Fic: Independent 33, “Beneath the Bitter Snows”, 1/1

[aadler]

 


Banner by sroni

Beneath the Bitter Snows
Copyright March 2020

Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Everything hurt. She swam up through a sea of suffering, of caltrops and broken glass and the deep, pervasive, awful ache that spoke of bone rotting away from the inside. Unbearable, if there was any choice … but there wasn’t, so she pushed up and out, sluicing through pain to consciousness, and her eyes opened even as her hands reached for weapons that weren’t there.

That would have snapped her to instant alert even if she hadn’t been on her way already. She always had weapons available. For more than a year now, she’d always had them on her person. It had made for some interesting bathing arrangements (on those too-infrequent occasions when bathing was possible at all), but that was simply part of how the world was now: better grimy than dead.

And if anybody should know, it was her.

She sat up, her muscles dragging at her with heavy, leaden lethargy, and had seen and focused on the man sitting outside the wire cage while he was still jerking in reaction to her unexpected motion. “Who are you?” she demanded of him. “What is this place? And what have you done with my stuff?”

The man hadn’t yet fully recovered from his initial startlement, but his self-control was good. “Ah. Ah, yes.” He took a better hold on the notebook he had almost dropped. “I can understand your concern. In order, then: I am Dr. Gregory Silva. This is an equipment storage area of our, our settlement, but we brought you here because it can be suitably secured. And your possessions are safe, and you as well.” He paused, shook his head slightly. “At least, as much as is possible under your current circumstances.”

The precise, almost pedantic way he spoke reminded her of Giles (and the pang at the memory was unexpected but familiar), but there the resemblance ended. This man was older and shorter, and looked like someone who had been pudgy not too very long ago, so that loose skin hung at his neck and jowls. There was no accent to go with the name, but it seemed to her that his features did have something of a Hispanic cast. She regarded him with a level gaze that held no suggestion of warmth. “I knew another Dr. Gregory once,” she said evenly. “I can already tell I liked him better than I’m going to like you.”

He actually looked a bit downcast at that, but only a bit. “I apologize for your … your lodgings. I’m sure you can see the necessity, given your condition; and, let’s face it, you’re in much better circumstances than you’d find out there.”

The tone matched the words, but she didn’t buy it for a minute. “I’m a prisoner here,” she told him. “I didn’t ask for that, and I’m not about to be grateful for it. Or pretend to be.”

Silva shook his head. “Again, I’m sorry. Once we’d seen you, it was clear that … intervention was required.”

Without looking at it, she had already registered the bandage on her forearm: clean gauze, fresh tape, professionally done. They had seen the bite mark, then, and chosen to dress it rather than simply kill her. That could be taken as encouraging, as could be the facts that she hadn’t been stripped and hadn’t been tied down - or chained - for someone’s ‘recreation’. (Yet.) That still left the matter of her captivity.

She didn’t think there was much chance of it working, but it cost nothing to try. “What, you mean this?” she said, a quick tilt of her head acknowledging the bandage. “That was a normal human person, not a zombie. Cussing and leering and trying to rip my clothes off, the whole nine yards.” She put her face into an exasperated expression. “The bite was a surprise; usually, if they can’t win by muscle, they go for knives. Like I did.”

He shook his head again, with every appearance of genuine regret. “I’m sorry, but we’ve already identified the pathogen in your bloodstream. And even if we hadn’t, we’d hold you in quarantine until you either healed, or failed to do so. We’ve learned we simply can’t take chances on this matter.”

She tried to keep her tone level, but the hardness crept in regardless. “You wouldn’t be taking any chances if you’d just left me to myself.”

“That wasn’t possible, I’m afraid.” He sighed. “It would have been inexcusably irresponsible of us to allow you to wander on, a danger to anyone you might encounter.”

“Anyone who’s out there,” she told him flatly, “has managed to stay alive in this mess for years already. Do you honestly believe I’d pose much threat, in my condition?”

That brought a flicker of a smile, but his answer was sober. “Even the most hardened survivor might lower his guard for a pretty young woman. That’s a risk we can’t take in good conscience.”

She’d once been adept at the ‘vapid airhead’ act, but the bleakness of current reality had undercut that, and she was long out of practice. She’d given it her best try, but now she glared at him with a primal ferocity, a clear statement that used no words nor needed them: I get out of here, I’m going to kill you.

And, as best she could tell, his answering expression carried something along the lines of, I appreciate the warning. I’ll certainly do my best to avoid that.

At last she nodded, grudgingly, letting the glare fade. “All right. What’s the program now that I’m here?”

“You’ll be fed,” he said to her. “If you like, we have some drugs for when the pain becomes too bad. And once it’s … once it’s over … we’ll see that you have a proper burial.” He sighed. “I wish we could offer more, but you know how the world is now.”

She did, and in that setting this was extravagant generosity … if he was telling the truth, which she wasn’t about to assume. “I’m locked up in here,” she said, her eyes boring into his. “If I’m going to die, I’d rather it be out in the open air.”

He actually seemed to consider it before answering. “I don’t know if that’s possible. I’ll find out, but I won’t make casual promises. Safety … I believe you can see how that would be an overriding priority these days.”

She nodded. Yes, she could see it. Didn’t have to like it, or let it move her toward cutting him the least bit of slack, but okay. Move on. “How long was I out?” she asked.

His expression didn’t change, and yet somehow she got the impression that he had been waiting for this. “A bit over four hours. I honestly didn’t expect you to wake so soon. You took a big dose.”

She frowned at that. “Dose?”

He nodded. “Animal tranquilizer. Not actually intended for use on humans, but we’ve, er, adapted over the last year or so.” His eyes rested on her, probing, assessing. “We have various forms of alarms for those properties that lie outside our walls. You tripped several, and the pattern of your movement didn’t match what we’ve seen among the dead, so we sent a patrol out to check. Once they’d sighted you, they made the choice to capture. I’ve reviewed their actions, and it appears that their decision was sound.”

Animal tranquilizers. And the users had got close enough to hit her without her seeing or hearing them. Which confirmed that she had been pretty far gone, but she’d already known that much. “I don’t remember,” she said, watching him as steadily as he was studying her.

“Yes, that occasionally happens.” He shifted on the folding chair. “The report says you reacted very quickly, almost made it out before the effects could slow you down.” A tiny shrug. “I’m afraid in their excitement they overreacted, and you were hit three more times. More than two total would be dangerous on someone your size, and our team members have been scheduled for refresher training on the necessary protocols. Not,” he added, “that you seem to be showing any ill effects. Not from that, at any rate.”

“That’s me,” she said, deadpan. “Take a lickin’, keep on tickin’.” A shrug. “So what comes next?”

He stood up. “I waited to make sure you woke properly, that there was no lasting damage from the tranquilizers, but I’m afraid I have other duties that have to be seen to. I’ll check back with you in a few hours; you can let me know then what you’d like for lunch.”

Life for the last several months had settled into grimly repetitive patterns, but this was unexpected. “Wait - I get a choice?”

He smiled at that. “We’re doing our best to preserve civilization, starting among ourselves. And we have certain, er, resources. The larder isn’t as varied as pre-Plague society used to provide, but yes, there are choices.”

It came out before she could stop it. “Biscuits?” Silva tilted his head, surprised at her vehemence, and she felt the flush start at her neck and work its way up. She pushed past it, saying, “Don’t get me wrong, any food is okay - God, I’ve eaten cat food, and you cannot imagine how nasty that is - but for some reason I’ve been obsessing about biscuits lately. The Poppin’ Fresh kind, dripping in butter.”

The smile grew a bit. “No Poppin’ Fresh, I’m afraid, but we can certainly manage biscuits. And when I come back, I’ll bring a list of the jams we have available.”

“That’s …” She stopped, trying to figure out how to react. She’d spent most of the last several months in Solitary Mode, she wasn’t at her best when it came to dealing with people. She finally settled on “Thanks, I guess. For the food. And the bandage. And for the not-having of any general nastiness.” She looked around. “Gonna keep holding a grudge about the cage, though.”

He nodded, still smiling. “That’s understandable. In a few hours, then.”

She settled back onto the cot when he was gone. Okay, mixed news here; the current polite treatment was certainly welcome, and the food even more so, but she couldn’t afford to put any trust in the reassuring show. Even so, until Silva revealed actual malign intentions, she’d have to find a way out that didn’t involve killing anybody. Which could be a problem.

So. Caught, held, and studied. He’d waited till she woke, and she’d got a strong sense that he wanted to find out what he could about her. He’d let that go, though, gone off to deal with other matters and then return later. Figuring the break would make her more cooperative? Not very likely anything like that would be happening. Or maybe he was still learning the whole how-to-treat-a-prisoner business.

… No, she didn’t believe it. Any faith she’d ever had in the human race had been burned out of her by bitter experience. He had an angle, and he’d work it in his own time, and she’d deal with whatever he threw at her.

Because she had her own angle. She could feel it, out there, the slow insensate gathering of the dead. She could use that, especially if she knew and her captors didn’t … but either way, it was there to use. They couldn’t hold her, nothing could hold her, and once she was loose -

Screw the world. Screw everybody in the world. Buffy was out for Buffy now.

She let herself sink back into whatever relief from the pain that she could get from unconsciousness. Beneath the welcoming blanket of oblivion, though, a tiny watchful part of her remained aware of the silent, implacable numbers inexorably drawing nearer.

*               *               *

Eyes closed, Buffy let out a long, shuddering moan. Through the almost unbearable storm of sensations, she heard Silva’s voice: “Good?”

She chewed, swallowed, then opened her eyes to regard him with a kind of stunned wonder. “I’ve had orgasms that weren’t this good.”

He used a little cough to cover the laugh. “Well. All right. I’ll, I’ll pass along your approval to Audrey.” At her inquiring glance, he clarified, “The jam is one of her efforts, and she’s rather proud of it.”

Buffy nodded, integrating his words with her impressions. “I thought that tasted a lot better than I’d expect from something that had been sitting in a refrigerator the last few years. So you guys make your own goodies?”

Silva settled back in the office chair he’d wheeled in to replace the earlier folding model. “I don’t mind answering a few questions, but we’re somewhat curious about you as well. Would you be open to trading information?”

Buffy considered it. He was still behaving as hospitably as the circumstances warranted (and the biscuits and jam were a plate full of heaven, which she was eager to plow into at greater length). Even if she could accept his cordiality as genuine, though - and she didn’t - there was still the minor imprisonment issue. On the other hand, she didn’t have much to lose or much in the way of options. Time for Cooperative Buffy, then. “Quid pro quo? Sure. But isn’t that supposed to be done with the hot chick on the outside of the cage?”

“Times change,” Silva returned, mildly enough that she couldn’t tell whether he’d caught and disregarded the Silence of the Lambs reference or was entirely unconscious of it. “To begin with, I’m interested in knowing how far you’ve come to get here, and where you started out originally.”

Buffy shrugged. “I’m not really sure of either one. I’ve got no real idea of distances - I don’t even know where I am now - and I don’t actually know where I started. Probably Florida, what with the mangrove swamps, but maybe the southern part of Georgia. Or, who knows, maybe even South Carolina, I was never solid on my East Coast geography.”

Silva’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t know where you began? where you were when the plague first manifested?”

“Oh, that, yeah, but it wasn’t here.” She regarded him steadily. “And no, I’m not coy about filling out that answer a bit, but you haven’t given any answer to my first question.”

Silva looked momentarily confused, then his expression cleared. “Oh, the jam? Yes, we make our own. We have to work on keeping some variety in our diets, but we’re not doing too badly as far as feeding ourselves.”

“Yeah?” Buffy leaned forward on the cot in her cell. “How?”

Silva lifted an eyebrow. Buffy frowned at him, then she got it. “Oh. Okay. I was overseas when our current apocalypse started. England. I didn’t make it over here till fairly recently. So, what kind of food supplies? and, what I asked before, how?”

“This location is a small agricultural and mechanical college,” Silva explained. “When things started falling apart, many of the students and most of the staff chose to remain here, and others found it advisable to return while there was still time. We’ve consolidated what we could, expanded where possible.” He regarded her speculatively. “You were passing through one of our orchards when you were captured, and we have other crops as well. Those are outside our walls, of course, and we have to put some care into guarding them.”

Buffy thought about that. “Why? I can’t see zombies being that interested in watermelons and kumquats.”

“They’re not,” Silva agreed. “But there are the normal animal pests … and there are people.”

“Like me,” Buffy said, understanding. “I was chowing down on the apples, wasn’t I?”

“That particular section was peaches, actually. But yes.” He shrugged. “A single individual passing through would be a small matter, but we can’t afford to have our yields carried off by swarms of refugees.”

Buffy regarded him, her gaze hardening. “People need food.”

“We’re the ones growing the food,” Silva countered. “We’re not willing to lose it to those who can’t provide for themselves.” He shook his head. “We’ve almost stabilized to the point where we can begin taking in others, building supplementary settlements, working outward to reconstruct a civilization that’s been largely lost to plague and famine. It isn’t a quick process, and we have to survive in order to carry it out.” He sighed. “You’re not raising any points that haven’t been argued at length - and need to be - but this is where we are just now. So, how did you manage to get here from England?”

Buffy thought of stonewalling him, but it didn’t really matter. “Ocean,” she said.

Silva waited. When no more came, he prompted, “And?”

Another shrug. “Crossed it.”

Silva hmphed. “It must have taken some determined scavenging to acquire enough fuel for that.”

“No,” she said, relaxing just a bit. “You’re right, anybody that had gas was saving it for vital stuff. So I sailed, wind power only.”

A brief, frozen silence; then, “By yourself?”

Buffy’s smile was tight, and held only the thinnest trace of humor. “Nobody else was that crazy.”

More silence while her host weighed the implications of what she had told him. “You must be a skilled sailor,” he said at last.

Far from it. She’d been lucky to have a couple of weeks to teach herself the basics when she first started out; then storms started to hit, and she spent days on end avoiding one disaster chained to the next. The breakthrough came when she realized that the ocean was an enemy: it was trying kill her, and the small craft was her only weapon to fight back. One of the Slayer gifts was an instinctive feel for weapons, and once she let those instincts take hold, her improvement was exponential. All the same, it had been a close call, as much from encroaching starvation as from the sea itself.

She shrugged yet again. “Must be.”

“So why did you make the trip?” Silva asked. “Are things really so bad in England that you had to come here to escape it?”

“It … was okay, actually.” Buffy bit her lip, thinking of the small, isolated island where the Council had its research station: the hobby gardens that had become precious resources, the ocean that served as a barrier to the hordes of the dead, the warning spells and scrying spells to safeguard and to glean news from the outside, the Council people themselves and their determination to find an effective response to the darkness that was swallowing the world. “But I had family here. Still do, I hope, but I’ll never know unless I go and find out.”

Silva nodded. “Where? Near here?” At her suspicious expression, he said, “If it’s close enough, we might know to watch for them, after you’re …” He broke off.

Once she had died, he meant. “Nowhere near here,” she admitted. At last report, Dawn had been studying at Berkley; Buffy wasn’t sure of her own current location (Alabama? Kentucky? Pennsylvania, even?), but she knew California would be a long, long distance yet. “West Coast.”

Silva pursed his lips, weighing that. “You were planning to cross the entire continent. Alone.”

“One day at a time.” She sighed. “Easier than crossing the Atlantic, I just figured it would take longer.”

Silva nodded, and Buffy could see him controlling his reactions; the fate bearing down on her was hers, and he seemingly had no wish to add to it by some careless comment or unguarded display of emotion. (Or was doing his best to look like he was being considerate.) “Have you run across any other settlements in your travels?”

That drew a sharp look. “Why do you want to know?”

His answer was straightforward, showing no reaction to her obvious wariness. “Our world has largely fallen into terra incognita. Any additional knowledge would be a lessening of the huge unknown. More practically, other communities might have resources we would want to barter for, personnel whose capabilities we could learn from. And …” His smile, while it appeared sincere, had a wry twist to it. “It would be reassuring to know we weren’t alone. That others were also working their way through the rebuilding process, that it didn’t fall solely to us.”

Buffy gave it some thought. She was no longer a protector of humanity - that ship had sailed long before she set sail - but that didn’t mean she could make herself not care about people at all. Even though he’d done his best to present a positive picture, she didn’t actually know anything except what this man had told her. It might not be the whole truth, or might even be a complete con; in either event, she didn’t want to risk the welfare of the small groups she’d encountered on her trek, not to someone whose personality and motivations remained unproven. Still, shutting him out completely might cause problems … “No,” she said at last. “You’re not alone.”

He smiled again at the note of caution, and the carefully brief answer, but accepted it. “Until we make contact with other communities and establish relations with them, we are alone. But thank you; it’s encouraging to know that others are doing the same work, and not so far away that we’re unlikely ever to meet them.”

The words were good, but Buffy’s unease was still growing. “You know, you’ve been nice enough about everything - no, I’m still not forgetting the whole being-locked-up part, even if we can let that go for now - but you’re the only person I’ve seen since I got here.” She locked her eyes with his. “In fact, I only have your word that there even are any other people here, and I’m not just squirreled away down in your trophy basement.”

Silva’s face went blank, and he opened and closed his mouth a few times before he collected himself. “You know, that never occurred to me. I’ve been focused on …” He stopped, shook his head. “I’m sorry, I let myself get caught up in tunnel vision; I thought I was treating you with as much concern as was possible, but I wasn’t really seeing it from your point of view.” He stood up. “I left you here alone before because you seemed to need your rest. I won’t do that again, and I apologize for my shortsightedness. Just as before, I have other issues I need to deal with, but I’ll send somebody to visit with you so you’re not, not in solitary down here.” He paused, considering. “A woman, if that would help assure you that I have no, no sinister designs.”

“Wouldn’t hurt.” Buffy kept her tone brisk. “As far as requests go, does your grow-your-own program go as far as you and your people being able to manage orange juice?”

Silva gave her another tilted eyebrow. “I’ll find out. I know we can provide you with something fresh.” He started for the door, stopped to look back. “I apologize again. I know that your current circumstances aren’t what you would normally consider hospitality, but we really would like to do the best we can for you.”

Buffy couldn’t hold back the jab. “Out of the goodness of your hearts.”

Silva’s eyes seemed to look inward. “So that we can have some evidence that we’re holding onto our own humanity.” Then he turned again, and moments later he was gone.

Buffy settled in to finish off the biscuits, again sinking into rapture at the taste of the jam. Doing okay so far. She didn’t need to actually trust the man, only to play for time.

Because the dead were coming. Coming.

*               *               *

Buffy knew full well that she looked worse when Silva returned. Still, his only reaction was a small frown, which he covered by saying, “Brooke told me you asked her to leave.”

“Yeah.” Buffy sighed. “Sorry, she was making me antsy. She tried, but I’ve spent a lot of time by myself, and … well, she just seemed like she was always on edge.”

Silva nodded. “Yes, she was one of our returnees. Left to rejoin her family when the outbreak started, made her way back to us months later, alone.” He shook his head. “She told us what she could of conditions on the outside - part of our ongoing information-gathering process - but there were some things she still doesn’t want to talk about, and we’ve learned not to press.”

Right. This was probably another play to get her to reveal more about other communities, but what he’d said about Brooke matched Buffy’s own impressions: not exactly a thousand-yard stare, more the slightly disconnected gaze of someone who’d learned all too well that there were things out there that couldn’t be forgotten. “Uh-huh. Like I said, she tried. I even got a bath out of the process.”

Silva looked startled. “Really? How did she -?”

Buffy smiled at that. “Oh, she was careful. Gave me a tiny squeeze-bottle of shampoo, then tossed water on me through the cage-wire, from a pan.” And hadn’t made the least apology for her caution, which Buffy respected; right now, paranoia was a basic survival protocol. “I didn’t even know how itchy I’d got till I was clean again.” (Not to mention how odd it felt to realize that having lukewarm water thrown on her, while she was stripped down in captivity, actually qualified as a luxury now.) “ ’Course, then I only had dirty clothes to put back on … but, hey, glass half-full.”

“Ah,” Silva said. “We might be able to -” He broke off, regarded Buffy evenly. “How are you feeling?”

Yeah: why give the dead girl clean clothes, just to have to turn right around and burn them? “Pretty much the same,” she said; then added, after a moment, “There might be a little bit of fever. Nothing major.”

He considered it, nodding; still, even though he’d masked his response, she knew as well as he did that once the fever manifested, it was never more than a day. Maybe hours. “I’m seeing what we can do about giving you some time outside,” he said. “We have to be careful, but we’re not heartless.”

“Okay, sure, fine,” she answered. “Whatever you can manage.”

His gaze sharpened a bit, something in her tone or body language alerting him. “Is anything wrong? You seem …” He gestured vaguely. “Disturbed, dissatisfied, uneasy, I can’t say.”

So here it was. She had spent the last several hours debating which way to play this; apparently, she had made the decision already, because otherwise she could have hidden the cues he’d keyed in on. Now it was a matter of how to communicate the necessary concept; ‘I never was that good at sensing vampires, but I’ve got to where I can feel zombies pretty well, and I’m getting a big vibe right now’ would call for more explanation than she was willing to provide, so … “You know what people say about intuition?” she ventured. Silva tilted his head slightly, an indicator that he was waiting for follow-up, so she went on. “That it’s really just our subconscious putting together a lot of different stuff that our surface mind can’t be bothered to track, and then giving us a kind of heads-up?”

“I’ve heard that, yes,” he said. “And there’s considerable evidence supporting the theory. Are you having what you see as an intuitive alert?”

“Something like that.” Buffy shook her head. “It’s taking me a while to shake off whatever your guys dosed me with, so I’m still not totally clear on my memories right before then … but I think I was getting the sense of a lot of the dead around.” She looked straight at him, trying to beam straight into his brain just how serious she was. “And I mean, really a lot.”

His eyes stayed on hers while he visibly assessed what she had told him. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll call for a heightened watch.”

“Just like that?” Buffy asked. “I mean, you give the orders, and people hop to? You must have a pretty solid leadership position here.”

Silva’s response was a soundless chuckle. “Leader? I’m the senior faculty member, which gives me a certain stature; mostly, though, I’m in a directive role as a result of consensus agreement. People do what I suggest as long as that makes sense and brings the desired results. If I stopped delivering, well, then it would be time to choose someone else to make the decisions.”

“Okay,” she said, weighing that. “And you’ll make this decision just based on my hunch, that you have no reason to trust?”

“If you’re right,” Silva said, “then we need to take action. If you’re wrong, another surprise drill will have its own benefits.” He looked around. “I, uh …”

“Yeah, if it’s something you need to do, it’s something you need to do pronto.” Buffy gave him a grudging nod. “I can see that.”

“Thank you,” Silva told her. “I’ll get back to you when I can.”

“Got nowhere else to be right now,” she replied as he turned to leave.

Once she was alone again, she returned to her cot, shifted it back out about a foot from the right-hand wall of the cage. This was one of the reasons she’d pushed Brooke out: she’d found a place where the weld wasn’t as secure as the rest, and worked one of the wires back and forth till it broke free from the weak join; that had given her enough leverage to repeat the process on the next one up till it came loose as well. She settled her grip on the third wire from the bottom now, forcing her concentration onto the task; the Slayer strength hadn’t totally deserted her, but she was having to pull it out of a body that was breaking down on her.

She was cutting it close. This was a race now. Win, lose … it could go either way. The important part was where she didn’t quit.

*               *               *

Flex. Flex. Stretch the metal, bend it, work it. Use movement to create slack, use slack for more movement, building on both till another wire gave and she could switch to the next. Stop now and then to pace the interior of the cage, shaking out her cramped hands, gauging the growing wobbliness in her legs and dimming of her vision.

It was a race, and she was losing. Keep going anyhow.

Flex. Flex. Careful not to catch fingers on the rough edges; blood would make the metal slippery, and that would drop an additional handicap on her. Perspiration was running down her face, her breath coming faster as sheer will struggled to compensate for failing organs. The background awareness of threat was still growing; it was bigger than she had thought, she’d felt less than this when she was near a zombie herd that must have numbered close to a hundred, which meant there had to be a lot more than that gathering, gathering. Blood pounded in her ears, muscle tremors becoming more violent and slowing her efforts further. Another wire loose. Even skinny as she’d become, she’d need three times as much as she’d managed so far before she might be able to squeeze out the gap.

Not going to make it. She couldn’t see what she was doing anymore, working by feel now. The farther she got, the faster she could go; the more her capabilities faded, the slower it went. Almost perfect balance, except that the balance couldn’t maintain, there was too much left to do and too little of her remaining for the task. Another wire. Not enough. Wasn’t going to be enough.

Keep going.

By the time she could no longer continue, she was too weak to make it back up onto the cot. She lay on the rough concrete, drenched in sweat, gasping for air, her body jerking uncontrollably. She fought anyway, habit and stubbornness refusing to surrender, but the conclusion had always been known. She might not be ready for death, but apparently it was tired of waiting for her.

Her heart rate, which had skyrocketed from her efforts to push past inflexible limits, began to diminish. Her breathing became shallow, erratic. The determination that had forced her on could no longer override the draining of her strength. Darkness grew around her, within her.

Her heart slowed. Slowed. Slowed.

Stopped.

Her body went slack as the last tension faded and was gone. No air moved through her open lips, a faint film clouded her unseeing eyes. Everything inside her had ceased, going out like a field of candles extinguished by an uncaring wind. The sweat began to cool on her still frame.

…

Her heart lurched, spasmed, spasmed again, settled into a steady rhythm. Her back arched as she drew in a long, long breath, let it out in a wailing moan. She pushed herself up and rolled onto her hands and knees, the tremors returning to shake her entire body till the seizure had passed, and she blinked and blinked and blinked her eyes till her vision returned.

God, it seemed to take longer every time. Maybe that was her imagination, or maybe her ravaged flesh had to cannibalize itself to restore function, so that each recurrence left her less to work with. She was ravenously hungry; she’d eaten as much as Silva had provided, but she couldn’t have asked for more without risking suspicion, and she needed much more than she’d got.

Put that on the back burner; right now, there was a different matter to be addressed.

She looked at the torn wire of the cage, and her lips thinned. All her agonized effort had managed to create a gap of less than a foot; she took hold of the wire now with both hands, set her feet, and tore away the rest of what she needed in two sustained bursts of energy, then ripped loose some more to allow room for her to slip through without tearing her skin or her clothing on the broken strands.

She was really hungry. If a tenth of what Silva had said was true, there was food to be had, and her yearning for that verged on desperation. The return of life, though, had also brought a full restoration of her senses, and the awareness of the encroaching zombie horde was all but suffocating. She had to get out of here, as quickly as she could, which meant grabbing whatever she ran across on the way rather than any sustained search.

The door to the larger room was locked. It burst under a sharp kick, and she was through and slamming an open-palm strike to Brooke’s jawline before the other girl could do more than begin to react. She moved on swiftly without bothering to check Brooke’s breathing: she had been doing this for a long time, knew how to gauge the application of her strength, and she didn’t have any time to waste. There, a backpack, not hers but it’d do for anything she could scrounge, she caught it up along with a short-handled four-tined garden spading fork (memories of jabbing one very like it through the eyeholes of that demon mask - Hobo Dasani, something like that - which come to think of it was part of her first experience with zombies!), and forged ahead, grabbing various canned goods as she passed and dropping them into the open backpack without slowing.

A glimpse of a high-set window, with no light showing through it, told her 1) she was below ground-level and 2) night was already falling out there, so she acted on the impression and took a set of stairs up, shouldering the backpack while she moved. Outside and ran into Silva on his way in, her free hand closed on his throat to forestall any outcry and she hissed, “Which way out? Which way?”

He struggled, choking and trying to drag her fingers away, but her grip wasn’t something he’d be able to break. She gave him a little shake to impress on him where the balance of power lay here, and commanded, “Point.” He did, sucking in air through the lightest easement she could allow, and she went where he had indicated, pulling him along with her. “Play nice and I’ll leave you here to keep running your little Jonestown,” she told him tersely. “Screw with me, and your groupies are gonna be spinning the bottle for a new leader, capisce?”

She kept their movement steady, nothing fast enough or jerky enough to draw attention, because there were other people moving around in the deepening dusk: briskly, not dawdling but not running either, and they were calling out reports and instructions to each other. No-panic was good but hey, this was the time to panic!, her sense of the herd she’d been feeling wasn’t any stronger but she could hear the zombies groaning now, and the difference between the sound of the closer ones and the sound of the rest told her that they were already inside the walls -

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

She released Silva’s throat and shoved him away. “You’ve got a breach,” she snapped. “Call out the troops or get everybody into a fallback point, but whatever it is do it fast, I’ll see if I can buy your people some time!” She ran, not waiting for a reply, the spading fork would have to do but what she’d give for a sword right now! Single-foe tactics - or even small-group - wouldn’t do the job against the numbers she’d be facing, she’d have to give ground to keep from being rolled under but maybe she could stack up enough of the dead to slow the others for even a minute or so, and why was she doing this?

Because she had to, was the plain answer. She wasn’t the world’s champion anymore - the world had beat her to the punch on doomsday - but she couldn’t simply walk away from people about to be massacred by monsters. However disillusioned and betrayed and bitter she’d become, she wasn’t that far gone yet. Maybe soon, but not yet, damn it to hell.

Her night vision was better than human but she still wasn’t fully recovered, she was most of the way up more stairs toward the horrible groaning before she realized what this had to be: a small sports stadium, maybe the size of the one Sunnydale High had used for football games. She’d caught reflections on the way here but as she came out into the stands there were actual lights - not the full night-game setup you’d normally see, but half a dozen placed for strategic illumination - and she stopped to take in what was spread out before her.

Her first thought was that the zombies had massed on the field (and oh yeah, hundreds all right!), but there was something not-quite-right about what she was seeing, and at another look she started to catch the pattern. They were … separated, sorted, shambling toward distant figures who waved and clapped their hands to keep the attention focused their way, and the zombies were moving along defined pathways, internal barriers that channeled them. This was more straight-line, but it reminded her of how people had once been spread out into winding lanes for airport security, controlled and routed, and what the hell -?

Movement next to her and she turned, spading fork raised, but it was Silva and he was looking past her, studying the field appraisingly: not like someone surprised or dismayed, but inspecting something familiar to be sure it was working right. “We paid attention to your warning,” he said to her. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

Buffy stepped back to make for a more comfortable distance, but didn’t move away from him past that. “This …” She shook her head, looking back at the field. “This is organized, this is a prepared defense. You didn’t throw this together on the spot, you already had it set up.”

He looked back at her. “Well, yes.” He nodded toward the packed field. “We don’t want the dead to mass along our walls till they find a way through, or make one, so we admit them under circumstances of our choosing, so that we can deal with them in a set manner.” He started away from her, motioning her to follow. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of it.”

She moved along behind him, a little stunned; she was already close enough to see that the people at the other end of the field were divided into teams, some walking alongside the inner walls and spearing any of the dead that tried to clamber over, others maintaining the steady noise that kept the zombies moving forward, others yet manning gates that they opened and closed at regular intervals, but keeping themselves on the side that didn’t allow any of the horde to reach them. Watching how the human tenders moved, Buffy realized that this was an established routine for them: serious business, but deliberate and controlled and purposeful. “How on earth did you come up with … with this?”, she asked Silva.

He glanced back at her, again the polite host. “As I said, we’re an A&M college. Some of our animal husbandry staff adapted the methods for channeling large numbers of cattle. We’ve continued to modify the process, but it’s more or less settled now except for occasional tinkering at the edges.”

Buffy nodded, her combat brain already understanding the basic concept. Zombies were slow and stupid, with no defensive ‘instincts’ whatsoever, easy prey for a calm person who kept his head and used a weapon effectively; the biggest threat had always come from their numbers and their relentlessness, disregarding casualties that would have shattered any mortal army and pressing on regardless. This defense took advantage of their basic weaknesses, directing them in such a manner that those numbers could never be brought to bear. She didn’t even have to see the end to know what it must be: pikemen to dispatch the foremost at a safe distance and allow them to fall into some handy pen, then the next batch let in for the same treatment. It was systematic, practical, matter-of-fact, lethal. “How do you dispose of all the bodies?” she heard herself asking.

Silva gave her a nod that seemed somehow approving. “We used to burn them,” he said, “but eventually we could see it would waste fuel we needed to conserve. Instead we’ve set shredders and grinders, and we process them into mulch.”

She drew back at that. “You … you turn them into fertilizer and grow stuff in them?”

He smiled at her reaction. “Carefully,” he said. “Only on select crops, which we monitor. Then we use those crops as feed for animals, also kept segregated for observation. We haven’t seen any adverse effects so far; and, given the massive amount of infected dead in the world now, it may not be possible to keep them out of the food chain, so we’d like to have some idea of what the long-term results will be.”

Buffy nodded, understanding, but she still felt queasy. “So … you’ve got it under control here.”

“We do,” he said. “We probably would have been fine even without your alert, but why take chances?” He was studying her, eyes probing. “You didn’t have to warn us, but you did. And you interrupted your own escape attempt to try and deal with what you thought was a crisis. That speaks well of you.” The mildness of his tone and expression were familiar, again from Giles, and she had some idea of what was coming next. “Additionally, you’re alive, and apparently recovered from infection. You … you have to have some idea what that must mean.”

Yes, she did, but she already knew it was useless for helping anyone else … not even other Slayers, which had been confirmed at terrible cost. Was it because, having been brought back once from true death, certain forms of death could no longer hold her? There was no telling, only the brutal fact, which she had to convincingly communicate now. Buffy sighed. “Pretty sure I know what you’re thinking,” she told Silva. “And no, it’s not that.”

He shook his head. “Nobody recovers from the infection, the only survivors are those who had a bitten extremity amputated before the pathogen could establish itself in the rest of their system. We can take samples, culture antibodies -”

“I’m sorry,” Buffy said. “It won’t work, I’ve already been through this. I had the best people in the world studying me, for more than a year, people with facilities you’d never be able to match. What I have, can’t be reproduced, can’t be replicated, can’t be synthesized. If it could, I’d probably still be there, doing everything I could to help spread the cure … but there is no cure. I’m sorry.”

Silva considered, studying her. “The best in the world, you say, and you were in England … Oxford?”

“Oxford went under,” she said. “Again, sorry. But people from there, with high-end equipment and research teams and other folks from Germany and Switzerland … and one Aussie, but he kind of had his own ideas. And, like I said, I gave it a year. Dead end. No offense, but if they couldn’t do it, no way you could.”

(And it hadn’t just been science, either. Microbiologists and bacteriologists were given a turn after the mystical researchers had pulled out all the stops, because this was exactly the kind of thing that had End Times written all over it … but no, it wasn’t mystical in origin. The plague was man-made, even if there still wasn’t anybody who knew who, and that knowledge had eaten away at Buffy until she just couldn’t stay anymore.)

Silva frowned at her, half-convinced but unwilling to accept it just on her say-so. “What were their names?” he asked. “The researchers studying you?”

Buffy shrugged. “Different ones took their turns. I remember Gosterlitz, Krindschaft, Sheckley … lets’s see, Lindenmann, a couple of women named Downey and Swift-Eades, some younger guys - I think they’d been grad students - called something like Guiser and Suttlesh …” She shrugged. “Lots of people. After a while I stopped paying attention, just let them try whatever ideas they had ’cause I could already see we weren’t getting anywhere.”

Silva’s face fell. “I recognize several of those names, definitely leaders in the field. And others do sound familiar. You’re telling the truth.” The older man seemed to wilt slightly. “Oh, God. I was, was so sure. Once I’d seen you, once I realized the implications -”

“Wait a minute.” Buffy gave him a sharp look. “You knew? You kept me, softballed me with low-key interrogation, gave me time and space to myself, because you knew my deal? How? How could you know?”

He looked back at her, sorrowful but unwavering. “The bites,” he said. “I could see you’d been bitten before, old scars, and your body was showing resistance to the newest infection. I didn’t tell anyone else, didn’t want to raise hopes that might prove false, but someone who had survived past bites? That meant you had something I needed to investigate.”

Buffy fought back not-hysterical laughter. Her body healed from zombie bites, healed fully once she came back from being killed by them; the scars Silva had seen were from vampires - from the Master, Angel, even from maybe-Dracula - she never thought about them anymore because her mind automatically slotted them into a different category. Silva had misjudged the visible evidence, jumped to unfounded conclusions, and landed on the right answer anyhow. Irony, there; and the answer, her seeming immunity (she did die from z-bites, she just kept not-staying that way) wasn’t something she could provide to anybody else, which made the irony something beyond bitter.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish it was true. I spent a solid year hoping it was true. It just … isn’t.”

Silva shook himself, and regarded her sadly. “You could still stay,” he said. “We’re building something here, something worth preserving and nurturing. Just the fact of your survival could be an important symbol, even if we can’t duplicate what you have.”

And just the way he said it, the attempt to persuade her, told her he had no intention of trying to hold her by force. She’d distrusted him automatically, because trust seemed to have no place in the new reality that had swept across the face of the globe; but apparently she’d been wrong, because she wasn’t picking up any false notes and honestly he’d been consistent from the beginning till now.

Perhaps her suspicion had been triggered by a subconscious awareness of his appraisal, an agenda he had hidden even if there had been no harm meant to her by it. Perhaps it was part of her crushing disillusionment with the human race as a mass. Perhaps it was both of those, along with other things she couldn’t track or imagine. Whatever had made her believe he was lying, concealing a threat, she didn’t believe it now.

“Maybe I will,” she said to him. “Stay, I mean, for a little while. A really little while, no more than a week or so, but I could stand to rest for a bit and eat some non-scavenged food and sleep inside walls without worrying about what might be breaking through them. That would be nice … but I’ll be moving on again, you should know that from the start. There are things I have to do, and that hasn’t changed.”

He smiled at her through a sadness that still lingered. “We’ll make the best of that, then. And I’ll do what I can to try and change your mind, convince you that this community can be a home for you. If you decide to leave regardless, though, I’ll sincerely wish you luck. And take heart from the fact that, that you have shown me hope, even if it’s not something I can bring to bear for immediate effect.”

She nodded. “Okay, then.”

“Okay, then,” he repeated. Then he turned and continued on his path, doubtless to check and make sure the zombie-culling operation was proceeding as designed. After a barest half-second of hesitation, she fell in behind him.

She wouldn’t actually stay, she knew that. But, as she’d said, she’d stay for a little while, and welcome the respite.

She was no longer the savior of humanity; humanity itself had found a way to bring about an apocalypse after she, and those before her, had thwarted so many. Still, however cruelly reduced, the human race had survived its own best attempt at self-destruction, and was now struggling toward a new beginning.

She still had her own job to do - the supernatural world might have taken a pause to watch the result of this unexpected, fortuitous armageddon, but it wouldn’t hold off forever, and she’d be there to fight its return - but the essential job was being addressed by the ‘ordinary’ people she hadn’t thought to notice. She had watched, helpless, as a long night fell over the earth, a bleak, terrible winter of destruction and death and decay. Now, for the first time, she was seeing the suggestion of seeds for rebirth, and it would be a pleasure to wait for the advent of a new spring.

Her former captor walked ahead of her to inspect his handiwork, and she followed, to see what was here to see and determine what it might mean.

- end -

And there you are. Don’t hesitate to offer commentary.
End Notes