds as a dust storm and a pretty violent one at that. The road ahead was open and straight, so Scott put his foot down on the accelerator and drove like a bat outta hell until the storm caught up with the car and finally overtook them. The world outside became obscured by a hurricane of frothy dust. Violent gales buffeted them from side to side. Dust and dirt seared across the car in a torrent of destruction so forceful that it left deep scratches in the glass and tore ugly screeches from the metal hull.
"There's a bridge up ahead," the Hood reported, suddenly revealing himself to be an apparent expert on the area. "We can take shelter beneath it. Drive on."
"You try driving in this," Scott muttered with no small trace of venom, but eased them through the dust blindly, praying that the road wouldn't suddenly disappear from beneath the wheels. The bridge loomed out of the clouds, an avenging angel. He guided the car underneath, off the tarmac and up the slope until they were tucked beneath the rising arch of concrete and the winds could no longer attack them from all sides. He released the wheel with a full-body sigh and cut the engine.
"How long do you reckon it'll last?" he wondered aloud.
Alan's console didn't hold any advice. The Hood merely reclined across the backseats as best he could, folding his jacket beneath his head. Scott took a leaf out of his book – they were clearly going to be stuck here for a while so they may as well get comfy. He pried his shoes off and poured the dust from each into the footwell before reclining his chair as far as possible and lifting his legs onto the dash. His back still complained but there wasn't a lot he could do other than surreptitiously down another set of painkillers. He fought back a yawn, trying not to focus on the way the storm sounded as though it were stripping the metal from the car, tearing it apart fragment by fragment to get at them.
"Hungry?" He offered Alan the rucksack. "You can pick. Anything you like."
It was a weak bargain, a feeble attempt at drawing Alan back into the present, and it fell flat. Alan turned away, face hidden in his shoulder, curled against the door. His arms were wrapped across him, fingers curling around his biceps tightly enough to leave bruises beneath his suit. He hadn't said a word since the farmhouse.
"Alan?" Scott tried again.
Alan didn't look up but lifted his hands to sign. "Not hungry. Will puke if I do. Stop asking."
As if this wasn't conclusive enough, he twisted further against the door to firmly put his back to Scott and yanked his hoodie over his head to block out all noise. His shoulders were trembling as if he were crying, but there was no sound of tears.
People who cry silently have taught themselves that skill.
Alan had never needed to teach himself the art of keeping tears quiet. Not until recently, at least – which meant that Scott had failed. Again. Sometimes, deep down, buried so far in his subconscious that he barely dared admit it existed at all, a tiny selfish part of him was grateful that Jeff was not around to see how just how badly Scott had fucked up, just how far short of the bare minimum he'd fallen. But then at the same time he wished so, so desperately that his father was still here, because then Alan would never have had to suffer like this, and everything would have been better.
John would disagree, he knew that for a fact. But John wasn't here and Scott was, and Alan was now sobbing silently in the passenger seat while the Hood lurked behind them, a monster in the light while monsters in the dark stalked ever closer. At the end of all things there wasn't peace, not until you threw yourself over the finish line but left everyone else behind you and all of those people would have to suffer with the consequences of you being gone. Or something. He didn't want to give voices or names to the thoughts in his head. He just wanted to be enough. He wanted to fix this.
The storm yowled. Dust clawed at the windows. The entire car lurched but mercifully remained anchored to the ground. Scott counted the rations and concluded that they would comfortably make it to the ranch even if he and Alan were both eating three meals a day. Not that this actually applied because Alan was refusing to eat.
Scott didn't take a tin either. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the woman's face and the slithering motions beneath her skin, mottled marks of decomposition and eyeless sockets staring into his soul. His chest ached. He drew a deep breath. In the gloom, he swore he could see creatures watching him.
Anxiety seethed, restless under his skin, itching beneath his fingertips and heels. Pain leached heat from his back. He probed a bandage with one thumb and barely managed to bite back a cry as the wound ignited. Fire seared along his spine. He curled a hand into a fist out of sight and dug his nails into his palm, forcing himself to take level breaths. Okay. So. That wasn't great. He should have begun to heal by now.
Alan uncoiled himself from a tight ball of tension to seize a water bottle before burying his head beneath the hoodie once more. Scott resisted the urge to reach out to him because that wasn't what Alan wanted right now and he had to respect his brother's boundaries.
Oh, god, everything hurt. It hurt so badly. Ached, too. He glimpsed his reflection in the windscreen and silently thanked the dust for concealing how pale he was. There was sweat licking the nape of his neck again. He snaked a hand under the hem of his shirt and felt feverish dry heat radiating off his skin in waves. At this rate he'd be lucky to get them to the ranch in one piece.
The glove compartment was jampacked with various items they'd taken from the pharmacy back in the city. He rifled through it, careful not to draw Alan's attention. There was a single packet of something he vaguely recognised as an antibiotic, but he didn't dare take those in case they were stuck on Earth any longer and Alan ended up needing them. Instead he dribbled more antiseptic down his back, hoping it would seep through the bandages because he couldn't exactly change those while the Hood and Alan were right there and were very much still awake. He found more painkillers and took them, chasing it down with water, then curled under a blanket he retrieved from the footwell to hide the shivers running rampant through his body.
It was fine. He would be fine.
Nausea threatened to reject the pills he'd taken. He bit down on his knuckles. Another torrent of dust smacked into the side of the car. Alan looked up sharply and hesitated, that dazed glare of anxiety clearing from his eyes just enough for suspicion to take root.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes," Scott answered quickly, probably too quickly but he couldn't afford to let the breathlessness become audible in his voice. "Just tired. Been driving for a long time."
Alan accepted this without question, which was very uncharacteristic and only served to reinforce Scott's concern. His thoughts were sticky and confusing, and he was drowning a little under the weight of the fear only he couldn't pin down the reasons why. He clutched the blanket closer. Screwed his eyes shut. Blocked out the sounds of the storm. Ignored the shaking of the car. Kept himself still and quiet and repeated over and over in his mind 'I'm fine' like a mantra until he either fell asleep or the fever dragged him into unconsciousness.
The storm cleared shortly before dawn, leaving empty skies. Scott had slept in fits and starts all night and so was awake when the final gusts died down. It made sense to make some progress after they'd lost so many hours to the dust, so he eased the car back onto the road and drove in silence while the Hood and Alan slept on.
Faint stars scattered the sky. A pale glow shimmered along the horizon. Gentle peach ghosted the edge of midnight blue, pushing back the night so that the day could once more take centre stage. Scott cracked open a can of vibrantly neon energy drink – poached from a gas station back in Cali – and sipped from it as he cruised along the empty road. The caffeine and excess sugar hit his system within minutes. He could physically feel the newfound energy beating his symptoms into a false submission that only meds and a rested immune system could truly achieve.
The car didn't seem too worse for wear after being battered by gale force winds and sharp dust all night. Scott made a mental note to check the tyre pressure when they next stopped but for now he was content to simply count down the miles and watch the sunrise. The can of energy drink was pleasantly cool and he pressed it to the underside of his jaw so that the heat from his skin could leak into the metal. He was fairly certain that he was still running a fever, but his mind was clear and his hands weren't too shaky and his temperature wasn't high enough to be cause for concern. He could still get them to the ranch. He just had to focus.
Another star blinked out. He studied the sun beams arching across the sky. Gold light glistened on the river running parallel to them. He recalled a childhood spring sunrise spent waist-deep in a similar river, Gordon scooping frogspawn into a jam jar at his side and their dad laughing from the bank in his dry clothes without any traces of pondweed on his jeans or wet brothers leaping up at him with their prize.
Scott missed his family so much that it physically hurt.
"Take a right at the next junction."
He jolted at the sudden voice. The Hood, leant between the seats, levelled him with an unimpressed stare.
"Where are we going?"
The Hood cocked his head. "I am going to a safe place where I know I will be welcomed with open arms. You will be dropping me off around a mile away so that you don't follow me."
"We wouldn't want to," Scott muttered. He took another sip of the energy drink and revelled in the taste of sugar. "It's a bunker, right?" He observed the Hood's expression in the reflective windscreen. "That's where you're heading."
"Possibly."
Scott was too tired to care. "The next right, was it?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
Following a twenty-minute detour, Scott left the Hood on a non-descript roadside with an extra bottle of water and packet of jerky because he was tired of being sharp all the time and longed for the chance to be kind, even if it meant being nice to the person he hated most.
The Hood was deeply unimpressed.
"I tried to kill you. I tried to kill your family."
"I know." Scott inhaled deeply. The air was crisp and cold and tasted of salt. "God, I know. I just… I don't want to discuss this. Do you want it or not?"
The Hood studied him for a long minute. "Keep the blanket," he said at last.
"That was yours?"
The Hood rolled his eyes. "See you around, Scott Tracy," he called over his shoulder.
Scott let out a surprised laugh. "I hope not."
"Well," the Hood answered, voice ringing in the still air. "Like I said – life would be boring without having you around to torture." He lifted a hand. "Try not to die saving the world, Tracy. I'd hate for you to perish at anyone's hands other than my own."
Alan finally stirred when the sun was already high in the sky and Scott had gone through two more energy drinks and was either about to have a heart attack or cure the world single-handedly with nothing more than a thought. Alan shuffled upright, hoodie pooling in his lap, and raked a hand through his hair, grimacing at the taste in his mouth. Scott handed him a bottle of water and a cereal bar without needing to be asked and tried to keep the obvious relief off his face when Alan tore into the food.
"Where's the Hood?"
"Bunker. Well, I dropped him off about a mile down the road from a bunker. He's probably there by now." Scott spied the time. "He's definitely there by now."
Alan frowned. "Did you OD on painkillers or something? Why are you so… shaky? Jittery – that's the word."
"I finished an energy drink."
Alan looked at him doubtfully.
"I finished three energy drinks," Scott clarified.
Alan went bug-eyed. "Dude. What the hell?"
"It's fine." Scott shifted the conversation before Alan could start diagnosing him with every condition under the sun. "I thought you'd like to know – we're ten minutes out from the ranch."
Alan's hands dropped down to his knees mid-sign, successfully distracted. The gates appeared a short distance away, security measures still active and hopefully enough to keep any unwanted visitors – of the raiding survival variety or the rabid infected kind – out. Scott rolled down the window and let the retinal scanner confirm his identity. The gates parted to let them drive through.
"Here we are." Scott caught Alan's eye. "Home sweet home," he quipped.
Alan let his hand trail through the open air. "Home safe home," he amended.
"Home safe home," Scott agreed. The gates closed with a clang behind them. "What do you think about trying to find a working radio?"
Alan's grin was brighter than the sun overhead. "I think I love that plan."
