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Kyle wasn't the type of guy who'd huhm and haw after you set a task in front of him. You might even say he suffered of executive over-competency, actively chasing after the bus headed to burnout town and about to catch the damn thing at any given moment. Or so a therapist had told him once.
Had he listened?
No.
Give Kyle a Thing To Do, and he'd eyeball it quickly, squint, and then he'd get it done. Which seemed the appropriate reaction to having a quest bestowed upon him by none other than Death, even if said quest had been hella vague, leaving Kyle with fuck all of an idea about what he was supposed to do with the literal child at the end of the scent trail.
The only thing he was certain of was that he couldn't wait to leave. This place? This sad refugee camp resting in an otherwise quiet vale? It made his skin prickle and pulled the air around him taut with just how much anxiety hung in the air. Add to that the looks people threw after him, the stares, the whispers of "Pilgrim" (gossip had wings), and Kyle was convinced he was maybe one sneeze away from disaster.
Like, you know, a bit of a shooting as a treat. Or a lynching.
He was an outsider, after all, and outsiders weren't part of what remained of polite society these days, where desperation and mistrust overruled any number of social contracts that'd helped glue the world together once.
Grim?
Defeatist?
Maybe.
But he'd seen crap like this way too often since the Fall and, yeah, he had a pretty good idea why he hadn't been thrown out yet, even after the kid had shouted Pervert! earlier (Gossip. Wings.).
Lynchings (the literal and figurative kind) liked to happen to an other first. Had always. Would always. Specifically an other who looked like an easy target.
Kyle Crane did not.
He struck a certain figure, being taller than most (again, literally and figuratively). Road worn. Built for that very same road. Scarred. Armed. White (or passing as it, anyway).
It bothered him beyond measure how he couldn't ignore what he saw; that he couldn't just dismiss it as coincidence once he'd realised every single survivor in here was white, which'd been a painful trend in the last few places he'd drifted through. But, hey. Do the math: the virus had started in Harran. Hence, blame Harran. Then add skin colour. Add fear. Multiply by bigotry. Subtract compassion and good sense.
You'd think—you'd fucking think—people'd yank their heads out of their collective asses after an apocalypse. Lift each other up, ya know? Not walk over whoever didn't fit into some arbitrary box.
Kyle scuffed his shoe over the ground and scowled at the world at large.
Yeah. Kyle's mind liked to wander. Or leap, if you will, easily clearing the most impressive wall of focus and reason so it could go off on adventures.
It was exhausting. Wild to think some people had quiet minds; tempting to want one too, what with how maybe then he'd be able to keep those unhappy tangents at bay.
Bleh. He stuck his thumbs into his belt.
So. Where'd the little punk go, hm?
The punk named Aiden.
Ai-dan.
Ai-dn.
Little Fire. Roots drawn back all the way to Áed, an old Irish godling. Had Áed been real? Kyle shrugged at himself. Possibly. Loads of god-adjacent critters had been, with the latest Kyle had crossed paths with Harran's very own moon god. Sin. Some judge or the other, and an old (read: ancient) friend of Death's; meaning when Sin had come a-calling, Death had loaned out their local hound to him and Kyle's adventures in Harran had gotten dragged all the way out into the city state's golden wheat fields. Something, something fae cults and evil human sciences not mixing well.
Fun.
Kyle blew a frustrated raspberry and kept trudging forward, his mind still a-wander and his nose hard at work. (Btw, Kyle? Gaelic roots. Straight. Narrow. Cue the laugh track. Straight he was not.)
ANYWAY. Work.
He smelled people musk. Trash. Ill maintained sanitary facilities. Sea brine folded under ground up coral. Compost.
Hold up. Kyle's feet stopped trudging. His head snapped left, then right. Sea brine? Ocean? The idea of coral, like glitter dancing on the air, gone as quick as when it'd snuck under his nose?
Weird, he thought, though before Kyle could get invested in whatever he'd picked up on, his eyes snagged on a piece of cardboard chilling in the dirt. It looked familiar. Grunting, Kyle picked it up, and— yeah. It belonged to the cracker box the kid had run off with. Tracks led away from where it'd fallen. Small ones, left by kid-sized shoes, which led Kyle out of the encampment and steadily forward into dew-dipped fields.
With the buildings at his back, Kyle hopped the camp's sad fence and traced the kid's flight all the way to the nearby river, where the grass was tall enough to tickle at his hip. Least until the greenery was interrupted by a strip of asphalt.
A bicycle track. For those healthy people who liked to bike from village to village, stopping just long enough to kick back a large Radler before paddling on.
There were, of course, no bikers when Kyle stood there to get his bearings, no matter how often he looked both ways. There waaaas... nothing, actually. No wilting Biters. No Virals. No scrawny Aidens. (No tall glass of Radler.) Just a lot of shameless bugs, one of which Kyle squashed against his neck with a slap of his hand.
"Hm."
To the left, the bicycle track would lead into the next village deeper down in the valley. The right? Kyle raised himself onto his toes. "Hmmm." Hard to tell. The river curved, taking the path with it, and had grown a near-solid wall of reeds so high, they blocked Kyle's view of not only the water, but also of whatever lay beyond the bend.
The only thing that stood out was the tip of a roof, buried deep in the wildly oversized riverbank jungle. A roof Kyle only saw because a gust of wind decided to push the tips of trees and reeds downwards, baring a manmade ridge of wood.
The roof belonged to a boat, slash, fishing shed, which waited at the end of a weed-choked path and beyond a PRIVAT sign stuck to a metal pole. Past the shed was a small pier. An intact one, no less, with a dingy row boat halfway up the riverbank and halfway bobbing in the murmuring water.
Kyle snuck up to the shed's front door, while his wandering mind soaked in the ambience. This was a s nice spot. Like, a 10/10 base, the exact sort of shit baby Kyle would have (not literally) killed for back in his wild child days. You had cover from prying eyes. Water to splash in. Rocks. Plenty of wood to source sticks from.
What else could you possibly need?
Wifi?
…
Yeah, okay.
That'd have been neat.
Briefly mourning the loss of reddit and infinite Tumblr scrolling, Kyle popped the door open — and, yep. There he was: one (1) Aiden, sitting on a table by the far end of the small shed, his back to the wall and a cracker on its way to his mouth. His cheek bulged on one end. Full of the previous cracker, Kyle assumed.
"Hey, kid," Kyle said, which was lame as hell, but what else was he supposed to lead with? In fact, what was he supposed to do? "No need to be scared, okay? I'm not gonna hurt you, I just want to ask you a few questions."
… questions? Like what? Kyle thought, stumping himself. He had no idea what he was doing and yet here he was. Doing it.
Swallowing the cracker he'd stuffed into his mouth prior to Kyle ruining his day, Aiden stared, his lips now set into a thin, hard line. He was scared (understandably) and had that certain I'm about to bolt again air about him. Not that bolting would do him much good. Where would he go? Past Kyle? No way. Out the window by his shoulder? Yeah, he'd try, but he'd have to open the shutters first. And the second Aiden moved, Kyle was going to take one long step, grab him by the ankles, and that'd be it.
Ugh. Just thinking that made Kyle feel slimy, so he put on his best smile and offered a compliment. See, kids were people too and liked being treated like the miniature adults they were.
"Nice nest."
Kyle stayed where he was, his hand still on the door handle and his eyes giving the interior a quick scan. Solid walls. Table. Two chairs, one with clothes drying on its back. Fishing equipment (not yet looted), a spare oar, two swimming vests on the wall, bunch of fishing hats—
—a section of wall dedicated to an oversized calendar which'd been covered end to end in scribbles. Names. Stick figures. More names, crossed out. More stick figures, also crossed out. Question marks. Red lines drawn this way and that.
A conspiracy board?
Kyle blinked.
"Uh. Look, Aiden. I'm sorry about getting you caught earlier, alright? How about I make up for it? Get you some grub?" Kyle's eyes cut to the fishing equipment, which got him to look up and notice the net hanging on the ceiling.
A net.
On the ceiling.
Above his head.
No fucking way.
"Okay— okay, kid—" Kyle raised a finger, his smile wobbling off his lips. Aiden twitched. "Don't," Kyle warned.
Aiden's knee shifted.
"Nuh-huh. I swear to—" Before Kyle could finish that sentence or take his one long step, Aiden twisted around, pulled on a rope Kyle hadn't seen among all the other decorative ropes and knots, and threw himself at the window.
And that net?
Yep.
That dropped right over Kyle, its ends weighted down by river rocks.
୧╏ ~ ᴥ ~ ╏୨
