Chapter XIII: Heart-to-Heart

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

The big confrontation in this chapter was so hard to write. Definitely feel like I just half-arsed it in the end - good enough is better than not at all. Let me know what you think.

Another double update, this is one of two.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

They immediately tried backing back into the bar, but it was slowly filling with dead through the wall-hole. They'd broken the flimsy wood still remaining and found it far easier to file through now. Those with guns raised them, pointing at the crowd. "What do we do?"

"We make them work for it." David said, voice grim.

As the others built themselves up or broke themselves down to wherever they needed to be to die well - expressions firming or eyes going distant - Chloe balked. "Fuck that!"

And from one of the blocked alleyways, a man emerged, drawn by the noise. Back then, a common cliche might've described him as being built by a brick shithouse - in truth, that didn't do him justice. He looked like every strong security man Chloe had ever seen. The shotgun clutched in his hands looked almost tiny in his meaty grip. He twirled it with a comfort and ease of long, long practice and greeted them with a grin. "You should probably come this way." He swept a hand back like a magician unveiling the path to wonder, to reveal a now open van door.

They ran.

The van, half buried in the wall of alley, let them enter through the side door and exit out through the back into the next street. Once again, they'd avoided the main paths of the hordes. Chloe idly wondered if this was some sort of bird migration thing. Or maybe just plain chance.

They made it clear through a few streets over, and then the man gestured them to a stop and grinned broadly at them all. He had nicely cropped brown hair and more tattoos than any of them knew what to do with, most prominent a long double-headed snake with a head on each hand that coiled up his arms and under his t-shirt, presumably joining up near his spine. "I'm Matthew, like the Apostle. Nice to meet you all."

They gave a little round of introductions of their own, and he greeted each of them warmly and companionably. Chloe found herself liking the guy almost immediately.

"So, are you folks tryin' to get out of town, or just to find a place to stay? If you want, I've got a safehouse that's pretty secure for the moment. You're welcome to come along."

"We're mostly trying to get out of town, dude. Sorry." Chloe shrugged.

He wafted a hand at her. "No worries at all. Good luck to you. If you're looking to keep heading east, I'd recommend you head a bit to the south first. A lot of the Damned went north, chasing the people as they fled from the main city. It's pretty gritty up there."

"Thanks." David nodded gruffly.

"No thanks needed, David. Just bein' a good Samaritan. We Saved have to stick together in this world, right?" As the man turned to leave, Dana suddenly elbowed Chloe and mouthed 'Rachel?' at her.

Chloe blinked. "Wait!" Matthew turned back. "We're also looking for someone - Rachel? Kinda short, blondish? Wears a lot of weird artsy jewellery and shit?"

He thought for a moment. "There is a Rachel in my safehouse at the moment. I don't know if she's the one you're looking for, but she's definitely 'kinda short and blondish'. No jewellery though."

"Is her name Rachel Amber?"

He shrugged. "I never asked anyone's surnames. I found her near the river, surviving with another girl. Tiny thing, she never said a word to anyone besides Rachel."

"Could be her…" Chloe turned to the group. "Can we check? …please?"

To Chloe's surprise, David immediately nodded. "Where's your safehouse?"

"I can lead you over there now, if you want. I know the safest paths, and I'm honestly done here for now."

"Agreed."

He guided them south and east, towards Ladd's Addition - one of the oldest places in Portland, he had told them. He guided them down a well-maintained road, off at a diagonal from the grid-layout of the rest of the city. Tucked away in a once nicely maintained garden was a church - a nice one, tall, grey stone, those classic arched windows. The doors even had little pillars on either side. Chloe was pretty impressed. A sign on the right read "St Sharbel Catholic Church Maronite Rite. Established 1970."

Matthew saw her expression and beamed "She's a beautiful church, isn't she?" He chuckled. "Saint Sharbel would probably hate it." At Chloe's questioning look, he continued, "Saint Sharbel was an ascetic monk who took the hermit's path. Fancy stuff like the big stain glass probably wouldn't have been his thing." He pushed open the big wooden doors and lead them all into the main part of the building. "That's probably why I like him - he was a monk living a simple life. I follow the same path."

"With the shotgun?" David asked, eyebrain raised very, very sceptically.

The man ran his hand lightly over his weapon with a proud grin. "The shotgun is a very simple weapon."

Chloe liked this man a lot.

But she turned to the room to see if Rachel really was here and much to her surprise, she recognised two faces amongst the little crowd. Rachel, glorious, beautiful Rachel… and Max. "Max?!"

Both of them blinked at each other. Max went completely pale, just staring at Chloe in shock. "C-Chloe?"

Chloe dropped her axe on the floor. It landed with a clatter that silenced everyone in the room, leaving an eerie quiet to be broken by her frantic "What the fuck?"

—

"Max? Wasn't that her-"

"Her best friend. The one who abandoned her." I said. Adi nodded in recollection, then scowled at the thought. I think we'd all come to the conclusion that Max was kind of a bitch.

The Stranger nodded. "Yes. Neither of them had ever really expected to see the other again. Hoped, maybe. But expected, no."

"But what happened? How the fuck was she there?"

The Stranger chuckled. "Funny. That's about what Chloe said."

—

As they stood in stock silence, staring at each other, Rachel - sweet, kind, socially-adept Rachel - turned to Max and blurted "You're Chloe's Max?"

Max and Chloe both spoke at the same time. "Chloe's Max?" "She's not my fucking Max."

Chloe scowled, and Max retreated into herself more. "What in the fuck are you doing here? Shouldn't you be off with your new friends in Seattle, way away from all the messy shit here?"

"I-um-I-ah-I-!" Max verbally flailed under Chloe's onslaught. "I'm-I'm-I was-"

Rachel's hand danced lightly over Max's shoulders and she leaned in. "Come on Maxie, take a breath. Count backwards from five, nice and slow."

"Rachel!" Chloe barked. "What are you fucking doing?"

"I'm helping you get an actual answer to your question. I know you're curious, not just being a bitch." Rachel smirked, still focused on Max throughout her chiding disapprobation.

"She fucking left me! I came all this way to rescue you from a literal goddamn zombie apocalypse! And you're choosing her over me?"

"Of course not, Priceless. But you want answers, and you're being too loud to get yourself any." Then Rachel turned back, winked at her. "Not usually your problem, eh?" Back to Max. "So, I'm doing what I always do - the surgical approach to your rampaging sledgehammer."

"This is Max. The Max that abandoned me less than a month after my dad left me too! She deserves a fucking sledgehammer to the-"

"Chloe," David stepped in. "Look, I never met the man, but Joyce talked about him a lot to me. You know he didn't leave you, right? It was a car accident. Some asshole trucker not paying attention."

And then something in Chloe, pulling ever more taut over the years and even moreso since Joyce, just snapped. The dam opened up. "I know! Of course I fucking know! I'm not an idiot, okay? I know it was just one of those things, bad shit happens to good people, nobody was at fault, blah fucking blah. But it doesn't change the fact that he went and died, which nearly killed mom, and then she married you, and you nearly fucking killed me!" Chloe sighed. "I loved her, and I hated her, and I hated that I hated her. And I loved it, because it was all I had left, and… and-" She scowled again, threw her hands around in some aborted attempt at cathartic violence, falling short with nothing to hit. "Fuck!"

The statement fell hard into the silence, as the rest of the room watched with the kind of fascination normally reserved for car crash TV.

"I- I didn't choose either, Chloe." Max managed to get out.

Chloe whirled on her, ready to yell. "Yeah? Your parents made you move? Fine, sure. Not your fault, you didn't do shit. But you were the one who never texted. You were the one who never called, or emailed, or fuckin' anything. MySpace was a thing, Max. Myspace."

At Max's watery-eyed look, Chloe growled, turned, and strode out of there. Or tried. The door was barred. Instead, she just punched it a couple times, then gave up when that started to hurt, and just thunked her head down onto it.

The room was silent.

After a few moments, Chloe felt a familiar hand on her back. Rachel. She turned her around to face her. "Did you really come all this way for me?"

The other girl's smile had the same effect it always did, and Chloe couldn't help but soften, ever so slightly. He shrugged. "Yeah, kinda."

Rachel's smile bloomed into a full, happy grin. "That's so sweet."

"Fuck off."

"Love you too, Priceless." She gave Chloe a quick pat down, dusted off her shoulders, concerned mom on the first day of school. "You gonna be okay?"

Chloe shrugged. "Don't wanna punch everyone in the face right now, but we'll see."

"There's still time to change our mind. Flip a table, go storm out into the zombie horde."

"Maybe later, Rach." Chloe rubbed the back of her neck. "You, uh… is your dad around?"

Rachel's eyes went… complicated. Very few things about Rachel weren't, Chloe had realised early on. "No."

Behind them, Rose gave a strangled sob. Rachel turned to her step-mom - her expression never changed, but she gave Chloe an apologetic shoulder squeeze and went over anyway. "He, uh… some asshole rioters were chasing us, and he tried to fight them off. He actually took out a few of them, but there were too many and- yeah. He… shit, he saved my life."

"He loved you so much." Rose said, choking through her sobs. "That's all he ever wanted, to protect you."

Chloe almost said something about how the man had a funny fucking way of showing it, trying to get a drug dealer to stab her and all. But she had her own problems, and Rachel beat her to it. "And yet, half of my scars come from him and my mom. You remember, the woman he tried to have killed?"

Rose stared at her in horror, before dashing off to one of the side rooms. Rachel watched her go, then sighed, made to follow. David stopped her with an outstretched hand. "Let me." He paused. "I've been there."

Rachel nodded, and he went into the back after her. Rachel slumped down into a pew and went quiet.

Then Chloe turned to Max. "Don't think I've forgotten about you. You still owe me some fucking answers."

Max took a deep breath. "I was here with school - there was a-an art competition. They made me put a piece in, and I was here for a ceremony thing. They attacked while we were there and-" Her eyes went distant. "It was horrible. All the blood and the screaming and- and they were eating people! Kristen, she, she pushed one away from me and then it tore out her throat. Oh dog…"

"Dog?" Chloe snorted. "You're still Max Caulfield, I see."

"Yeah-yes. Sorry. Um, I would've died in there, but one of the jocks saved me. Fought them off and helped me get out. I don't even know his name. He had a wonderful style - very Robert Capa." Then she faltered.

Rachel stepped in, just like she'd always done for Chloe. "She survived in the city for a while, then we ran into each other. My dad had just- yeah. And then we survived together. Had a few close calls - that one biter in the halloween store nearly got us both! - but we made it until Matt found us trying to get some food from a store. Helped us get here, and you pretty much know the rest."

"So, I guess you two have really bonded, huh?"

Rachel actually smiled. "What can I say, living through danger really helps you see what really matters. We know that too well, right Chloe?"

"I guess we do."

After a few beats of silence, one of the other lookie-loos got brave enough to speak up. "You should get some rest. We've got places to-"

"There's no time. We gotta get moving."

"What, do you have an appointment to get to?" The person asked.

Chloe stared at them in utter confusion for a long moment before turning to Rachel. "You didn't tell them?"

Rachel shrugged. "Not yet, no. Matthew knows, but…"

"Knows what?" The person demanded now, squaring up in angry panic.

"That this entire city is going to be bombed back to the stone age. Whoever's running the show for the military knows the quarantine isn't gonna do shit, so they need another way to take out enough of the zombies to make the situation manageable."

Dana frowned. "I thought it was all about taking out the virus. Burning it out or whatever?"

Chloe shook her head. "I've been thinkin' about it. Sure, they'd probably like it if it helped with that, but they'd have to literally level the whole place to take it all and that'd get expensive. The zombies already made it to Arcadia Bay, right? Who knows how far south they got. That's a lot of places to bomb." She shrugged. "So, it makes sense they'd try to make the job more manageable, then go in and clean up later."

"Shit." The accusatory lookie-loo leaned back, ran a hand through long black hair. "How long have we got?"

Chloe shrugged. "No idea. Kinda lost count. Hours, probably."

—

Rose and David rejoined them, both looking melancholy but somehow resolved. He took point, rounding up their errant group members, thanking Matthew and warning him to move on as quickly as possible, and then leading them all to the door.

As he reached up to push the heavy church door open, something outside roared.

A second later, something slammed into the door hard enough to shake the lights dangling from the ceiling. David rushed forward to shove the door back with a roar of his own, "Infected!"

Honestly, Chloe almost wanted a big, involved battle to distract her from whatever was swirling around in her head at the moment. And boy, big was the word. Not so much the battle though. Three zombies - not like the Tyrants, more like big undead linebackers covered in rhino horns made short and dense and meaty - charged in through the walls in a cloud of plaster and brick dust.

David let out three rapid shots, taking out the rightmost one before it could reach Chloe. The other two continued, trampling several of the slower survivors as they rammed into the support pillars lining the central aisle.

As another linebacker zombie - this one actually in football gear - charged in from the side windows, Chloe cursed and levelled her gun on it, emptying her clip into it.

She got it, but the momentum of its charge carried it slamming into her and knocking her ass over teakettle. Matthew rammed his shotgun into its spine. He pulled the trigger.

In an impressive show of speed, he caught up to the others and ended them too - though again, the momentum was a bitch. The damage rocked the building and things began to fall and crumble. Then another wave plowed it, and then another. Chloe lost track of everything in the confusion, just focused on survival. As the dust cleared, silence fell again.

The few survivors looked almost blankly at the destruction around them. What once had been a sturdy, strong building was almost gone. All the damage had added up. They couldn't stay here. The loud cocking of a shotgun split the quiet vibe of reflection and horror, and everyone turned to Matthew. He gave a hearty laugh at their attention. "As I said, Saint Sharbal would've hated this place. Though we have lost our sanctuary, we have pleased a saint. God must be on our side!"

Chloe couldn't help an astonished snort. He just shrugged, another broad smile. "Has anything ever actually phased you, dude?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Life is to be lived, Chloe. Fight what you can fight, accept what you can't. And keep moving forward. We have the gift of free will for a reason - God wishes for us to make choices. And I make the choice to focus on the positive."

"Huh." What else could she say to that?

"So," He continued. "We will make for the North. Contact someone in the Quarantine blockade and prove we are uninfected."

"But you-"

"I know we hasten to fear the nature of the government in this country, but a government is a big thing. People are people, regardless of their position, and I believe if we can talk to one of them they will demonstrate they've supped of the milk of human kindness."

Rachel smiled. "You know Shakespeare?"

He shrugged. "I met my first boyfriend in the theatre. Macbeth was our play."

Rachel looped her arm over Chloe's shoulder. "We met through the Tempest. I was Prospera, and she was my Ariel."

He smiled. Chloe gently pushed Rachel off her. "Look, dude, I know you wanna believe in people and that's great, but isn't it better to not take the chance? Shit, if we go east, we can even try talk to them first but at least then we've got alternatives if it does go bad. Better to have a backup if you do accidentally run into an asshole who binged the beer of human dickishness."

Rachel put her arm back over Chloe. "That's so poetic, Chloe."

Matthew thought a minute, then nodded. "I see your point. Very wise, Chloe. Alright, we'll go with you."

He guided everyone in packing up and moving out. Thus, they found themselves in another convoy. Though they weren't being actively pursued this time, they still were attacked and they still lost people. As dissention brewed and two people actively began arguing in the street, Chloe, Matthew, and David knew they needed a moment to breathe and guided them to the first safe spot they could find.

They entered the house and began to secure it as best they could, leaving the others to manage the growing 'debate'.