It is a biting winter day, dried leaves catching in the wind and grazing against the cracked windowpanes of an empty house, and my mother is dying.
I sit bundled in the only bedroom with four walls and a door that locks, moth-eaten blanket tugged high to my chin, and listen to her downstairs. She had spent the past few days trying to placate our fears, as if I hadn’t noticed the bloodied cloths left hanging from the half-shattered bathroom sink or the way she scratched almost insistently at her neck. Reassurances had spilled from her lips, until the coughing started yesterday while she snapped at Jericho. Now, the only thing coming up her throat is blood.
That was when my brother had locked me away up here. I can still hear her wheezing rattling through the rotten floorboards though, can still hear the insistent shouts she slings at Jericho that she is fine, that this will pass. The lie of it lingers in the air long after the coughing fits subside.
So, I sit, bundled and hidden and alone, and listen through the layers of house that isn’t ours, as my mother slowly rots from the inside out.
[[Bang on the door to be let out.]]
[[Find a way out.]]{(set: $bold to 1)
(set: $quiet to 0)
(set: $sarcastic to 0)}
“Jericho!” I scream, throat raw and fractured by a sob. My small fists ache where I pound them against the door, my knuckles blooming red where splinters catch under my skin. “Jericho let me out!”
The thundering of footsteps on wood. Then, “You need to stay inside, Hayden.”
“I want to see mum.” Blood slides down the length of my fingers. “Please. //Please//.”
“Mum’s not feeling well.”
“I don’t care! I want to see her.”
The whole house seems to sigh with him. “Stay inside, Hayden. I won’t ask again.”
I slam my hand against the door one last time, pain spiking up my wrist. When I shove my fist in my mouth to stop from crying out, I taste iron.
“And keep it down,” Jericho snaps under his breath, his voice so close I can almost pretend to feel it in my hair. “When it’s safe I’ll let you out.”
I’ve already sunk to the floor, my forehead resting against my knees and the blanket pooling at my feet, when the sound of his receding footsteps echoes [[through the door->Prologue2]].{(set: $bold to 0)
(set: $quiet to 1)
(set: $sarcastic to 0)}
I’m busy watching the leaves below the window get caught up in a swirl, twisting around themselves until they hit the bitumen and seemingly loose they’re energy, when I notice the latch is loose.
Clambering across the room with hope igniting my gut, I put my weight behind the dilapidated beside table and shove. The floor screams in protest, wood against wood grating my ears and making the whole room vibrate, but within a few seconds my pathway to freedom is laid before me.
Opening the window itself is harder. Paint has dried over the seams, and that combined with years of dust and grime makes the contraption stiff enough that my frail shoulders don’t so much as rattle it.
I have one foot braced on the window frame, prepared to kick, when the bedroom door flies open.
“What are you doing?”
Jericho fumes in the doorway, his dark hair hanging loose around his face and green eyes lined with exhaustion. With the door now open, the sound of my mother’s choking cough echoes up the stairs and [[into the room.->PrologueWayOut2]]
And so, I sit.
And wait.
(set: $prologue2reaction to "And cry.") (cycling-link: bind $prologue2reaction, "And cry.", "And fume.", "And sigh.")
The minutes tick by into hours but I can’t seem to find the energy to lift myself from my spot on the floor. The cracked floorboards dig into my knees and the blanket starts to itch against my skin.
Outside the window, a bird chatters impatiently, voice high-pitched and whining while it tends to its nest. A twig flies free in a gust, scattering a few more with it. I watched vacantly as the bird ducks to retrieve the twigs, only for them to get blown away again moments later, the creature’s cycle of frustration distracting me enough that I can pretend not to hear the commotion brewing downstairs.
Near what seems to be the crescendo of Jericho’s shouting, the house falls silent.
Curiosity peaked, I stand on numb feet, leaving the blanket to rest in the middle of the room as I rush to the door. A distant floorboard creaks, the sudden quiet deafening enough that my pulse pounds heavy in my throat. Since mother had fallen ill a few days ago I hadn’t heard her stop fighting with my brother, the two of them fuses constantly on the edge of explosion. The occasional whisper drifts up through the cracks, the words flitting just on the edge of my hearing. The walls groan around me with the wind and I flinch.
A clicking noise, and then a voice appears on the other side of the door. “Hayden.”
“Jericho?” I ask, body pressed against ageing wood. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
He hushes me. Another mechanical noise, and this time I recognise it as him loading bullets into a gun. “Promise me you’ll be quiet?”
“Promise.”
The door creaks open seconds later, and Jericho bustles his way inside before I even have the chance to listen out for my mother downstairs, a rifle I’d seen a few times before resting against his shoulder. He looks at me, skin taut against his cheekbones and dark hair messy against his brow. He presses a finger to his lips; shakes his head with pinched eyes. I copy him, my own finger trembling against my chapped lips, and he reaches out to grab my wrist and tug me into a crouch [[by the window->Prologue3]].
{(if: $prologue2reaction is "And cry.")[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $prologue2reaction is "And fume.")[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $prologue2reaction is "And sigh.")[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
]}
“I’m going to open the window,” he mutters, hand still white-knuckled around my wrist, my pulse fluttering out of beat against his fingers. “I’ll lower you down to the –”
“What about mum?”
Voices, loud out by the street. Jericho tenses and gets to work unlatching the window from his crouch, one hand still at my wrist. “Listen. I’m going to lower you down. It’s not that far, you’ll be fine. I’ll jump down after you.”
“How will mum get out?”
“Don’t worry about her.”
“Jericho –”
The sound of splintering wood downstairs, and shouting. The window swings open and Jericho stands with it, grabbing me by the armpits and leveraging me out over the gutter.
“Jericho, what about mum?”
“Ready?”
“But –”
He drops me. It’s really not that far, but I still stumble to my hands and knees in the overgrown grass with a cry, dirt scraping against my exposed knees hard enough to draw blood. They’re still stinging when Jericho thuds down beside me, grabs me by the same wrist as before, and starts running.
“What about mum?” I’m shouting now. A broken scream erupts from the house. My knees are on fire. “Jericho we can’t leave her!”
“Shut up and move!” he snaps, eyes flickering back over our shoulders.
More shouting, and then, “We’ve got two more, [[heading south!”->Prologue4]]
The voice is distorted, deep, and I twist in Jericho’s grip to look behind me. A figure stands by the side of the house, dressed in a white jumpsuit that covers every bit of skin besides the little I can see through the clear plastic over his face. There’s a gun like Jericho’s clutched in his hands, and a rough-edged cross smeared across his chest. I lock eyes with him, the sun catching against the plastic sheen of his face and sending a glare so bright towards me it almost burns, when two more similarly clothed figures appear beside him.
“Run, Hayden,” Jericho snaps, and it’s the first time I’ve heard my brother’s voice shake. “Just keep running.”
(set: $prologue4reaction to '"But mum . . ."') (cycling-link: bind $prologue4reaction, '"But mum . . ."', '"I am!"', '"Yeah, yeah,"') I wheeze.
“Faster, Hayden. Faster.”
“What –”
A gunshot.
I scream, stumbling to the ground. The bullet hit the grass beside me, dirt spraying from the impact against my calf. Jericho drags to a halt as well, swinging the rifle from where it bangs against his side to rest against his shoulder.
He pulls the trigger and doesn’t let go.
The roar burns my eardrums as he blankets the sidewalk with bullets, empty casings rattling against my back and the grass by my hands. More screaming erupts as white suits burst from the inside with [[crimson->Prologue5]].
{(if: $prologue4reaction is '"But mum . . ."')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $prologue4reaction is '"I am!"')[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $prologue4reaction is '"Yeah, yeah,"')[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
]}
“Come on.”
I feel myself hoisted, until I’m being cradled against Jericho’s chest. I twist my arms around his neck, the rifle digging uncomfortably into my forearm as we’re both jostled by my brother’s sprinting. Behind us, two of the white suited figures lie scattered, red staining their once pristine clothes, while a few others race after us.
A group pours onto the front porch of the house, and I see my mother dragged through the shattered remains of the front door by the hair, feet swinging wildly for purchase.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her in days.
Her skin has turned pallid, almost grey in the blinding sun. Her neck blooms the same red as the suits lying motionless in the grass though, ugly blisters both full and bursting littering her skin. She opens her mouth as if to scream, but a bout of blood splutters out instead, spraying against the suit of the figure who grabs her flailing legs. They carry her to a nearby pickup, throwing her weakening body into the bed and chaining her to the side of it before she can even spit blood at their plastic faces.
The few figures that gave chase seem to have abandoned their pursuit, the bulk of their suits making it difficult for them to keep up with us as we disappear into the nearby woods. Jericho keeps running anyway, leaping over fallen logs and dodging trees. A branch snaps against my cheek, tearing a thin red line through my tears, blood and brine alike dripping from my chin into his shirt.
My brother shouts, once, into the trees as he stumbles on a rock. His arms tighten around me, fingers digging into the small of my back. I bury my face in the [[crook of his shoulder->PrologueEnd]].
It was a biting winter day, the blood-soaked ground feeding the wildflower seeds that ached to bloom in the coming spring, [[and I never saw my mother again.->One]]
<img src="oneheader.png">
The house stands like a beacon on the horizon, wood panelling yellowed from the unrelenting sun that basks the neighbouring wheat fields in gold. The crop is long-since overgrown and unkempt, parts having died away to feed the next season’s seeds, and the stalks rustle together in the soft summer breeze like chatter between childhood friends. I pause at the letterbox at the head of the driveway, the red tin stuck on a delicately carved wood post in the shape of a crane, wings tucked tight against its back. A rusted number three hands precariously by one screw.
I reach for a scrap of paper sticking out of it when the ever-constant scratching of boots on dirt ahead of me grinds to a halt.
“Hayden?”
My brother stands up the driveway, staring back with one eyebrow raised as he looks between me and the letterbox sitting askew beside me. His dark hair is pulled back off his neck in a small bun, skin reddish from a badly healing suntan. The years haven’t been kind to him, his green eyes lined with creases he assures me he’s not supposed to have yet, and a scar cutting deep from his ear down the length of his neck.
[["Sorry, I'm coming."]]
[["We haven't stopped all day, give me a break."]]
[["Don't worry, I'm sure it's not going to grow ten times the size and eat me."]]
{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
I let my hand drop to my side. “Sorry, I’m coming.”
Jericho turns a little, a smile tugging at his lips as he gestures further up the drive to the shambling house. “I’m sure there’s plenty of other more interesting things inside.”
My eyes linger on the scrap of paper. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
I roll my eyes, hands tugging at my backpack straps as Jericho stands ahead of me, basked in sunlight, looking proud of himself. He urges me forward, eyes flickering back to the house in the distance, and I fall back into step beside him. One of his large hands lands awkwardly against my shoulder, the ring he wears on his middle finger a burst of cold metal against my exposed skin. [[I lean into the bite.->ChOne1]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
I spare him a glance before tugging the paper free. “We haven’t stopped all day, give me a break.”
“Hayden.”
“Don’t *Hayden* me,” I snap, metal in my blood rising at the tone of his voice. “I’m not a child.”
He raises an eyebrow at that, hands coming to land against his hips. “Well you’re acting like one.”
“Piss off.”
“Brat.”
I glare at him, paper dangling from my hand, as he slowly turns and starts traipsing back up the drive towards the house, apparently content to leave me. Despite myself, I race after him.
“What does the damn thing say, anyway,” he throws over his shoulder.
The paper is yellowed and torn, the bottom half of the page torn clean off at some point. Insects have clearly got to it, with holes littering what remains, and I’m suddenly glad I didn’t open the letterbox.
“Hang on . . .” Holding the paper up to the light doesn’t do anything but blind me, the searing summer sun as unhelpful as always. If there was writing on it, it’s long since faded.
“You can’t read it, can you?”
*Bastard*. “It’s the glare. I can’t see anything out here.”
I fall into step beside my brother, trying to ignore his growing smirk in the corner of my eye. After a few moments, my control boils over and I throw the paper at his face. His hand flies up to block it, a laugh spilling from his lips in the same moment, and I leave him to his chuckling [[as I storm ahead.->ChOne1]]
{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
“Don’t worry,” I taunt, my fingers hovering over the paper where it sticks from the letterbox. “I’m sure it’s not going to grow ten times the size and eat me.”
“I wouldn’t test your luck,” Jericho sighs, but doesn’t look away as I pull the paper free. I gasp in horror for a second before a smile splits my face instead. He doesn’t so much as flinch.
I make a show of inspecting the yellowed paper, torn edges and insect-riddled holes and all. The bottom half of the page has been torn clean off, the rest having faded so badly over the years that all I can make out is the ghost of someone’s handwriting, the imprint of their pen leaving barely a trace. The knowledge that they’re likely dead sits heavy in my gut.
“Not so entertaining, huh.”
I frown at Jericho where he’s already walking off, sights set once again on the dilapidated house. “You never know. One day I’ll impress you.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I bark out a laugh as I jog to catch up to him. He breaks his determined stride long enough to reach over and ruffle my hair, curls tugging free from the braid he’d put it into that morning. I jab out at his stomach, fleet-footed, and he swears and [[shoves me ahead of him with a chuckle.->ChOne1]]
The house looms ever closer on the horizon as we make the trek up the dirt path that is the driveway. Grass spills over the fencing on either side of us, so overgrown that the barbed wire is near invisible beneath the green mess. It doesn’t improve as we get closer to the house, nature having thoroughly taken over the whole area to the point where a few stray vines curve their way up the porch and onto the roof.
My eyes catch on a small wooden cross, stabbed half-heartedly into a barely visible dirt mound to the right of the front steps. If I crane my neck, I can see a few more, the shadows of the crosses thrown in stark relief against the golden wheat fields that line the house. A lone wildflower sits, wilted, atop the smallest mound.
{(set: $ChOne1reaction to "I feel my fingers curl into a fist at the sight, palms burning from the bite of my fingernails.") (cycling-link: bind $ChOne1reaction, "I feel my fingers curl into a fist at the sight, palms burning from the bite of my fingernails.", "I find myself staring at it, at the equally small cross, hands numbing.", "I swallow around the sudden lump in my throat, my own saliva suddenly fowl in my own mouth.")}
It’s not until Jericho catches my wrist, tugging me along beside him, that I realise I’d stumbled to a halt.
“Come on,” he mutters, voice rough-edged. When I look at him, he has eyes for nothing but the house. “We can’t linger.”
“But these people . . .”
He tugs me again. The wooden steps ache under my boots as we ascend them and step out of the sun for the first time all day. “Are dead. We don’t have time for them.”
“This was their home, Jericho.”
He pauses then, where he’s rubbing away grime from the stained glass adorning the front door. He turns towards me enough that half his face is cast in shadow, the line of his nose suddenly razor-sharp. “This hasn’t been anyone’s home for a [[long time, Hayden.”->ChOne2]]
{(if: $ChOne1reaction is "I swallow around the sudden lump in my throat, my own saliva suddenly fowl in my own mouth.")[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChOne1reaction is "I feel my fingers curl into a fist at the sight, palms burning from the bite of my fingernails.")[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChOne1reaction is "I find myself staring at it, at the equally small cross, hands numbing.")[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
]}
I know he’s right, know that his fear of stagnation is warranted given the circumstances, but there’s a certain romanticism to having four walls to call your own, to knowing which floorboards creak and where the drafts drift through. I run my fingers along the porch railing, a splinter threatening to catch under my fingernail where a chip digs into the wood, and wonder how long the imperfection has been there. I’m sure the ghosts in the dirt mounds would know.
My eye catches on the crosses, and the boot prints my brother and I have left in the dust on the porch, and I wonder how long it’s been since another living person has set foot in this house, how long it’s been since the wood knew the touch of human.
“Hayden,” my brother snaps, the front door yawning open before him. He’s pulled his mask from where it hangs around his neck to cover his nose and mouth. “Keep a move on.”
I make sure to run my fingers over the stained glass as I follow my brother inside, mask of my own pulled [[taut over my face.->ChOne3]]
Like most places we search, the house is a near-empty shell. Anything of import has either already been looted or was used up by the family buried outside before they succumb to their wheezing. Jericho still insists we search every drawer and cupboard, still insists we check everything twice over. I leave him to pick his way through what’s left of the kitchen, instead moving up the rotting staircase to the upstairs rooms.
“We move in half an hour,” he reminds me.
{(set: $ChOne3reaction to '“I’m not the one that needs reminding,” I mutter.') (cycling-link: bind $ChOne3reaction, '“I’m not the one that needs reminding,” I mutter.', "I salute him as I disappear up the stairs, even though his back is turned to me.", '“I’ll be quick, I promise,” I say as I disappear up the stairs.')}
The rooms up here prove almost as fruitless, although when I shoulder my way into the furthest bedroom on the right, I can’t help but smile. A good portion of the ceiling has caved in, from water damage if the moulding walls and floor are anything to go by, leaving the afternoon sun to pour over the room. Papers lay scattered across the desk in the corner, apparently having proven useless by whoever last graced the house with their presence, and all that remains of the bed is the frame and rusted springs.
I’m shifting through the desk when a burst of colour catches my eye. A fading, water-stained magazine pulls free from where it fell down the back of the drawers; the words are blurred and make my eyes strain, but the images still stand out clear as day in the sunlight. A man stands alone before a crowd of endless armoured shapes, with what appears to be a burning flag hanging from one hand. I think I recognise the flag from an old storefront we looted a few months back, the red and white stripes surprisingly saturated considering the magazine’s age.
I had asked Jericho about it then, and all I had got in return was a grumbled answer about the fall of an empire and a world on fire. His meaning still escapes me, but the picture is beautiful.
{(set: $hasMagazine to 'Keep the magazine.') (cycling-link: bind $hasMagazine, 'Keep the magazine.', 'Leave it behind.')}
There’s a sole window in the far corner, half shrouded by moth-eaten curtains. I tug them away, a handful of the material crumbling to dust in my fingertips, and I have to fight the urge to cough despite my mask. A thick layer of grime coats the glass; I use some of the papers from the desk to clean it away.
[[The view is beautiful.->ChOne4]]
{(if: $ChOne3reaction is '“I’m not the one that needs reminding,” I mutter.')[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChOne3reaction is "I salute him as I disappear up the stairs, even though his back is turned to me.")[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChOne3reaction is '“I’ll be quick, I promise,” I say as I disappear up the stairs.')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
]
(if: $hasMagazine is 'Keep the magazine.')[
(set: $hasMagazine to 'True')
](else-if: $hasMagazine is 'Leave it behind.')[
(set: $hasMagazine to 'False')
]}
Wheat fields stretch for as far as I can see, their golden stalks bending in the breeze. The occasional tree sprouts among them, casting shadows that stretch like phantoms across the fields. It almost looks like water, especially when a strong gust rips through and sends ripples cascading over each other. I let myself wallow shamelessly in the beauty of it for a moment.
There’s a silhouette on the horizon.
I only notice it because I turn to follow one of the ripples, but after a moment of confusion there’s no doubting the shape moving out of the nearby woods and into the field as a person. My breath catches as I watch the grass and wheat almost part for her as she moves, her hands held out before her to push especially troublesome flora away.
For months it’s just been Jericho and I, the open stretch of country roads the only company besides each other, and I’ve grown tiresome of only ever seeing my brother’s face. The woman’s skin shines a shade of olive in the sunlight, her hair so red it almost looks like flames where it’s tied tight off her face. I’ve never seen hair so bright.
It’s takes a few more moments of staring before I realise she’s moving towards the house.
[[Call out.->ChOneCALLED]]
[[Hide.->ChOneHID]]
{(set: $ch1jerichoInjured to 'True')}
“Hey!” I shout, hands slammed palm-flat against the grimy window.
A pregnant pause. The whole house falls suddenly silent.
The woman has frozen in the field too, half crouched amongst the wheat.
A floorboard creaks, deafening, downstairs. I look towards the sound on instinct, the faint sound of my brother’s swearing echoing up the stairs.
When I glance back out the window, the woman is staring at me.
I stare back.
In the span of a few seconds, she pulls a pistol from the confines of her jacket.
Aims it.
[[Fires.->ChOneCALLED1]]{(set: $ch1jerichoInjured to 'False')}
I jerk away from the window, throat feeling smaller than it is, as I rush back out of the bedroom. The floorboards groan underfoot but I keep going regardless; the house feels like it’s shaking down around me. I’m halfway down the stairs when Jericho appears at the bottom, brow furrowed.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, hand gravitating to the gun that rests against his back.
“There’s a person. A woman.”
Jericho freezes. “Where?”
“Back of the house.”
His eyes dart to the back door where it sits near the kitchen. Flick back to me. I finish making it down the stairs, eyeing the door as well. I have no idea if she saw me. *What if she saw me?*
“Was she alone?”
I nod.
“Armed?”
I can feel my pulse in my throat, can hear it in my ears. “I – I don’t know. I didn’t . . .”
Jericho grabs me by the shoulders. “Breathe. Was she armed?”
I take a breath. “I don’t know.”
He pulls me away from the windows, ducking into an alcove by the front door. The sunlight catches in the stained glass from this angle, sending a kaleidoscope of colours scattering across the foyer. The light makes Jericho’s eyes burn green.
[[Run.->ChOneHideRun]]
[[Hide inside.->ChOneHideInside]]
I’ve barely thrown myself to the floor when wood explodes above me, the bullet sending splinters shattering over my back and shoulders.
“Hayden!”
My heart jolts back to life in my chest, body paralysed.
“Hayden, where are you?”
I force myself to my hands and knees. My hands shake under me, so badly a splinter catches in my skin and draws blood. The woman’s eyes flash in my mind, burning, and I squeeze my own shut. Distantly, the rotting stairs scream in protest as someone thunders up them.
The bedroom door flies open from where I’d left it ajar. “Hayden!”
“I didn’t . . .” I mutter, but Jericho’s already lunging for me, already dragging me from the room before I’ve even got my feet under me. “She just . . .”
“Shut up. Move.”
“But –”
A door groans open downstairs.
“It’s okay,” Jericho whispers, one hand braced on my shoulder while the other loosens his axe free where it rests against his hip. “Opposite end of the house. Now.”
I’d already searched the other rooms up here, and they’d all been surprisingly intact except for the bedroom that’s now decorated with the remnants of gunfire. All had windows to varying degrees of serviceable, and rotting furniture.
[[Go to the study.->ChOneStudy]]
[[Go to the master bedroom.->ChOneMaster]]
I rush down the hallway towards the small study, tucked in the corner of the house behind what I assume was once a bathroom. Floorboards creak underfoot, the ghost of our movements reverberating through the house, but it’s not as if she doesn’t know we’re already here. *Idiot.*
Jericho bustles me inside and gently closes the door behind us, hands resting by the doorknob for a precious moment before he spins to survey our surroundings. A desk and chair. Broken shutters.
“Window,” he snaps.
Looking out, it’s a straight drop to the dirt. I notice the graves from before and feel my stomach lurch into my throat when I realise there are many more than I’d first thought. At least seven crosses litter this side of the house. A veritable graveyard.
It’s a long drop to the ground.
“Go, Hayden,” Jericho says, his back to me. He weighs his axe in his hands. “Jump.”
“It’s too far.”
A growl. “Hayden, go.”
“But –”
The door bursts open.
I don’t have time to think, don’t have time to fear for the four-metre fall that looms before me, because the woman is standing in the doorway and [[levelling her pistol at us.->ChOneStudy1]]
I rush down the hallway, veering off towards the largest bedroom I’d found earlier. Floorboards creak underfoot, the ghost of our movements reverberating through the house, but it’s not as if she doesn’t know we’re already here. *Idiot.*
We pass a bathroom with cracked tiles and what appears to be some kind of hall closet before finally making it to the bedroom proper. Jericho quickly shuts the door, trying and failing to get the lock to click into place, before grabbing a chair that lies askew on the ground and jamming it under the handle. It’s not quite tall enough but he leaves it there anyway.
This room is similar to the one I’d found the magazine in, although the bedframe is much larger and there is more furniture here. Small sets of drawers, chairs, a bookshelf, a closet set into the wall. A pile of empty food cans and torn blankets sit festering in the far corner, and I think once again to the graves outside.
Belatedly, I remember that the windows are boarded shut.
“Fuck,” Jericho curses under his breath, tugging at the wood, but it doesn’t budge. Rusted nails hold the boards in place. “Fuck.”
“Jericho . . .”
He turns to me. Surveys the room. “Closet. Now.”
“But what –”
“Closet, Hayden.”
I stare at him a moment longer, at the crease of his brow and shake of his hands and [[go to the closet.->ChOneMaster1]]
Jericho immediately lunges for her, axe swung diagonally across his body to intercept her gun as she raises it. He impacts as she fires, the bullet going wide and tearing through the wall bedside my head. My ears burn, body twisting away from the impact. A fight breaks out. The gun skitters across the room. Someone screams. I swing myself up to brace against the window, legs dangling over the sill, and hesitate.
“Go!” Jericho shouts as he shoves the woman against the wall so hard the wood buckles. I don’t see his axe. “Just fucking jump!”
I jump.
Somehow, I don’t break my ankles.
The pain, unfortunately, still sears up my legs and into my back sharp enough that I collapse on impact, swearing. Dirt grazes my knees, the fabric of my jeans tearing. I use one of the grave markers as leverage as I stumble to my feet.
A gunshot. Then, silence.
“Jericho!” I scream.
I can feel my pulse in my ankles, can feel where the ligaments were stretched too far, can feel my legs trembling on unsteady supports.
[[Hide.->ChOneStudyHide]]
[[Go back inside.->ChOneStudyInside]]
{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
I turn and run into the wheat field.
The stalks are at least a head taller than me, seeds itching at my exposed skin. I can barely keep myself upright. The crop is so thick that when I half fall into a crouch, I can barely see the house in the near distance. I stay sitting in the dirt, rubbing at my throbbing ankles, and wait.
And wait.
Eventually, I hear the distant sound of footsteps on the front porch.
“Hayden?”
I’d know that voice anywhere.
Getting back up is harder than getting down was, but I manage to awkwardly make it to my feet and rush out of the wheat until I collide with my brother’s solid chest. He stumbles back at the impact, hands rough on my shoulders, but within seconds I’m clutched against him.
“You okay?” he asks after a moment as he holds me at arm’s reach. There’s a streak of blood on his forehead.
“My ankles.”
“Can you walk?”
My eyes flicker to the house. “Did you . . .”
“Yeah,” he says, chest heaving with a sigh. “We should go.”
[[“Okay.”->ChOne5]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
It doesn’t matter though because my brother is in there still. I make my ankles work.
Running past the makeshift graveyard, using the crosses as support, I stumble up the front steps and back into the downstairs foyer. The house is eerily silent except for the creaking floorboards under my own feet.
“Jericho?” I shout.
A pause.
I make it to the stairs and up two before my ankles give out, pain blossoming again. I fall against my hands, forehead slamming against rotting wood, and I cry out despite myself. Black dots swim in the edges of my vision for a moment.
The sound of an impact vibrates through the house.
“Jericho!”
A figure stumbles from the study then, and my brother’s eyes immediately find mine over the railing.
“It’s okay,” he says, a sigh rattling out of him. “You hurt?”
I manage to make it back to my feet, leaning against the balustrade. The wood groans a little under my weight, but it holds. “My ankles.”
Jericho finally makes it to me. There’s blood on his hands. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Come on then.”
Grabbing me around the waist, he helps me back down the stairs and out of the front door. The smell of iron lingers on his shirt and [[smudges against my own.->ChOne5]]
The sea of wheat continues for what feels like miles, until the flat plains of fields start morphing into hillsides thick with trees. By the time we have no choice but to walk through the woods along the roadside, the sun is low in the sky behind us, the burnt gold slipping through cracks in the tree line. A flock of birds fly by overhead, their formation piercing through the afternoon gloom. I watch them until they disappear into the horizon.
Jericho walks ahead of me, silent, tense. {
(if: $ch1jerichoInjured is 'True')[
I try not to linger on his slight limp, or the way he clenches and unclenches his fist erratically, or the stench of iron that has followed us from the house. He still catches me staring, every so often, although he offers little comfort.
](else:)[
He hasn’t said a word since we left the house, his back a hard wall of dark-green fabric and muscle between us. I chew on my gum to keep my mouth shut, focusing instead on the twigs that break beneath our feet.
]}
The ground is uneven and littered with obstacles in the woods, but Jericho insists we walk within the trees and not on the cracked bitumen of the road up the rise beside us. I don’t understand his reasoning until the rumble of a car comes echoing behind us.
“Down,” Jericho snaps, body suddenly taut, as he drags me to my knees behind a thick patch of bushes.
“What –”
He clamps a hand over my mouth, the green of his eyes set deep in a frown. I stay quiet.
The glare of headlights cuts through the alley of trees down the road, and a few seconds later two cars roar past. A pickup and a van. Both are white and nondescript, besides the peeling paint and run-down tires. They almost glow in the fresh dusk darkness. Through the windshield I spot figures dressed in the same shade of white, the glare of the headlights making the plastic over their faces [[shine.->ChOne6]]
It’s large enough that I can stand within it, but metal coat hangers catch in my hair, so I crouch in the corner instead. Jericho closes me inside, and I watch as his shadow shifts past the crack between the door and the floor, until I’m left in darkness. My pulse throbs in my ears, my palms clammy. I shut my eyes, but when I open them again it’s just more of the same endless void. I feel a bug skitter past my ankle and clench my jaw.
The silence drags on for what feels like hours.
Then, the door creaks open.
I hear the chair Jericho had futilely shoved against it clatter to the floorboards, the sound of wood on wood grating. Another pause. I hold my breath, my lungs burning for air, before I hear the woman scream.
The sound of an impact, and my brother grunting, and suddenly the whole room is alight with the sounds of a struggle. I hear Jericho curse, hear the woman growl, hear the bedframe jolt against the back wall. A gunshot rips through the space, wood bursting outwards. I slam my hands over my mask and my mouth beneath, back pressed against the wall behind me.
Another gunshot. It slams into the wall beside me, a hole torn in the closet door, and I scream on instinct. Light pours into the space, my eyes blinded.
“Hayden!” my brother shouts, voice so far away. He’s cut off by another shout, blood-curdling this time. There’s a loud thud across the room.
[[Open the door.->ChOneMasterOpen]]
[[Stay inside.->ChOneMasterStay]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
It’s too dark. My head pounds. I need to get out. I need to help Jericho.
The door opens from the outside, but I shove my whole weight against it anyway. It takes a few tries, but the wood eventually buckles and flies open, leaving me to stumble to my hands and knees.
The first thing I notice is the blood.
There’s a pool of it, dripping down from the woman where she’s splayed across the bedframe, an axe lodged in the side of her head. The blood congeals in the cracks of the floorboards. I jerk away, looking frantically for my brother until I find him slumped beneath the window. He’s covered in blood, face and mask sprayed with it, and he looks a little grey in the dim light, but he’s breathing.
“You okay?” I mutter. Bile is stuck in my throat. I see the woman’s foot twitch lifelessly in my peripheral.
“Yeah.” Jericho stares at me a moment, eyes a little wild, but eventually sighs and lets his eyes fall shut. He heaves himself to his feet unsteadily. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
He stumbles over to the corpse, reaching for his axe, and I turn away just as he pulls it free, a bout of blood bubbling out of the wound. The room stinks of iron. I want to tear my mask off and vomit up my guts, but I hold the bile down. You don’t take your mask off indoors.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jericho says as he offers me a hand. He’s cleaned most of the blood from his axe.
I take his hand. “Please.”
[[“Come on.”->ChOne5]]
{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
I can’t move.
The pinprick of light from the bullet hole glares into my eyes. I wrap my arms around myself and freeze, as if my stillness will let me vanish from existence for a moment.
On the other side of the door, I hear my brother growl with effort. His footsteps falter as his shadow moves closer under the door. There’s a moment where his body blocks the bullet hole and I’m plunged back into darkness; I close my eyes against it.
“Hayden . . .” he mutters, faltering with the closet handle. “Fuck, come on.”
The door creaks open, and I can feel the warmth of the light as it hits my skin. My brother’s hands immediately find my arms where they’re twisted around my knees, the sound of him falling to his own echoing through the room.
“Hayden. Hayden, look at me.”
I open my eyes.
His mask and face are splattered with blood, crimson stuck in his hair and eyebrows and in the off-white colour of his mask. His hands are crimson stained too, leaving imprints on my elbows. His green eyes glow in the newfound light.
I start to look behind him, but he blocks my view. “Did you . . .”
“Yeah.” A beat. “You alright?”
I nod. “There’s blood in your hair.”
“I know,” says, sighing out a laugh. He stands then, dragging me to my feet in front of him. Out of the corner of my eye I spy the lifeless body of the woman, splayed over the bedframe, a pool of blood growing underneath her. I look away. “Let’s get out of here.”
[[“Okay.”->ChOne5]]
“We need to leave,” I whisper, pressed beside my brother.
His eyes are still pointed towards the back of the house.
“Jericho?”
“Okay,” he says, lifting his rifle off his back so it sits heavy in his hands. “Quietly. There was a hole in the wall down this way. Stay close.”
We both move along the hall still in our crouches, careful to keep our heads below the windows. Every creak or shift of the house makes me want to shrivel into a ball, but Jericho doesn’t stop, and so neither do I. I focus on the strong silhouette of his back and the quiet breeze outside. A bird chirps as it flits by and I have to bite back a yell.
Eventually the hole comes into view, wood and insulation torn free to reveal a small exit to the outside world. I wonder absently how it happened; it doesn’t look like water damage or anything similar to what had happened upstairs. Looters, maybe?
“Wait here,” Jericho is saying. I press myself against the wall and nod.
I watch as he shifts onto his heels and slowly, inch by inch, sits up to look out a nearby window. His eyes flick over the horizon, the house groaning around us in the wind, before after an eon he crouches [[back down beside me.->ChOneHideRun1]]“Should we hide?” I ask, the doubt sitting heavy in my stomach, but worse is the anxiety that the woman is probably almost to the house by now.
Jericho glances down the hall, eyes darting this way and that.
“Jericho?”
He turns back to me, already reaching for my arm. “The garage had a loft area. Come on.”
I don’t remember seeing it but follow him anyway. We stay low and away from the windows, me trailing close behind him as we move. His back tenses at every small sound the house makes, floorboards creaking underfoot and walls groaning in the wind, and I flinch with him, our nervous systems synchronised.
We make it almost to the adjoining garage, the open living and foyer area long behind us, when the sound of the back door slamming closed echoes down the hall.
“Jericho . . .”
He turns and grabs me by the shoulder, ushering me ahead of him. “Quickly.”
We rush as fast as we can afford into the garage. The door has long fallen from its hinges, and anything of worth was picked clean years before. Shelving lies empty and askew, and the roller door is rusted shut. There is a loft area above the door, large enough to fit some storage, but all that’s left is a pile of wood planks and empty boxes.
“Here, Hayden,” Jericho whispers, standing under the loft and making a step with his hands.
He hoists me up easily, and I lie flat and offer him a hand in return. My whole body flares with pain as he kicks up off the ground, my arms burning, but he quickly gets a hold of the loft floor and drags himself the rest of the way up. We have to crawl on all fours up here, and the air is stale with rot; I pull my mask tighter, trying to cover my eyes as best I can.
As I move further back in the loft, something large and furred crawls across my hands.
[[Scream.->ChOneHideInsideScream]]
[[Hold it in.->ChOneHideInsideHoldIt]]
“Okay, you go out first,” he whispers, grabbing me by the shoulder and guiding me to the hole. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Jericho –”
He shoves me lightly. “Go.”
I stare at him a moment, only his eyes and brow visible around his mask, and sigh. Turning to the hole, I feed my legs through first, lowering myself until I feel dirt beneath my feet. Jericho sits crouched behind me, hulking in the dim interior.
I'm ducking my head through the hole when a door slams on the other side of the house.
“Quickly, Hayden,” Jericho says, palm on my shoulder as he helps me the last of the way through. I can feel the anxiety pulsing through his skin.
Outside, the sun is blinding. The heat beats down heavy on my scalp, my skin immediately breaking out in a sweat. I press myself flat against the wall as Jericho squeezes his way through; he hands me the rifle while he goes, and the metal feels wrong in my hands. It’s heavier than I thought, larger. Cold, too. There’s a strip of leather tied around the grip that I remember him adding a few years ago, and it’s the only soft thing on the gun.
It takes Jericho too long to get through, his bulky frame scraping against the edges of the hole. The wood creaks loudly at one point, and we both freeze. His backpack is stuck.
“Go, Hayden,” he whispers, voice fast and rough. “Go into the fields.”
I frown. “No. Let me help.”
“I said go.”
I start to hear footsteps through the wall.
[[Stay and help.->ChOneHideRunSTAY]]
[[Hide in the field.->ChOneHideRunFIELD]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
Despite the growing noise inside and the wide-eyed fear in my brother’s eyes, I drop the rifle and reach for him.
He lets out a strangled noise but doesn’t protest further. I try and pull him through, throwing my whole weight behind me, but he calls me to a stop.
“My knife,” Jericho says, motioning with his free arm to his boot. “Cut the strap.”
I fumble for his boots, lifting his mud-stained sock away to reveal a small hunting knife, sheathed against his ankle. Inside, I can hear drawers and cupboards being opened roughly, can hear rooms being checked, but I force my hands to remain steady as I bring the knife up to the strap that’s jamming Jericho’s backpack in the hole.
“Easy, Hayden,” he says, his voice hot against my cheek as I quickly saw back and forward. The material is thick, too thick, and I swear. Footsteps sound at the end of the hall.
Over Jericho’s shoulder, a shadow shifts into the hallway.
He must sense it too. “Hayden . . .”
“Almost got it.”
The shadow freezes. Starts moving.
The strap is splitting into threads.
Just as I see a foot appear at the end of the hall, the strap gives way, and Jericho half falls out of the hole and [[into the sunlight.->ChOneHideRunStay1]]{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
The look Jericho gives me makes me want to tear my insides out and grind them into a pulp. But this is Jericho; resourceful, steadfast Jericho. I hold his gaze, mouth clenched shut, before turning and sprinting into the nearby wheat fields.
I pretend not to notice the fear in his eyes.
It’s only a few metres from the house to where the overgrown wheat starts, but it’s the longest few metres of my life. I have no idea where the woman is in the house, or if she’s near a window, or if she has any kind of ranged weapons. If she even glimpses me, my brother and I are both doomed.
I skid to my knees into the wheat, but crawl a few more metres for safe measure, until I can only just see the faint dark blotch that is my brother struggling to disentangle himself from the side of the house. Even with the height and density of the wheat I lay myself flat, stomach pressing into the uneven dirt, and try not to make too obvious of a dent in the field.
Jericho seems to squirm for a moment, arm twisting at an odd angle. Both his legs and one arm are free now, but the other is still trapped inside along with his back.
[[A shadow passes by the front door.->ChOneHideRunField1]]
I move to start running as soon as his feet hit the ground, but he snags my wrist and tugs me back. I begin to protest but realise there’s an exposed area under the house on this side, old plumbing snaking out and into the ground. The two of us cram ourselves in, my body pressed tight against Jericho’s back where he’d shoved me in first. He smells of leather and sweat. I lean my forehead against his shoulder blades and close my eyes anyway.
The presence of the woman in the hole above us is near suffocating. She’s so close I can almost hear her breathing. My hands grip at Jericho’s sides, twisting his shirt. He remains a statue in front of me, rifle at the ready.
Thankfully, he doesn’t need it.
Sounds of the woman's disappearing footsteps thud above us, until we can hear her looting the house again.
Jericho twists his head to try and look back at me. “Let’s go. Keep low and don’t leave my side, okay?”
[[“Okay."->ChOne5]]
My blood freezes, heart dropping into my stomach.
Just as she starts to move down the hall we’d taken, there’s a thud as my brother finally frees himself. He shifts and crawls back towards the house into what I now realise is a small opening underneath. Plumbing snakes and curves out of the floor and into the ground, and he twists himself amongst it until I can hardly see him in the gloom.
Not a minute later, the woman and her eerily flaming hair appears in the hole.
I press my face to the dirt. Feel the wheat scratch and shove against me in the breeze.
Minutes tick by into what feels like hours, every terribly scenario cycling through my head until, when I finally find the courage to look up, she’s gone.
I lie in the wheat for a while longer until I notice the dark shape that is my brother slowly reemerging from under the house. He rushes over to me and immediately grabs for my hand.
“Are you alright?” I ask, brow furrowing. “She was right there, she nearly –”
He places his other hand on my shoulder for a moment, before hurrying me along. “I’m fine. But we need to go.”
[[“Right, okay.”->ChOne5]]
{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
I don’t think, don’t consider the woman stalking around the house a few walls away. There’s a rat bigger than any I’ve ever seen centimetres from my face, so I shriek.
Jericho lunges for me in the same second, slamming a hand over my mouth as he grabs the rat with the other. The force of his hand coming down on my mouth makes me bite my tongue, my eyes stinging.
In the corner of my eye, I see Jericho throw the rat out of the loft, it’s large body plummeting into the garage below.
“What the fuck, Hayden,” he whispers furiously, his breath scalding against my cheek.
I mumble an apology against his hand. He gives me a moment, before finally pulling away.
Footsteps suddenly sound in the hallway outside the garage.
Both of us freeze.
I hear the rat skittering around below, trapped by the woman that’s no doubt standing in the doorway. A sigh. Then, footsteps again that recede back into the house.
Jericho fumes at me, but I can’t stop listening to the rat below us. We stay cooped up in the lot for at least an hour, until the house has truly fallen silent once again, before Jericho jumps down.
“Come on,” he says, arms outstretched. “It’s gone, I promise.”
I raise an eyebrow sceptically but jump into his waiting arms after a moment anyway. “Can we leave now?”
[[“Yeah. Let’s go.”->ChOne5]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
I have to bite down on my lip and cover my mask with my hands to stop from screaming out. I still fling myself back into Jericho, his hands coming to rest on my shoulders to stop the both of us from flying back over the edge of the loft. The rat isn’t so lucky, catching the side of my flailing boot and going plummeting over the edge.
“Shit, Hayden,” Jericho mutters, pushing me away a little. I can’t stop trembling. “It was just a rat.”
I just glare at him over my fingers.
Said rat continues to skitter around below us, too dazed by the fall to apparently be able to find the door. The sound grates on my nerves, makes me want to tear my hair out. Jericho, despite the stranger lurking somewhere else in the house, sends me a smirk. I hit him on the shoulder quietly.
We stay in the loft for another hour or so, until the distant echoing of footsteps moving around the house fades and the only sounds are the rat and the wind and my brother’s heavy breathing behind his mask. Jericho lowers me to the ground and jumps down after me, rifle still drawn. We do a sweep of the house, finding it once again empty. The image of the woman’s flaming hair sticks in my mind.
“We should move on,” Jericho says eventually, shouldering his rifle again. “Keep a lookout for her, though.”
We leave through the back door just to be safe. My throat is still tight and my pulse still too quick, but I manage to offer my brother a small smile. He just ruffles my hair. [[Bastard.->ChOne5]]
As they drive past, I hear muffled screaming, and turn just in time to see a man, tied and gagged in the tray of the pickup, before the two cars turn the bend and vanish.
“What the hell?” I mutter, staring from where the car’s tail lights disappeared into the trees to my brother where he’s crouched beside me. “What were they doing with him?”
Jericho shoves himself to his feet and begins walking.
“We can’t just leave him!”
“We can, and we will.”
“Jericho!”
He spins, but where I expect a frown, I only see heavy-lidded eyes. “Keep moving, Hayden.”
[[Sigh. "Fine."->ChOneGIVEIN]]
[["No! You know what they'll do to him!"->ChOneFIGHT]]
{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
I hold his gaze, green piercing green, before sighing. “Fine.”
Jericho nods, once, and turns to start walking again. I force myself to follow, to not lose him in the quickly descending darkness, but my eyes keep wandering to the road beside us. The man flashes through my mind, as does the woman from earlier. Strangers, in the wilderness, and yet I ache.
“They’ll kill him,” I whisper.
A pause. “I know.”
I snap my gaze to my feet. Chew on my lip. Kick at a stone and watch it skid away into the underbrush. “We could have done something.”
“No, we couldn’t have.”
Even though I know he’s right, {(if: $hasMagazine is 'True')[
[[it still hurts.->ChOneMagazine]]
](else-if: $hasMagazine is 'False')[
[[it still hurts.->ChOne7]]
]}{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
“No!” I snap, blood on the edge of boiling. “You know what they’ll do to him!”
Jericho doesn’t seem to have any energy left in him, sighing and rubbing at his temples. “Hayden . . .”
“Don’t *Hayden* me!” I storm towards him, shoving my hands palm-flat against his chest. “They’ll kill him!”
That seems to snap something in him. He grabs me by the wrists, grip just tight enough that my pulse jumps against his fingers. “I know damn well they’ll kill him. And that’s why we’re going to keep quiet, and keep to the trees, and not going anywhere near those fucking cars.” He shakes me a little, a vein popping in his throat. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Do you hear me?”
I stare at him, trembling in his hands. My lungs aren’t big enough for the air I gasp down.
Jericho’s frown deepens, eyes questioning. “Hayden?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, a tear slipping free.
And I nod.
He gently releases my wrists and, after a moment of staring at me, starts walking deeper into the trees. I let myself breathe for a moment, shaking apart at the seams, before kicking at a nearby bush. Dirt sprays. My brother stands a few metres away, waiting, and I make myself {(if: $hasMagazine is 'True')[
[[follow him.->ChOneMagazine]]
](else-if: $hasMagazine is 'False')[
[[follow him.->ChOne7]]
]}{(if: $ChOneMagazine2reaction is "*It's still worth trying,*")[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChOneMagazine2reaction is "*What a pessimist . . .*")[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChOneMagazine2reaction is "*That doesn't mean you give up,*")[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
]}
Two days later, after sleeping tucked against my brother’s back under a large, protruding tree root, the woods start to thin around us. There aren’t beautiful sweeping fields of gold to greet us this time though, no house as a beacon on the horizon. I look up from where I’d been adjusting the strap on my backpack, the material fraying at the edges, and stumble to a halt. Jericho has already paused in the tree line beside me.
Bile rises in my throat.
Growing up after the end of the world, there were many things I’d learnt far too young. How to start a fire, how to use a hunting knife, how to disappear into your surroundings like dust on the wind. Survival was imperative. Jericho had been an excellent, if not stern teacher in most things, but there were some things that didn’t need lessons. Some lessons you can only learn from experience.
The Heralds were one of them. I hadn’t understood, until I was eight, that they’d been the ones to take my mother. From then on, hazmat suits and white cars on the horizon had always signalled danger. I feel suddenly foolish, for fighting Jericho about it yesterday.
We hadn’t encountered them personally since the day they took my mother, though, whether because of my brother’s diligence or sheer dumb luck. Either way, neither of us had complained. Everyone knew what happened if the Heralds got you.
A whole field of their victims lay stretched [[before us.->ChOne8]]
The grass is overgrown and wild, curling in the breeze. Wildflowers dot the landscape, their petals shining in the morning sun. At least ten crosses stand as beacons in the field, each looming at least eight feet high. The grass has crept up the base of some, flowers already blooming on others. Wood painted white burns my eyes in the sun.
There’s a body pinned to each cross.
Jericho scans the horizon for a moment, hand shifting to the rifle slung over his shoulder. Tension rolls off him, setting my hairs on end, but I can barely look at my brother. My eyes remain glued to the nearest cross, barely ten metres from the tree line.
It’s the man from a few days before, in the pickup.
Blood has dried over the man’s palms and ankles where nails have pinned him to the wood. His body hangs, limp, in the sunlight, exposed flesh reddened and peeling from exposure. The skin around his neck is the worst, twisting in on itself and raised in burning blisters, some burst some still full. Crimson stains the man’s lips and chin, as if he’d coughed it up. The grass has already begun winding its way up the base of the cross, tendrils brushing the man’s feet. Specks of day-old blood stain the grass red.
The image makes me think of my mother, wheezing as she was dragged away. Was she sacrificed to the sun too? Have wildflowers started growing from her skin? Have strangers cried at her burial?
I feel a tear streak down my cheek when Jericho grabs me gently [[by the wrist.->ChOne9]]
“We need to keep moving,” he says, eyes on my face instead of the scene behind him. “They could be nearby.”
I meet my brother’s eyes. His jaw is clenched.
“Mum . . .”
His face shatters. He’s barely put it back together when he tugs me roughly against my chest. “She’d want you to be safe, Hayden. We can’t linger.”
“I know,” I mutter, breathing in my brother’s scent. Leather and sweat and wood. “I know.”
After a moment longer, Jericho pushes me slowly away, a hand still gripping my shoulder. He looks as he always does, face hard again. I envy his control.
“Come on. We’ll go around.”
The two of us stay in the shade of the trees as we give the field a wide birth. Even hours later, when the sun has reached it’s peak and makes my body ache, I can’t get over the silhouettes of the crosses. They burn in the back of my mind, like the glow when you’ve looked at the sun too long and shut your eyes.
No matter how many times I blink, they still linger.
[[A sea of grass, and flowers, and corpses.->Two]] <img src="twoheader.png">
The days and weeks and months slip by, almost lazily, the summer heat burning off into mist as the seasons dip into autumn. Fields shrivel as we walk, golden seas turning grey as the weather sours. We pass another procession of crosses and no wildflowers grow up their bases this time; instead, rotten petals litter the ground at their feet, brown and torn. The bodies hang, nonetheless.
Jericho told me it’s called crucifixion. Bile still thunders up my throat as we pass them by. Mercifully, no Heralds loom on the horizon.
Small victories.
The landscape around us has shifted too, these past few weeks. No longer do fields stretch for as far as the eye can see, disappearing off the edge of the world in the distance. Dirt roads have shifted to bitumen, woods to overgrown parks and backyards. We pass the skeleton of a car at one point, it’s paint peeling and rusted and anything of worth torn from the wreckage. I ask Jericho if he’d had a car and he grunts that he preferred motorbikes. Whatever those are.
I like to think that the change in scenery has been a happy accident, but my brother is too calculated for that. I manage to hold my tongue about it until houses start appearing.
“Jericho . . .” I mutter as we pause behind a tree, surveying the empty suburban street that sprawls ahead of us.
He stands beside me. His dark hair is loose around his face today, and his voice is strained. “I know, I know. We need supplies though.”
I hesitate. The chatter of birds above us is the only sound for miles. “Is there even going to be anything to find?”
He swallows. “Just keep close and quiet, alright?”
[["Sir, yes, sir."]]
[["I know . . ."]]
[["I'm not a child, I know what to do."]]
We settle for the night in an abandoned roadside store, tucked in the storage room that has two exits and boarded windows. The air stinks of stale food and disinfectant, boxes torn and strewn across the floor. Plants have overtaken the back half of the store and a tree’s roots have pierced through one of the walls near where I sit.
Something digs into my thigh where my pocket bulges, and I belatedly remember the magazine from the house.
The pages are bent and curling, after hours stuffed in my pocket, but some wrangling on my part gets it almost flat. The same image greets me, the shadows of the flag in the man’s hand cast long behind him. I’m about to ask Jericho about it when I notice he’s already staring.
“Where did you find that?”
“Back at the house,” I say, flicking absently through it. The inner pages are equally worn, some torn clean through or waterlogged, but I can still read some of the words. One headline reads *‘Will Global Warming or Greed Be Our Downfall’* in blocky, red letters. The images below it are foreign to me, one showing people crowded around some kind of room with lots of equipment, and another of a landscape that looks unlike anything I’ve ever seen, barren and white.
I turn the page towards Jericho. “What’s this?”
I’m half expecting him to turn away, to tell me I’m being foolish for holding onto ghosts when we’re still alive, but whether from tiredness or pity he humours me. “It’s a news article.”
"I’m not an idiot.”
Jericho raises his eyebrows slightly and I fight the urge to hit him. The seriousness bleeds back in quickly though, and he points to the top picture. “That’s a science lab. They’re experimenting on samples from back when the permafrosts [[were melting.”->ChOneMagazine2]]
“Permafrost?”
He sighs and shuffles closer, resting his rifle against the wall beside him. “Ground that’s frozen all the time. It’s not supposed to melt.”
The image of the barren landscape makes some kind of sense, although the idea of the ground being frozen still makes me frown. It’s nothing like the flowing wheat fields and woods I’ve known all my life, nothing like the burning heat of summer and the cold rains of winter.
I turn to Jericho. He’s still looking at the page, eyes scanning the faded words. I bite my tongue to stop myself from interrupting him.
He notices anyway. “What?”
“It’s just . . .” I mutter, the headline caught in my mind. “Which was it? Greed or global warming?”
A scoff. My brother’s eyes turn cold. “Global warming started because of greed. It wasn’t one or the other.” He sighs, resting his head back against the wall. “People delude themselves that this was inevitable, that the world had a lifespan that we hit, but they’re wrong. We created global warming, and when the permafrosts started melting, we were so greedy for what secrets it might hold that we released the virus too. All of this is no one’s fault but our own. We destroyed ourselves.”
My heart aches. “But surely people tried to stop it? To help?”
“Sure,” he says, closing his eyes and resting his hands in his lap. “Too little, too late though. Grabbing a bucket when the house is on fire isn’t going to do much.”
{(set: $ChOneMagazine2reaction to "*It's still worth trying,*") (cycling-link: bind $ChOneMagazine2reaction, "*It's still worth trying,*", "*What a pessimist . . .*", "*That doesn't mean you give up,*")} I want to say, but I keep quiet. The magazine is suddenly stone in my hands.
“Go to sleep, Hayden.”
I stuff the magazine in my backpack, lean against Jericho’s shoulder, and close my eyes. [[Sleep doesn’t come though.->ChOne7]]
<img src="Title.png">
<h3>[[Play->CW]]</h3>
{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
“Sir, yes, sir,” I whisper, giving him the vaguest of salutes.
Jericho just glares at me.
“What?” I shrug, fighting back a laugh. “You were the one being all doom and gloom.”
“That’s what’ll keep us alive.”
“Would it kill you to take a joke?”
He holds my gaze a moment longer, before sighing and beckoning for me to follow him. I don’t miss the twitch of his [[lips though.->ChTwo1]]{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
"I know . . .” I mutter, kicking at the dirt. My brother’s eyes burn into the side of my skull. “Stay close, don’t do anything rash, let you know if I see anyone.”
Jericho stutters forward, hand outstretched, as if to put it on my shoulder, but seems to rethink it at the last moment and lets it drop uselessly to his side. The air is suddenly stale.
“It’s for your own good,” he finally settles on. It’s the wrong thing to say and he knows it, but I still can’t find the energy to do anything but sigh at my feet. “I’m . . . sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I motion to the street, and he takes it as his queue to [[get moving.->ChTwo1]]{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
“I’m not a child, I know what to do,” I snap.
Jericho raises an eyebrow at me. “Then do it and stop complaining.”
Groaning I throw my hands in the air. Fight the urge to punch the tree in front of us. “Why are you always like this?”
“Right?”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Language, Hayden.”
I glare at him, blood on fire. He just holds a hand up in surrender, smiling despite the way I fume, before slinking off further down the street. I watch his shadow shift in the grass before swearing [[and following.->ChTwo1]]We keep close to the edges of houses, pressed against molded wood and shattered windows. A stray cat darts past us, hairs on end, and I fight the urge to scream. The only life I can see at all is animals, small and hidden. My boots leave impressions in the dead leaves underfoot, as if I’m the first one to have stepped here in years.
The houses themselves are dark silhouettes in the frigid autumn air. Most windows are boarded closed, makeshift warnings scratched on the outside to warn people off. We pass the occasional house with a large, white cross spray painted on the front door and my stomach knots; the poltergeist of the Heralds lingers stronger than ever here, their presence still heavy in the air. I pull my mask up on instinct despite the slight breeze.
“Hayden.”
I turn to find Jericho looking down the scope of his rifle, on one knee beside me. I drop with him.
“There’s a grocery store, at the other end of the street,” he says, voice soft as he concentrates. “Looks clear.”
I frown. “It’ll be [[picked clean.”->ChTwo2]]
“We don’t have a choice.” He shoulders his rifle again, turning to face me fully. The cut along his jaw from last week still burns a sickly shade of red. My eyes catch on it. Jericho pretends not to notice. “We’ll be in and out. You grab whatever you can, I’ll watch. Okay? If something happens you just run.”
Something in me snaps, watching him hold his rifle steadily. “No. I want to be useful.”
He stares at me, hard.
“Seriously, Jericho,” I say as I stand, brushing dirt from my knees. “I want to help.”
“No.”
“I’m thirteen. I can handle myself.”
He scoffs, rolling his eyes, but his hard edges remain when he turns to find me staring him down. “You’re serious?”
{(if: $bold > $quiet and $bold > $sarcastic)[
“Yes, I’m serious! I want to be able to handle myself.”
](else-if: $quiet > $bold and $quiet > $sarcastic)[
"Please, Jericho. I want to help.”
](else-if: $sarcastic > $quiet and $sarcastic > $bold)[
“No, I just thought – yes of course I’m serious, you idiot.”
]}
Another beat. I can feel my pulse in my throat as I stare him down.
“Fine,” he sighs, standing too, and I feel my pride swell. “What do you want to know?”
[[Learn how to use an axe.->ChTwoAxe]]
[[Learn how to use a rifle.->ChTwoRifle]]{(if: $ChTwo1reaction is '"Please, Jericho. I want to help.”')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwo1reaction is '“Yes, I’m serious! I want to be able to handle myself.”')[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwo1reaction is '“No, I just thought – yes of course I’m serious, you idiot.”')[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
]
(set: $haydenWeapon to 'axe')
(set: $jerichoWeapon to 'rifle')}
My eyes drift to the axe hanging at his hip. I can’t remember where he picked it up, but it’s seen its fair share of blood. The handle is a dark wood, with brown leather inlaid into the centre, the occasional chip blemishing the aged weapon. The blade itself glints in the sunlight, dark grey steel scratched but still deadly whenever I’ve seen it used.
{(if: $ch1jerichoInjured is 'True')[
I remember what it had done to the woman we’d encountered a few months ago in the house, how Jericho had emerged drenched in blood, how she hadn’t.
] (else-if: $ch1jerichoInjured is 'False')[
Jericho has tried to shield me from the damage he's cause, in the past. I remember regardless, the blood burned into my memory.
]}
“Your axe,” I say, meeting my brother’s eyes again.
He unhooks it from his belt, sighing. “You’re sure? You’ll have to be close to someone to use it.”
“I know.”
Jericho appraises me, weighing the axe in his hands. I watch him, palms suddenly clammy. The biggest blade I’ve ever held was his hunting knife.
“Lesson one,” Jericho says, the axe outstretched towards me in his hands. “You can’t be afraid of it. Be respectful of it and know what it’s capable of, but don’t be afraid. It’ll make you hesitate.”
I take it, and the weight of it almost makes me stumble. Gritting my teeth, I make myself keep my footing. Jericho is still watching me, [[face hard.->ChTwoAxe2]]
{(if: $ChTwo1reaction is '"Please, Jericho. I want to help.”')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwo1reaction is '“Yes, I’m serious! I want to be able to handle myself.”')[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwo1reaction is '“No, I just thought – yes of course I’m serious, you idiot.”')[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
]
(set: $haydenWeapon to 'rifle')
(set: $jerichoWeapon to 'axe')}
I glance at the rifle resting in his hands. My brother’s had it for years, ever since he lost the semi-automatic he’d used to save us the day our mother was taken. We found the new rifle in an abandoned hunting lodge, stuffed in a downstairs storage room. He’s had it ever since.
I’d once thought it was made of wood, with it’s red-brown colour and grain, but Jericho has since told me it’s steel with decorative colours added to it. Despite carrying it everywhere, Jericho rarely fires it unless he has to, the sound drawing more attention then we need. The polish is worn but still shines red in the sunlight.
Jericho catches me looking, and sighs. “Really?”
“You hardly use it anyway.”
“Hayden . . .”
I cross my arms. “I want to be useful. So, teach me to be useful.”
He stares at me a moment longer, long enough that I think he might refuse. I’m about to snap at him when he holds the rifle out to me.
“Lesson one,” he says as I gingerly take the rifle in my hands, the steel of it colder than I’d expected, “always be respectful of the weapon, and mindful of what it is. Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to shoot, and only ever have the safety off if you’re about to use it. Now, you want your hand to be here . . .”
Jericho repositions my grip, careful to make sure the safety is on. His hands are rough where they brush against my own. The clench of his jaw [[looks painful.->ChTwoRifle2]]
“It’s heavy, but you can use that to your advantage. You’re small but if you got your weight behind it you could do some damage. Here.” Jericho shifts my hands to be resting at the base of the handle. “Can you hold it with one hand?”
My wrist protests for a moment but doesn’t give out. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Good. Using two hands gives you more power but opens you up to counter attacks and doesn’t give you as much control.” He mimics a swinging motion. “Now, you want to put your weight behind it and swing down over your shoulder, on an angle. Like this.”
I watch him for a moment before trying it myself. Miraculously, I don’t trip from the sudden weight shift, and I manage to keep hold of the shaft, but my swings are clumsy.
Jericho adjusts my stance and grip a little, jaw clenched. “Good. You’ll get used to the weight of it, but this swing is all you need to focus on doing. You can swing from the side too, but make sure to keep your footing and try not to leave your side exposed for too long. Once you’re more confident I’ll teach you how to use your other hand.”
I experiment with a few more swings, the weight still foreign but not as overwhelming as it first was. The wood is rough on my skin, but also has a comforting warmth to it. I like the feel of it in my small hands, like the [[power it has.->ChTwo3]]When I turn to Jericho, he’s frowning at me, deep lines digging into his brow.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, lowering the $haydenWeapon.
He shakes his head, turning away to face in the direction of the grocery story he’d pointed out earlier. “Nothing.”
“Jericho.”
“I said it’s nothing,” he snaps, voice brittle. Thrown in profile, shadows play along the straight line of his nose and catch in the crevices under his eyes. He looks suddenly old. “I still want you to stay close when we go inside, okay? Don’t do anything –”
"Rash. I know." {(if: $haydenWeapon is 'rifle')[
I sling the strap of the rifle around my shoulders.
](else-if: $haydenWeapon is 'axe')[
I hook the axe in my belt.
]} "I'll watch your back."
Jericho looks at me, eyes pinched. “Good.”
And so, we begin slinking down the street, sticking to the shadows cast by the buildings as the sun slips lower on the horizon. The line of Jericho’s shoulders is tense, hands gripped knuckle-white around his $jerichoWeapon. I stay as close as I can without bumping into him.
My heart is empty of hope as we slowly approach the grocery store, all of it having drained out of me on the journey here. Our supplies have been dwindling, food cans all but gone and bullets thin. The biggest loss has been our medical supplies though; Jericho had risked himself last week to save me from a particularly foul scavenger, the man crazed with illness, and the best I’d been able to do in the aftermath for his torn cheek was wipe it with a dirtied cloth. He’s dealt with the pain as he always does, but we can’t afford for a similar incident to occur again with so few supplies.
I adjust my mask as we get closer. As much as I know we need to search everywhere we can, the stagnant air that surely waits for us inside makes my skin prick. The bodies on the crosses haunt the back of my thoughts.
My neck itches, almost in reaction. I make myself [[ignore it.->ChTwo4]]“Now, pretend you’re shooting at that sign,” he says, pointing to a rusted, pot-marked street sign. “Make sure your shoulders are squared and facing it.”
“Like this?”
“Good. Now, to reload you need to pull this bolt up and back, and then put your new round in here.” There’s already one inside. Jericho doesn’t mention it. “Then, close it the way you opened it.”
I sigh, rubbing my chin against my shoulder. “This is more complicated than I thought.”
“It’s not a toy, Hayden.”
Jericho is looking at me, but I swallow and look back towards the sign. “Now what?”
He pauses for barely a moment. “Press your cheek tight against the stock, just there, and make sure it’s snug against your shoulder. Remember when you fire there’s a kick back, so be ready for that. Then, you want to look down the scope and line up the cross with your target. In a fight, you’d flick the safety off and fire.”
The sign looks crisp in the scope, red lines centred on a street name that’s so weathered I can barely make out a single letter. The weight of the gun is a surprising comfort in my hands, the promise of power behind it a relief after feeling so helpless [[for so long.->ChTwo3]]The grocery store itself is torn open, glass shattered where an abandoned car sits wedged in the front door. I crouch beside it as Jericho peers around the car and inside, comforted by the new weight of my weapon. I close my eyes briefly, take a deep breath, and open them again calmer.
Jericho taps me on the knee, and I turn to see him nod. He quietly begins moving inside, and I trail behind.
Glass lines the floor here, and it’s impossible to avoid it; our boots crunch against it as we move inside. Movement in the corner of my eye sends me spinning, but it’s only a group of rats huddled around an all-but-empty can of something, licking at whatever’s left. They scamper off when they see me, small eyes glowing from the darkness under a cabinet.
The interior of the grocery store is in no better shape then the front door. Shelves are toppled and empty, boxes and cartons in disarray across the floor. A cash register dangles by a few cords, picked clean, not that I have any idea what use anyone would have for money anymore. Old habits, I guess.
“Take anything that looks useful,” Jericho whispers. A light flickers on across the room, emergency generators apparently still operational after all these years. “Bandages, food, ammo, anything. Meet back here in fifteen.”
“Okay.”
Keeping low, I move towards the flickering light end of the store, while Jericho shifts deeper towards what was once the refrigerated section.
This part of the store is in equal amounts of disarray, the flickering of the light almost making my head hurt. I look through boxes only to find receipts and scrap, anything of worth already taken or eaten by the current rodent residents. Something under a shelf catches my eye though; I flatten myself to my stomach, reaching my arm under as far as I can. My fingers just barely touch something, and I feel as though my shoulder might pop from the socket, but then I finally find purchase around a small bag.
I drag it free to find the remains of a first aid kit. It’s clearly been opened, and I can’t help but wonder why whoever had it last didn’t take the whole thing. Bandages, antiseptic wipes, a suture kit and cotton swabs are inside in passable condition, if not a little dusty, but I still smile despite myself.
I’m stuffing the bag in my backpack, nestled beside my water bottle, when the crunch of glass echoes from the [[store’s entrance.->ChTwo5]]It’s been barely ten minutes. Jericho would never waste a minute of scavenging time.
Another crunch, louder. A laboured cough.
I put my backpack back on and shift into a crouch, pressed beside the nearest shelf.
More crunching. My hairs stand on end.
The light flickers, on and off, on and off.
My pulse pounds in my ears.
“Hey!”
I jump on instinct, before realising the voice is coming from the opposite end of the store. It’s foreign, wheezing, muffled. A man, definitely.
“Hey, I see you!” he yells again, a dangerous shake to his voice. “Stand the fuck up with your hands in the air.”
The sound of shifting fabric. More glass crunching. Then, “Easy. Easy.”
Jericho.
I crawl to the end of the aisle, careful to avoid the remnants of glass that has made it down this end of the store. A figure stands about five metres away, wrapped in dark clothes; all I can make out is a mess of blonde hair not so dissimilar to my own. He has a scarf wrapped around his neck and mouth, and a pistol pointed straight at my brother across the store.
“Easy,” Jericho says again, hands raised. I don’t see his $jerichoWeapon. “Let’s just –”
The man lurches forward, gun still raised. “Not another fucking step!”
Jericho shuts his eyes, head bowing a little. “Okay, okay . . .”
“Your pack,” the man says, voice rising and falling oddly. “Toss it here.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Toss your fucking pack!” he all but screams. His hand is shaking. “Toss it or I’ll put one between your eyes.”
[[Threaten the man.->ChTwo5Threaten]]
[[Sneak behind the man.->ChTwo5Sneak]]
[[Stay hidden.->CHTwo5Hide]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)
(set: $haydenCh2Shot to 'True')
(set: $haydenCh2Kills to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Choked to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Hid to 'False')}
I don’t think.
The man has a gun to my brother’s head, is screaming on the threshold of exploding, and I don’t think.
I stand, pull my $haydenWeapon, and brandish it at the man.
“Get away from him,” I snap, emboldened by the weight of the $haydenWeapon in my hand.
The man, like I had, doesn’t think either.
He spins, pistol still pointed, his dark eyes wild and dilated, and fires on instinct.
Right at me.
I duck, twisting away. Distantly, years away, I hear my name yelled. I raise my hands lamely as I fall, as if two thin layers of flesh and bone will do anything against a bullet.
The heat of the bullet rushes past my hand, tearing flesh with it, missing the centre of my palm by centimetres. I collapse against the shelf screaming.
Another gunshot goes off, tearing a hole in the ceiling. Plaster hits the floor beside me just as two bodies collide and go flying down another aisle out of sight. I can’t move though, can’t think, because my hand is on fire and there’s blood dripping from a large gash in the side of my palm and pinky finger and my whole wrist is trembling out of control and sending crimson droplets everywhere.
I scream again, clutching uselessly at my hand as pain ricochets up my wrist, my arm, into my shoulder and whole left side. My nerves are screaming, burning, roiling in pain. The shelf behind me groans as I lean into it, sliding further onto the ground. I tumble forward, clutching my arm under me as the pain wracks through my arm. There’s a pool of blood under me. Bile thunders up my throat, catches there, and I gag on instinct. Absently, my leg bumps into my $haydenWeapon where it had fallen.
Another gunshot, distant.
I rock back and forth, pain only growing worse until I can feel my pulse, pounding in my hand and wrist and arm, until some of my fingers have gone a little numb at the tips. Water drips onto my arm where I clutch it below me. The tears only get worse once I notice them.
[[“Hayden?”->ChTwo5Threaten2]]
{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
The man is on the verge of collapse, trembling apart at the seams. I take the opportunity to crawl back down the aisle towards the front of the store, once again mindful of the glass. I can hear his wheezing breaths from here, even through his makeshift mask.
Another cough rings out.
“Take a breath and think,” Jericho is saying, voice far away as I move achingly slowly through the store. I take my $haydenWeapon into my hands as I go, despite the burden. “You fire that gun, you’re as good as sending up a flare.”
“Shut up!”
“They’ll hear it, and they’ll come, and getting my pack will be the least of your worries.”
The man’s voice is shrill, broken. “I said shut the fuck up!
I reach the same aisle the man is in. It’s barren much like the others, white skeletons of shelves the only thing between us. From behind he looks small, hunched, pistol wavering between Jericho’s face and chest and the wall behind him. His scarf slips free as another cough rattles through him, exposing his neck and jaw.
His skin is blotched and twisted, burning red. Ahead of me, Jericho takes a discreet step back, eyes flicking to me for the barest moment. The man is too caught in the blood that dripples from his mouth to notice.
“Stop moving,” he shouts, stumbling another step closer to Jericho to close the gap he’d just made. I move with him, staying in a low crouch. $haydenWeapon digging into my palms. “Just give me the pack and I’ll leave. No hazmat [[freaks involved."->ChTwo5Sneak2]]{(set: $quiet to it + 1)
(set: $haydenCh2Shot to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Kills to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Choked to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Hid to 'True')}
I take my $haydenWeapon in hand, grip white knuckled. Breath in.
It would be so easy, to spring from where I’m pressed against the shelves and attack, to use the newfound weight sitting heavy in my hands to help my brother. Five steps, maybe, and I would be on the man. One movement and I could kill him. I’d asked Jericho to teach me for a reason, after all.
And yet here, crouched, with the threat of the man’s voice echoing to me, my bones lock in place.
I can’t move.
Flexing and tightening my fingers around my $haydenWeapon, I bury my face in my free hand, swearing quietly to myself. A tear slips through; I shift to sit back against the shelf shivering.
*Sorry, Jericho.*
As if he can read my thoughts, halfway across the store with walls and shelves and death between us, Jericho speaks up again. “Take a breath and think,” he says, the only other sound the laborued wheezing of the man across from him. “You fire that gun, you’re as good as sending up a flare.”
“Shut up!”
“They’ll hear it, and they’ll come, and getting my pack will be the least of your worries.”
The man’s voice is shrill, broken. “I said shut the fuck up!
He’s on the edge, fraying fast. A cough rings out, choking and wet, and I fight the urge to cover my ears. I’m eight years old, locked away in an upstairs bedroom, listening to my mother rot from the inside out all over again. My stomach churns. The world blurs. I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t –
I gasp, choking on thin air.
[[The man hears it.->ChTwo5Hide2]]
A choke on a sob, twisted into a ball on the ground.
The sound of boots crunching through glass and sliding around the corner. “Hayden!”
Hands grab me and lift in one swift motion, and I cry out on instinct. Jericho has fallen to his knees in front of me, hands hovering and eyes blown wide, as he takes in the damage. His notices my hand and immediately tears off his jacket, wrapping it around my entire hand and wrist. I scream out again at the contact.
“Just breathe,” he says. There’s blood on his arms. “Just breathe. It’ll be alright. Were you hit anywhere else?”
I whimper, crumpling against him a little.
“Hayden!” His yelling drags me from the pit for a moment. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No . . .” I mutter.
Jericho stands, disappearing back to where I’d first seen him. His absence is frigid against my aching skin. He returns but a moment later, all-but dragging his backpack by one strap, and collapses in front of me again.
“Okay, okay,” he says, more to himself than me, as he rummages through his pack. He keeps one hand on mine, holding his jacket tight around it. “I don’t have anything. Fuck.
“My bag . . .”
Jericho hardly turns to me. “What?”
“In my bag . . . I fo –” A sob rattles up my throat. “I found a kit.”
He shifts to unhook my backpack, and despite my protests at moving my arm he gets it off. It doesn’t take him long to produce the first aid kit from before. He stares at me for a moment as he holds it, breathing as ragged as mine.
“You are so fucking lucky,” he says, even as he tears equipment free. “I swear to God, Hayden. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I thought . . .”
His face is so close. “No, you didn’t, you didn’t think! You had that fucking $haydenWeapon and tried to be all hero with it and look what happened.”
[[“I’m sorry.”->ChTwo5Threaten3]]There’s a long moment where silence engulfs us. The scuttle of a rat echoes from the other end of the store, surely investigating the new meal laid out before them a few aisles over. I shudder, biting at my tongue as another wave of pain rocks through my arm. Jericho rubs at his eyes despite the blood, smearing red across his cheeks. When he looks back at me, there’s a glimmer in the corner of his eye. I look away.
“Come here,” he says, gentle. He tenderly unwraps his jacket, and the fabric catching on the wound makes me fight back another scream, but eventually it’s exposed again. Blood still steadily seeps from it, and it stings when he sprays the antiseptic on it, but having the bandage eventually pressed over it actually helps the pain. My whole arm still burns, but most of it has dulled to a sharp ache in my hand.
Jericho shoves his blood-stained jacket into his backpack despite the chill outside, and shoulders it, our weapons and both our backpacks himself. A veritable packhorse.
He crouches in front of me, offering his arms. I stare at him a moment, brow furrowed and fresh tears spilling down my cheeks. He rubs a thumb through it, smearing grime across my ashen skin.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” he says, eyes flickering to my hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
Hooking his arms under my knees and behind my back, he lifts me in one swift motion. He stumbles a little, the sudden weight of me along with all our belongings overwhelming for a moment, but eventually he steadies himself. I keep my arm clutched tight against my chest, eyes fixated on the bandage as a spot of crimson blooms bigger and bigger underneath it. The white material is all-but engulfed by the time Jericho has picked his way back to the front of the store.
I ignore the corpse, lying spread on the floor in a pool of his own blood, as we move back out into the [[open air.->ChTwoShot]]Jericho scoffs, keeping his eyes fixed on the man even as I approach. “Getting my pack isn’t going to save you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. I know that even if you take everything I’ve got and leave me to bleed out here, that neck of yours is only going to get worse, and if it doesn’t kill you first then the Heralds will find you.”
I’m so close. Barely a metre away.
The man moves to raise his gun higher, fingers tightening. His entire body is shaking.
I move first.
“I wouldn’t,” I say, pressing my $haydenWeapon to the back of his reddened neck, “if I was you.”
The room freezes.
The tip of my $haydenWeapon brushes against a bulging blister and it bursts lazily, puss and blood oozing down the back of his neck and underneath his shirt. He’s doing his best to remain still, but his breathing is so laboured and blood-soaked that he trembles under my $haydenWeapon anyway, lungs choking.
He’s half dead already, a shambling corpse with the hint of colour in his cheeks. Jericho was right; his sickness will likely be the end of him before the Heralds are.
My heart aches, twists.
“You’re going to drop your gun,” I say quietly into his ear, mindful to keep my mask tight around my face, “and you’re going to slowly walk out of here. Okay?”
He shifts to look back at me, but I press the weapon tighter against his skin. Another blister bursts. “You’ll kill me.”
[[“We won’t. I promise.”->ChTwo5Sneak3]]
A pause.
Jericho steps forward. “I’d take the offer while it stands, asshole.”
My breath leaves me slowly as the man lowers his gun, his chest heaving. Jericho’s eyes flick to me over the man’s shoulder, pinched and shadowed by a frown. My $haydenWeapon feels leaden in my hands and I fight to keep it raised. I squeeze my own eyes shut for a moment.
The man lunges.
A gunshot tears through the silence that had encompassed the store, glass on the far wall shattering in a shower of crystals. Jericho shouts, curses, falls to the floor under the weight of the man atop him. My fingers go white around my $haydenWeapon. Jericho fumbles, hands shoved under the man’s jaw. The pistol spins to a stop on the linoleum.
“Hayden!” Jericho snaps. Blood flecks across his cheeks and forehead.
My feet are frozen.
The man is more animal then person, rabid, blood spraying as he splutters and shrieks, clawing at Jericho’s face and shoulders.
Jericho tries calling again but is cut off by a shout.
{(if: $haydenWeapon is 'axe')[
[[Kill him.->ChTwoSneakKillAxe]]
](else-if: $haaydenWeapon is 'rifle')[
[[Kill him.->ChTwoSneakKillRifle]]
]}
[[Freeze->ChTwoSneakFreeze]]{(set: $haydenCh2Shot to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Kills to 'True')
(set: $haydenCh2Choked to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Hid to 'False')}
I lunge for the man, for Jericho, my axe raised. The weight of it makes my wrist ache but I bite down on the inside of my gum, ignoring the burn. My body shifts into autopilot, my limbs moving on their own; my eyes fixate on the man’s neck as I swing the axe at it, throwing my body into the arc, just like Jericho taught me.
The impact of steel in flesh sends me jolting. My hand slips free of the handle.
Blood sprays across me.
The man immediately stops fighting Jericho, instead stumbling backwards off my brother and onto his side. His mouth opens and closes lamely, teeth and tongue crimson. I stand wide eyed as I watch veins pump blood into thin air, a protrusion of spine so white it glows in the poor lighting. The man gurgles, chokes, eyes rolling back in his head. My axe sits lodged in the back of his neck, slick with blood, skin torn around it.
I can’t move, can’t do anything but stare as the life leaves him, as the crimson pools and inches across the floor towards me.
My hands tremble.
The cold bite of a tear stings [[down my cheek.->ChTwoSneakKill2]]{(set: $haydenCh2Shot to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Kills to 'True')
(set: $haydenCh2Choked to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Hid to 'False')}
My body jerks back to life, feet coming free. Jericho shouts again as a coughing fit overtakes the man, sending blood and saliva spraying.
I swing my rifle up to sit against my shoulder, finger trembling over the safety for a moment before I manage to turn it off. The metal of the gun is biting against my hands, the steady comfort from earlier long gone. In my panic I point it towards the man where he straddles Jericho, too close for the scope to be of any use.
My fingers shake. I bite down on my gum to steady myself.
“Do it!” Jericho snaps, punching the man in the jaw hard enough that he swings back, swearing. He turns to me in the same moment, to the rifle a few metres away.
I stare into his eyes as I shoot.
The bullet tears clean through his neck, blood bursting from the impact and sending his body slamming into the nearby wall. I barely hear the impact of the bullet over the roar of the rifle in my ear, the world ringing around me. The hole blown through his neck is messy, awkward, his entire head lolling to the side as he falls to the floor. His mouth opens and closes lamely, windpipe shattered, his teeth and tongue painted crimson. Blood coats his entire chest.
I let the rifle drop from my hands as his eyes glaze over, staring vacantly at a spot on the ceiling beside me. Blood still pours from the wound. My shoulder throbs from the kickback belatedly, shock wearing off.
I can’t move, can’t do anything but stare as the life leaves him, as the crimson pools and inches across the floor towards me.
My hands tremble.
The cold bite of a tear stings [[down my cheek.->ChTwoSneakKill2]]
“Hayden?” Jericho’s voice is soft as he takes my face in his. I don’t remember him getting so close. “Hayden, it’s alright.”
My throat feels clogged. “I killed him . . .”
“Hey,” Jericho says, not quite snapping but loud enough that I jolt in his hands. “He was trying to kill me. You saved my life, Hayden.”
It doesn’t feel like it. All I can see is the man’s brutalised body, and the blood. All I can hear is the impact his body made, and the gurgling of blood stuck in his throat.
“You did nothing wrong, Hayden.”
{(set: $ChTwoSneakKillReaction to '"It doesn’t feel like it."') (cycling-link: bind $ChTwoSneakKillReaction, '"It doesn’t feel like it."', '"I know."', '"Better you than him, right . . ."')}
I close my eyes against my brother’s face. His palms cut into my cheeks, callouses catching on my skin, the warmth of him radiating into my suddenly frozen body. Despite the blood staining his chest and face, Jericho folds me against his chest anyway, letting me ride out the tremors until I’m not quite whole but stable, cracks hidden again.
“Can we please get out of here?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the distant shelves instead of the blood-soaked floor.
Jericho nods, grabbing my $haydenWeapon where I’d left it while I start wandering to the store entrance. When he catches up to me, crunching through glass as he goes, the street is as desolate and brisk as we’d left it. I trail behind him as we stick to the shadows pouring from the other storefronts, ignoring the blood on [[my clothes.->ChTwoKilled]]“What the fuck was th –”
He’s cut off by something, presumably Jericho, colliding with his chest.
I do cover my ears this time, $haydenWeapon forgotten, as I twist myself into a ball so small, I can almost forget the world around me exists for a moment. Distantly, a scuffle crashes through the store, toppling shelves. A gunshot slams into the ceiling; plaster sprays. The sound of swearing, and yelling, until blissful, terrible silence.
A laboured breath. My blood runs cold.
Then, “Hayden?”
All the air rushes out of me, lungs empty. Another tear streaks down my cheek, catching on my chin. I swipe it away.
“Here.”
Jericho appears a moment later, blood flecked across his face but otherwise unhurt. His $jerichoWeapon is already stashed.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper lamely, avoiding his gaze. “I tried, I did but I just . . .”
He kneels beside me, offering me a hand up. I take it. “It’s okay, Hayden.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say as he hoists me to my feet. “He could’ve hurt you.”
A breathy laugh. “But he didn’t, did he?”
{(set: $ChTwoHideReaction to "I frown at him.") (cycling-link: bind $ChTwoHideReaction, "I frown at him.", '"Idiot . . ."', '"Don’t joke about that, Jericho."')}
“How about you just worry about staying alive, and I worry about the rest?”
My jaw aches from clenching it. “Yeah, okay. Can I keep the $haydenWeapon though?”
He looks at me a moment, sharp-eyed, but relents. I pick up the $haydenWeapon again, despite the anxiety pulsing in my throat, and grip it. Ground myself.
“Let’s go before anyone else shows up,” Jericho says, leading me towards the front of the store. I keep my eyes forward, not wanting to see whatever state Jericho left the man in. My pulse pounds in my ears anyway when I spy the edges of a blood pool down one aisle.
I leave it behind, in favour of the [[fresh air outside.->ChTwoHid]]{(set: $haydenCh2Shot to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Kills to 'False')
(set: $haydenCh2Choked to 'True')
(set: $haydenCh2Hid to 'False')}
It would be so easy to use the newfound weight of the $haydenWeapon sitting heavy in my hands to help my brother. Five steps, maybe, and I would be on the man. One movement and I could kill him. I’d asked Jericho to teach me for a reason, after all.
And yet here, watching my brother be slowly covered in blood that’s not his own, my bones lock in place.
I can’t move. Can’t do anything but stare as the man tears a deeper gash in Jericho’s shoulder.
My jaw clenches, so tight I feel the bone pop, feel the grind aching in my skull. My hands tremble, shaking apart at the seams. The $haydenWeapon falls to my feet.
Jericho throws me a wild look, green eyes beacons amongst all the blood. Throws a punch at the man, twists beneath him. I’m barely paying attention, my thoughts frozen and numb, when he manages to free the hunting knife from his boot. I can’t even make myself turn away when Jericho slams it into one of the man’s eyes.
Blood sprays, the man screams. He flails with his arms, clutching at his ruined eye, but doesn’t manage to stop Jericho doing the same to his other. More blood. The air stinks of iron. Bile rises in my throat, and my body jerks back to life long enough for me to turn and fall to my knees, guts hacked up across the linoleum.
[[A thud behind me.->ChTwoSneakFreeze2]]“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I mutter, hands frantically reaching for purchase on the ground. My legs won’t work. There’s not enough air. “I’m sorry, Jericho, I just –”
“Stop.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, balling my fists against them.
“Give me that,” Jericho snaps, reaching to grab the $haydenWeapon where it fell. I scramble for it, but too late. “Why did you even want to learn if you’re going to freak out like this?”
“I’m sorry!” I scream, standing on uneasy footing. My eyes catch on the man, splayed on his back, and another wave of nausea washes over me. I shove it down. “I tried but I couldn’t – couldn’t kill him, okay?”
Jericho storms up to me. All I can see is crimson, on his shirt and face and in his hair. There’s some caught in his eyelashes. “No, it’s not okay. If you’re going to hold this,” he shouts, shoving the $haydenWeapon in my face, “then you need to be able to fucking use it.”
The fight drains out of me. “I tried.”
Jericho scoffs. Storms towards the front of the store. Over his shoulder he throws, “Trying isn’t good enough, Hayden. I was counting on you.”
{(set: $ChTwoSneakFreezeReaction to "*You're fucking fine,* I want to scream") (cycling-link: bind $ChTwoSneakFreezeReaction, "*You're fucking fine,* I want to scream", "*I'm sorry,* I want to mutter", "*Well I’m just a child, after all,* I want to spit")} but he’s already waiting outside, nothing but a silhouette. I wipe at my suddenly wet cheeks and breath for a moment, not wanting to follow him. The stench of death is too putrid inside though, the corpse a burden in my periphery.
Jericho ignores me as we leave. [[I don’t push it.->ChTwoChoked]]We stay in town a few days, picking our way through the rest of the stores despite the fact that all their shelves are nothing more than bare skeletons. One large house acts as our makeshift base for our time in town, with enough rooms, doors and windows to throw ourselves from should the worst happen. Jericho is itching to move on after mere hours, but I convince him that a few days of stagnation won’t kill us.
He’s been my shadow ever since the injury, incessant, protective. My hand still pounds, the injury still raw, but most of the time I can bite on my gum to distract myself from the pain.
Jericho had sewed my hand back together, a few days ago. I don’t know which was worse: the whiskey he poured on it and then forced me to drink, or the feeling of having a needle pulled through already-burning flesh. He’d had to stuff a rag in my mouth to keep the noise down. I don’t know where he learnt to sew wounds, just like I don’t know where he learnt to shoot a gun or kill a man, but I don’t bring it up. Some things are better left alone. Jericho is tense enough with me as it is.
The moment the bullet tore through the side of my hand replays at night, stuck on a loop I can’t get out of. I don’t tell Jericho though, in part because I don’t want to seem weak to him, but also because I don’t think I need to tell him. He feels me jolt awake beside him at night. Neither of us say anything.
Silence is easier than words, [[lately.->ChTwo6]]That night, three days after the incident at the grocery store, the two of us sit huddled around a bedroom, sorting through the meagre supplies we’d managed to scavenge that day. Five bullets, eight cans of years-expired SPAM, a packet of bandages, a small switchblade that’s almost too rusted to be of any use. Scraps. I still take the bandages and SPAM and stash them safely in my backpack.
Across the room, Jericho coughs.
I snap my eyes to him.
He rubs his hands on his thighs where he sits, raising an eyebrow at me. “What?”
Another moment passes, silent. “Nothing,” I sigh, turning back to [[my backpack.->ChTwo7]]{(if: $ChTwoSneakKillReaction is '"It doesn’t feel like it."')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwoSneakKillReaction is '"I know."')[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwoSneakKillReaction is '"Better you than him, right . . ."')[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
]}
We stay in town a few days, picking our way through the rest of the stores despite the fact that all their shelves are nothing more than bare skeletons. One large house acts as our makeshift base for our time in town, with enough rooms, doors and windows to throw ourselves from should the worst happen. Jericho is itching to move on after mere hours, but I convince him that a few days of stagnation won’t kill us.
I’ve been spending a lot of time tucked away in the attic, alone.
Jericho wasn’t too happy to leave me in the house while he went on scavenging runs, but one look at my still-shaking hands and the dark circles under my eyes and he was convinced. After some investigating, I think the room was used for art, a rotting contraption made of wood set up by a small window with a box of paint brushes and long since dried paints set beside it. I sit in the little stool, staring at the town where it sprawls below us.
The man won’t leave my mind.
The way his body fell, the look in his eyes, the blood.
The blood is the worst.
Some of it still lingers on my clothes, caked on hard enough that I can’t pick it off. In a panic I’d tried to pour water on it, and Jericho had snapped to not waste such a precious resource.
I stare at it, now. A pulse of panic rattles through me, and I try to find something on the horizon to focus on that’s still alive.
It proves hard, when the [[world is dead.->ChTwo6]]{(if: $ChTwoSneakFreezeReaction is "*I'm sorry,* I want to mutter")[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwoSneakFreezeReaction is "*Well I’m just a child, after all,* I want to spit")[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwoSneakFreezeReaction is "*You're fucking fine,* I want to scream")[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
]}
We stay in town a few days, picking our way through the rest of the stores despite the fact that all their shelves are nothing more than bare skeletons. One large house acts as our makeshift base for our time in town, with enough rooms, doors and windows to throw ourselves from should the worst happen. Jericho is itching to move on after mere hours, but I convince him that a few days of stagnation won’t kill us.
Apart from a few arguments, here and there, my brother isn’t talking to me. He only gave me back the $haydenWeapon this morning.
Part of me doesn’t blame him for hating me, even if I’d never admit it to his face. He would never stand by and watch me be wailed upon by an infected stranger, would never hold the means to save the person he loved in his hands and not use it. Jericho doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t care for anyone but himself and me. His coldness is the reason we’re both still alive when so many other aren’t.
Maybe I’m just weak. Or maybe my brother just doesn’t have a heart for humanity anymore. Regardless, he’s a silent wall of muscle and dark hair whenever I try to talk to him, and the few times he’s not, we end up arguing in hushed whispers.
I wish he’d just yell at me, sometimes.
I’d take yelling over this endless, [[mind-numbing silence.->ChTwo6]]{(if: $ChTwoHideReaction is '"Don’t joke about that, Jericho."')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwoHideReaction is '"Idiot . . ."')[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChTwoHideReaction is "I frown at him.")[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
]}
We stay in town a few days, picking our way through the rest of the stores despite the fact that all their shelves are nothing more than bare skeletons. One large house acts as our makeshift base for our time in town, with enough rooms, doors and windows to throw ourselves from should the worst happen. Jericho is itching to move on after mere hours, but I convince him that a few days of stagnation won’t kill us.
I hold my $haydenWeapon every time we venture out into the dead streets, despite the fact that the weight still terrifies me a little. The confidence I’d had with it initially has melted away, although Jericho assures me it will take time to grow accustom to it. I don’t want to be weak though, don’t want to curl up and disappear from the world whenever danger strikes.
It’s the end of the world. There are threats around every corner, and I want to be prepared, even if the thought of fighting anyone other than my brother makes my hairs stand on end.
Being born into the desolation, you’d think I would have more of a stomach for it. Violence. Bloodshed.
Whether it’s from my mothers sheltering or Jericho’s talent for fixing problems before I’m faced with them myself, I’ve somehow managed to avoid the brunt of the harsh reality of the world up until now.
I delude myself that the $haydenWeapon helps. Maybe one day it [[actually will.->ChTwo6]]I wake to the sound of coughing. Staring at the ceiling, I listen to Jericho across the room trying to muffle it in his jacket.
After about five minutes, we’re drenched in silence again.
I can hear the rasp of his breathing long after we have breakfast and move on for the day, though. He doesn’t cough again. A brisk wind rushes by and [[I blame that.->ChTwo8]]Within twenty-four hours, half our supply of water is gone.
Jericho is still coughing regardless.
He’s barely eaten anything all day, squirreling away the food I offer him to save for later, hopeful I suppose. Every so often out of the corner of my eye, I spy him scratching at his throat, loosening his mask and scarf despite the chill in the air.
[[Ignore it.->ChTwoIGNORE]]
[[Question him.->ChTwoQUESTION]]I keep my eyes forward, focus on the decaying town around us and the leaves rushing past in the breeze, focus on anything but my brother where he walks ahead of me. He hasn’t said anything, and so neither do I. Two fools, living in the illusion of his good health out of selfishness or fear, I’m not entirely sure.
His pace is unchanged. The coughing only gets worse.
I pull my mask on and [[leave it there.->ChTwo9]]I wait until we pause under the awning of what appears to be an abandoned gift store, dust-coated trinkets still hanging from their displays. The glass is shattered. A few beads of sweat clump by Jericho’s hairline despite the weather having almost drifted into winter. He clears his throat, rubbing at his throat subtly. As if I don’t notice.
As if I haven’t noticed everything.
“Jericho–”
“We should keep going. I want to search the department store on the other side of town before sunset.”
{(if: $bold > $quiet and $bold > $sarcastic)[
I frown, fighting the urge to slap him. "Don’t you dare ignore me, we need to tal-"
](else-if: $quiet > $bold and $quiet > $sarcastic)[
My face shutters closed as I bury my hands in the pockets of my jacket. "It’s just that you don’t loo-"
](else-if: $sarcastic > $quiet and $sarcastic > $bold)[
I cross my arms, trying uselessly to catch his eye. "You might be fooling yourself, but you’re clearly not-"
]}
He storms off down the street as if I didn’t speak at all, as if I’ve become a ghost these past few days. Maybe I have, to him.
I watch him clench and unclench his fist at his side. His figure, backlit by the sun, looks shadowlike.
[[Sighing, I follow.->ChTwo9]]By the next night, Jericho is feverish and fuming.
“Jericho –”
He spins to me, pupils dilated. “I’m fine, Hayden. Just shut up.”
“You’re not fine,” I snap, pointing at his neck. “If you are, you’d take your scarf off.”
“Fuck off.”
I stare him down. “No. The longer you ignore this the worse it’s going to get.”
Something snaps in his eyes as I say that. His fingers are curled into fists when he storms up to me, all-but backing me against the nearby wall. We’re crowded around the foyer of a small café, table and chairs scattered at our feet. My brother looks about ready to implode, sweat beading at his brow and breathing already ragged.
“What are you going to do?” he seethes, face so close I can just barely see angry red blotches peaking out from under his scarf. “You can’t magically cure me, Hayden. I’m a dead man.”
My heart sinks. “You don’t know –”
“You saw what happened to mum. Stop being such an ignorant child.”
I slide along the wall a little, putting some space between us. I still have my mask on, whatever good it’ll do. “Now you’re just being mean.”
He scoffs, turning away. A cough wracks through him and he has to hunch over a little from the pain of it. I watch his every movement, jaw clenched. When he pulls his hand away, I see flecks of blood, see him stare at it for a moment before closing his eyes and staring at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. Pulls himself into one of the only functioning chairs left in the room. “I’m sorry.”
He fiddles with his scarf, breathing heavy. I stay rooted to the spot.
“It’s okay.”
Another cough. More blood. “We should –”
Car engines. [[Down the street.->ChTwo10]]
Jericho stumbles to his feet in the same instant I rush to his side, blood and wheezing aside. He reaches for his $jerichoWeapon while I look out the window, only to have headlights blast into my eyes and over the whole café foyer. We’re both blanketed in golden light, strong enough to make my eyes water.
“Upstairs, Hayden,” Jericho shouts, reaching for me while he starts running.
I sprint to him, taking his hand and dragging him up the stairs. He’s slow, laboured, spitting blood as I haul the both of us into the upper levels.
Shouts echo from outside. “How many?”
“Two confirmed,” a woman replies.
The sound of boots on bitumen.
The upstairs is mostly storage rooms, with a large open area that I presume was once another seating area of the café. I sprint for the back rooms, praying there’s a tree close to one of the windows. Wishful thinking, that they wouldn’t have already surrounded the place.
“Here,” Jericho snaps.
He tugs me to the side, my shoulder protesting, and the two of us cram inside a room off the main hallway. It’s small, crowded with equipment, a steel bench running along one side. In the back corner there’s a small metal door, set into the wall. A chute. Jericho notices and immediately shoves me towards it.
“Down here,” he says, already pushing me towards it.
It’s barely wide enough for me. I dig my heels in. “No.”
“Hayden –”
“You won’t fit.” I glare at him, taking my $haydenWeapon and gripping it, firm, before searching the rest of the room. “We can find another way, some other exit. A window?”
Floorboards creak.
The pair of us freeze, silent. Another creak, and the slam of wood against wood as rooms are checked.
My pulse pounds, skin suddenly clammy. Jericho’s face reddens as he tries to hold in a cough. Blood drools from the corner of his mouth. I stare at him, pleading.
Eventually, he nods brokenly, still eyeing [[the chute.->ChTwo11]]
More creaking floorboards outside. Voices muffled by plastic. My gut churns.
I move to press my ear against the door, the wood rough against my skin. The hall sounds clear, footsteps receeding. Jericho lingers behind me, the heat of his body almost radiating into my own. I turn to him only to find his jaw clenched, hands clasped over his mouth.
“Jeric –”
Blood splatters over my face as he chokes on it.
And then can’t stop.
The coughing fit is grating, deafening, rattling around the walls of the room and seeping through the wood into the rest of the store. There’s barely a moments pause before the crash of footsteps comes thundering towards us.
“Hayden,” he wheezes, blood staining his lips and chin.
I stare at him, tears in my eyes. Then, the door flies open.
My body slams into the floor, rolling to a stop against the opposite wall as three figures in white suits flood into the room, the door batting me aside. Jericho lunges for the nearest figure, $jerichoWeapon aimed, but he’s slow with fatigue and they shove him away and pin him against the wall with little effort, ragdoll-like. The coughing won’t stop, blood spraying against aged wood as his infected lungs try fruitlessly to reject the blood filling them.
“Jericho!” I scream.
It doesn’t matter if my hands tremble when I palm my $haydenWeapon, it doesn’t matter if the thought of killing makes me want to throw my inside up until I’m empty. Nothing matters now, because there are Heralds swarming the room and my brother is dying and I’m sick of sitting by and watching the world take things from me.
[[Enough.->ChTwo12]]{(if: $haydenWeapon is 'axe')[
I swing my axe in a wide arc, aiming for maximum damage, and manage to snag one suited figure
](else-if: $haydenWeapon is 'rifle')[
I raise my rifle, letting a bullet fly into the nearest suited figure at near point-blank, crimson bursting across their chest,
]}before another punches me across the jaw. I tumble to the floor, $haydenWeapon skittering out of reach. Jericho spits, heaves, sends his assailant flying. He can barely breathe, lungs having entirely given up from the exertion. I barely manage to make it to my feet before they’re kicked back out from under me.
Hands, everywhere. At my wrists, my shoulders, my hair. My scalp burns in protest as my thick braid is tugged, a handful coming free. Jericho tries to shout but chokes up blood and bile instead.
I’m dragged from the room by my hair. My legs hook in the door frame, and Jericho tries to lunge for me in the same moment, but he’s stabbed clean through with a knife and crumples.
“Jericho!”
“Get them to the truck,” one of the Heralds snaps. They reach down, grabbing Jericho where he’s collapsed to the ground and heaving him from the room by the ankle. His scarf tugs free, his neck a blister-ridden mess, swollen to half the size. A sob catches in my throat.
“Get the fuck away from him!” I scream.
I watch as Jericho reaches blindly for the nearest Herald, the knife from his boot having appeared at some point. He manages to cut through the suit and calf muscle of one, sending the man tumbling to the ground, before another appears in his place.
The hand at my hair releases its grip for a moment. Another Herald moves to grab my flailing feet.
[[Bite.->ChTwoBite]]
[[Kick.->ChTwoKick]]My mask has slipped free, hanging loose around my neck. I twist in my captor’s grip, sinking my teeth into the nearest available surface, which happens to be an plastic-covered arm.
The Herald screams, slapping me away.
My teeth ache, my jaw jolted from the impact.
“Jesus,” a voice snaps behind me. “Get them to the fucking truck now!”
I’m carried down the stairs, wailing, thrashing, an animal being taken to the slaughter. Jericho is barely conscious, his head banging on the steps as they drag him down them, but he’s thrashing with as much energy as he can. His eyes catch mine, forest green. I couldn’t hide my fear if I wanted to.
“Jericho . . .” I mutter, hissing when my hair is tugged taught again. I feel more strands pull free.
We’re in the foyer. The headlights of the trucks burn my eyes, send harsh shadows stretching across the floor like demons, elongated and unnatural. The suits of the Heralds almost glow white in the light. I keep my eyes on Jericho.
He frowns at me, face harsh. I open my mouth as if to say something when he suddenly goes limp.
My heart drops into my stomach, burning, shrivelling. I’m about to scream when I notice the Herald’s carrying him suddenly stumbling under the sudden dead weight, his body thudding to the floor.
[[He’s on his feet in seconds.->ChTwo13]]I wait until the Herald is leaning down to grab my feet before heaving my leg upwards, upwards, whole body twisted with the movement. The toe of my boot connects with their jaw, sends a tooth flying. The Herald tumbles to the ground, shouting.
More hands, grabbing at my legs, until all I can do is squirm
“Jesus,” a voice snaps behind me. “Get them to the fucking truck now!”
I’m carried down the stairs, wailing, thrashing, an animal being taken to the slaughter. Jericho is barely conscious, his head banging on the steps as they drag him down them, but he’s thrashing with as much energy as he can. His eyes catch mine, forest green. I couldn’t hide my fear if I wanted to.
“Jericho . . .” I mutter, hissing when my hair is tugged taught again. I feel more strands pull free.
We’re in the foyer. The headlights of the trucks burn my eyes, send harsh shadows stretching across the floor and remaining furniture like demons, elongated and unnatural. The suits of the Heralds almost glow white in the light. I keep my eyes on Jericho.
He frowns at me, face harsh. I open my mouth as if to say something when he suddenly goes limp.
My heart drops into my stomach, burning, shrivelling. I’m about to scream when I notice the Herald’s carrying him suddenly stumbling under the sudden dead weight, his body thudding to the floor.
[[He’s on his feet in seconds.->ChTwo13]]I thrash harder as Jericho sprints for me. A blister bursts on his neck, crimson puss oozing out. The pallor of his skin has greyed, and his breaths are loud enough to be heard for miles. He makes a beeline for me, punching and slashing at any Herald that gets in his path with the ferociousness of a feral animal, all bite.
His eyes are cold, empty.
Blood drips from his mouth and neck.
Sweat pours from his temples.
I manage to kick one foot free, shoving it in the crotch of one Herald hard enough to send them to their knees, while I bite out at another. Jericho makes it to me in the same second, punching one in the head and tackling the other until I’m tumbling to the floor, free.
Free.
“Run, Hayden!” Jericho screams, voice shattered. “Fucking run!”
I duck under a Herald as they reach for me, grabbing a knife that’s fallen from the one Jericho tackled and stabbing out with it futilely. Jericho is already being swarmed, growling.
I meet his eyes across the room. Glistening, yet resolved. I heave out a sob, vision blurring.
“I said fucking *run!*”
A Herald charges me and I throw myself to the side, slamming into the wall. My hands brace against the wood, the headlights glaring into the foyer. Jericho is pinned, choking up blood again, staring at me.
*Go*, he mouths.
The world is static, my pulse pounding in my ears and neck and wrists, fingers gripping the measly knife so hard I can feel it breaking skin. Jericho’s dark hair sticks to his forehead, the entire lower part of his face blood-soaked as [[he wheezes.->ChTwo14]]White suits run for me, hands and knives and guns outstretched.
Salt streaks through the blood on my cheeks. My brother’s blood.
*I love you*, I mouth, or maybe I scream it. Maybe I haven’t stopped screaming. Jericho holds my gaze as long as he can, eyes heavy lidden and tear-stained.
Then, I turn.
And I run.
[[And I leave my brother behind.->Three]]<img src="threeheader.png">
Autumn falls away.
Leaves shrivel and turn to dust. The chill wind solidifies, hardens, until sleet is tearing at my cheeks. Tears and ice and blood trickle off my chin. Buildings scream with the rattle of water against tin as I pass, windows almost shaking.
Winter arrives, brutal, biting.
I don’t remember what it was like to feel warm.
I don’t remember anything but running, running, [[running.->ChThree1]]The coughing starts two days out of town, two days into the deafening loneliness.
Niggling at first, then burning, grating against my throat. The warmth I’d craved washes through me, feverish. By the next day I collapse on the outskirts of a wooded area, body giving out from under me.
I don’t fight it.
Instead I huddle against the trunk of a dying tree, a skeleton of what it once was, empty branches reaching fruitlessly up to a sun hidden perpetually by clouds, [[and wait.->ChThree2]][[And wait.->ChThree3]]The release I’d craved never comes.
I scream, throat raw, for the feel of it more than anything. A lone bird flits away from the sound, dark wings almost blending with the grey sky. The burning fever lingers, persistent, but the coughing subsides. When I feel at my neck, the skin is slightly raised but otherwise unblemished.
I dig my fingers into the dirt, mud catching under my nails. My scalp aches. My throat itches.
But the virus never runs its course.
Whether simple luck or the universe’s sick idea of humour, I don’t know. I don’t know most things, anymore. I don’t know where to go, what to do. My body aches with the ghost of the virus, running hot through my veins, and my legs throb from days of being pursued. My $haydenWeapon is gone. Half my supplies are gone.
My brother is gone.
The world is silent, empty, where it stretches out before me.
I wonder if Jericho’s blood had known mine, wonder if it had inherited his protectiveness enough to stamp out the virus mixed in with it before it could doom me too. If I close my eyes, I can still taste it on my tongue, can still feel it running down my cheeks and catching in my eyebrows. The thought is both a comfort and nauseating.
Is that the legacy I will carry of him? The taste of iron on my tongue. The forest green of his eyes surrounded by crimson.
[[He can't be . . .]]
[[I don't want to think about it.]]
[[When I think of my brother, all I feel is anger.]]{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
He’s Jericho. Strong, dependable Jericho. Always watchful, always cautious. In a life full of quiet fear and uncertainty, with death hanging like an approaching storm on the horizon, if there was one constant, it was Jericho.
There isn’t a version of the world, at least not in my head, that he isn’t by my side.
It simply . . . doesn’t make sense.
There’s no way such a reality could exist.
And yet, as always, the world fights to prove me wrong.
My heart catches in my throat, the skin still a little raw, and pulses for a moment. I brace myself against a tree, the bark shrivelling under my fingers. I don’t know what to do with the throbbing loneliness in my veins other than stand with my eyes squeezed shut. A tear slips free and I wipe it away.
When I open them again, the horizon beckons, dreary as it is. I don’t know what to do with myself other than take one step [[after the other.->ChThree4]]{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
I don’t want to think about it.
I don’t want to think about my brother, or the Heralds, or the doom that had me by the throat and found me unworthy of being given an escape. I don’t want to feel anything, don’t want to look at the sodden ground beside me and see nothing but empty dirt instead of my brother’s footprints, don’t want to look at the blood drying in my hair and on my clothes and think of all I’ve lost.
The trees groan around me, leafless branches like hands in the gloom. I stare at them, at the sky, at the slow grind of the world around me. If I stare at the sky long enough, will it swallow me whole? Can I stop existing, just for a moment, and hang weightless like a cloud?
I shake myself.
Biting the inside of my gum I pace off into the horizon, hands stuffed in the pockets of my jacket to stop myself from picking at the fresh cuts on my skin. I keep my eyes forward, keep my breaths even, despite the effort.
If I delude myself with my own calm, maybe one day [[it will take hold.->ChThree4]]{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
I’m swinging my fist at the nearest tree before I can stop myself. Bark sprays, the rotting wood caving in around my fist despite the lack of weight behind the swing. My knuckles sting, blood already blooming when I pull my fist back. I shut my eyes against the pain. Let it consume me, distract me.
I see Jericho’s face anyway.
A scream tears free, the sound ringing through the nearby trees. Birds scatter from the empty canopy, feathers damp from the rain that has hung low in the atmosphere for days. Blood slips down the length of my fingers, catching in my nails and dripping into the mud. I stare at the crimson as it seeps into the ground, disappearing as if it never existed.
The thought that life is so easily consumed by nature, devoured into nonexistence, makes my stomach churn even more.
Not as much as Jericho leaving me does, but nothing will make that ache go away.
I kick at the mud, my boots now sodden, and storm off into the distance. My brothers bloodied, ruined face follows in my periphery no matter [[how many times I blink.->ChThree4]]A week goes by in a blur.
The sleet lingers, insistent, as if unable to decide between rain or snow and choosing both instead. Woods shift into dried hills, empty fields. Days-old blood slowly bleeds from my skin in crimson streaks.
I stand in the downpour with my face upturned and let it bite at my cheeks.
No white suits loom on the horizon. I should take it as a blessing, that they were apparently sated with my brother’s blister-strewn neck. It doesn’t feel like it, though. I keep traipsing further into the [[emptiness before me.->ChThree5]]The barn is a rock in the storm, a point of calm in one of the harshest winters I’ve ever lived through. The wood exterior is aged, red paint faded to an off beige, and the rain leaks through in some corners. It’s set between two hills though, surrounded entirely by overgrown orchards enough that only the roof is visible from the road down the way. A flea-ridden cat had hissed at me when I stumbled inside a few days ago.
Now, my hands tremble as I hack at my hair.
My scalp burns, knife dull where it grates against my braid. The Heralds had left it patchwork, chunks pulled free and left to drift into my brother’s blood. The memory had escaped me until the rain had stung against my exposed scalp; the itch was unbearable, after that.
I hack at it again.
My vision blurs, cheeks tear-stained, but I don’t stop until the hair gives way. The braid is messy, uneven, pitiful where I hold it in my fist. Curls fall into the dirt at my feet. I stare at it a moment.
My heart snaps.
Screaming, I throw the braid across the barn, knife flying free too. Having no root to hold onto, the hair separates and sprays in an arc of blonde, scattered in the harsh wind that slips inside. A stone digs into my knees where I fall, hands clutching at the mess I’ve made of myself. Thunder crashes outside, rain pounding against the roof enough that the walls almost shake.
My lungs are too small. Or maybe it’s the remnant of the virus, scarring them enough that something as simple as breathing grates against my throat. My fingers are white knuckled in my hair, tears catching on my nose and chin.
[[Jericho had always been better at braiding then me.->ChThree6]]<h3>Content Warning</h3>
Grave Green contains graphic violence, gore, blood, depicitions of illness, foul language, suicide, and in general has heavy death-related themes. Please read with caution.
[[Continue->Prologue1]]
It takes a few days for the leaden feeling in my chest to dissipate. A few more after that for me to get used to the sudden weightlessness on my scalp. The curls have twisted themselves twice over, but I don’t mind. They remind me of my mother, distantly.
The rain has dissipated into a crisp fog that morning, hills blanketed in it. I sit bundled in the top level of the barn, an abandoned sniper roost having been set up by the previous occupant some years ago. A pile of picked-at food cans lie in a neat stack in the corner and bullet casings are mixed in with the dried hay. I pull my knees to my chest and watch the fog weave between trees and slowly fade away into the dreary winter sun.
The quiet is all-consuming, almost nauseating. I can hear my own breath, can feel the beat of my pulse where I grip my wrists. The weight of being so achingly alone is heavy on my shoulders. I’ve never been aware of myself so fully. It’s disconcerting.
I stare at the fog and the trees and the hazy horizon to distract myself.
Amongst the chill breeze, a scream.
It’s far off, small, but the world is so empty that I hear it regardless. Craning my neck around, I scan the tree-lined hills. The windowpane groans a little, old wood twisting to life as another scream, closer, ricochets towards us. I grip the pocketknife I’d used to cut my hair.
The fog lifts enough on the rise of a nearby hill to show a figure, racing haphazardly between the trees. Small, frail. Barely more than a child, despite the distance between us. An echo of myself, [[lost in the mists.->ChThree7]]{(if: $bold > $quiet and $bold > $sarcastic)[
I’m palming my rusted pocketknife and swinging around the half-rotten banister before I can stop myself, before my scarred throat and trembling hands can hold me back. The screaming continues, wailing, and I run for the hole in the barn wall, metal rising in my blood. The chill air catches in my eyes but I push past it.
](else-if: $quiet > $bold and $quiet > $sarcastic)[
I stare at the figure, at the way they stumble and catch themselves with torn hands, at the dirt and blood staining their clothes. My heart stutters, skips, both screaming to run and pleading to help. I grip the windowsill, white-knuckled, before spinning and racing downstairs and out into the chill before I can stop myself.
](else-if: $sarcastic > $quiet and $sarcastic > $bold)[
I spin, making for the ladder that leads to the ground level, when the voice in the back of my head screams me to a halt. My hands tremble where they grip rotting wood, neck itching despite the scars having turned silver days ago. The ghost of my brother’s touch, holding me in the shadows. Hidden. I squeeze my eyes shut against his silhouette, shaking apart at the seams, and shove past him, rushing outside before I can let myself stop.
]}
The child is closer than I’d last seen, cresting the nearby rise, backlit by morning glare.
It’s a little girl. Dark hair a mess behind her. Bone-thin.
Her neck blooms crimson in the early morning air. The smell of blood. A rasping cough I hadn’t heard before, intermixed with the screaming. Eyes so wide all I can see is white.
She swings her head around, eyes staring right through me and the barn and the trees that engulf us. Before I can process what’s happening, she’s running towards me. I’m about to shout out when more figures appear on the horizon.
White suits.
Heralds.
[[Help her.]]
[[Leave her.]]She’s so close now I can see the tears streaking through the dirt on her cheeks. Another scream, and I’m surprised any noise can make it past the mess that her neck has become.
I reach for her.
The weight of her slamming into my chest almost sends me skittering to the ground, but by some miracle I keep my footing. The barn looms beside us as I bundle the girl up in my arms and run, her arms twisting vice-like around my neck. The stink of blood hangs around her like a ghost. She coughs into the skin of my neck and something wet runs down beneath my shirt.
I race for the trees behind the barn, heart stupidly hopeful for some kind of refuge in the half-dead orchard.
The slamming of boots on dirt eventually hits my ears. Shouting.
She’s featherlight, barely more than skin and bones. I can feel her ribs where I clutch her to my chest. The shouting gets louder behind us regardless.
“They’re coming,” she whimpers brokenly into my neck. “They’re coming, they’re coming . . .”
A fallen log. I veer right.
[[More shouting.->ChThreeHelp1]]My blood runs cold, air suddenly frigid against my skin.
The white suits descend closer, shouting, the thundering of boots on dirt caught in the wind as it lashes through my hair. The little girl is racing for me, arms outstretched, blood spilling from her mouth as she screams. Her cheeks are stained crimson.
I turn around.
The door to the barn is makeshift but functional, hinges rusted and lock weak, but I shove it closed behind me anyway. I spin to survey the room, the sound of her screaming and the Herald’s boots cacophonous. Discarded machinery, broken wood. Nothing large enough to hold the door closed. My breath catches, palms clammy. I rake my hands through my hair, fingers catching on knots.
Banging at the door.
“Help!” the little girl is screaming, gasping, a horrible wet sound forcing its way out of her throat. [[“Help me, please!”->ChThreeLeft]]I can hear her thundering breath in my ear. The rasp of air against blisters. Gurgling. I focus on the sound of her throat turning itself inside out instead of the rumble of Heralds behind us.
She’s halfway through a scream, the sound high pitched in my ear, when a body slams into us.
Their arms close around my waist and the girls as we tumble to the ground. I try to twist but her back slams into the rock-covered ground anyway, blood bursting from her small mouth as she opens it to cry out at the impact. I punch back with an elbow on instinct, connecting with plastic. A grunt. Hands, grabbing at my hair and shoulders.
They slam my head against the dirt.
White spots like stars in my eyes. My teeth burn. The girl is wriggling underneath me, spluttering through a scream. More boots, thundering.
“Little bitch,” someone growls. Male.
[[I won't let them take her.->ChThreeHelpFight]]
[[The fight has all-but drained out of me.->ChThreeHelpSurrender]]I swing my head back, connecting the back of my skull with his nose, if the crunch is anything to go by. The burn vibrates through my head, making my eyes water, but I stumble to my feet through the haze.
A sea of white, looming towards us.
The girl is clutching at my thigh, trembling, tugging, blood a steady drool from the corner of her mouth. Red stains her shirt, dirt caught in her hair. Barefoot.
I shove her away, turning to the Herald who’d tackled us where he’s still clutching helplessly at his face through the mask. The plastic, somehow, is still holding. My knife glints in the dirt, and before he can come at me again, I lunge for it. As he reaches for me, I duck under his clumsy arms and slash his suit clean through.
The moment hangs, endless.
He stumbles away, clutching uselessly at the plastic as it falls open, the dark fabric of his shirt exposed to the chill.
Smiling, blood in my teeth, [[I lunge for him.->ChThreeHelpFight2]]I pant into the dirt, the taste of blood and dirt in my mouth. The Herald grabs a handful of my hair again, fingers scraping against my scalp, and drags me off the little girl. I grab his wrist, clawing at it, but my head is still swimming in a star-filled daze enough that I barely managed to keep my grip.
In the corner of my eye, my knife glints. I reach blindly for it, hair pulling, but the Herald throws me away instead. A tree catches me, splinters cutting into my hands where I hold them out to brace myself.
The sea of white looms down the hill, impending. Plastic glinting in the winter gloom.
“You think you can run from me?” the Herald snaps, stalking towards me. The little girl is frozen, cowering. Blood on her chin.
I shove myself to my knees, hands burning. When he’s close enough, I spit at his feet, blood and bile.
Silence.
We stare each other down, his face thrown in sharp relief by the shadows reflecting on the plastic of his suit, when the hoard of white suits finally reaches us.
Hands grab at my arms and legs, lifting me even as I curse and squirm. The girl is screaming again. The Herald from before looks about ready to tear my head from my body. I smile at him, blood in my teeth, as they [[drag me away.->ChThree8]]My hands grab the edge of the tear I’d made, and even though he punches me in the temple hard enough that I scatter to the ground, I bring the plastic with me, tearing his suit almost clean in half as I fall. He’s screaming, or maybe that’s the little girl, or maybe it’s the wind that has suddenly risen to a roar around us as if not wanting to be left out of the cacophony. My head pounds, the taste of iron on my tongue. I’m shoving myself to my hands and knees when the swarm of white suits finally hits us, boots connecting with my stomach while hands grab at my flailing arms and legs.
The little girl hasn’t stopped screaming.
One of the Heralds grabs me by the hair, pulling hard enough that I scramble onto my knees in front them. The greying clouds reflect off their plastic face. “You stupid child,” the Herald snaps. They swing in and out of focus, blood loud in my ears. “You can’t run from your fate.”
I spit blood on their pristine suit.
Silence.
I can see the Herald from before flailing about, his comrades already turning on him and his torn suit like vultures to a corpse. Behind me, the little girl’s screaming is muffled, by a hand no doubt.
The Herald with a fist in my hair leans down, the tip of a gun dug sharp into my scarred neck. The metal is frigid on my skin.
“Don’t worry,” they say, close enough that I can barely make out a face behind the plastic. Female. Sharp. Cold. “God is a forgiving man.”
[[And she drags me away.->ChThree8]]
Blood trails in the dirt as they drag the two of us away.
The trees loom above us, leafless and barren, as our procession of white moves between them. I can’t make out any faces beneath the plastic, can’t see anything but burning white silhouettes in the edges of my vision, and if I was a believer, I might think it was God haunting me. The little girl’s gurgling has worsened, to the point where her whole neck almost seems to pulse. I can see the blood pumping under her skin.
She whimpers, a dying animal.
A blister bursts, blood and puss oozing down her neck and under her shirt.
I look away.
The winter chill seeps under my raw skin and into my bones, body aching as I stumble through the dirt. They’ve tied rope around my wrists, and it burns against my scarred skin as the Herald holding the other end tugs me along. A leashed dog. I would run but the white surrounds me.
[[I walk instead.->ChThree9]]I shove my back against the door. Her weight on the other side is barely noticeable, but there’s a feral rhythm to her banging, and so I dig my heels into the hay and dirt and brace myself. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel her blood-filled breath on my skin, can almost see the blisters littering her neck. My mind races to my brother, splayed on the ground and crimson, and bile rushes up my throat.
The banging on the door stops as another scream rings out. Wailing. Footsteps.
I back away from the door. Hands trembling. Grunting and coughing, outside.
The door flies open.
Somehow, beyond belief, I manage to dive to the side of the rotten wood as it’s kicked in, a spray of splinters coating the room. Hay hangs in the air.
Two Heralds stand in the doorway, their suits near glowing backlit by the dreary winter sun, faces cast in shadow. Distantly I can hear the gurgling of the little girl, no doubt apprehended with little effort. She was no more than skin and bones. The Heralds leer towards me, hands raised as if to calm a feral animal.
[[I won't give them the satisfaction of taking me.->ChThreeLeftFight]]
[[I don't have the energy to fight back.->ChThreeLeftSurrender]]
I bare my teeth.
“You can’t win this fight,” one of the Heralds says, pulling a serrated hunting knife from their belt. “Now be a good little girl and –”
I make a break for the other end of the barn.
“Fuck!” the Heralds shout almost in unison, the squeak of plastic as they race after me so high pitched it makes my ears ring.
The barn is large, maze-like, abandoned machinery and dried hay bales littering the space. White swims in my periphery as I weave between the rows, aiming for the hole in the wall that had let a feral cat in a few days past when the sleet was at it’s worse. It’s small, jagged-edged, but my skin is already scarred enough.
It comes into view as I round the corner, sunlight glinting in the distance. The pounding of the Heralds grates through my skull. My lungs ache, burning with the crisp air I gulp down, but I force them to fill as I run. Somewhere deep in my stomach, hopes knots.
I almost make it, barely a few lunges away, when a Herald tackles me into the dirt.
The impact of my face against the ground jolts through my body, shockwaves of pain racing down my neck and back. I cry out on impact, skin torn along my chin. The Herald pins me, a burden on my shoulders where they grab for my flailing arms. The other white suit appears in my periphery, grabbing at my legs. They flip me until I’m splayed on my back.
A cloud blocks out the sun. The hole in the wall goes dark.
And the Heralds drag me away as [[blood catches on my chin.->ChThree8]]I stare at them, at the harsh angles of their faces behind the plastic, at the dirt staining their boots brown, at the rifle on one’s hip and the hunting knife on the other. The little girl comes into view in the doorway, slung over a Herald’s shoulder like a piece of meat.
My neck aches from clenching my jaw. I dig my fingers into my palms hard enough that I almost draw blood.
The Heralds take another step towards me, confidence blooming when I don’t back away.
I close my eyes.
They lunge for me.
“Don’t worry,” one of them says into my ear as they press me into the dirt, a knee between my shoulder blades that makes my whole body have to fight against a spasm. “God will remember your sacrifice.”
They tug me onto my knees by the hair, hand locking around my neck to keep my in place. I spit at their pristine suits anyway. Some blood flies free, and its then that I realise I’ve bitten my tongue.
A slap.
The force sends me reeling back into the Herald that has me by the hair, cheek on fire. More blood in my mouth. I pant around it, teeth slick with it.
“Little bitch,” the Herald snaps, hand still outstretched from the follow through. I’m shoved into the dirt again, burning cheek grating against splinters from the broken-down door. They grab my legs, hoisting me into the air between them.
I close my eyes as they drag me [[from the barn.->ChThree8]]We don’t stop for at least half an hour and I can’t help but wonder how far the little girl ran. The trees have thinned, hills flattening to fields that run off the edge of the world like I’m used to. The wheat is greyed and dead through, and there’s no abandoned house on the rise, and my brother is gone.
I stare at the horizon anyway.
A pressure. I turn to see the little girl slumped against my side, her neck so raw and bleeding it looks like the top layer of her skin has been flayed away completely. Her mouth hangs half open, limp, air rasping down her throat. She’s young, barely the age I was when my mother was taken. I wonder, distantly, where her parents are.
{(set: $ChThree9reaction to '“Hey,” I whisper, reaching a hand to nudge at her hair. She’s halfway dead already, a warm corpse at my side, but my heart aches. She barely reaches my chest.') (cycling-link: bind $ChThree9reaction, '“Hey,” I whisper, reaching a hand to nudge at her hair. She’s halfway dead already, a warm corpse at my side, but my heart aches. She barely reaches my chest.', '“We’ll figure something out,” I whisper, and even if the determination stales on my tongue, I don’t regret it.', 'I reach out to ruffle her hair, the ghost of my brother in the action, faking a smile despite the way it tugs. “Chin up, okay? Everything will be alright.”')}
She ignores me, staring at the ground ahead of her.
“Hey. . .” I start, forehead creasing.
She continues to [[stare blankly.->ChThree10]]{(if: $ChThree9reaction is '“Hey,” I whisper, reaching a hand to nudge at her hair. She’s halfway dead already, a warm corpse at my side, but my heart aches. She barely reaches my chest.')[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChThree9reaction is 'I reach out to ruffle her hair, the ghost of my brother in the action, faking a smile despite the way it tugs. “Chin up, okay? Everything will be alright.”')[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
](else-if: $ChThree9reaction is '“We’ll figure something out,” I whisper, and even if the determination stales on my tongue, I don’t regret it.')[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
]}
“Shut up,” one of the Heralds snaps, tugging on my restraints enough that I stumble forward, away from the girl.
By the time I crane my neck back around, she’s brought a knife to her neck.
“Don’t –”
Blood sprays as the she slices her throat open.
I try to lunge for her, but my rope is pulled taught, my body snapping back hard enough that I almost fold in half. My body hits the ground at the same time hers does.
The Heralds stand in a circle around us, chanting words I’ve never heard with closed eyes. I try to drag myself towards her but the dirt just catches under my nails as I’m kept away. Her eyes point at the sky, tears pooling in her small lashes and cutting through the blood that has stained her face. A twitching arm. A spurt of blood. Her legs are twisted underneath her, fragmented, as if her strings were cut.
I want to scream, or cry, or do anything but sit in the dirt and stare as the blood seeps from her body and back into the dirt, but I can’t bring myself to move. No one cries for the little girl’s death except for her.
A Herald grabs the girl ragdoll-like, throwing her over their shoulder as if she didn’t just split her own skin open. My eyes stay glued to the patch of blood where she’d fallen. A crushed weed sprouts back up as her body is taken away, it’s green leaves flecked with crimson.
“May the Devil take her,” a Herald says, loud over the procession. “By God’s light, only the cursed will find their peace.”
A hum through the crowd.
[[Nausea boils in my gut.->ChThree11]]The Heralds drag me along roughly, rope rubbing my skin raw at my wrists. Their pace is faster now, insistent. The little girl’s corpse hangs in front of me over the Herald’s shoulder, her hair a matted mess that’s slowly become caked in her own blood.
I keep my eyes stuck to the ground. Let my mind wander deeper, deeper, until I’m numb to the world around me.
//“Hey,” a voice asks, nudging my shoulder with theirs. “Where’d you go?”
Shaking myself, I turn to see my brother. He’s younger but no less scarred here, hair shorter around his jaw and eyes just as forest green as I remember. The rifle we’d looted from an abandoned hunting lodge sits against the wall beside him, out of sight, to comfort me or him I’m not sure. The day before had been the first time I’d seen Jericho kill a man up close.
His clothes are clean of blood in the memory. I know they weren’t then.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking myself. “Just thinking.”
This had been a few years after losing mum. The two of us, stashed away in a suburban high rise, as if hovering above the rest of the world would keep us safe from it. I’d never known the world to be so expansive, until I’d looked at the view from the top of the building and seen the stretch of buildings and roads and what had once been humanity for as far as the eye could see. A wonder, that we’d had so much and let it slip through our fingers, like dust in a breeze.
[[“I got you something.”->ChThree12]]////Jericho holds out a small pocketknife. It’s aged and clearly seen some use, but the handle is a deep green with a floral pattern engraved into the metal. Faded, but beautiful. I smile for the first time in days.
“It’s so pretty,” I whisper, running a finger along the handle as Jericho gingerly puts it in my hand. “Where did you find it?”
Jericho shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s yours.”
“I don’t know how to use it.”
“Hopefully, you won’t have to,” he says, shifting where he’s sitting against the wall. He rubs at a scar on his hand. “But if things ever get bad, and I’m not there, you use this, okay? You point it at the thing that’s hurting you, and you slash until it’s just you left, understand?”
My throat tightens, stomach twisting. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Jericho grips me by the shoulder, fingers tight enough to make me look at him. “You might not have a choice, Hayden. Life takes our choices away sometimes, but if you do get a choice, don’t be afraid to make it.”//
“Keep a move on.”
I jerk back into myself, shivering against the cold that’s enveloped me. The Herald dragging me along tugs on the rope again, sending me stumbling forward through the field. A wind picks up, sending dead wheat drifting past. The field opens up ahead of us as we crest a small hill, abandoned crop left to [[bleach in the sun. ->ChThree13]]Crosses litter the field. Corpses hanging in the sun, sacrificed to God. There are no wildflowers crawling up their spines this time.
The moment the little girl slit her throat flashes, and I remember that there are many fates worse than a quick death at your own hand.
We shamble through the field. A few of the Heralds peel off from the group, the flow parting around a cross like a stream around a rock. The person pinned twitches, eyes near-glazed over and neck bulbous. My own mouth hangs open, bile caught in my throat. My rope is pulled, feet stumbling. Another twitch. Sun burnt skin.
Most of the sacrifices are fresh, days old at most. One little boy hangs from a cross with a long-since scarred over neck, the virus clearly having ravaged him but not enough to stick, and yet rusted nails still pin him to wood. A deep gash runs down the length of his gut, insides spilling out. I look away before his dark eyes can meet mine.
A scar is as much a damnation as a being infected.
[["You sick assholes!"]]
[["How could you do this?"]]
[["And you wonder why the world collapsed."]]{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
My blood boils as I stare at the boy, and the blood that’s caked around the nail’s in his palms and ankles, and the field of people strung up to bleed and choke away in the winter sun. I try to swallow the heat, to force it back down into my stomach to fester, but I’m tired of feeling ill in the core.
“You sick assholes!” I shout, straining back against my ropes enough that the Herald holding my leash stumbles. “You fucking freaks!”
“Watch your tongue,” a Herald snaps, looming behind me. “This is a place of God and none of your foul language will be tolerated.”
I scoff, deranged laughing spilling over. “A place of God? You’re murdering people.”
“These people have sinned and let their greed become them. It is our duty to bring them before God so that he may – ”
“Shut up!” I scream, lunging at them, but my leash holds me back. Feet skidding in the dirt for purchase. “If anyone’s a sinner here, it’s you.”
The slap comes too fast for me to turn away.
My cheek is on fire. I stumble backwards into the dirt, hands sinking into mud from the recent downpour. Laughter muffled by plastic echoes above me. I blink away stars, the crosses strewn across the field like beige silhouettes in the sun.
“You’ll share their fate soon enough, girl,” the Herald spits down into my face, venomous, “and God will reward me for your blood.”
My leash is pulled taut, and the Herald with their hand still raised turns away in a huff as I’m dragged along [[by their comrade.->ChThree14]]
{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
I stare at the boy as we slowly make our way past, long enough for his head to loll towards the sound of our feet in the mud. His lips are cracked deep enough to bleed, skin bluish from the frigid weather or blood loss or both, I’m not sure. The small movement makes his body jerk, and a fresh bout of blood oozes from the gash in his stomach.
I can’t look away from his eyes. The brown of a tree in the height of summer.
“How could you do this?” I whisper, to the Heralds around me, to the air, to the world that feels like a noose around my neck. “How can you just leave him there to die?”
The Herald holding my leash looks back over their shoulder, their voice carrying in the wind. “It is our duty to bring those who have sinned before God, so that He may judge them and aid in their passing.”
I swallow, tripping on a branch. “He’s not even sick though! His neck has healed, he’s getting better.”
“No one escapes God’s plague.”
“But –”
The Herald spins, grabbing me around the throat so fast I can’t help but choke out a gasp around their fingers. “Quiet, girl. No one questions our righteous path.”
My eyes begin to bulge, hands scratching at their wrist, and for a moment I think they might strangle me there, in the killing field. My scarred lungs burn, ache, scream.
They throw me into the mud just as the burn starts racing up my throat.
I gasp in the winter air, lungs too small and hands hovering over my neck and the marks that no doubt stain it. Hands grab me and drag me to my feet before [[the procession continues.->ChThree14]]{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
I watch the boy shift and groan softly, over the shifting of the wheat and quiet murmur of the Heralds around me. He’s young, around the same age of the little girl who hangs lifeless a few Heralds ahead. Neck silver and rough but healed. Two steps away from ruined, but the blisters have faded to slight indents on his skin. A reflection of my own.
The laugh escapes me before I can stop myself.
“Quiet,” the Herald behind me snaps. Shoves at my shoulder enough to make me almost trip in the mud.
I can’t stop the laughter from spilling out. “And you wonder why the world collapsed.”
“Excuse me?” they snap, grabbing me by the shoulder and spinning me to face them. My rope goes taut, body on the verge of being torn in two, but the procession stills around us as I stare at a person hidden behind rain-soaked plastic.
“You nail innocent people to stakes in fields, and carve open children for having scars on their necks, and you wonder why the world fell apart.”
They crowd towards me, breath fogging up their plastic face. “God brought His plague upon the world to punish humanity for their greed, and its our calling as Heralds to bring those sinners among us to justice.”
“It wasn’t God that made people sick. It wasn’t God that made insane zealots like you roam around the world slaughtering people for some kind of sick high. It was humanity that found the virus, and it was humanity that killed the planet, and it was you and your friends that decided to be murders. Don’t delude yourself that this was all God’s grand plan or some higher calling. You’re just a fucked up asshole taking advantage of your own fucking mistake.”
I spit on their face.
The promise of violence hangs thick in the air, silence so heavy I can hear my own pulse in my ear.
My rope pulls, burning at my wrists.
The slap comes anyway.
My cheek is on fire, body stumbling away from both the force of the blow and my leash tugging me forward. The Herald fumes above me, my spit blocking their view. I bare my teeth from the mud anyway, blood in my teeth. I can feel their glare through the plastic as [[I’m dragged forward and away.->ChThree14]]They take me to an abandoned church.
I’ve never been inside one, or at least never cared enough for the haunting feeling that lingers in them despite the years of vacancy to ever willingly want to. Jericho had warned me away, something about ghosts that hang in the pews and the threat of white suits in the rafters.
Our procession marches closer, two Heralds flanking me like a caged animal.
I wish, now more than ever, that my brother was here.
White paint is peeling on the exterior, mould and rot having set in long ago, although it still glows a little in the midday haze. A light fog clings to the field nearby, insistent, the remnants of it looking to almost seep through the ajar door of the church. One spire-like part of the church has all-but caved in on itself, cross broken at the tip and hanging limp in the breeze as the rest of it sinks through a hole in the brown shingles.
A false god. A place of worship defiled, by man or nature I’m not sure. I don’t think it matters.
I don’t think anything really matters, anymore.
They shove me inside. Two more Heralds.
Three more people.
A man and a woman, cowering like wounded animals in the corner. Shivering. One neck blooming red, the other scarred silver. Their clothes are tattered, wrists as raw as my own where rope binds them. The woman looks at me as I stumble inside; I see nothing but empty resignation.
There’s a corpse in the [[middle of the church.->ChThree15]]
His body is splayed between two dusted pews, brains entirely blown out and skull barely recognisable as human in the aftermath. I didn’t think Heralds killed their victims so carelessly. I can’t tell if he was infected or not.
Wailing.
The still-living man in the corner is scrambling on the wooden floor, held back by a Herald. I stare, confused, until the little girl’s body is dumped on the other corpse. The rich brown of both their hairs matches, even when caked in blood and dirt. They almost twine together, fallen fractured on top of each other, her small face pressed into the back of his neck.
“Have we learnt our lesson now? You cannot escape your fate,” a voice says. A Herald, standing by the alter. There’s a machete on their hip. The other man hasn’t stopped screaming. “What a mess.”
I fall to my knees. My veins pump numbly through my body, loud enough that all I can hear is the pounding in my ear. I feel my hands start to shake, feel a tear slip free despite myself. Years of taking the pieces of myself and gluing them back together, mismatched and patchwork but whole, crumbling in an instant. Every imperfection suddenly aches. I don’t know what to do with the grief and anger and hopelessness pulsing through me. I don’t know how to save the weeping man, or the woman that claws at his shoulder uselessly. I don’t know how to save myself from the doom that sits heavy in my gut.
Feet, in front of me. I don’t know when the Herald got so close.
The bite of metal on my skin makes me flinch. A machete is held under my chin, my gaze lifting to the Herald before me as another tear slips free.
“Don’t despair,” they say, and away from the fog and rain outside, I can make out a woman behind the plastic. Eyes like ice. “Your atonement awaits.”
[["Go to hell."]]
[["I don't want any of your damned atonement."]]
[[Stay quiet, swallowing down your fear.]]
{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
“Go to hell,” I spit, careful not to tear my skin on the edge of her blade.
She laughs softly to herself; the sound vibrates through the church, ghostly. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, child.”
The sound of the man’s wailing dies down. His choking sobs linger though, and I stare blankly at the back wall of the church and the makeshift cross that’s been nailed to it to try and drown him out. The air reeks of death.
“I know you.” The Herald. When I look back at her, she’s examining me with her head cocked. Predatory. I’m about to frown, to say that I couldn’t possibly know a Herald, when she says, “You were with the dark-haired sinner.”
I freeze, blood running cold.
Jericho.
“Resilient, that one,” she says, pulling her machete back to run her thumb along the shimmering metal. “A shame, really, but a sick dog needs to be put down.”
I stare at her and see Jericho’s face in the reflection of her plastic face.
The blood choking up his lungs, the green of his eyes in the darkness of the café. The way he’d looked at me then, as he’d always looked at me, as if he wouldn’t have minded if the world ended all over again so long as I was okay. I squeeze my eyes shut against the ghost of his face, against my own face, and it feels as though my chest has caved in.
Some small, childish part of me had thought he may have escaped, may have healed, that in this one thing the God that has brought me nothing but pain and suffering may have found it in His heart to be kind.
I know the woman is telling the truth.
White noise. Tears, so hot on my cheeks they burn.
I know because I’d never even believed in my [[own naïve hope.->ChThreeCHOICE]]
{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
“I don’t want any of your damned atonement,” I say, something too sharp to be a smile tearing my face.
She holds my gaze a moment, before smirking herself. No humour. “Unfortunately, you’re in no place to be bargaining, girl.”
The sound of the man’s wailing dies down. His choking sobs linger though, and I stare blankly at the back wall of the church and the makeshift cross that’s been nailed to it to try and drown him out. The air reeks of death.
“I know you.” The Herald. When I look back at her, she’s examining me with her head cocked. Predatory. I’m about to frown, to say that I couldn’t possibly know a Herald, when she says, “You were with the dark-haired sinner.”
I freeze, blood running cold.
Jericho.
“Resilient, that one,” she says, pulling her machete back to run her thumb along the shimmering metal. “A shame, really, but a sick dog needs to be put down.”
I stare at her and see Jericho’s face in the reflection of her plastic face.
The blood choking up his lungs, the green of his eyes in the darkness of the café. The way he’d looked at me then, as he’d always looked at me, as if he wouldn’t have minded if the world ended all over again so long as I was okay. I squeeze my eyes shut against the ghost of his face, against my own face, and it feels as though my chest has caved in.
Some small, childish part of me had thought he may have escaped, may have healed, that in this one thing the God that has brought me nothing but pain and suffering may have found it in His heart to be kind.
I know the woman is telling the truth.
White noise. Tears, so hot on my cheeks they burn.
I know because I’d never even believed in my [[own naïve hope.->ChThreeCHOICE]]
{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
Any retort I may have had dies on my tongue, the idea of fighting stale in my mouth. I swallow down my fear instead, the lump so large I almost choke on it.
She watches me, before offering a smile devoid of warmth. “It will all be over soon, child. I promise.”
The sound of the man’s wailing dies down. His choking sobs linger though, and I stare blankly at the back wall of the church and the makeshift cross that’s been nailed to it to try and drown him out. The air reeks of death.
“I know you.” The Herald. When I look back at her, she’s examining me with her head cocked. Predatory. I’m about to frown, to say that I couldn’t possibly know a Herald, when she says, “You were with the dark-haired sinner.”
I freeze, blood running cold.
Jericho.
“Resilient, that one,” she says, pulling her machete back to run her thumb along the shimmering metal. “A shame, really, but a sick dog needs to be put down.”
I stare at her and see Jericho’s face in the reflection of her plastic face.
The blood choking up his lungs, the green of his eyes in the darkness of the café. The way he’d looked at me then, as he’d always looked at me, as if he wouldn’t have minded if the world ended all over again so long as I was okay. I squeeze my eyes shut against the ghost of his face, against my own face, and it feels as though my chest has caved in.
Some small, childish part of me had thought he may have escaped, may have healed, that in this one thing the God that has brought me nothing but pain and suffering may have found it in His heart to be kind.
I know the woman is telling the truth.
White noise. Tears, so hot on my cheeks they burn.
I know because I’d never even believed in my [[own naïve hope.->ChThreeCHOICE]]
A breath.
I open my eyes and look at Herald before me. My brother’s face lingers within my own. I can feel his hand on my shoulder, can feel myself slowly shaking apart at the seams under his haunting comfort.
It would be so simple, to fractured myself and attack her. To give my pounding, aching blood the violence it craves. The presence of the two innocent people pulses behind me though, burns in my periphery. I was born from violence, my mother attacked and raped after the end of the world. I have lived in it, have dealt it, have seen the consequences of it.
The dead people stuffed in a pew a few metres away. My brother, sacrificed to a God he never believed in. My own, thread-bare composure.
Another breath.
[[Attack her.->VENGEANCE]]
[[Pull myself together.->MERCY]]
{(set: $end to 'Vengeance')}
I lunge for her.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a weapon. It doesn’t matter that my wrists are still bound by rope tight enough my skin has started to bleed. It doesn’t matter that there are four Heralds in the room, or that I’m nothing more than a child to them, or that death is more likely than any other kind of success.
I see my brother’s blood in her eyes.
I think I’m screaming when I knock her to the ground.
Her suit where it appeared thick is empty, underneath, air rolling under my weight as I wrestle with her. She smells of chemicals, unnatural, man-made. I see the edge of her smile through the plastic, this side of feral.
Sunlight glinting on metal. Her machete slices through the air in front of me, and I twist away to avoid being carved open like the little boy I’d seen hanging in the field. Her blade connects with the wood floor, sinking a few centimetres deep. She swears, muffled by plastic. I kick out at her head as she struggles to pull it free, a muddied boot print on her face as she reels back.
One of the other Heralds tackles me.
His suit is just as bulky, awkward, but his frame dwarves mine enough that the two of us are sent spilling over the pews and deeper into the church. Wood bursts under his weight, splinters piercing my exposed arms and drawing blood where I land beside him.
I don’t feel it.
My body is detached, weaponised.
The pound of blood in my ears. The clench of my jaw. [[Every muscle, taut.->Vengeance1]]
{(set: $end to 'Mercy')}
And another breath.
And another.
Until I’m not quite calm, not by a long way, but my blood has lessened from a boil to a steady heat and I can unclench my jaw from the painful lock it had fallen into. I lower myself as the tension bleeds from me, forehead pressed to the floor as tremors run through my body.
Above me, the woman laughs. “Not so similar after all, then.”
[["You don't know anything about me."]]
[["Would you rather me kill you?"]]
[["Violence isn't the answer to every problem."]]
The Herald swings at me with his fist and I dodge, falling behind the fractured pew as his follow through sends him swaying to the side. A piece of wood points up to the ceiling, serrated, and I quickly race my bindings back and forth against it while the Herald rights himself. One strand pulls free, two, three –
He kicks me in the gut.
The force of it sends me slamming back into the wall, lungs emptied, and the bones in my wrist extend almost to breaking where the rope is caught on the broken wood until finally, miraculously, it snaps.
The sound ricochets through the church.
I scramble to my feet. Flex my hands.
Freedom.
The Herald comes for me at the same time the woman does. I volt over a pew, the rush of her machete pulling at the hairs on the back of my neck. Screaming, my own or not I don’t know. Someone swears behind me. The world is on fire.
Another Herald rushes towards me now, gun drawn. I don’t know where the fourth Herald went. I don’t care.
“You can’t win this fight,” the woman shouts, even as she slashes out at my head with her machete. A killing blow. I throw myself to the floor.
The machete carves through the suit of one of her companions instead of my spine.
The Herald stumbles backwards, hands flailing at the large flap his suit has become. Then, screaming, as the white of his [[undershirt turns crimson.->Vengeance2]]
“Fuck,” the woman curses. I scramble away, as the blood slowly pours from the man’s chest, as the screaming shakes the church walls and sends dust falling from the ceiling. Two crows rattle through the rafters, desperate for an escape from the commotion. Their black wings shine against the rotting white ceiling.
The woman doesn’t pay her comrade another mind, leaving him to tumble to the floor in a pool of his own God-drawn blood.
“Look what you made me do,” she chides, rounding on me.
{(set: $Vengeance2react to "I spit blood at her feet.") (cycling-link: bind $Vengeance2react, "I spit blood at her feet.", "I scoff, baring bloodied teeth.", "I frown, jaw clenched so tight it's almost painful.")}
Movement, in my periphery. My mind tugs me towards it before I can stop myself. In the seconds it takes for me to register that the wailing man from earlier is stabbing a Herald with a knife he apparently pulled from thin air while the infected woman races for the church door, there’s a machete slicing towards me.
I twist lamely to the side, hands raised.
It tears straight through my shoulder.
I scream as I fall, blood bursting from the wound. She follows me down, swinging again. I manage to catch her in the side of the head with my good arm, the force of my fist connecting with her skull sending her aim wide and into the pew beside me. I grab at her wrist despite the fact that my whole left side is on fire, that my shoulder is trembling out of control, that there’s blood quickly coating my entire arm.
I hold her at bay, the edge of her blade hovering menacingly between my eyes. Her legs dig painfully into my hips, knees jerking to break my focus. I spit at her, lock my arms against the floor. She frees one of her hands from the machete handle to dig into the wound at my shoulder, and my vision turns white, a scream thundering up my throat as I feel her fingers dig into and [[under my skin.->Vengeance3]]
{(if: $Vengeance2react is "I frown, jaw clenched so tight it's almost painful.")[
(set: $quiet to it + 1)
](else-if: $Vengeance2react is "I scoff, baring bloodied teeth.")[
(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)
](else-if: $Vengeance2react is "I spit blood at her feet.")[
(set: $bold to it + 1)
]}
Tears pour down my cheeks. I can hardly see her, the white of her suit blurring my vision of her face entirely. It would be so easy to let go, to give into the pain and let this church be my demise.
*If things ever get bad, and I’m not there, you use this, okay? You point it at the thing that’s hurting you, and you slash until it’s just you left, understand?*
I scream. Louder than I ever have. The crows fly manically above us, pitch black in my blurred vision. I see Jericho’s reflection in the plastic of the woman’s suit.
A gunshot rips through the church.
The woman’s hand holds firm, but she snaps her head up to the side. My left arm is twitching uselessly, pain so overwhelming bile is stuck in the back of my throat. The clattering of a gun to the floor, distantly.
I can’t see anything but pews and blood and the woman.
I swing my injured arm up, up, until it connects with her neck through the suit.
Her head swing back around even as she loses balance, her hands losing grip on the machete. I follow her momentum, bloodied arm shoved hard in the side of her neck while the other holds firm to the wrist that’s holding her weapon. I kick out at her once she’s fallen from on top of me, toe of my boot connecting with her crotch. Her body folds, face contorted beneath the plastic. I pull the hand with the machete closer, until my already-bloodied teeth latch around her skin and bite.
Her turn to scream.
Her good hand reaches blindly for my face, but too late. The machete falls to the floor between us, the sound of metal on wood deafening despite the crush of my pulse in my ear.
[[I grab for it.->Vengeance4]]
My trembling hand stills.
Time freezes as I heave myself to my knees, machete drenched in my own blood gripped between my hands. My vision clears; the woman’s eyes are blown wide beneath the plastic, skin pallid.
I don’t know if she was the one to pin up all those people outside. I don’t know if she was the one to pin up Jericho.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
I bring the machete down through the plastic over her face.
It splits as easily as flesh, the serrated blade tearing through the thin plastic with ease. Cold air rushes into her suit, the gasp of her breath high pitched as the tainted air is sucked into her lungs, but it’s cut off as I wedge the blade between her eyes. Blood sprays over her face, icy blue eyes suddenly stark against the crimson that surrounds them. Her body jerks as I tug the machete free.
I strike again.
And again.
And again.
I don’t know if the screaming is mine, or hers. I don’t know whose blood coats my arms, my face, my chest. With every slam of the machete into her face, her body jerks to meet mine, the wood beneath us thick with gore. At some point my injured arm buckles and I lose grip of the blade, sending it flying down the aisle.
My hands hover over her face.
Flesh so mutilated she barely resembles a person anymore.
Blood drips from my fingertips.
My body trembles atop hers, face slack as I stare at her.
I feel hollowed out, empty, as if all the blood has drained from me and left me a husk of who I used to be. There’s a corpse tucked between my thighs, more blood and bone then person, and yet I feel so detached from myself I may as well be [[dead along with her.->Vengeance5]]The cross nailed to the far wall hangs, cloaked in shadow as a cloud passes overhead, and I stare at it. I blink, and something catches in my eye; when I go to wipe it away, I just smear my face with blood. My fingers hover before me. Crimson-stained. Iron, on my tongue.
Standing aches. I want so badly to lie down beside the mutilated corpse beneath me and drown in the pool of our blood. It sticks to my boots, to my pants, sticks and comes away only to drool down the fabric as I stumble to my feet. The white of her suit has begun to absorb the blood, white turning a deep crimson. The inherent violence of life, the way it always tries to consume that which it’s shed.
Turning, I survey the carnage. The infected woman is dead in the doorway, body half drenched in the winter sun where it lies mangled in the dirt. The other three Heralds lie in their own pools of crimson, suits torn or blown open. The wailing man is the only living thing left.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, eyes flicking from me to the corpses of the man and the little girl, still strewn in the pew. There’s a gun in his hand.
I turn back to the cross on the wall as he fires.
The thud of his body barely reaches my ears.
A church full of corpses, killed not by an ancient virus, or a doomed world, but by each other. The sick irony of it all, that at the end of the world, we are still our own worst enemy.
I pry the gun from the man’s stiffening fingers once he stops twitching, before hooking the strap over my shoulder and stumbling through the back door of the church. The hinge is broken, wood rotten enough that a soft push sends it crumbling into the dirt.
A light rain soaks the field, almost-dried mud now liquid again as I shuffle forward. Water mixes with the blood coating me, sending crimson droplets falling from my chin and fingers and the ends of my hair. My arm hangs useless at my side, blood-soaked. I tear a strip from my ruined shirt and shove it against the wound, the white spots that burst in my vision almost driving me to a knee. A steadying breath, and then I take one limping step after another. [[Clouds brew on the horizon.->Vengeance6]]
I leave a trail of blood through the field, a hazy line from the desolate church to the corpse I’ve become, like a forever-festering wound that never closes. No longer a person; just <span class='red'>[[crimson, crimson, crimson.->VengeanceEpilogue]]</span>{(set: $bold to it + 1)}
“You don’t know anything about me,” I snap, forcing myself to breathe around the anxiety that’s racing through my bones. Losing my composure when I’d fought so hard to keep it almost causes me physical pain, but I manage.
The woman crouches before me, machete still in hand. “I think I know a great deal. I think you and your brother were more similar than you realise. A shame to lose such strong-willed individuals, but it must be done.”
“As if we would’ve ever joined you,” I scoff, the remnants of my temper still yet to fray completely. “You’re a bunch of psychopathic murderers.”
“We’re in a church, girl,” she snaps. “Watch your tone.”
“Fuck you.”
I half expect her to kick my teeth in, or slap me, or react in any way other than to stand to her full height and walk from the church. My blood still sings, softly, for a fight. I bite the inside of my mouth to let the pain distract me as the woman storms outside.
[["Have them prepared for atonement.”->Mercy1]]{(set: $sarcastic to it + 1)}
“Would you rather me kill you,” I mock, baring my teeth in something too sharp to be a smile. “I’m sure it can be arranged.”
Another laugh, haunting. “I’d like to see you try, little girl. Even your brother was no match for me.”
A twitch. I catch my lip between my teeth, drawing blood, to hold myself steady.
“No smart comment?”
The woman crouches before me, hand reaching out to run the edge of her machete lightly along my jawline. I turn my face up, jaw clenched enough that it makes my head ache. The white of her suit reflects in the blade, near glowing in my periphery.
“I didn’t think so.”
I keep my eyes on the far wall, where a mimic of the crosses scattered through the field outside sits pinned to the rotting wood. A small figurine of a near-naked man hangs from it, long hair in his face and ribs sharp enough they almost pierce his skin. It’s beautiful, in a nauseating way.
Distantly, the woman is speaking again. “Have them prepared for atonement.”
I don’t turn to [[watch her leave.->Mercy1]]{(set: $quiet to it + 1)}
I stay folded over myself, an insignificant speck in the dust-covered church, but my heart twists at her words anyway. “Violence isn’t the answer to every problem,” I mutter, before the sane part of my mind can stop me.
“Pardon?”
Her tone is mocking, sharp, but I push myself to my knees to look her in the eye anyway. “Violence. You and my brother and everyone else in the world seem to act as though it’s the only solution given to you, but it’s not. Violence is never the only option.”
She watches me for a moment. My glaze flicks from the ice blue of her eyes to the broken pews left scattered across the church interior and back again, unsure where to settle in the silence that hangs in the air and so picking nowhere. The gloomy midday sun catches on the woman’s machete where she holds it at her side, reflections painting the church gold.
“You were born after God’s plague, correct?” she asks, head cocked as she stares at me.
I swallow around the lump in my throat. Nod.
“Then you, of all people, should know that violence can be just as cleansing as it can be brutal. It’s only through this holy wrath that we may atone for our sins.”
My stomach knots. I feel as though I might be sick.
The woman moves off towards the church entry, calling back over her shoulder, “Don’t worry, child. You’ll find yours soon enough.”
I’m numb to anything else she says as she leaves [[into the field.->Mercy1]]
The quiet of the church is deafening in the moments that follow.
There are no insects, no birdsong, just the rustle of dead wheat in the breeze and the shifting of plastic as the three Heralds left begin pulling inch-long nails from a decaying box. The metal of the nails is reddish, stained. Well-worn. Blood or rust, I don’t want to know.
The vacant-eyed woman with the swollen neck is taken first.
She barely reacts to being dragged from the church; eyes glazed over as she’s pulled into the sun. The distant sound of hammering and tearing flesh. She screams, then. I close my eyes against the sound, but it rings in my ears anyway.
“What’s your name?”
I turn to see the wailing man huddled beside me. His eyes are red-rimmed and tired but kind, beneath the gloom. A few stray flecks of blood on his cheeks.
“Hayden.”
I don’t know whether he’s trying to smile for his sake or mine. “Noah.”
The corpses in the pews burn in the back of my head, the image of the little girl slicing her own throat open stuck low in my stomach. Noah is older, older than Jericho even, a few grey streaks at his temples and a rough beard along his jaw. I remember the way he’d screamed when the Heralds had [[thrown her corpse to the floor.->Mercy2]]
I falter. “You locked me away.”
“For your own safety!” It barely takes him four strides to reach me, grabbing at my wrist. “Get down before you hurt yourself and just listen to me for once in your life.”
“I’ll listen if you let me out of this room,” I shout, determined not to let his looming frame scare me. “Why have you shut me away! I want to see mum.”
“No.”
“But –”
Jericho takes me by the shoulders, all-but lifting me down to the floor. “I said no. You’re going to stay in here until I tell you it’s safe. Okay?”
The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. My mother wheezes again downstairs.
“Hayden?”
“Okay.”
He lets me go, picks the bedside table up and leaves with it. I sink to the floor, gathering my half-forgotten blanket around my shoulders, as he closes the door [[behind him->Prologue2]]. “We need to get out of here,” he whispers. The Herald across the room shifts as they fiddle with their gun and Noah points to them. “I’ve tried cutting the rope but it’s no use. There’s a lighter in the box though.”
“A lighter?”
Noah stares at me, before sighing. “It makes flame. If we get it, we can burn through our bindings and get out of here while they’re distracted with – while they’re distracted.”
Another scream outside. Two nails pinned.
“I’ll distract him, bring him over.” He looks me up and down. “Do you think you can help me take him out?”
I look into his kind eyes, so unlike the forest green I’m used to looking back into, but a woman is dying outside, and the world isn’t as empty of humanity as I once thought it was, and the sudden hope of it all sends stars spinning in my eyes.
I want to survive.
“I can help.”
[[“Okay.”->Mercy3]]
Noah begins wailing again in the next instant, clawing at the wall until he’s on his feet. The Herald looks once, twice, and rises with him, box discarded in the pew behind him as he stalks towards Noah.
“Sit down,” the Herald snaps, voice distorted through plastic. I cower away as he strides past, staying close to the floor until I have a clear path to the box. Noah is still crying; the Herald repeats his order, hands white-knuckled around his gun.
“I want to see them,” Noah pleads.
The gun rises. “Last warning, jerk. Sit down.”
“Or what?” Noah spits, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You’ll shoot me? Do it, I’m begging you.”
I crawl between the pews, the anticipation of the box sitting a few metres away making my hairs stand on end. Nausea, rolling in my stomach. The metal of the box is the same reddish tone as the nails and my fingers tremble.
Across the room, the Herald is jamming the gun into Noah’s gut. He doubles over, gasping. I clasp my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out with him, desperately pushing myself along the floor to the box. A metre. Within arms reach.
“Don’t tempt me,” the Herald is growling.
I drag the box down to the floor with me, hidden in the shadow of a pew. Gasping echoes from the front of the church. [[The thud of a punch.->Mercy4]]
The lighter. I press the button a few times, but my hands are trembling too much. Breathe. Breathe.
Footsteps. The door of the church being pulled open.
I press it again. Flames. My palm burns as I angle the flame towards the rope binding my wrists. One strand breaks, then two, then three.
“Enough.” The woman from earlier. “Bring that one next. Where the fuck is the girl?”
The whole rope ignites.
I claw at my arms, at the rope, at the flames, until it finally snaps and slips from my red-raw wrists onto the floor. It seems to almost fizzle as it hits the ground, but then a stray piece of rotting wood catches the edge of one spark, and that’s alight too.
Footsteps. Smoke. The silhouette of a Herald looms at the end of the aisle, white suit stark against the wood pews. Flames burst between us.
I don’t stop to think. I grab for the lighter and launch to my feet. Noah is slumped over by the entry, gun held to his temple, a smile on his face even as blood drips from his mouth. The pew beside me is fully engulfed now, a wall of shimmering orange between me and the Heralds.
Through the haze, the woman glares at me. Her eyes almost glow in the burn of the fire, blue stark against the quickly darkening flames. A piece of pew sits, smoking, at my feet. I’m throwing it towards the church entrance before I can stop myself.
It collides with the Herald holding Noah. The floor at his feed ignites.
[[Screaming.->Mercy5]]
Across the room, Noah nods at me. Tears stain his cheeks. I think of the bodies, now burning in the pews.
Noah yells as he throws himself at the Herald, carless of the gun loaded at his side. A gunshot goes off, tearing a whole in the far wall. My heart twists, aches, burns. Noah makes another lunge at the Herald through the fire, and the gun goes off straight into his chest. His body slams into the floor, fractured, blood spraying and burning up mid-air at the intense heat.
I run.
The back door concaves under my boot. Smoke billows through holes in the church ceiling, the desecrated spire already alight. I put the lighter against the nearest wheat stalk; it ignites within seconds.
I run.
The flames race along beside me, wheat glowing red-orange in the midday glare as the fire catches. A breeze slams into me, sending sparks flying. The distant sound of the roof, caving in. More screams.
I twist, turning to look behind me. The silhouette of the church is backlit by flames, orange filling the windows and shattered stained glass. The field is wholly alight, crop well and truly dead. Smoke fills the air, blooms from the church and the field and the crucifixes that have now gone up in flames.
The violence is second-hand, natural, the purifying fire to cleanse all evil. My lungs choke on it, scars burning against the smoke. Tears sting at my eyes, for Noah and the infected woman and the little girl, nothing but ash and bone. I wipe at my cheeks, and my hands come away [[streaked with black.->Mercy6]]
The church glows in my periphery as I run from the flames. A beacon, a warning. Do not return.
<span class='red'>[[The smoke stretches for miles.->MercyEpilogue]]</span>The fields stretch for miles.
I limp through dirt and dried leaves, arm twisted against my chest in a poor excuse for a sling. The sun lingers behind me, uncertain, hidden behind clouds enough that my shadow stretches elongated before me.
Crosses.
Trailing behind me, ahead of me. Corpses at every turn.
I look up into the face of the next one I pass. A woman, crows picking at her skin.
[[I keep limping.->VengeanceEp1]]
The fields stretch for miles.
I wander through the dirt and dried leaves, lungs twitching around the remnants of the smoke as I slow my pace. The sun lingers behind me, uncertain, hidden behind clouds enough that my shadow stretches elongated before me.
Crosses.
Trailing behind me, ahead of me. Corpses at every turn.
I look up into the face of the next one I pass. A woman, crows picking at her skin.
<span class='mercy'>[[I keep walking.->MercyEp1]]</span>
[[And limping.->VengeanceEp2]]<span class='mercy'>[[And walking.->MercyEp2]]</span>It’s raining when I find him.
The field is small, unimportant, trees lining it on all sides. In the distance I can almost imagine the town we’d passed through, the rusting tin rooves and abandoned stores. Birds dart by and even though the field is dried and dead for the winter, I can imagine the wildflowers that will bloom in the spring.
I glance up at the cross as I move past, empty of any hope at this point. The church is days behind me. The blood and gore no longer haunt my every waking moment.
A mess of dark hair.
A torn grey shirt.
The scar on his cheek, from a feral dog years ago.
My knees give out.
The dirt is rough, stone-covered here, and though it cuts into my skin, I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything, really, or maybe I’m feeling too much. My heart aches in my chest, my pulse pounding in my ears. I twist myself down until my head is pressed against the base of the wood.
Blood. Caked in the mud, in the dead grass. Running down the wood as the rain pelts us, slipping through my fingers as I dig them into the mud. Streams of dirt, and blood, and tears.
We sit like that, the two of us, rain-soaked, blood-soaked. His presence is so cold.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, voice breaking around the words. “I tried. I tried so hard, but it hurts. It hurts so much. Make it stop, *please*.”
[[My brother's corpse is my only answer.->VengeanceEp3]]
It’s raining when I find him.
The field is small, unimportant, trees lining it on all sides. In the distance I can almost imagine the town we’d passed through, the rusting tin rooves and abandoned stores. Birds dart by and even though the field is dried and dead for the winter, I can imagine the wildflowers that will bloom in the spring.
I glance up at the cross as I move past, empty of any hope at this point. The church is days behind me. The flames and smoke no longer haunt my every waking moment.
A mess of dark hair.
A torn grey shirt.
The scar on his cheek, from a feral dog years ago.
My knees give out.
The dirt is rough, stone-covered here, and though it cuts into my skin, I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything, really, or maybe I’m feeling too much. My heart aches in my chest, my pulse pounding in my ears. I twist myself down until my head is pressed against the base of the wood.
Blood. Caked in the mud, in the dead grass. Running down the wood as the rain pelts us, slipping through my fingers as I dig them into the mud. Streams of dirt, and blood, and tears.
We sit like that, the two of us, rain-soaked, blood-soaked. His presence is so cold.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, voice breaking around the words. “I tried, but I failed, and I don't know what to do. Please tell me what to do. *Please.*”
<span class='mercy'>[[My brother's corpse is my only answer.->MercyEp3]]</span>
It takes me two days to leave Jericho behind.
The nearby town sings, beckons, but I follow the trail of crosses instead, their silhouettes long and misshapen in the early morning sun. My wounds still ache, still pulse, but I bite down on the pain. The promise of a white suit, somewhere along the trail, keeps me limping forward. The image of blood, bursting against their plastic faces.
Clouds hang low in the sky. Rain threatens on the horizon.
[[No more hiding.->VengeanceEnd]]
It takes me two days to leave Jericho behind.
The woods that line the field sing, beckon, but I set my sights higher. Keeping to the side of the road, I set my sights on the distant glint of glass on the horizon, abandoned pillars stabbing into the sky. The city I was born in but have never returned to. The promise of humanity, clinging to the remains of our society, away from the sprawling, cross-riddled fields.
Sunlight peaks through the clouds. Pink and gold rays catch in my eyes.
<span class='mercy'>[[No more hiding.->MercyEnd]]</span>
<img src="VengeanceEnd.png">
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