fic: Reach Up (Grindhouse, Dakota/Abernathy, 1/1)
Grindhouse fic! Dakota/Abernathy! All ficangel‘s fault! GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW NO REALLY.
Reach Up
by Gale
SUMMARY: I never miss.
"Mom!" Jen comes running up the beach. "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom--"
"Okay, honey," Abby says, with the weary patience of someone who's done this a thousand times. Dakota envies her that; that, and the smile on her face as her daughter comes running up. "What? What is it?"
"On the beach," Jen pants, "one of them--" and just like she's been taught, she drops to the ground as it tears through the scrub.
Abby's reflexes are still new; she reaches for her kid, not her weapon. But Dakota's been doing this longer, and she doesn't have anyone left to protect. She has her gun in her hand and four rounds in its head before Abby and Jen can start scooting away.
"Are you all right?" she asks. For a minute, she's not Dakota; she's Dr. Block, deprived of most of her little friends but not her knowledge. She checks Abby for wounds or blowback, then Jen more thoroughly. They both seem fine: no sores, no pustules, no weird wounds. She'll tell the twins to keep an eye on them 'til mid-afternoon, just in case, but she's cautiously okay.
Caution is all Dakota has, anymore.
"I didn't think they could get through," Abby says. She's not scared for herself, not really, but for Jen; the glances she keeps shooting her daughter prove that. "I mean, the water--"
"They're not swimming yet, we don't think," Dakota says. She scans the area clear and shoulders her gun. "But that doesn't mean they won't, or that they can't. The ones in the cities tend to stay in the cities, and those further out like to stay where they are. Protect their territory."
There's a tug on her skirt. Dakota looks down.
"Can I have one?" Jen asks, eyes huge on Dakota's gun.
In the old days, Dakota would have been horrified at the idea. A lot of things were different then.
She smiles. "Of course, honey," she says, kissing the top of the girl's head. "But not an automatic, okay? You and your mom come by tomorrow, we'll start you on lessons."
"Handguns only, young lady," Abby says. She's a mom first, probably always will be (unless something happens, God forbid), but she's not stupid. Her being here proves that. "At least until you're older and have a longer reach."
"Yes ma'am," Jen says, nodding. Dakota ruffles her hair.
*
Abby came in about ten months ago, part of a smaller group. Most of the ones who come in these days are in packs of ten or more, up to twenty-five or thirty; not a lot of singles left, these days. Too easy to pick off. Abby's group was small enough: her, her daughter Jen, a girl not quite Abby's age named Lee, and a couple of women named Kim and Zoe. Zoe was sort of familiar-looking, like maybe she'd been on TV or something, but that was in the old days.
They didn't have much in the way of skills, but that was fine; a lot of people didn't. They were all having to relearn things these days, like farming or scavenging goods. Abby works in the gardens most mornings, organizes supplies in the afternoon, does guard duty at night. "It's not like I can sleep," she'd said the one time Dakota asked, which was good enough for her.
Lee is one of three people running the makeshift school. It's important that kids still learn stuff like math and reading and history, even art and music; it's just that now they learn them side-by-side with how to shoot a gun and proper ways to defend your face and first-aid. Needs change.
Kim and Zoe are in the group that goes out scavenging: for food, mostly, but sometimes electronic supplies and, if they're *very* lucky, survivors. They both carry guns and lead pipes, and tend to argue over who gets to drive and who's stuck riding shotgun. Kim has a filthy mouth, but Dakota's seen her go out of her way to be fair, even when others won't. Zoe is cheerful to a fault, right up until she's not.
About a month ago, a guy came in with one of the smaller packs, maybe fifteen people. He struck Dakota as weird even at the time, but he did what he was told to do, and no one could really complain -- 'til three or four women came up claiming he'd raped them. There's no way to prove it, since there's no forensics labs anymore, but the way they reacted and the way he smiled made Dakota's gut twist.
"We've still got laws, Daughter Number One," her father had said, spitting tobacco and glaring out at the water. "An' less'n someone comes forward can tell us otherwise, it's his word against theirs. Ain't no court in the land'll stand against that."
And then, one day, Kim and Zoe had come up to Cherry with pipes stained red, and explained that he'd gone nuts and attacked them.
"It was the weirdest thing, yeah?" Zoe had said, wide-eyed and startled. "We were out walking the shoreline, and he just runs up on us. I thought it was odd, y'know, but he's always been kind of a strange one--"
"Motherfucker should've been glad he didn't try anything with me," Kim had muttered, and shut up.
"--but he had those *things* on his face," and then Zoe'd made the hand-against-the-face symbol for "one of them", and Cherry had nodded. "And we just." She'd made a face and chucked the pipe away. "It's the law, right? I mean, if you want to take us in, y'can, but he could've come back here--"
"You did the right thing," Cherry had said, nodding. She's kind of a mayor and kind of an earth-mother figure, but mostly she's a former go go dancer and widowed single mom with a gun where her leg should be. Dakota's pretty sure she'll love her 'til she dies. "Better one person get taken out than everyone get infected. That's the law."
Never mind that if he'd *really* been infected, they never would have brought a bloody pipe back and risked infection; and never mind that if he managed to get to a safe zone, odds are he'd had the immunity. There are other kinds of infection that can spread through a crowd, after all.
"Yeah," Zoe'd said, "'s what we thought. Still, thought you should know."
There's a story there, Dakota's still sure of it. But none of them are talking, and she's learned that there's a point where most people just want to stop with the fucking questions, already.
So she just waves them off most mornings, loads her gun, and gets on with her day.
*
Some nights, she still dreams of Tony. Not William, except in nightmares she can't remember, and not Tammy, in *different* nightmares she can't remember. Both leave her sweating and dry-heaving, though, so *that's* fun.
The dreams about Tony are worse. He's bigger, and taking care of Cherry and El Wray's daughter, or sometimes playing with Jen and the other kids. He's very protective of his pets, having lost his scorpion somewhere during the exodus, but he has a new pet python to take some of the sting off. He looks a lot like her, and not much at all like William. He says "Mom" in a long-suffering voice, and gets taller every day.
Those dreams wake her up crying every time.
"Hey," someone says in the darkness. It takes Dakota a minute to realize it's Abby, voice still rough with sleep. "Wha' time 'sit?"
Dakota looks out the window. "Early," she says, looking at the position of the moon and guessing. Her watch died a while ago, and non-essential batteries aren't high on the resupply list. "I had a nightmare, it's fine. Go back to sleep."
She hears Abby sitting up in the darkness. "Oh yeah? What about?"
Dakota really does mean to say "nothing" or "I can't remember". But what comes out is, "My son."
She can hear Abby blink. "You have a son?"
"*Had*," Dakota says quietly. "I had a son. During the outbreak, we were running, and I handed him a gun--"
"Oh," Abby says faintly. "Oh, Christ, Dee, I'm sorry."
Dakota shrugs. "I don't let myself think about him during the day," she says honestly. "But at night, sometimes..." She trails off and touches her face, absently wiping tears away.
There's a little silence.
Then Abby reaches over and hauls Dakota close, completely not giving a shit when Dakota freezes against her. Jen makes a noise in her sleep and spoons Dakota's leg.
"About a week before it happened," Abby says quietly, "maybe less, I -- we were in Austin--"
"No shit?" Dakota says, and winces when she sees Jen. "Um. No kidding?"
"No kidding." Abby smiles a little. "Kim and Zoe -- they are -- they were stuntpeople. People who did stunts, you know? So they were playing Ship's Mast--"
"That thing where you strap yourself onto the hood of the car?" Dakota says, looking at her incredulously. "Oh my God, are they crazy?" It's not meant to be funny; the last thing they need is insane people looking for supplies.
"Not legally," Abby shrugs. "They're stuntpeople. Anyway, some asshole tries to run us off the road. I don't mean he was just messing around; I mean he tried to run us off the goddamn road." She shrugs. "So we caught up to him and killed him."
Another little silence.
"You mean you beat the shit out of him," Dakota says.
"I mean we beat the shit out of him, then I caved his head in with my boot," Abby says calmly. "I don't -- I don't regret it, I want to make that clear. He deserved worse, but we were kind of coming down from the adrenaline high, so that was the best we could've done under the circumstances." She rubs Dakota's back. "But sometimes I still dream about him. About the sound it made when his skull cracked, or the way Zoe slid around the hood of the car."
"I never killed anyone until I needed to," Dakota says softly. "Not on purpose."
"Yeah, well. Neither did I." Abby shrugs. "No one knows if they're capable of it 'til they're in it, I guess."
"Yeah," Dakota starts to say, and then Abby's kissing her.
She's had better first kisses: Tammy wasn't bad, but the record-holder is still Dani Nikolodos, in med school. Five-foot-nine with four-inch boots, too much lip gloss and not enough top. But this is the one Dakota's having now, in the new world, and Abby tastes like MAC and pretty woman.
Abby stops and looks at her for a long moment.
Dakota looks back at her, one arm around her waist.
"So," Abby starts, looking a little nervous. "Um--"
"Your bangs are stupid," Dakota says solemnly, or as solemnly as you can get when you're kissing a beautiful girl. She's not sure; Tammy was a lot of things, but "solemn" wasn't one of them.
Abby grins. "I'm growing them out.”
Reach Up
by Gale
SUMMARY: I never miss.
"Mom!" Jen comes running up the beach. "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom--"
"Okay, honey," Abby says, with the weary patience of someone who's done this a thousand times. Dakota envies her that; that, and the smile on her face as her daughter comes running up. "What? What is it?"
"On the beach," Jen pants, "one of them--" and just like she's been taught, she drops to the ground as it tears through the scrub.
Abby's reflexes are still new; she reaches for her kid, not her weapon. But Dakota's been doing this longer, and she doesn't have anyone left to protect. She has her gun in her hand and four rounds in its head before Abby and Jen can start scooting away.
"Are you all right?" she asks. For a minute, she's not Dakota; she's Dr. Block, deprived of most of her little friends but not her knowledge. She checks Abby for wounds or blowback, then Jen more thoroughly. They both seem fine: no sores, no pustules, no weird wounds. She'll tell the twins to keep an eye on them 'til mid-afternoon, just in case, but she's cautiously okay.
Caution is all Dakota has, anymore.
"I didn't think they could get through," Abby says. She's not scared for herself, not really, but for Jen; the glances she keeps shooting her daughter prove that. "I mean, the water--"
"They're not swimming yet, we don't think," Dakota says. She scans the area clear and shoulders her gun. "But that doesn't mean they won't, or that they can't. The ones in the cities tend to stay in the cities, and those further out like to stay where they are. Protect their territory."
There's a tug on her skirt. Dakota looks down.
"Can I have one?" Jen asks, eyes huge on Dakota's gun.
In the old days, Dakota would have been horrified at the idea. A lot of things were different then.
She smiles. "Of course, honey," she says, kissing the top of the girl's head. "But not an automatic, okay? You and your mom come by tomorrow, we'll start you on lessons."
"Handguns only, young lady," Abby says. She's a mom first, probably always will be (unless something happens, God forbid), but she's not stupid. Her being here proves that. "At least until you're older and have a longer reach."
"Yes ma'am," Jen says, nodding. Dakota ruffles her hair.
*
Abby came in about ten months ago, part of a smaller group. Most of the ones who come in these days are in packs of ten or more, up to twenty-five or thirty; not a lot of singles left, these days. Too easy to pick off. Abby's group was small enough: her, her daughter Jen, a girl not quite Abby's age named Lee, and a couple of women named Kim and Zoe. Zoe was sort of familiar-looking, like maybe she'd been on TV or something, but that was in the old days.
They didn't have much in the way of skills, but that was fine; a lot of people didn't. They were all having to relearn things these days, like farming or scavenging goods. Abby works in the gardens most mornings, organizes supplies in the afternoon, does guard duty at night. "It's not like I can sleep," she'd said the one time Dakota asked, which was good enough for her.
Lee is one of three people running the makeshift school. It's important that kids still learn stuff like math and reading and history, even art and music; it's just that now they learn them side-by-side with how to shoot a gun and proper ways to defend your face and first-aid. Needs change.
Kim and Zoe are in the group that goes out scavenging: for food, mostly, but sometimes electronic supplies and, if they're *very* lucky, survivors. They both carry guns and lead pipes, and tend to argue over who gets to drive and who's stuck riding shotgun. Kim has a filthy mouth, but Dakota's seen her go out of her way to be fair, even when others won't. Zoe is cheerful to a fault, right up until she's not.
About a month ago, a guy came in with one of the smaller packs, maybe fifteen people. He struck Dakota as weird even at the time, but he did what he was told to do, and no one could really complain -- 'til three or four women came up claiming he'd raped them. There's no way to prove it, since there's no forensics labs anymore, but the way they reacted and the way he smiled made Dakota's gut twist.
"We've still got laws, Daughter Number One," her father had said, spitting tobacco and glaring out at the water. "An' less'n someone comes forward can tell us otherwise, it's his word against theirs. Ain't no court in the land'll stand against that."
And then, one day, Kim and Zoe had come up to Cherry with pipes stained red, and explained that he'd gone nuts and attacked them.
"It was the weirdest thing, yeah?" Zoe had said, wide-eyed and startled. "We were out walking the shoreline, and he just runs up on us. I thought it was odd, y'know, but he's always been kind of a strange one--"
"Motherfucker should've been glad he didn't try anything with me," Kim had muttered, and shut up.
"--but he had those *things* on his face," and then Zoe'd made the hand-against-the-face symbol for "one of them", and Cherry had nodded. "And we just." She'd made a face and chucked the pipe away. "It's the law, right? I mean, if you want to take us in, y'can, but he could've come back here--"
"You did the right thing," Cherry had said, nodding. She's kind of a mayor and kind of an earth-mother figure, but mostly she's a former go go dancer and widowed single mom with a gun where her leg should be. Dakota's pretty sure she'll love her 'til she dies. "Better one person get taken out than everyone get infected. That's the law."
Never mind that if he'd *really* been infected, they never would have brought a bloody pipe back and risked infection; and never mind that if he managed to get to a safe zone, odds are he'd had the immunity. There are other kinds of infection that can spread through a crowd, after all.
"Yeah," Zoe'd said, "'s what we thought. Still, thought you should know."
There's a story there, Dakota's still sure of it. But none of them are talking, and she's learned that there's a point where most people just want to stop with the fucking questions, already.
So she just waves them off most mornings, loads her gun, and gets on with her day.
*
Some nights, she still dreams of Tony. Not William, except in nightmares she can't remember, and not Tammy, in *different* nightmares she can't remember. Both leave her sweating and dry-heaving, though, so *that's* fun.
The dreams about Tony are worse. He's bigger, and taking care of Cherry and El Wray's daughter, or sometimes playing with Jen and the other kids. He's very protective of his pets, having lost his scorpion somewhere during the exodus, but he has a new pet python to take some of the sting off. He looks a lot like her, and not much at all like William. He says "Mom" in a long-suffering voice, and gets taller every day.
Those dreams wake her up crying every time.
"Hey," someone says in the darkness. It takes Dakota a minute to realize it's Abby, voice still rough with sleep. "Wha' time 'sit?"
Dakota looks out the window. "Early," she says, looking at the position of the moon and guessing. Her watch died a while ago, and non-essential batteries aren't high on the resupply list. "I had a nightmare, it's fine. Go back to sleep."
She hears Abby sitting up in the darkness. "Oh yeah? What about?"
Dakota really does mean to say "nothing" or "I can't remember". But what comes out is, "My son."
She can hear Abby blink. "You have a son?"
"*Had*," Dakota says quietly. "I had a son. During the outbreak, we were running, and I handed him a gun--"
"Oh," Abby says faintly. "Oh, Christ, Dee, I'm sorry."
Dakota shrugs. "I don't let myself think about him during the day," she says honestly. "But at night, sometimes..." She trails off and touches her face, absently wiping tears away.
There's a little silence.
Then Abby reaches over and hauls Dakota close, completely not giving a shit when Dakota freezes against her. Jen makes a noise in her sleep and spoons Dakota's leg.
"About a week before it happened," Abby says quietly, "maybe less, I -- we were in Austin--"
"No shit?" Dakota says, and winces when she sees Jen. "Um. No kidding?"
"No kidding." Abby smiles a little. "Kim and Zoe -- they are -- they were stuntpeople. People who did stunts, you know? So they were playing Ship's Mast--"
"That thing where you strap yourself onto the hood of the car?" Dakota says, looking at her incredulously. "Oh my God, are they crazy?" It's not meant to be funny; the last thing they need is insane people looking for supplies.
"Not legally," Abby shrugs. "They're stuntpeople. Anyway, some asshole tries to run us off the road. I don't mean he was just messing around; I mean he tried to run us off the goddamn road." She shrugs. "So we caught up to him and killed him."
Another little silence.
"You mean you beat the shit out of him," Dakota says.
"I mean we beat the shit out of him, then I caved his head in with my boot," Abby says calmly. "I don't -- I don't regret it, I want to make that clear. He deserved worse, but we were kind of coming down from the adrenaline high, so that was the best we could've done under the circumstances." She rubs Dakota's back. "But sometimes I still dream about him. About the sound it made when his skull cracked, or the way Zoe slid around the hood of the car."
"I never killed anyone until I needed to," Dakota says softly. "Not on purpose."
"Yeah, well. Neither did I." Abby shrugs. "No one knows if they're capable of it 'til they're in it, I guess."
"Yeah," Dakota starts to say, and then Abby's kissing her.
She's had better first kisses: Tammy wasn't bad, but the record-holder is still Dani Nikolodos, in med school. Five-foot-nine with four-inch boots, too much lip gloss and not enough top. But this is the one Dakota's having now, in the new world, and Abby tastes like MAC and pretty woman.
Abby stops and looks at her for a long moment.
Dakota looks back at her, one arm around her waist.
"So," Abby starts, looking a little nervous. "Um--"
"Your bangs are stupid," Dakota says solemnly, or as solemnly as you can get when you're kissing a beautiful girl. She's not sure; Tammy was a lot of things, but "solemn" wasn't one of them.
Abby grins. "I'm growing them out.”