Smosh Fic: Greyscape (Chapter 6)
Title: Greyscape (Chapter 6)
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: (future) Ian/Anthony,
Beta:
98ninetyeight
Genre/Warnings: AU, Angst, Apocalypse, Death, Gore, Violence, OOC
Summary: The world is a wasteland. Nothing is what is used to be. Humans? They are scarce and few. What is left is a mutation of human. And Ian Hecox is the cure.
Chapter Summary: Reality and nightmare mix together and friends unite.
Previous Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five
A/N: BLAARGHH AAHLEEGHH!! (That's the story rising from the dead, by the way in case you didn't understand and also a big "thank you" in zombie lingo for sticking by and still being interested in reading this. It feels so good to finally get this chapter out. Like a fart being held in for too long.)
The voice overtakes him. Says things to him until he believes it. Until his body moves on its own accord and he has Ian’s life in his palm, clenched tight, and held under water.
Yours. So close.
The water of the lake is clouded in pink, a halo around Ian’s head. His face is stark white and mouth open in a gasp. Eyes wide and the dusty-orange light of the setting sun moves off of Ian’s face. Something inside Anthony finds it invigorating and it squirms in delight, coiling round the stem of his brain and demanding his fingers to squeeze harder, stronger and tighter. The dark red of Ian’s blood on his paling lips tantalizes Anthony as he greedily takes the sight beneath him.
Take him. Take him. Take him and have him.
The skin under his hands beats wildly, throbbing with human heat and he can almost hear the wash of coursing blood through the channels of Ian’s body. He doesn’t feel and doesn’t care for his own blood dripping out of his nose or the heat of his bruising cheek and the cool water that laps at his bare calves is paid no mind. Ian - it’s just Ian now, laid out beneath him with his body full of hot, living, moving blood and Anthony can just take him, have him, because he’s mine and mine and mine nobody else’s but mine -
The mantra in his head tangles and ties around the contours of his every nerve until it connects with the words he speaks aloud and then it’s one voice, forcing his neck down and his lips to hover just over Ian’s, where there’s just a single drop of blood seeping through moistened broken skin, mixing and twirling with another drop of river water. It’s beautiful, really, and it captures all of Anthony’s attention. Ian’s breath escapes shaky and restricted, laced fully with fear, blowing delicious, insatiable heat against Anthony’s sweaty skin, as cool and as unpredictable as the similarly trembling water.
He stares into the blue quivering eyes which widen and stretch with a real fear that only makes Anthony tighten his hold round Ian’s neck. The pulse of Ian’s Adam’s apple is frantic and hard against the curve of Anthony’s thumb, just like the desperate gasps as he attempts to breathe. And it would be so easy to just dig into the flesh with his fingers, wedge between the strings of muscles and find the lifeline of red underneath. Want and need curl within Anthony’s chest - not for Ian but for his body - as he feels it rumble and shake. The feeling springs forth from there, blurring the edges of his vision with ribbons of darkness until Ian underneath - close and a single gem of ruby on his lip- seems to be clouded by a dark, soul-sucking shadow.
And then, from behind them, a screech - “IAN!”
Anthony swings around and comes face to face with her. She’s incredibly close and a thread of fear catches him, telling him this is dangerous, unnatural and hadn’t she been wanting what was his before? His nose bumps into her cheek and she snarls, staggering back an inch but screams again, “STOP!” Saliva flies from her mouth and hits Anthony’s eyes. He shakes his head, a feral growl bubbles out of his throat as he glares back at her. Her eyes squint up at the rays of the setting orange sun and her thin translucent grey skin hisses at the touch of light, shrivelling as moisture leaves remnants of cracks on its broken surface, only satiated at calf level in the water. His own skin tingles and he feels pops and twists bursting one by one inside of him. He eyes her suspiciously, thinking she wants what is his and no no no, mine he’s mine “MINE!” he screams. His grip tightens firmly - possessive and protective - around Ian’s throat even as the other starts thrashing and struggles to find his voice.
He doesn’t understand the sounds though - from Ian. It just sounds like buzzing noise, convoluted echoes that bounce into his ear and back out until Anthony’s looking at Ian; his moving mouth with that decoration of pearly red being enveloped by black water and shifting shadows and wondering - for half a second - who this was and oh, look, there’s mine red, red, pretty red and there I need to have it now now now now
“STOP!”
Screaming again. What is it? Look behind him. It’s her. What does she want? He can’t have his. No, no, no, never. He opens his mouth and screams back again: “MINE!”
She holds out her arms and wails, “IAN!” What follows is her screeching an ear-shattering crescendo, and holding out her thin, shaking grey arms to him. Her battered body buckles down and she drops onto her knees, almost slipping. Her head just shies from hitting onto the slippery, jagged rocks below. There’s a trail of muted blue blood running down the side of her ear and it’s nothing like the beautiful color of red; breathing, dancing red. An exhale and she touches her empty chest for something - it’s shiny and golden.
“STOP,” she cries and tugs at the chain round her neck. The metal slices her thin papery skin. “IAN! HERE!” She winces as her voice shatters and breaks. “…I’m here.”
Anthony watches her, feeling familiarity guzzle away his confusion, sucking willpower and force into an unreachable vacuum. He recognizes the voice and images splinter by in his mind of someone along side him, constantly telling him to find someone, to get to someone, to find what was theirs. It was always dark and wherever they rested, it was concrete and grey that bedded them. Ian, the voice had said in the Darkness. Ours. Our friend.
She screams once more; savage and sadness and madness all running in her sound as she launches towards him, feet leaving the shallow of the lake and trailing strings of droplets behind her, body propelling into the air to him and face stretched in a gruesome, grey stretch. She flies in the air for a moment, at merciful liberty and hopelessly dangerous all at once. And Anthony’s body goes slack and his fingers lose their edge on what he was holding onto so tight before. It slips from his grasp and pushes him off.
Cold. Realization so wrong it hurts. “Melanie?”
Then the next thing he hears is the crush of stone against his head and then - darkness.
*
I’m dying.
Ian’s vision starts to blur at the edges, distorting his other senses as he feels himself lose the battle to stay conscious and to breathe, staring up at Anthony’s face that comes closer to his, marred with a growing viciousness. Anthony’s face is feral, close and ugly. Even though Ian’s sight swims and dips between present and darkness, he can still see the way Anthony’s face changes; the skin starts to grey, veins appear through and fill with cold silver blood, and his eyes are completely translucent cold, cold, cold, blue. And all Ian can think about is that this is the last thing he’s going to see before dying, before he gets his neck ripped apart by a monster that’s really his best friend through it all. It reminds Ian of his dream, where Anthony and he are drowning one minute but then back safely at home the next.
He wants that. He wants to be drowning and then wake up. Maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe he’s dreaming his annoying dream again and they’ll be at home, he’ll turn into a monster, Melanie will die again, over and over again, and then he’ll wake up. He’d rather be in his nightmare that he hates and that splits him open in fifty different ways than not, because the darkness will lift and turn to morning and he will open his eyes. Then it would just be that: a nightmare. And he’ll wake up and won’t feel a single ounce of heat because the air-conditioner’s sunken to the lowest it can go and there’s yesterday’s Dr. Pepper on the table, disgustingly warm and flat in the summer afternoon.
So he wills himself to wake up as he stares into Anthony’s blind blue eyes, an undercurrent of darkness swirling beneath the colour, wills his surroundings to dissolve and place him in his room at home in another time, or the unbearable fear of sleeping too long - alone - to wake him up. But when nothing changes, and Anthony is still trying to kill him and Ian is still really dying, he realizes this isn’t a nightmare.
And he’s so angry. He’s furious and livid and he doesn’t want to die. He does but not like this. He doesn’t want to die knowing he had spent two years, seven months, fourteen - or was it fifteen days? - searching, crying, tripping, nightmare after nightmare and fighting - trying to save his dumb friend only to be killed by him.
Killed by him, and the creature that floats dangerously behind Anthony’s shoulder. Ian’s so close to blacking out that he only stares, frozen and afraid, at the twin pairs of blue eyes with the running thought that shit, we’re in trouble now (as if the day that dumb shit of a doctor had announced a cure-all remedy for diabetes hadn’t been the moment trouble began). The two monsters start screaming growls and screeches at each other. Anthony’s eyes rip away from his and his grip loosens. Sweet sudden air leaks into Ian’s lungs and it’s enough to give life to his body once again so that he’s thrashing, groping the rocky lake bed for a stone. Then he’s screaming too, raw and painful, as he sees the monster jumping from its hind legs right towards them before using all the weak strength left of him to pound down the smooth stone right into Anthony’s head. There’s a prominent thud as stone meets skull and head meets water again.
There’s another echoing in his mind: the word Anthony had uttered in coherent speak just before he was knocked down, but it’s wasted and flung away as the very real and present moment that the body of the monster lands on him.
It screams too, bulging eyes and mouth open to reveal disastrous rotted teeth. Ian’s heart pounds like thunder through his whole body and he cries out loud and clear, before pushing the light, gross body off of him. The stone in his hand is ready to strike but the monster has a vice grip around his wrist and another tugging at the necklace round its neck. And the necklace catches his eye and his breath. It stops his movements for one second and in that time, it’s enough for the monster to escape Ian’s rock-filled fist before suddenly cutting short its screech, reedy in a wasted throat. Its eyes bear into him, intense, strong, and pleading. And she cuts him up like the slick silver sword he’s used to kill so many others.
The word - the name - that Anthony had said floods his mind.
And then he drops the slippery wet rock and the sound as it hits the water breaks the sudden suffocating silence. The quiet is worse than the water and the hands that had almost drowned him. He stares back at it; the hunched figure on all fours, back bent and whole body heaving with wheezing breaths. The murky grey blood seeping from its head and underneath the familiar gold necklace. The chain is clean and unfaded, looking odd and out of place in the backdrop of taunt dying skin. Little broken frays of memories flirt with his mind until he remembers the day he bought it and the afternoon at the airport he had secured it around her neck. She had been smiling.
The memory evaporates and Ian wants to pick up the stone again to kill the painful remembrance. But the eyes - he recognizes them, too. He recognizes them and doesn’t want to.
Still blue but he knows.
He struggles to opens his mouth to speak to it - to her - but his voice is gone. And his mind and body unwilling to cooperate with themselves and each other. He thinks one thing, knows another and wishes to do entirely something else. Nothing comes out but a brittle exhale and it’s like something had crawled into his throat and had killed his voice. He wants to vomit again as the world suddenly goes vertigo and flips him from his back to his feet. But there’s nothing inside and all he can do is choke on the airlessness, clutching onto his throbbing throat and staring wide-eyed at her then to Anthony, whose limp body lies sideways in the still water of the lake.
No, no, no, no, he thinks. You’re dead. He wants to say, I saw you die. I saw it.
She’s still looking at him, still as he’s ever seen any thing ever be. He can’t do it. He can’t say it. But he wants to as her name runs through his mind like a bullet.
He could be wrong, he thinks. He could be crazy for all he knew. But what if - and the what if is strong and deafening. And he doesn’t get the chance to finish when a piercing shriek sounds from behind him, shaking them both out of their stances.
Ian whips his body around, sucking in a sharp breath as his quick movements tug at his open wounds. And then he sees: between the spaces of trees that suck all light away, little blinking dots of blue paint the black and, as Ian looks on, materializes into thin, crouched bodies. Half a dozen or so cool pale blue eyes reflecting the warmth of the dying sun - staring right back.
And he can’t breathe again. He just can’t - for more than a second he thinks he’s going to die because he can’t breathe. Because there are other creatures just thirty feet from him and it’s more than the one in front of him. More than allowed here, so far removed from the city. And had they been following them all along? How could have Ian missed that? He has to force himself to keep standing, defenceless and hurt, even though his whole body is racked with uncontrollable shaking. The gash on his leg stings and it feels like a wet heavy mace has been dragged through it.
They’re here. And he can smell it in the air. The sweet nectar of clean nature driven away and tainted by the taunt, rotting smell of the Almost Dead. The animals are silent and the water beneath him quivers. The trees are frozen.
There’s another shriek from the darkness, to his right now. He flinches, hand darting instinctively behind him for his sword only to find nothing and feels his whole body ache. No gun, no knife, no sword - nothing to protect him. He curses under his breath and looks back. The water around his ankles ripple as she crawls towards the voices until she’s in front of him and crying out, too.
They’re talking, he thinks. He’s never seen this before. Back in the city, they’re always screaming with no pattern, no literacy detected and nothing like the exchange happening right now. This realization tugs at Ian’s mind and he wonders how many of the screams as he was killing were pleads that had meaning and could be understood.
He shivers, pushing the thought away when she turns around to look at him. Her eyes - blue and soft - dart from his and back behind her where one scream turns to two and then to six, until it’s like Ian’s back in the cement prison outside the forest.
He swallows something thick and hard in his throat as she tugs at her neck, snapping the old gold chain in half and further slicing her skin in the process. She holds out her shaky, weak hand, palm up and necklace hanging from her fingers. An oval locket slides down the chain, swaying back and forth.
He doesn’t want to think what’s inside the locket.
When he doesn’t move - can’t move - and the cries multiple in desperate magnitude, her hand closes and retreats. Her whole face, however marred and mutated, is sad and Ian can’t look at her anymore. He closes his eyes despite knowing that if he brings his attention away he could die amidst being in the centre of a group of Almost Dead just because he can’t look at her.
He corrects himself - He can’t look at it.
Finally, Ian hears the splash of water and then the quick pitter-patter of feet retreating in the distance between the world-pounding sounds of his heartbeat.
The screams stop all together. The forest comes back to life. And when he opens his eyes again, his ears ringing and cheeks raw from tears he hadn’t realized were there - she’s gone.
He falls then. Gravity grounding him and putting him where he is now; shaking and trembling and he thought he was dying before when Anthony was killing him - but no - this is real death. Knowing she was still alive, breathing, walking, living and remembering him. Tremors rack his chest as he heaves, spitting out water and saliva and willing air to come back into his lungs. Panic claws viciously at his throat and each trying breath he draws, drags at his lacerated insides.
Melanie is alive.
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: (future) Ian/Anthony,
Beta:
98ninetyeight
Genre/Warnings: AU, Angst, Apocalypse, Death, Gore, Violence, OOC
Summary: The world is a wasteland. Nothing is what is used to be. Humans? They are scarce and few. What is left is a mutation of human. And Ian Hecox is the cure.
Chapter Summary: Reality and nightmare mix together and friends unite.
Previous Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five
A/N: BLAARGHH AAHLEEGHH!! (That's the story rising from the dead, by the way in case you didn't understand and also a big "thank you" in zombie lingo for sticking by and still being interested in reading this. It feels so good to finally get this chapter out. Like a fart being held in for too long.)
The voice overtakes him. Says things to him until he believes it. Until his body moves on its own accord and he has Ian’s life in his palm, clenched tight, and held under water.
Yours. So close.
The water of the lake is clouded in pink, a halo around Ian’s head. His face is stark white and mouth open in a gasp. Eyes wide and the dusty-orange light of the setting sun moves off of Ian’s face. Something inside Anthony finds it invigorating and it squirms in delight, coiling round the stem of his brain and demanding his fingers to squeeze harder, stronger and tighter. The dark red of Ian’s blood on his paling lips tantalizes Anthony as he greedily takes the sight beneath him.
Take him. Take him. Take him and have him.
The skin under his hands beats wildly, throbbing with human heat and he can almost hear the wash of coursing blood through the channels of Ian’s body. He doesn’t feel and doesn’t care for his own blood dripping out of his nose or the heat of his bruising cheek and the cool water that laps at his bare calves is paid no mind. Ian - it’s just Ian now, laid out beneath him with his body full of hot, living, moving blood and Anthony can just take him, have him, because he’s mine and mine and mine nobody else’s but mine -
The mantra in his head tangles and ties around the contours of his every nerve until it connects with the words he speaks aloud and then it’s one voice, forcing his neck down and his lips to hover just over Ian’s, where there’s just a single drop of blood seeping through moistened broken skin, mixing and twirling with another drop of river water. It’s beautiful, really, and it captures all of Anthony’s attention. Ian’s breath escapes shaky and restricted, laced fully with fear, blowing delicious, insatiable heat against Anthony’s sweaty skin, as cool and as unpredictable as the similarly trembling water.
He stares into the blue quivering eyes which widen and stretch with a real fear that only makes Anthony tighten his hold round Ian’s neck. The pulse of Ian’s Adam’s apple is frantic and hard against the curve of Anthony’s thumb, just like the desperate gasps as he attempts to breathe. And it would be so easy to just dig into the flesh with his fingers, wedge between the strings of muscles and find the lifeline of red underneath. Want and need curl within Anthony’s chest - not for Ian but for his body - as he feels it rumble and shake. The feeling springs forth from there, blurring the edges of his vision with ribbons of darkness until Ian underneath - close and a single gem of ruby on his lip- seems to be clouded by a dark, soul-sucking shadow.
And then, from behind them, a screech - “IAN!”
Anthony swings around and comes face to face with her. She’s incredibly close and a thread of fear catches him, telling him this is dangerous, unnatural and hadn’t she been wanting what was his before? His nose bumps into her cheek and she snarls, staggering back an inch but screams again, “STOP!” Saliva flies from her mouth and hits Anthony’s eyes. He shakes his head, a feral growl bubbles out of his throat as he glares back at her. Her eyes squint up at the rays of the setting orange sun and her thin translucent grey skin hisses at the touch of light, shrivelling as moisture leaves remnants of cracks on its broken surface, only satiated at calf level in the water. His own skin tingles and he feels pops and twists bursting one by one inside of him. He eyes her suspiciously, thinking she wants what is his and no no no, mine he’s mine “MINE!” he screams. His grip tightens firmly - possessive and protective - around Ian’s throat even as the other starts thrashing and struggles to find his voice.
He doesn’t understand the sounds though - from Ian. It just sounds like buzzing noise, convoluted echoes that bounce into his ear and back out until Anthony’s looking at Ian; his moving mouth with that decoration of pearly red being enveloped by black water and shifting shadows and wondering - for half a second - who this was and oh, look, there’s mine red, red, pretty red and there I need to have it now now now now
“STOP!”
Screaming again. What is it? Look behind him. It’s her. What does she want? He can’t have his. No, no, no, never. He opens his mouth and screams back again: “MINE!”
She holds out her arms and wails, “IAN!” What follows is her screeching an ear-shattering crescendo, and holding out her thin, shaking grey arms to him. Her battered body buckles down and she drops onto her knees, almost slipping. Her head just shies from hitting onto the slippery, jagged rocks below. There’s a trail of muted blue blood running down the side of her ear and it’s nothing like the beautiful color of red; breathing, dancing red. An exhale and she touches her empty chest for something - it’s shiny and golden.
“STOP,” she cries and tugs at the chain round her neck. The metal slices her thin papery skin. “IAN! HERE!” She winces as her voice shatters and breaks. “…I’m here.”
Anthony watches her, feeling familiarity guzzle away his confusion, sucking willpower and force into an unreachable vacuum. He recognizes the voice and images splinter by in his mind of someone along side him, constantly telling him to find someone, to get to someone, to find what was theirs. It was always dark and wherever they rested, it was concrete and grey that bedded them. Ian, the voice had said in the Darkness. Ours. Our friend.
She screams once more; savage and sadness and madness all running in her sound as she launches towards him, feet leaving the shallow of the lake and trailing strings of droplets behind her, body propelling into the air to him and face stretched in a gruesome, grey stretch. She flies in the air for a moment, at merciful liberty and hopelessly dangerous all at once. And Anthony’s body goes slack and his fingers lose their edge on what he was holding onto so tight before. It slips from his grasp and pushes him off.
Cold. Realization so wrong it hurts. “Melanie?”
Then the next thing he hears is the crush of stone against his head and then - darkness.
*
I’m dying.
Ian’s vision starts to blur at the edges, distorting his other senses as he feels himself lose the battle to stay conscious and to breathe, staring up at Anthony’s face that comes closer to his, marred with a growing viciousness. Anthony’s face is feral, close and ugly. Even though Ian’s sight swims and dips between present and darkness, he can still see the way Anthony’s face changes; the skin starts to grey, veins appear through and fill with cold silver blood, and his eyes are completely translucent cold, cold, cold, blue. And all Ian can think about is that this is the last thing he’s going to see before dying, before he gets his neck ripped apart by a monster that’s really his best friend through it all. It reminds Ian of his dream, where Anthony and he are drowning one minute but then back safely at home the next.
He wants that. He wants to be drowning and then wake up. Maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe he’s dreaming his annoying dream again and they’ll be at home, he’ll turn into a monster, Melanie will die again, over and over again, and then he’ll wake up. He’d rather be in his nightmare that he hates and that splits him open in fifty different ways than not, because the darkness will lift and turn to morning and he will open his eyes. Then it would just be that: a nightmare. And he’ll wake up and won’t feel a single ounce of heat because the air-conditioner’s sunken to the lowest it can go and there’s yesterday’s Dr. Pepper on the table, disgustingly warm and flat in the summer afternoon.
So he wills himself to wake up as he stares into Anthony’s blind blue eyes, an undercurrent of darkness swirling beneath the colour, wills his surroundings to dissolve and place him in his room at home in another time, or the unbearable fear of sleeping too long - alone - to wake him up. But when nothing changes, and Anthony is still trying to kill him and Ian is still really dying, he realizes this isn’t a nightmare.
And he’s so angry. He’s furious and livid and he doesn’t want to die. He does but not like this. He doesn’t want to die knowing he had spent two years, seven months, fourteen - or was it fifteen days? - searching, crying, tripping, nightmare after nightmare and fighting - trying to save his dumb friend only to be killed by him.
Killed by him, and the creature that floats dangerously behind Anthony’s shoulder. Ian’s so close to blacking out that he only stares, frozen and afraid, at the twin pairs of blue eyes with the running thought that shit, we’re in trouble now (as if the day that dumb shit of a doctor had announced a cure-all remedy for diabetes hadn’t been the moment trouble began). The two monsters start screaming growls and screeches at each other. Anthony’s eyes rip away from his and his grip loosens. Sweet sudden air leaks into Ian’s lungs and it’s enough to give life to his body once again so that he’s thrashing, groping the rocky lake bed for a stone. Then he’s screaming too, raw and painful, as he sees the monster jumping from its hind legs right towards them before using all the weak strength left of him to pound down the smooth stone right into Anthony’s head. There’s a prominent thud as stone meets skull and head meets water again.
There’s another echoing in his mind: the word Anthony had uttered in coherent speak just before he was knocked down, but it’s wasted and flung away as the very real and present moment that the body of the monster lands on him.
It screams too, bulging eyes and mouth open to reveal disastrous rotted teeth. Ian’s heart pounds like thunder through his whole body and he cries out loud and clear, before pushing the light, gross body off of him. The stone in his hand is ready to strike but the monster has a vice grip around his wrist and another tugging at the necklace round its neck. And the necklace catches his eye and his breath. It stops his movements for one second and in that time, it’s enough for the monster to escape Ian’s rock-filled fist before suddenly cutting short its screech, reedy in a wasted throat. Its eyes bear into him, intense, strong, and pleading. And she cuts him up like the slick silver sword he’s used to kill so many others.
The word - the name - that Anthony had said floods his mind.
And then he drops the slippery wet rock and the sound as it hits the water breaks the sudden suffocating silence. The quiet is worse than the water and the hands that had almost drowned him. He stares back at it; the hunched figure on all fours, back bent and whole body heaving with wheezing breaths. The murky grey blood seeping from its head and underneath the familiar gold necklace. The chain is clean and unfaded, looking odd and out of place in the backdrop of taunt dying skin. Little broken frays of memories flirt with his mind until he remembers the day he bought it and the afternoon at the airport he had secured it around her neck. She had been smiling.
The memory evaporates and Ian wants to pick up the stone again to kill the painful remembrance. But the eyes - he recognizes them, too. He recognizes them and doesn’t want to.
Still blue but he knows.
He struggles to opens his mouth to speak to it - to her - but his voice is gone. And his mind and body unwilling to cooperate with themselves and each other. He thinks one thing, knows another and wishes to do entirely something else. Nothing comes out but a brittle exhale and it’s like something had crawled into his throat and had killed his voice. He wants to vomit again as the world suddenly goes vertigo and flips him from his back to his feet. But there’s nothing inside and all he can do is choke on the airlessness, clutching onto his throbbing throat and staring wide-eyed at her then to Anthony, whose limp body lies sideways in the still water of the lake.
No, no, no, no, he thinks. You’re dead. He wants to say, I saw you die. I saw it.
She’s still looking at him, still as he’s ever seen any thing ever be. He can’t do it. He can’t say it. But he wants to as her name runs through his mind like a bullet.
He could be wrong, he thinks. He could be crazy for all he knew. But what if - and the what if is strong and deafening. And he doesn’t get the chance to finish when a piercing shriek sounds from behind him, shaking them both out of their stances.
Ian whips his body around, sucking in a sharp breath as his quick movements tug at his open wounds. And then he sees: between the spaces of trees that suck all light away, little blinking dots of blue paint the black and, as Ian looks on, materializes into thin, crouched bodies. Half a dozen or so cool pale blue eyes reflecting the warmth of the dying sun - staring right back.
And he can’t breathe again. He just can’t - for more than a second he thinks he’s going to die because he can’t breathe. Because there are other creatures just thirty feet from him and it’s more than the one in front of him. More than allowed here, so far removed from the city. And had they been following them all along? How could have Ian missed that? He has to force himself to keep standing, defenceless and hurt, even though his whole body is racked with uncontrollable shaking. The gash on his leg stings and it feels like a wet heavy mace has been dragged through it.
They’re here. And he can smell it in the air. The sweet nectar of clean nature driven away and tainted by the taunt, rotting smell of the Almost Dead. The animals are silent and the water beneath him quivers. The trees are frozen.
There’s another shriek from the darkness, to his right now. He flinches, hand darting instinctively behind him for his sword only to find nothing and feels his whole body ache. No gun, no knife, no sword - nothing to protect him. He curses under his breath and looks back. The water around his ankles ripple as she crawls towards the voices until she’s in front of him and crying out, too.
They’re talking, he thinks. He’s never seen this before. Back in the city, they’re always screaming with no pattern, no literacy detected and nothing like the exchange happening right now. This realization tugs at Ian’s mind and he wonders how many of the screams as he was killing were pleads that had meaning and could be understood.
He shivers, pushing the thought away when she turns around to look at him. Her eyes - blue and soft - dart from his and back behind her where one scream turns to two and then to six, until it’s like Ian’s back in the cement prison outside the forest.
He swallows something thick and hard in his throat as she tugs at her neck, snapping the old gold chain in half and further slicing her skin in the process. She holds out her shaky, weak hand, palm up and necklace hanging from her fingers. An oval locket slides down the chain, swaying back and forth.
He doesn’t want to think what’s inside the locket.
When he doesn’t move - can’t move - and the cries multiple in desperate magnitude, her hand closes and retreats. Her whole face, however marred and mutated, is sad and Ian can’t look at her anymore. He closes his eyes despite knowing that if he brings his attention away he could die amidst being in the centre of a group of Almost Dead just because he can’t look at her.
He corrects himself - He can’t look at it.
Finally, Ian hears the splash of water and then the quick pitter-patter of feet retreating in the distance between the world-pounding sounds of his heartbeat.
The screams stop all together. The forest comes back to life. And when he opens his eyes again, his ears ringing and cheeks raw from tears he hadn’t realized were there - she’s gone.
He falls then. Gravity grounding him and putting him where he is now; shaking and trembling and he thought he was dying before when Anthony was killing him - but no - this is real death. Knowing she was still alive, breathing, walking, living and remembering him. Tremors rack his chest as he heaves, spitting out water and saliva and willing air to come back into his lungs. Panic claws viciously at his throat and each trying breath he draws, drags at his lacerated insides.
Melanie is alive.