What the ever-loving fuck?
I check on the zombie, not missing the bruises and track marks that Gussy must have sustained when she was still alive. Bree mutters something about not having gotten attacked before, and something about a different viral strain. My mind’s not really taking in any of it; I’ll have to file it away for later. I’ve about fucking had it with this, but it gets worse when Martinez tries to get close to the corpse, and Bree goes off in his face.
“Don’t you fucking touch her!” It takes her almost twenty seconds to get a grip on herself, and she insists on burning the corpse. She’s still talking about it as if it is the woman rather than a zombie. I’m not correcting her. If I spend another second standing there like the useless fuck I am, I’ll go as insane as I’m starting to suspect my dear wife is at the moment.
Thankfully, there is shit aplenty to do. Like securing the perimeter, setting up a guard, torching the zombie—and clearing out the bunker underneath the heavy, reinforced trapdoor next to the burnt ground. Bree insists on coming with us. I don’t protest, but make sure that Zilinsky, Romanoff, and I clear all the rooms before she can get close to any possible danger.
There are no bodies but signs aplenty of the battle that must have gone on down here when whatever the fuck happened that—presumably—let Bree get away. Nothing is in good shape—even before the apocalypse happened it must have been abandoned for decades—and that actually eases my mind somewhat. The few things I can piece together from what she told me—and what we know—almost made me expect to find a high-tech facility here, and more than one familiar face. But while a place of nightmares, it’s not the place of my worst nightmare. It’s creepy as fuck for sure, and I know what happened here will haunt Bree for a long, long time—but it could have been so much worse. I know that I still don’t know everything, but it could have been so much worse.
Or so I think, until I see that video.
I don’t need her vehement insistence to know that it’s staged—if I wanted to set a trap, that’s exactly what I would have done—but I’ve seen enough.
The fact that Bree is about to lose it right there draws me up short. Oh, I get the anger—and the frustration; God knows I still have enough of that inside of me. But it’s her rage, and how it pours out of her, unchecked and unchallenged, that makes me realize something: this is Bree in her purest form, her very essence and soul exposed to the world. Gone is what little remained of the fluff she had been buried under when we met. Gone is all the pretense and false bravado. She has been bent; she has been broken; and she reforged herself in the fire of her own unmaking. This right here is the woman I fell in love with all those many months ago, long before she knew herself and what she’s capable of. What’s left is a sharpened sense of justice, a ruthless need for vengeance, and strength where weakness used to be.
I know she doesn’t see it, but I do. I know she’s hurting right now, and I wish I could take all her pain away and make her forget how she got here—but I wouldn’t, even if I could, because I can’t take that ultimate win away from her. She has changed so much over the course of the past few days, and as much as I hate to see that, a very small part of me appreciates it. Bree didn’t so much get up from her deathbed as she limped away from it. She was bleeding from a wound that she didn’t even try to bandage, and she let herself wallow in pain that, while understandable and something we shared, she should have started to fight. Now I’m sure she hemorrhaging all over her emotional landscape from dozens of deeper, near fatal cuts and bruises, but her strength is overpowering all that as if it was nothing. I know that it’s not nothing, and I’ll be damned to let her avoid dealing with that much longer, but seeing her so fierce and unafraid makes me so damn proud of her, my chest feels ready to burst.
And the best part? She did it all by herself. She didn’t need me messing with her head. Maybe that might have killed her in the end. She found her strength, and I know that she will never lose it again.
Even if she’s faltering a little as she gasps for air and flees from the bunker, overwhelmed and incapable of dealing with the maelstrom of bullshit that’s threatening to drown her; we’ve all been there, one time or another. We get it. We understand. No one sees it as weakness now.
I still make sure to be right behind her—because what I’m not letting her do is shut me out any longer. So I say the most terrible words one person can say to another. “We need to talk about this.”
She straightens from where she has been spitting up bile, but rather than look at me, she stares off into the sunset. “No, we don’t.”
“We do. Look at me.” She shakes her head, tries to avoid me. I reach for her and pull her around, even as she goes still first, then tries to shake me off. She’s still full of rage, but it lessens somewhat as she glares straight into my eyes, until a smidgen of hopelessness joins the myriad of emotions warring on her face. This is killing me. “What the fuck did they do to you?” I ask, trying to be gentle. I need to know. More so, she needs to tell me.
But all I get is a hoarse, “Nothing.”
I know I need to handle this right, but it’s hard not to lose my composure at her insistence. “What I just saw, on that video, wasn’t nothing, and that was only the very end of it. What happened? You know that you can tell me everything. You know that I won’t judge you. That you’re not responsible for anything that happened to you—“
I know it sounds like platitudes but I need her to know that I mean it. Nothing between us has changed. Nothing between us will ever change, unless she wills it—and likely not even then. Till death do us part, and all that shit. I’m in this, one hundred percent.
But she doesn’t believe me.
“They did nothing!” she screams, spittle flying from her lips. “That’s exactly my point!” Her eyes are wide, the look of them bordering on insane—but I get it. Maybe not on an intellectual level, but the prowling beast at the very back of my mind understands. Survivor’s guilt pared with pent-up frustration—a deadly mix to anyone with even a single fiber of compassion or empathy buried deep inside of them. She starts prattling on, trying to explain to me what she thinks I don’t get—but I get it. It’s exactly how I felt that night before they jacked me up with the serum—the night Hamilton’s baby sister tried to visit us at the base—the night that will haunt me for the rest of my life. She even ends her confession, as it is, with the exact same words that still echo through the depths of my mind. “And that’s all my fault.”
Oh, Bree. How I wish you didn’t have to go through this. How I wish I could make you forget. How I wish there were words I could console you with—but there aren’t, and I can’t.
All I can do is wrap my arms around her and hold her, offering my strength and support. It takes her a while to relax into me but eventually she does. We don’t talk; she doesn’t even cry, although I wouldn’t hold it against her if she did. We stand like that for a long, long time, watching the sun set. I know we have a lot of work ahead—on all kinds of levels—but all that counts for me now is that I have her back. And I do, even if she’s a little banged up, a little crazy, and very much in need of vengeance. I know that she won’t turn the other cheek. I know that it’s only a matter of minutes until her anger will be back, and bloodlust will be riding shotgun. I’m very much going to enable her, if that’s what she thinks she needs.
We will go hunt down her nightmare and make it go up in flames—and it is just that: her nightmare. Not mine.
Why don’t I fully believe that?
It could all be coincidence—and there’s a shit-ton of things I don’t know yet—but one thing is obvious: there’s one connection too many in this mess. It’s not something that I can pinpoint, or explain, but I feel it in my gut—and I’ve long ago learned to trust that paranoid fucker deep inside of me.
Guess I’ll have to make sure that, one way or another, we’ll stay ahead of the game. Fuck if I know what game we’re playing, and who’s sitting on the other side of the board—but
I have a feeling that we will find out.
Done
Done
Nate POV
I can tell the exact moment when that fucking mind control shit wears off.
One moment I’m still imprisoned in my unresponsive meat suit of a body, locked inside my head, screaming.
The next, my fingers clench into a fist and slam into the glass wall in front of me, hard enough to make something crack—and it’s not the glass. Pain shoots up my arm; I welcome it.
What. The fuck. Have I done?!
There is so much going on in my head that for a few seconds all I can do is stare straight ahead at my reflection. I never get overwhelmed, but this might have done the trick. Or maybe it’s the last dregs of the chemicals that have been poisoning my mind finally leaving my bloodstream as my liver clears them out. I don’t even try to sift through my memories and thoughts to make sense of it all, because making sense of anything is the last thing I want to do right now.
And it’s not like there’s anything I can fucking do.
Ah, there it is—what I have been waiting for: self-loathing, so deep it chokes me up and makes me want to hurl, creeps up my spine and settles in the pit of my stomach. I’m no stranger to that sentiment—I’ve had many moments in my life where, “Hello darkness, my old friend,” resonated way too much with me to be healthy—but now it hits me like a freight train. It’s not regret in the sense of my moral compass—or what little is left of it—sending a short message to my brain along the lines of was that really necessary? Or you maybe shouldn’t have done that. It’s not even that deep-seated grief that wracked me when I learned of my brother’s death. No, it’s a million times more intense, as if every single fiber of my being is so full of revulsion that I’m surprised my body doesn’t simply disintegrate as my atoms tear themselves apart.
If there was anything like a God or higher power—fate, even—I should not be breathing anymore. I should have simply ceased to exist. Or maybe dispersed in a giant, wet, violent explosion of blood and gore and all that darkness within—
But then it would be over, and I wouldn’t have to deal with the shit that I’ve done, and I absolutely don’t deserve this easy way out. So all I do is stare at my reflection, wide-eyed with horror and revulsion. As such things go, I notice a few things—it’s been a while since I last checked myself out in a mirror. My hair has grown too long, standing up in matted, unruly spikes from layers of clothing, wind, and that weird thing it does whenever it can. I haven’t shaved since before we dropped by in New Angeles, so my beard is pretty much in the same state as my hair. The bright overhead light catches a hint more gray in it than I remember, but it’s hardly noticeable with the blond and light brown. A week of grime perfects the hobo image—until I realize it’s not just dirt across my upper cheek, but blood.
Her blood. Bree’s blood.
Fuck.
I want to close my eyes and look away, but I can’t. There’s accusation in my gaze, blame and guilt already heavily entwined, and I’ve only just started with the self-flagellation. What would looking away accomplish? What I see is better than what can swim up in my mind’s eye—
Like her face, already pale from sickness, frantic eyes seeking mine in search of recognition that isn’t there. Her fingers, some white from bad circulation, others already blackened with necrosis. How frail she looked when I had to help her undress. The weak croak that should have been a hell-raising scream as they dragged her away.
The pain—physical and emotional—that I inflicted on her. The pain she must be in, now that they are taking her apart. The pain that I can’t take away, that I can’t even try to alleviate—
It’s that which finally tears me out of my apathy, and I start to pace, fingers wrenching at my hair in frustration. It’s the insanity of the dichotomy raging on that gets to me—I have to pray that the serum is working, and that she is in constant and incomprehensible agony because that’s the only way she will live. I have to be glad that they can help her—and are willing to, which wasn’t a given.
There is so much I don’t know—are they already cutting her up, or does the serum take longer to start working? Do they still need to take X-rays, or is it bad enough that cutting her open and looking directly at what damage they need to repair is the way to go? Is she right now screaming at the top of her lungs, her mind annihilated with agony? That last one I think I can answer, because I’ve clocked my share of infirmary time—they will have paralyzed her, down to her vocal chords, so no screaming, which somehow makes it a million times worse. But wouldn’t want to annoy the poor doctors who do the cutting, and bone-setting, and shit.
I know that, rationally, they are fighting to save her life, but the very idea that someone—anyone, really—is hurting her is making me want to slam through that damn glass cage and tear down every door I find until I’m right there to rescue her—
Only that if I actually tried that, I’d be dead long before I got to her, either bleeding out from cutting myself to shreds or someone putting a bullet in my brain to stop me. And even if I made it to the operating room, what could I do except fall to my knees and cry the tears her body is right now incapable of shedding? The only thing different would be that I see directly what happens and can punish myself for that, rather than just imagine it.
Part of me feels like I absolutely deserve that.
The much stronger rest feels like sneering, because that would be another easy way out—and I don’t deserve easy. Or a way out.
I stop and throw my head back, but the scream that wants to wrench itself from my very soul doesn’t come. No, I don’t deserve that kind of absolution, either.
I did this to her.
All of it. Everything.
My mind still tries to shy away from pointing at the single threads all tangled up in my guilt and self-hatred, but I won’t allow that to continue. It’s so easy to get caught up on the small infractions and lose sight of the overall picture; so tempting to say the worst thing I did was strangle her, but that’s not it. I’m smart enough to realize I’m not actually, directly responsible for my actions, and she can’t really blame me for that. Scratch that; she’s my wife—she can and will blame me for whatever she wants. Realistically, that means I have a much higher chance that I’m the only one blaming myself because she might not.
But how can she not?
Another layer of conflict: I can’t regret staying with her; making sure that she got to the installation as safe and sound as possible, to see that she’s taken care of, to not protest any stipulations they could think of imposing on us. In a heartbeat, I would have let them kill me if it meant she would live. Of course, I would have regretted that—I like living, and I like being alive to make sure she continues to live—and would also have regretted being responsible for the pain my death would have inflicted on her, but there’s never been a hint of doubt in my mind what I would do. I’m sure she knows it, and while she might protest that it isn’t so, deep down she would have been glad that it’s me, not her, who bites it. That’s one of the things I love about her—her innate drive to survive. It’s one of very few things I can absolutely rely on.
What she doesn’t know is that Hamilton did me a favor shooting me up with that mind control shit. Because given no other choice, I would have willingly done the very same thing he ordered automaton-me to do, if it only meant they’d help her, that she’d survive. Explain that to your wife: I would have held you down and let another man rape you if it meant you’d get to live. Since I didn’t get that choice, I’ll never have to, but deep down I will always know, and that’s almost as bad as if I’d had to do it.
Fuck.
How can she ever forgive me?
But all of that is just the tip of the iceberg, because all of this ranges so much further. I don’t know shit about why Hamilton did it, but I can’t bring myself to believe that it was his idea—that would be another easy way out, to put all the blame on him. Sure, he is to blame, and he did what he
did—and I hope to hell that’s as far as Bree will see it—but so much of it is still my fault. I didn’t cause the initial rift between us, but I never put enough effort into repairing it as I should have—and could have. And then I betrayed him when I dropped out, even though I’m sure he’s spinning it as a fortunate opportunity for him to finally get rid of me. I could have tried reaching out to him after that. Or after dropping a fucking building on all of us. Or after Rita told me that he was still alive. Even after the factory, although my willingness for that decreased exponentially once I found out Bree had been infected. I could have tried to prevent the takedown of the base in Colorado; I hadn’t been sure whether he’d be there or not, but it was a reasonably high possibility. I could have tried to make amends after our rocky truce there, but my ego wouldn’t have let me—and neither would Bree herself. I could have tried to contact him after we settled down in California.
I probably should have done so when the doc down in New Angeles showed us those overgrown petri dishes and I saw the horror in Bree’s eyes when she realized what was going on. Sure, it was just a second and she held on to hope that it wasn’t so, but deep down I knew that wasn’t going to end well. In the very back of my mind I’ve always known that, come what may—infection, cancer, anything else—the serum would save her, and I should have made damn sure that she got it as soon as possible. Instead, we went gallivanting across the country, taking our time, waiting for an invitation—
And she would be dead now if Wilkes hadn’t given her that envelope.
Even before all that, if our lives had never gotten tangled up, she wouldn’t be lying on a slab of steel now with a team of highly trained psychopaths cutting her limb from limb. Sure, she’d likely be dead—or maybe not. Hamilton had been sent to fetch her, and they might have gotten there just in time. Her good-for-nothing girlfriend survived, after all. If not infected by then, Bree would have made it, soon to be safely tucked away in a facility just like this one to work on saving the world by finding a cure—or whatever bullshit they would have fed her. I couldn’t have saved her from herself, but that route would have kept her from experiencing so much pain, over and over again.
Beyond Green Fields #2 - Regrets: A post-apocalyptic anthology Page 10
