4
"I was at work, night shift on the tail end of a double shift" Daryl explained as he pulled the warm blanket up over himself more, the noise outside of the Monsters keeping them both awake. Uglies. Daryl had called them the Uglies. A good name.
"Where did you work?" Ianto asked, checking Emma who was fast asleep.
"I was a PA at a lawyer's firm downtown so when the calls stated coming in about the sickness I just wanted to hide in my office. My mother rang, said she and Da were sick. My brother called next to tell me his wife and son were dead and my parents too, him sick" Daryl stopped talking then took a deep breath and continued "so it was two days of hiding before the candy machine didn't have anything left. There were six of us. We didn't know about the Uglies. It was a shock, we were an easy target out in the open like fucktards wandering about and we lost two in moments."
"And then?" Ianto asked gently once he saw that Daryl was getting lost in his memories, a bad place to be.
"Then another one took his own life that night while we were hiding in a diner where we had cooked a feed. We woke in the morning to find another one had snuck to and run off on their own, took so much food and stuff like a little thief. So it was down to two of us. Me and my friend Garrison. He walked into a trap right in front of me. If I hadn't paused to check something flickering in the light that turned out to be a broken car mirror… god."
"What?" Ianto focused now "The… ah… Uglies? Clever enough to create a trap?"
"They are smart. Scary fucking smart. They want to kill us but they also want to… sort of... punish us or something. Like they get off on our pain."
Ianto sat back "Thank fuck someone else thinks that. It's like they hate us. Smashing our heads in, not to eat us or anything, like we are a threat to be eliminated."
"Like av elephant and a mouse."
"Do you think we scare them? Somehow they see us as some sort of threat because they know we can think faster, react faster and kill faster?" Ianto wondered.
"So what is the game plan here?" Daryl asked.
"To keep moving, we stay in one place to long and we become a target. I think we need to keep moving North, find water wherever we can" Ianto replied.
"Water?"
"They don't like water" Ianto said with surprise, not aware that there might be those who did not know this fact. "They are afraid of it, it may be the only thing I ever saw them show fear for."
"Huh… well there ya go" Daryl snorted with surprise.
.
.
They were moving quickly, checking constantly as they headed for a sporting goods store at the end of the mall they were in.
They had not found any problems and this was making Ianto more than usually uncomfortable. His little girl was heavy in the backpack, the straps digging into his shoulders even with the lightened load.
They entered the store and Ianto hung back, sliding around towards the camping gar even as Daryl headed for the ammo locker, in case any were left. Ianto was more interested in some camping stoves or something, anything that meant they might be able to get out of the city and…. Ianto stopped walking.
Someone was already here, at least five that he could see, maybe more in the pop-up tents set up in the display area. They all seemed to be asleep… but he knew they went. He stood there for the longest time staring at them, just… staring. Sleeping bags pulled up to their chins like fat caterpillars on the ground eating them from the feet up.
Finally he took a shallow breath and the sickeningly sweet smell of death assaulted him.
They had been dead for days.
The camp stoves had dried up food sitting on them, no doubt the burnt remains were to be their meal for their last evening alive, so deep in the mall where the Uglies could not see the light of their lamps. They had lit their stoves, turned the gas cylinders up and enjoyed some comfortable warmth.
They had gassed themselves with inadequate ventilations.
All of them.
Ianto slid down to sit, cradling the baby he had pulled out of the backpack to cuddle close like she was in danger. Of course she was. They all were.
Daryl found Ianto there sitting with the dead, his face a mask.
"Oh shit" Daryl said softly as he looked at the dead bodies "What the fuck happened?"
"Outside cooking units. You need plenty of space to have one going and they lit three in the confines of this space. They died within an hour or so… the food almost ready. Would have felt sleepy, slightly disorientated and confused. Then… poof." Ianto explained, rising and rubbing at his face.
"What do we do?"
"We back out and walk away like we never saw. They are safe here, together and died sleeping peacefully. We can't really hope for much more, right?" Ianto said as he lifted the backpack to place Emma back into.
"Fucking cold, man. Don't you feel anything?" Daryl asked "I don't see a single tear for them."
"No. I've not cried since this started not even as I buried my beloved niece. I don't have time for that." Ianto said angrily "Fuck that. I will not shed a fucking tear until I know it was all for naught. Only then… only then will I weep for what is lost."
"Cold man"
