Go

There's a really neat trick you can do with radio transmitters and train tracks that boosts the power by a whole lot. It's the kind of thing that used to land people in jail. These days, it's the kind of thing that might save a life.

The sun's been up for way too long by the time Mark comes down from the tower. The island's disconcertingly dark, and will be for the next hour and change. It takes a lot of power to drive a message as far as they want to drive it. They've been practicing for three days, though, and he knows that all through last night the freezers were cranked up as far as they could go in order to make sure things would stay frozen through these next few hours. They'll lose a few specimens, but maybe not as many as the last time. Besides, it's not like there aren't more zombies out there to carve little pieces out of.

And he tries not to think about this part, but maybe the besides is really that it doesn't fucking matter because there's no answer and they're fooling themselves if they think they can find one. But he doesn't let anyone know that he ever thinks this part. He wouldn't be a good leader if he did.

The sun's good and high, and the scouts are waiting for him downstairs, waiting for directions. Uptown, downtown, crosstown, and Queens for those who have gotten really good at not dying. There have to be other survivors, and leaving them out there is cruel and unusual punishment when there's still room on the island and it's the safest place in the city.

the night before the morning

They might be the last two living people left in the DC metro area. Alana's weirded out by it, but it's also almost sexy. Okay, so maybe if she had to pick the other living person, she might not have picked Nikki, but life's not a fantasy and nothing's perfect, and at least she's not Chas.

"Let's go," Nikki says one night after Alana comes back covered from head to toe in bits of things that used to be people. It takes an entire bucket of water and several towels to get Alana looking human again, and her hair is still matted with blood and decomposing gray matter.

"Where?" Alana scoffs. "World's dead, remember?"

Nikki flips on a battery-powered radio. Static hisses and spits, and then there's a low voice. "To anyone out there, if you can hear this message, come to Roosevelt Island in New York City. We have power, we have supplies, we're trying to get to the bottom of this disaster. Bring what you have and get here as soon as you can."

The message repeats twice, and then static resumes. "Miller time," Nikki says, and Alana translates that into nine, and probably both in the morning and at night, because otherwise Nikki would have just said Coco. Nikki's got a few little quirks like that, since she never was very well wired anyway and a world full of the living dead doesn't help those kinds of tendencies.

"West," Alana decides. "Maybe they couldn't cross the river."

Her car's still intact, except for the paint job, so she siphons gas out of the other cars, stows it in the backseat with their remaining food, and preps for a road trip like she was catching up on the things college students who aren't Kodak All-Americans do with their breaks and their lives. Nikki's quieter than usual, but that doesn't take much, since Nikki doesn't talk all that much anymore.

She takes them west for a few hours, then turns the wheel over to Nikki so she can catch up on her sleep. When she wakes up, the sun's kinda in her eyes and I-95 just turned into the New Jersey Turnpike. "Bitch," she spits at Nikki.

Catch wonders what would happen if she flicked a fingernail sharply against the veneer of normalcy this place tries to hold together. Would people finally notice they were living like refugees in a hospital? Would people realize that Kasha takes her cold coffee with cream that's just past turning and a drop or two of blood? Would they remember that there are zombies out there, for heaven's sake?

Ali might not, come to think of it. She'd just ask for the hydrochloric acid or whatever they're using as testing material, and then she'd get on with what she's been doing for as long as Catch has been here. She seems happy, or at least as happy as could reasonably be expected, all things considered, although if she's not careful Kasha is going to kick her butt for overdoing things.

Ann wouldn't notice either, would she? Ann's like a gazelle alone on the savannah, all wide eyes and perked ears. At least now she has a good reason to be nervous. It makes Catch wonder how she controls it and slows herself down so she can wander around outside without drawing immediate attention. But then, prey learns how not to be seen, so it doesn't actually become prey. Protective coloration and all of that. Except instead of stripes and spots, it's blood and death-pale skin.

They've been hearing the message from New York for three days and more now, and some of them think they should go and others think there's no point, and Catch is somewhere in the middle. Ali wants to join up with the researchers to see if she's right about a few things. Ann keeps looking west, towards Colorado, towards Phoenix, and any sudden movement around her might be enough to make her run. Kasha doesn't say much, but when she looks out the window, she tends to blink into the sunrise.

Three more repetitions of the message, and Catch gets to thinking that if she got out of Indianapolis, she might stop having the nightmares where she wakes up screaming so incoherently that people think the undead have swarmed their safe haven. Maybe if she has something new to see, she can stop seeing the teammates she's had to kill. Maybe if she succeeds at something else, she can forget that she failed.

The caravan heads out the next morning.

Somehow things have fallen into pairs. Tweety and Powell, naturally. Pee-Wee and Smith, slightly less naturally. Cheryl and Brax, 'cause Brax needs to mother someone and Cheryl needs to be mothered. Jesus-girl and the sweet baby Jesus, though Ivory thinks trusting someone who's famous for coming back from the dead doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Plenette's got her gun, although that's a threesome with her axe.

Ivory hasn't. Who's she gonna pair off with? Coach? Ew. She's not into weapons that way, and she's not into threesomes anyway. It's only after the tenth or twentieth time she's traced the C on her shirt that she realizes what she's paired off with, and what it really means.

"We gotta get the fuck outta here," she says. She doesn't look around. She doesn't have to. "We been hearin' from New York, right? Let's get there. Always wanted to visit, anyway."

Things go quieter than usual for a moment, except for Jesus-girl chatting to her invisible friend, because Jesus-girl does not shut the fuck up for anything. Cheryl finally says, "You want us to go out there? But it's dangerous!" Her voice is real high-pitched, higher than it's gotten the last week or so, and was that a lisp?

"There, there, it'll be okay," Brax coos, and Cheryl buries her face in Brax's shoulder like- like a baby. Oh, shit. Shit's gone too far.

"This ain't right," Ivory says, pointing at Brax and Cheryl, and this time she does look around to make sure everyone knows what she's talking about. "We're goin' nuts in here, and we gotta get out or die trying."

"Don't plan on dyin'," Plenette drawls slow. And she probably won't. She's good at killing things. "I keep a mile 'round clean. Should be enough for us to find a bus or a few cars. Take our shit, steal some gas, go."

"Okay, but what about Katie?" Tweety asks. Ivory takes a deep breath and prepares to explain to Tweety again that calling Jesus-girl Katie tends to set Pee-Wee off and if that happens then they'll never get through this conversation.

But Pee-Wee doesn't sound too pissed when she says, "Oh, we're good. We both want out of here." Tweety's got a look on her face like she's about to attempt to explain, again, that Pee-Wee's girlfriend, partner, whatever the right word might be, is a rotting twice-dead corpse. Pee-Wee never takes well to that.

Coach steps in. "Injured players don't travel with the team, remember?" he says calmly. "And you know how badly hurt she was. You brought her back in here, remember?"

Coach is a fucking genius. Pee-Wee nods and shuts up, settling back on her cot, and it's almost normal except for her hand stroking Smith's hair (and how Pee-Wee ignores the long-dried blood, Ivory doesn't want to know) and her whispered words of apology into Smith's ear.

They end up leaving both Katies behind, because Jesus-girl seems to have decided to wait for her savior to show up. They leave her a box of energy bars and a few bottles of water, and remind her that there's a pump a few yards away if the bottles run dry. She's a big girl, she'll last a long time as her body devours itself. Still, Ivory gets the sense that if they come back here next year they'll find her body in the same position.

If there's a next year.