There are some nights when Alison can't get her mind to stop working a mile a minute, when her thoughts won't slow down and allow her the relief of sleep, when she's too preoccupied trying to figure out what they've learned from Kasha and the samples Alana brings her from the city, when she can't stop trying to figure out why James treats her like she's not even there. The darkness is no shelter from what she knows is lurking outside.

She doesn't have too many of these nights, but when she does have them, she has a solution as elegant as the one she wishes she could come up with regarding this whole walking dead thing. On the southern tip of the island, below where the tram used to run, there are some rickety benches that creak under her weight, and when she's feeling even bolder, she can sit on the edge of the island, her feet in the water, watching moonlight and searchlight glimmer off the river. The river protects them from the threat outside. Sometimes she wonders if she's a coward for staying. Sometimes she doesn't wonder.

One of the former Liberty players had mentioned- just in passing, just in a list of things that had gone wrong in the last month and more- that Jess Davenport was dead, had died on almost the first day that New York was attacked. Alison still can't wrap her mind around the idea. Her body still remembers high school and their meetings there, the dull ache that lasted for days after one of their battles in the post. She'd been hoping they could add a chapter to the developing rivalry between New York and Indiana, the two teams so strangely tied together. But there's no rivalry now, just a bare handful of Liberty players and as few Fever players, hardly enough able-bodied women to make up a legal roster.

There are courts on the island, and somewhere there has to be a basketball, but somehow no one's gotten up the urge to play, and post players look pretty foolish shooting around by themselves, no matter how carefully they've worked on their form. Maybe it's for the best, though. There's no way to delude herself into thinking things are normal as long as there isn't a ball between her hands.

Shay's not claustrophobic, per se, so much as she hates having so little space. It's hard to be in constant motion when she's always coming up against the water, and she knows better than to set foot in the East River, because no matter what she's had splatter all over her, the river's still grosser.

When her body can't move freely, then she has this other problem where it's her mind constantly going at top speed, throwing everything she is into the thoughts that just won't quit. She gets to thinking about the finals she was supposed to take, the ones she was a little nervous about, and the trip that her Maryland teammates were going to make to see her play in her very first game at the Garden, and that this is possibly the worst homecoming ever, even if New York is only half her home.

When she closes her eyes, too many times she sees what happened the first day that season-to-be that they practiced at the Garden. She remembers just how hard her heart was pounding, the way the nylon felt different against her skin, the lingering smell of pretzels and popcorn, how wide her eyes had been, how perfect the scene had been for a kid who just wanted to play some ball on the biggest of stages. As hard as she tries she can't stop the tape there, can't leave it at her last moment of innocence. Invariably, there's Coach, blank-eyed, greenish-gray, unnatural even for unnatural lights, and then the sound kicks in and Sherill's screaming again, and Shay can't decide what was worse, the screaming or when it stopped.

If she gets as far as that, then sleep becomes a lost cause. If she gets that far, then if she tries to sleep she'll end up with worse nightmares than usual, the ones where there's a different blonde coach on the floor and a different sort-of point guard screaming. So instead, she runs to the playground and tries to pretend she's still a kid, working off her energy on the swings and the monkey bars until her arms and legs ache, and then, when she knows she's still alive enough to hurt, she sits on one of the tired old benches, rattling the wooden slats and imagining that this was what the Garden would sound like for her.

Ivory likes small spaces. No room for anyone to bug her, no room for anyone but her. She likes people, especially when they pay attention to her, but when she wants to be alone, she wants to be alone, like having a coupla miles to herself. Can't get that most places, so small spaces where she fits nice and cozy and no one else is gonna look are fine by her. Besides, it's only fair. She gets enough shit on the court for being her size, so she's gotta have something to rub in their faces.

They don't think she thinks, either, and the look she tends to get when she's thinking deep on something makes people laugh at her, so she likes to be alone to think, 'cause coaches don't generally like when people punch their teammates for laughing at them. Even Bill doesn't- whoops, more like didn't- like when it got that far, except for that one time in practice when Pow and Pee-Wee started boxing, 'cause that was for fun and it was kinda cool. But generally hitting isn't allowed, and Ivory hits when she gets really pissed off.

She's got a lot of shit to think about, too, since she's the go-to woman on all the Shock stuff. Ain't easy taking care of teammates who've gone so far around the bend that they've started coming back around again. Keeping Tweety together the last couple of days since Pow went down in the non-sexy way has been a fulltime job, then she's gotta worry about Cheryl and Brax because neither of them are getting the hint that this mother/baby thing they have going on is fucked up and not right, not to mention Pee-Wee's been bitching about having to leave Smith behind (and Ivory's about given up on telling her "yo, she's dead, get the hell over it already!"), and no one sleeps right when Plenette's looking for target practice (or worse- Ivory's seen where that gun goes when Plenette doesn't think anyone's looking, and it's nightmare fuel for real). You'd need to be a saint to save this team, and Ivory's not about to make that claim.

And oh, yeah, there's the whole walking dead thing across the river, too. Shit like that is hard to forget, especially since she's got a teammate out there groaning for brains now too. Damn Tweety for going soft at the wrong time, though that's probably half the reason she's falling apart. Thorn's been talking to her, but they all know Thorn could be speaking Greek for all the good she'd do. Beard might be better, but fuck if Ivory's gonna ask a Dookie for help. Let her offer if she thinks it'd do any good.

Sleep is for the weak, and Ivory's anything but. She gets a few minutes here and there, maybe sometimes an hour or three until she's gotta deal with everyone's bullshit again, and she makes it through. Rest of the night, she hides out in her little cubbyhole down by the river, and she pretends that she's watching for something useful.

Losing Elaine had shocked the group. They were supposed to be safe once they found Roosevelt Island, and the fact that Elaine had met her fate while scavenging in Manhattan had nothing to do with the notion. It was too deeply ingrained. What the two survivors had said about the event wasn't doing much for morale, either, not when Shannon had admitted how easy Deanna's shot would have been. The last few days, the air's been heavier on the island, as if fear and worry have the same sort of effect on the atmosphere as heat and humidity. It's hard to sleep, not when she has to face this frustrating lack of answers, so she paces her room in the hospital building until she can't take the familiar stench of antiseptics masking decay any longer.

The night air slaps her in the face, but it's not the contrast it would once have been. Long strides take her to her usual place. Heat haze shimmers over the moon, dimming its light so that the world is shrouded in deeper darkness than usual. Columbus isn't a big city as cities go, but it's a city nonetheless; she's used to lights at night, and this darkness is more than she wants to take. It makes her remember the dull and disinterested way Kasha's started looking at her, how Ann shies away from her, how Catch doesn't look anyone in the eye, how Alana ignores her, how James refuses to look at her except out of the corner of his eye when he acts like he can only see her height and her profile. Too many faces are blank, and not enough people talk, and it makes Alison shiver all the way down to her bones.

On the bank of the river, she gingerly settles on one of the benches, the one that looks least like it's going to fall apart at any moment, and looks out over this place that used to be a thriving city. Now to the east is the necropolis that was once the four counties of Long Island, and to the west is the mystery-laden trap of Manhattan. As always, she looks nervously at the bridge that connects Roosevelt Island to the danger zones, the single ramp that allows them easy access to the other islands, and that if they stop being careful will allow the dead easy access to them.

A point guard's down, so Shay doesn't even think about sleeping. She'll think of nothing else, nothing but the dead, flat look on Tweety's pretty face and the way backcourts don't work right when they get separated. Instead, she runs, pounding her heels against the pavement, sending a pulse up her spine to drown out the thoughts in her head. But instead she thinks about Tiffany, and the first time she crossed this bridge on foot; suddenly there's blood again, blood on her blistered heels, blood in her raw throat, blood on her guilty hands, and Tiffany's face is melting, shifting, into Lang's. She has to stop, somehow.

She almost trips over her feet when she gets to the playground and sees someone else on one of her benches, staring out towards Queens. Of course she recognizes Alison immediately, even in the dim moonlight; she ran into Alison's screens too many times not to know the shape of Alison's body and the way she holds herself. Bruises flare. "Hey," she calls out, and Alison stiffens, turning her head slowly. "Didn't expect to see you here. I thought you were doing the mad scientist thing in the lab when you were restless."

It's hard to tell, but maybe Alison offers half a smile. "Part of the problem," she says, and Shay isn't about to argue with Alison not wanting to say things.

"We barely even knew her," Shay says, coming around and perching on the bench, not quite ready to sit down yet, too antsy and twitchy to think about staying still for more than a second. "Never got to match up against her. And now she's-"

"Dead," Alison finishes, before Shay can finish it in the wrong way. Better to think of those who fall and rise again as having fallen for good; whatever that is now shambling through the abandoned streets of Manhattan, it's not anyone any of them ever knew. "And it'll happen again. Maybe not soon, but we have to keep finding supplies in the rest of the city, and as long as we do that, we're in danger. As careful as you guys are, it still isn't always enough. This isn't a fight we can win."

Laughter explodes from somewhere, and it isn't Shay, and it's clearly not Alison, so naturally they look around for the source. Shay quickly shrugs it off, since her sanity probably jumped ship several months ago and hearing things is perfectly normal for crazy people. Alison gets up and starts looking around for the source of the noise. The laughter stops, and a familiar voice picks up. "Shit, we win the fight every day we wake up breathin'. Means we ain't dead yet, motherfuckers."

Because, clearly, the only way this night could have gotten worse was to throw Latta into it. Alison rolls her eyes, serenely confident in her ability to, if necessary, step on the little pest to shut her up. Shay's teeth start gritting all on their own when Latta slips out of her little hidey-hole, moving slow and careful, moonlight reflecting off what's on her hips. "Nice of you to think only of yourself," Shay says, but something flashes over Latta's face as soon as the words are out of Shay's mouth.

"Best watch your mouth," Ivory snaps. "I got my team to think on, and the least crazy of 'em is fucked up. You think I don't worry about other people? Been doin' that since day one, 'cause my ass knows geography." She doesn't smirk when Doron and Bales tilt their heads at her in synchronized confusion. "How did you two get into college? We are here." She points at a spot somewhere around the level of Bales's shoulder. "The walkin' dead started there." She points again, this time somewhere around Bales's hip. "We went to school there."

And when her finger comes down for the third time, it's all horribly, horribly clear. Alison shakes her head. "No. No, can't be. They- we- still haven't figured out how New York was infiltrated in the first place, but that it couldn't have been incursion from the south, because Staten Island was still okay and so's most of New Jersey. Maybe someone was doing unauthorized research and the subjects got loose, but you can't-"

Shay's shaking her head too, and she hates that Latta's right, hates it with every drop of her blood and every beat of her heart. "We haven't heard any news, except from the people who came after hearing the radio call, and they're from too many places between here and New Orleans. Alana came from Washington, Mariel came from Richmond. I don't think the signal could get much further south, but if Washington was unsafe…" She stops, unable to verbalize the next step in the logic chain, unable to say anything when Latta's watching her with something that might almost be sympathy in her eyes and Alison's looking at both of them like the light switch just went on.

"How the hell did you get into Duke?" Ivory says with as much of a sneer as she feels like mustering up, 'cause Bales is supposed to be some kind of geek genius, but Ivory's done everything except hit her upside the head with a clue and she still doesn't get it. "You think the undead up and decided they just felt like hittin' DC for a light snack? If they got there, they hadda go through everywhere else first."

Alison's still shaking her head, still in denial of the worst-case scenario, and she growls at Latta, although she's not sure what she would say to the little guard. Latta clearly isn't thinking straight. Clearly, the insanity that has overtaken the Shock has gotten to her too, and it's only a matter of time before she becomes as non-functional as the rest of them. Alison just hopes that when Latta does finally break, she'll do it in a non-violent way, as Shannon seems to have done, but she finds it unlikely. Latta's always struck her as all-or-nothing; if she's going to go crazy, she's going to be the craziest madwoman ever. And since Shay seems to be feeding into her delusions, the breaking point could come at any moment, and she wants nothing to do with it when it occurs. There are other places she can go to clear her mind. Shay and the gun at her hip can keep matters under control should Latta snap. "I'll leave you to your pessimism, then," she says coolly, and she turns to go.

Less than a minute after Bales clears out, Ivory snorts, a big rude noise that causes Doron to stare at her funny. "How smart do you have to be to be that stupid?" she mutters, spitting on the concrete, hearing it splat.

"Maybe she's right. Maybe they didn't come up through the Carolinas," Shay suggests, but they both know that she's talking to reassure herself. Doesn't matter anyway. Maryland's between DC and New York.

"Bet you wonder what it was like. How hard they fought back, how many they took down. How they went down. And you tell yourself, like fuck they'd go down, ain't no fuckin' way some walkin' stiffs could take 'em down, that shit don't happen to people like that. But we know better, don't we? We seen what happened in the D and New York. Just 'cause we didn't go to Duke don't mean we don't get it." In another place and time, Ivory would have been smirking, and she almost does by the end, but she doesn't quite, and she can see how it throws Doron off balance.

"When it happened here, we were on the court for practice. And then she came out, and something wasn't right about her." Shay stops, because she'll be damned if she admits weakness to Ivory Latta. There's so little of college to hang on to now that the rivalry might be the only stupid thing left.

Ivory perches on the back of the bench, her feet on the seat, watching over the scene. "That's right, you guys saw the shit go down hardcore. Fuck, we saw Smith go down and that was all we needed to run like hell. That woulda fucked all of us up, not that they aren't already. Maybe it woulda made Jesus-girl get her head out of Jesus's ass, though. Man, I can't believe I'm talkin' to you about this shit. Of all the fuckin' people. But you get it, and the rest of 'em don't get shit. They try to get home, and they're gonna learn that life don't hand you ruby shoes."

"Our teams are dead," Shay says into the still, heavy air. There. There, she's said it, said what she couldn't admit to herself; there, Latta's pushed her too far one more time, same as she ever was. There, she's admitted what she already knew from her nightmares, that if she sees any of her Maryland teammates again, she'll have to pull the trigger. There, that's cemented it: can't trust the people who had her back when the chips were down, has to trust the people who would have stabbed her in the back just a few months ago. There, it really is the end of the world they once knew.

"And that ain't all." Because Ivory never was good at laying off, because somehow it's easy to talk to Doron, and she can't figure out why, except that Doron's got the kind of face looks like she's paying close attention no matter what. Because Pow's dead and Cheryl's acting like she's eight (which is actually a fucking improvement over the last week, fuck you very much, Brax) and Pee-Wee's not all there. Because Beard is wrapped up in setting shit on fire. Because, and this is the one people don't get up here, Texas is not the South, Texas is its own weird thing. And maybe no one gets what Ivory's been getting at, but the stories she's heard about Long Island and the way Doron closes up, she thinks Doron gets it. "We got nothin' to go back to if we try to go back home. And maybe if you believe in prayer- hell, if you don't- you're praying that they're dead."

Shay looks away, unable to look Latta in the eye when she says, "You pray and you pray and maybe there's no answer. Chosen, my ass."

"One thing left to do. Gotta keep it together here. Gotta wake up every morning- if you even get to sleep." Ivory winks and bucks her hips a little, and Doron gives a fake little smile, 'cause yeah, both of them would rather spend their nights doing that. But not with each other. Probably. Naw, not unless it was just the two of them left, 'cause zombies are way fucking nasty. "Gotta keep breathing, gotta keep living, gotta keep everyone else breathing. Think you can do it, Twerp?"

"Better than you, Tar Hole," Shay shoots back, on familiar ground once again and glad to be there.

Ivory's smirk is back. Good, she'd gotten to missing it. "Wanna bet?"

"Bring it on. And if you go down, I'll be the first one to put a bullet between your eyes."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

Before going their separate ways, to think and to sort things out and maybe even to get some damn sleep, and to seal this bet they've made as rivals and never friends, Shay and Ivory shake hands.