“Zombumans?”
A look of disgust broke out on his face and he grew sterner. “No, it was natural. It was Matt’s, she never spoke, but---she still loved him even if she never connected after-after he was the only thing she recognized. She clung to him, like she needed him to breathe, and she let it happen. The baby…they died, something happened we weren’t prepared for. She bled and she got sick and she-she just didn’t wake up.”
“He…uh hasn’t been the same since. He wouldn’t let us take the precautions, we buried her as she was, whole. He says…here,” he said, giving her another backpack. “There should be enough food to get through for now and some herbs in case you need them. He wants you to go, says he wants to wait for her, that we can’t touch her until she comes and takes him away.” Tears choked his words, blurring his eyes. “Goodbye, Abby, I-I’m sorry.”
She threw the pack on her back and rushed out of the encampment. Henry could call it nothing other than what it was, she fled. Guilt tore at her features, forced a grimacing look to come forward, sharpening her edges. He followed, had to run to catch up, trying to stop her. She fell to her knees a good stretch down the road from the village. She groaned and dug her fingernails across the remains of the pavement, bloodying them, and then dragged them across her face, tears coming down after to sting the scratches she’d made. This was a woman consumed with guilt, with the horror of never being able to stop the things that happened around her and owning every bit of those things as if they were boxes she smashed down inside of herself.
“I’ll never make it better! I’ll never get away from this! I’ll never pay enough to make up for all I’ve done, all I’ve let happen, never! Why can’t it stop? Why can’t they stop paying for my failure? Why? Why? Why?”
Horrified, Henry knelt behind her and tried to put his arms around her, attempted to soothe this away, but she screamed and slapped him hard and heavy-handed. “Don’t touch me!” she howled, and fell back on the pavement. She wept on her back in the weedy path as he watched, unable to cease her painful mourning. When it passed, she grew silent and withdrawn, unmoving though it now approached dusk.
Once he felt that the worst of it had subsided he took a water bottle and dampened a cloth, carefully wiping at the scratches on her face, made worse by her own tortured anguish. When the dirt of the path was gone he pulled her out of the road and led her down it. It was the only thing he could think of that she might agree to, that might cause her to invest in whatever life it was she had here.
Soon she began to walk on her own and they continued their journey. Later, when he thought of it, he wondered why he didn’t take the backpack and search it while he’d had the chance. Then he pushed it away, annoyed that he was thinking of it when so much else had clearly happened in front of him and needed his attention.
***
Abby walked on, tired and broken by what had happened once again, what she was guilty of allowing to happen to still more of her beloved people. She choked on her rage, grunting to herself, frustration biting into her, the bitterness of her own existence diluting the very fiber of her thoughts. All of it stole away her words, took away her right to stand where she was without feeling as if there would never be anything in this world that meant she had done some good despite all her failures.
Of all those she owed, this pair most deeply scarred her after the great battle. Matt, with his open sorrowful strength, and Erin, with her distant tormented gaze, were always in her thoughts, a favored tool of self-hatred and torture. Guilt was a simple thing, the most basic element of all those that made up the entity she had become in the time following the war and its aftermath. And now even they’d come to a deeper tortured fate. She fought herself, not allowing tears to fall as they had in the moments after leaving the village that was their home. Even through the fate that came to befallen them, Matt hadn’t lost his faith in Abby’s valor and intent to heal, hadn’t lost hope the world would somehow achieve the level of true good it once held.
Now he was broken and alone, this hopeful and proud soul, without the dim creature that at least bore his lover’s face and need of him. He was broken, had begun to die until the death she would give him was all he had left. Within, at the very base of her soul, she was crushed and broken, seeing only the harm and the torture she’d given the world with her life.
***
She didn’t have any more breakdowns that day, but he saw the way she walked was subtly changed, that she was upset enough to let it show. Even this much proved that she must always be holding back ten times what she expressed. He couldn’t blame her; things had been horrible for her these last few days. It made him wonder what might come next, and in many ways, if he would ever get back to his world before her misfortune began to affect his own life, never realizing that in many ways it already had.
Chapter Twelve:
Let Me Show You
A cool air settled over them as they walked and shadows passed overhead as a storm began to brew above. Apprehension settled over Henry’s face as he thought back to the previous storm and all that occurred before it. What could happen now, when she had torn away her own armor and begun to fall apart? Would he play the victim again for her? Become her prey?
He looked at her, the grey fog of this place settling in her eyes even as she moved forward, her body limp and her presence a distant thing out of his reach. The clouds boiled up in the sky, slate grey and full of water, the glimmer of electricity lighting their inner folds as he watched. The sound of thunder was loud and demanding, rising as the clouds came closer. The silence of the forest around them was immense; anticipation choked out the normal sounds that could be heard there. Even the insects were silent, clearly having sensed what was soon to come.
Would she come for him or would he have to go to her? Would Jared take over their minds and use them like puppets? The feeling in the air was heavy, laced with ozone and the damp of coming rain. It could tell him nothing of what would come to pass, no more than those beings had that night Abby had gone missing and come back nude. For all the terrible things that had passed, his desire still rose at the thought of her that morning, but he pushed it away, watching her as she moved. He waited for some sign of what would happen next. She had yet to even acknowledge the storm around them, only subtly shuddering when the dense rainfall began to hit her. Henry fought the urge to laugh at the pressure of the rain as it pushed against him with terrific force. The weight bowed his head on his shoulders and made it impossible to see, until finally, after a few minutes it began to lighten and Abby came back into view.
Nothing had changed. Her gait was still a slow, trudging motion, her eyes still looked off into the distance, and suddenly he knew that they should stop. The shivering that had started in her shoulders had gone into her torso and down into her legs, made her already modified gait seem wobbly and ready to drop from shock. Her teeth chattered in her head as she moved only a few feet in front of him. Her thin tank top, pasted to her lithe form, exposed the jut of her nipples and the rise of her breasts as she breathed, and he felt sorry for her. She looked weak and tired, beyond this world, but still so very moved by it. Rain moved down her face and over the back of her head. Soon enough all of this caught up to her, pulled her to her knees in a heap.
Henry hurried to make up the distance between them, though it was only a few feet. When he reached her he knelt and wrapped his arms around her, his face close to her ear so he could speak and she would hear.
“Don’t we have a tent? Something we can use to take shelter from all this rain?”
She didn’t speak, but shook her head no, hesitant and distracted, likely even weakened from the torrent. He didn’t know if she was really responding to him, or if it was a singular denial of everything, of all that she knew.
“So there’s nothing we can do to get you warm?”
Thunder pounded above, shaking the ground beneath them. It made Henry nervous; the chance that they could be ambushed was high. If the creatures h
ere had been cowed by the impending storm a few minutes before, it could just as likely have driven some of them mad to have such pressure bearing down on them and blurring their sight. The force of the thunder could only stir them more.
Abby hadn’t replied to his question, only stared out to the road in front of them as she laid limply against his shoulder, blinking the rain from her eyes.
“Abby?” he asked, shaking her lightly. “Abby, come on, I need you here. We’ve got to get out of this storm somehow. What should we do?” Desperation had begun to creep into his voice. They were in danger every moment, they couldn’t be stuck here! He looked around them, trying to find a place out of the rain. This used to be a highway, right? There’s gotta be some shelter around here, an old house, a storage building, something!
And there was! Just over the rise of the hill he could see a corrugated metal roof. It’d be a struggle if she couldn’t walk on her own and he had to help her up it, but he should be able to get there with minimal trouble if he carried her up instead. Henry didn’t waste any more time thinking it over. He lifted Abby into his arms, her eyes going wide for a moment as she felt her equilibrium shift.
“What are you doing with me?” She was confused, as if she’d come out of a catatonic state, and Henry realized that was exactly what had happened. She doesn’t even know where we are! She didn’t know it was raining! Has this ever happened to her before? And if it has, was she alone? Jesus, do you really hate yourself this much, Abby?
“The storm’s pretty bad, we have to get out of this, and I see some sort of roof up there. I thought since you weren’t feeling well maybe I’d better carry you.”
“Well I feel fine now.” She shoved at him, trying to get down out of his arms, frustrated and embarrassed. He tightened his hold on her and started to walk toward the small hill between them and the roof to keep her from getting her way. Although there was an edge of amusement in it, his actions had more to do with keeping her safe and both of them out of the wet as soon as he could manage.
“You don’t look it. Besides, it’s not that far, it really doesn’t bother me.”
“It bothers me plenty! What if something comes? We’ll both be unarmed and in no position to fight! Let me down! I can walk.” She was angry, fighting herself as much as Henry in the moment. It was good to see the life come back into her but it was also a struggle to keep her from throwing herself down to get her power back.
The storm was building around them, the full force of it starting the rain down harder once again. A bolt of hot white lightning struck several feet down the road, burnt and cracked the pavement there. Is this going to go on all night? Her fighting was getting worse, his whole body being thrown wobbly by her movements as he tried to get to the building.
Against his better judgment, he bent down and let her stand on her own two feet. “All right, but be careful, you were out of it for a while there. If you’re shaky, let me know. I’ll help you, okay?” He fought to be earnest with it, honestly exasperated she was fighting like this.
“I don’t need your help.” As Henry watched with startled eyes, Abby threw herself toward the hill and climbed up it as if nothing had ever happened. There was nothing he could say to prove her wrong and he didn’t waste any more breath to argue with her. Instead he followed in her wake, lifted himself to the top of the rise by grabbing a sturdy sapling and pulling himself up. She was already down by the building by the time he was caught up, something roughly the size of a garage. She checked around the corner of it and then slid over in front of it looking for anything dangerous once he was headed down the hill toward her.
Mud had already started to make the ground soft; the black soil had sucked at his feet as he walked down the rise, forced him to fight hard not to slide here and there as the ground became less solid and his feet tried to turn on their ankles. Abby wasn’t in sight when he reached the building. She’s probably just finishing her scan of the area.
But what if she isn’t? What if something got her or she’s wandered off again?
You’re traveling with an insane woman!
She’s just been through a lot. All that crazy shit from that guy back there had to have gotten to her. That’s the way this place is.
They’re all crazy!
I don’t know that, not really. I don’t know what happened here.
Then remedy that, get the bag and find out what she’s hiding!
He walked around the building, but he didn’t see any sign of her besides the mushy prints from her boots she’d left in the front. There were boot prints in the mud so she must have come around this side of the building. Even my crappy tracking skills can tell me that. He decided to wait for her, walked back around to the front of the building, and listened to the sounds around him. It was quiet, the shush of falling rain all around him; the sound of it as bonged on the rusted metal made it hard to hear past it, even if there were anything to hear. Time was stretched a bit in the moment, the endless sort of thing that made you anxious when you had to wait. Sure enough, thoughts dug at him as he darted his eyes back and forth, trying to watch for danger in the rain. He was annoyed with these thoughts more than anything else, the sort of things he’d been thinking off and on for a long time now. Am I really going to get home or is this all some sort of game? Does it really matter now? What am I going home to? Would I even be doing my daughter any favors by coming back?
Annoyed, he shifted his feet and tried to clear his head, pushed himself to focus better on what he could hear past the rain. In a moment he heard footsteps coming around the building and stiffened, ready if he needed to defend himself. The first thing he saw was her boot as she crept into view; this told him that it was Abby, but he didn’t relax. If anything his muscles tightened, his breathing going shallow. Is she okay? Is she the lady that left a few minutes ago or is she going to attack me again?
Her face was calm, though her eyes roved the area, still focused on looking for danger and not finding it.
“Is everything okay?”
She took her eyes away from the trees and looked at him, studying his features in a way that made him nervous even as his muscles had begun to relax. Her features softened once she saw whatever it was in his eyes that made her feel things were all right for the time being. She seemed to be herself.
“Yeah. Yeah it’s as safe as this place ever gets. We’ve still got to see if there’s anything in there though.” She gestured toward the metal door beside Henry, a door he was a little embarrassed to admit to himself that he hadn’t seen until she pointed it out. It was rusty where the metal had come through the grey paint in several places, but looked sturdy enough, certainly for something that must be pretty old in a world where anything so modern was actually from far in the past. That says a lot about things, doesn’t it? The rust and the age, it’s been a long time since they had what you took for granted, how long? He didn’t know and couldn’t begin to guess.
Her body stiffened beside him, her machete raised as she gave him a nod to open the door for her. He reached a hand out toward the knob; its once brushed steel, marked by the same rust that pitted the edges of the door and the building itself, made it hard to turn. At first the tongue didn’t want to come out of the latch, stuck there after long years without being used, but he felt it give, the door thrown open by the force of his tug before he was ready for it.
Annoyed by his carelessness, Abby shoved him aside and threw herself into the room with her weapon raised. She slipped into the opening of the door and took careful steps into the space beyond it, ready for the dark to be full of hidden dangers. Once she had a few feet behind her, Henry followed; he stepped just as carefully so as to allow her to hear and see all she could as her eyes adjusted to the dark. There was little in the room beyond the smell of must and age that usually comes with a room being closed for a long time. Her boots echoed in the space, small clacks that bounced back from the walls.
Henry watched her move toward the center of the building, and
slowly walked into the dark after her, then stepped out of the dim light that came through the door so they could both see by it. His eyes flicked around the building as they adjusted to the darkness and a few feet over from the door he saw a light switch. He flicked it up, barely stopped to think about it before he did.
A corona of sparks burst off the two bare bulbs above, startling them both. Abby jumped and turned toward him, her face turned down with an angry glare that could have peeled paint. She turned back to the rear of the building as she walked, shaking her head to try clearing the flashes in her vision; her head darted back and forth to be sure she caught anything she might have missed in the flash. With his own eyes bleary, he looked beyond her to the few objects in the room. It didn’t take long to see that there was nothing dangerous in the room. A pair of couches and an old radio were thrown back against the far wall of the building, old and decrepit, likely the source of the must and aged smell of the place. That was it. She turned toward him again once she’d had a good look around the couches, her weapon arm relaxed while she stabbed the index finger of her right hand toward him in anger.
“You could have gotten us killed, Goddamnit! What if there had been something in this room? It already had the advantage; with the two of us blinded and you unarmed we could have been ripped to shreds before we knew it! Think, just think before you do something like that!”
“I didn’t even think it’d work! I’m sorry, okay? I’m just sorry. But things are okay, we’re safe. Let me close the door and we’ll sit down over there, all right?” He lifted his arm, gesturing to the decrepit couches behind her.
She turned and started toward them and he watched her stride as she did, looking for any strange movements. He still wasn’t sure that she’d really recovered from before, but no signs of anything strange had come up in the last several minutes since she started acting more normal. When she’d turned to unload her pack and sat down he walked the few feet back to the door to close it. The hinges creaked in their frame as it moved, and for a moment he wondered if he should close it with the rust damage, but it seemed okay enough when he finished the movement and locked it.
Other Dangers: Slipped Through Page 12
