forthedog | Derailment

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Derailment

He's not sure what wakes him. It could be any number of things. It could be the light on his face, the air moving over him, the shift of cloth against skin where before it had just been the cool of the sheets and the heat of two bodies. It could be the hard ground under his back, which would also explain the aches in him as consciousness drifts closer. He's gone soft, he thinks sometimes, fallen out of the habit of sleeping well on the ground, lost in the embrace of Tom's big bed. But he still roughs it sometimes, so at first the fact that he's clearly outside doesn't sound any alarms.

But it's the kind of outside. It's not the light but the quality of that light; not warm and glowing but thin, pale, anemic. When he opens his eyes it's not the trees swaying over him in the morning breeze but what they're like, them and the other plant life, still thickly growing and untamed but bad. Unhealthy. Sparse where it shouldn't be and dense where it shouldn't be. No birds, no fucking birds at all. The hints of a world knocked out of balance and gone horribly wrong.

There's a cold wet nose pressed against his cheek, and a weight pressing into his arm, numbing it. He rolls, pulls it away and sits up, shoving Neil harder than he meant to. Dexter steps back, whining softly, and Mike stares around and then down, absorbing it in quick shocked bursts. The car. The campfire, smoking ashes. Dexter. The two figures, curled together on the ground. Tom's old and ragged sweater. His own pants. Camo. Boots. The itchy feel of clothes that haven't been washed for a while.

His gun.

There's no mistaking what this is.

He doesn't want to wake them. As long as they're still sleeping, this is his nightmare and his alone. Maybe they never have to wake up. And yet he has no idea what's really worse: being back here or being back here on his own.

"No," he breathes, barely above a whisper. No louder, because he's honestly afraid that he might scream. "No. No. Fuck."

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I'm hard and fast asleep when there's a sudden sharp pain under my ribs, a swift rush of vertigo when the world snaps into focus and I'm bolting up before my eyes even open.

"Jesus Christ, man. What the fuck?" I mutter, rubbing a hand across crusty eyelids and wincing at the dead taste in my mouth.

It creeps in slowly, the little things that don't feel right. The breeze fluttering over my skin, and the roughness of my clothes. My eyes open, and for a moment, all I can do is stare, my hand reaching up to curl around Mike's arm before I even realize it.

At first, I think maybe the island's changed, but no... No, that's not it. It's not even close to bein' that simple.

He hadn't slept well - old nightmares, familiar themes. People dying, people just not being there anymore. He snapped awake the instant Mike jerked and cursed, and now he was staring, still lying down, at a tree that was dead and rotting where it stood. Everything was spoiled here, he thought. It was the smell. Faintly acidic, moldy - conjuring up sense memories of ruined woodlands that were rotting in their own soil. You found that everywhere, here.

Here. He already knew where he was.

"Neil," he said, almost in the same instant that he registered the continued presence of the other man beside him, "Oh, shit, thank god I -"

Too much. Too much. The girls, Peter, the Compound, the rest of the Island - where had everyone gone? With active effort, he stopped himself and swallowed, looking at Mike.

"Tell me what I'm thinking is wrong," he said quietly. No hope, really, but why bother? That had stopped existing here a long, long time ago.

Mike just shakes his head. His throat is locking up. He used to dream about this, waking up sweating and trembling with Tom and Neil quiet next to him, and Eostre before them. He used to dream about this and he used to pray and pray to a God he doubted in just about every possible way that he would be spared it. That Tom would be spared it. That they could hang onto what they had.

And now Neil is here too. And his daughters...

"You're not wrong," he whispers finally. "Look the fuck around. You know you're not wrong." He gets shakily to his feet, staring at the world with his hands clenching uselessly at his sides, Dexter yipping and dancing around all of them. He doesn't have the attention to spare to tell the mutt to shut it.

He doesn't even know where they are. When they are. And for the moment, it doesn't seem like it matters.

I pull Dexter into my arms, because it's something to do. Because I can't watch him hop around us anymore, so excited when Mike looks like the whole fuckin' world's just ended. He whimpers against my chest, his cold nose nuzzling in the crook of my neck, and I hold him close as I push to my feet, turning in a slow circle and tipping my head back to look at the grey, skeletal trees surrounding us.

It doesn't work like this, does it? They go, I'd never get the chance to go with them, I've known it from the start. So what the fuck is this?

"This doesn't make any sense," Tom insisted, rolling to his feet, surprised to find a gun under his pillow, knife still strapped to his side while he slept. He picked up the blankets, looking around the campsite with growing desperation.

"Its - it's like we camped here last night. Look at it. The fire pit, the gear. Packs for Neil, blankets - it's Spring here. I left the Realm when it was fall here, Pinocchio. This is -"

He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth as he looked out at what passed for wilderness. A road was just about visible through the trees. What passed for a road in the Realm...

"No. It's not possible."

Mike turns on him, and at the last moment, before he says something he'll regret, he manages to get it under control. It's not Tom's fault, none of it is, but this is an old familiar place and Tom is an old familiar target. Already he can feel himself slipping back into certain patterns, grooves carved into his brain.

"We're here, aren't we?" He turns to Neil, standing there holding Dexter like that, and his heart cracks in two. Tom hadn't walked into this willingly either, but by now he's been here, he's tough enough to take it. Neil... Neil might be tough enough.

But he doesn't want to test him like that.

"But you shouldn't be here. That's what doesn't fucking make any sense."

"Yeah, well, sorry to crash your private fuckin' party," I mutter dryly, stepping over the makeshift pallet on the ground, skirting around the dying campfire, leavin' them to argue 'bout whether or not this is real while I head toward the car.

Sliding the fingertips of one hand along the dusty hood, I stop in front of the driver's door, peering in through the grate covering the windows and trying the handle. The door opens with a click and I slip inside, letting Dexter jump into the passenger seat while I settle in behind the wheel.

Mike never lets anybody drive his car. I remember that conversation with Tom, sitting inside White Camaro, weeks before the three of us started anything.

The dirt road stretches out ahead of us in the distance, visible through the trees surrounding our little clearing. This place feels fuckin' poisonous, and already, I hate it... for all the things it did to the two of them and for the fact that it's not all dead and buried like it was supposed to be.

"We can't...we can't panic. Not yet." Tom looked around at the site, all the familiar bags, canteens, that fucking sweater that Tom hasn't seen Mike in for months. He reached out, running his hand down the oily surface of hemlock tree beside him.

"The Island plays games," he said to Mike, dropping to pull one of their packs in to his lap. Dried meat, some water, a handful of shotgun shells. On the island, commerce was carried out through volunteer hours. Here it was fucking bullets.

And it all made perfect, god damned sense.

He watched Neil's slim frame disappear off to the car, something pulling hard and sharp in his stomach.

"He's here," he said, looking up at Mike from a crouching position. "That has to mean something."

Tom swallowed, starting to roll up the bedrolls. It had to...

Mike's mouth twists sharply and he looks off towards the car, Neil in the driver's seat. Once he would have yelled and hauled him out by his ear, no matter who he was, but now he just looks and feels his stomach sinking into his boots.

"Like what?" He shakes his head. "Yeah, it fucking does play games. So maybe this is just the last one for us." One last prank, dumped back here without so much as a warning. And Neil coming with them just seems like one more bit of cruelty to spice the entire thing.

Except it doesn't feel like that's all it is.

"Look, whatever else... we can't stay here. We don't even know where the fuck we are."

There are no keys in the ignition, but there's a knife in my boot and an extra handgun in the glove compartment. I sit there for a long time with my hands on the wheel, ten and two, staring out the window and listening to Dexter pant excitedly at my side.

The island's a wilderness in it's own way, but there's almost always someone else around. Here, there's a kind of eerie silence, a vast, oppressive emptiness I feel all the way down into my gut. Like we're the only people in the world, but not in a good way.

Kicking open the driver door, I stick my head out and call, "You fuckin' comin', or what?"

Tom stared up at Mike steadily, almost surprised at the return of the old pessimism. Familiar scenes probably made it easier, but it was jolting, almost to the point of being unsettling. He'd watched the same man put his daughters to bed the night before. His daughters...

"We're getting through this," Tom told him, nodding at Mike to pick up the rest of their sparse belongings. "Right? And to do it, we get to hope for just a little bit longer. Give this until Tuesday, Mike. You have to promise me that much."

"Coming!" Tom shouted back, giving Mike one last look before turning to conceal the remains of the fire.

Old habits came back fast.

Edited 2009-07-07 20:35 (UTC)

"You know I suck at promises." He clenches his eyes shut and squeezes the bridge of his nose. Until Tuesday. So all they have to do is stay alive until then. And after...

He can't help believing that after will be more of the same. But Tom pulls him along, like he always has. He sighs and bends to scoop up the rest of the blankets. He heads to the car, tosses them in the backseat, leans over the open front door and regards Neil with a hundred different emotions fighting for supremacy. When he slips his hand into his pocket he feels the familiar weight of the keys.

He manages a thin smile. "You think you're gonna drive?"

He's different.

It's such a subtle change. A tension boiling under the surface, all hard edges where he's been so much softer for such a long time. It scares me, more than I thought it would, and instead of fucking with him and insisting on keeping my seat, I murmur, "Nope," and clamber between the headrests to tumble into the back seat.

Tom covered the last of the evidence that they'd been there, burying ashes, tossing the extra, piled firewood back into the woods. There was no way to hide all the evidence, but then, there never was.

And there was no telling who was looking for them now. It had rarely been so simple as fighting against just one front.

He slid into the front seat, startled for a moment at the flood of sense memory - the old upholstery, gasoline, ammo, and the faint smell of Dexter, who was currently sharing his normal seat with Neil. With a sigh, he opened the glove box, digging a battered compass from underneath a few handguns and crumpled pieces of paper, half written letters to Sophie. He snorted quietly. Right.

"Okay," he said, looking down as the needle aligned itself in his palm. "I guess we're heading west."

He pauses for a moment, hand on the door, looking from Tom to Neil and back to the road again. He hadn't ever wanted to be back on that road. All roads are the same road, and none of them have an ending.

Except one.

"Fuck," he whispers softly, and slides down into the driver's seat, pulling out his keys and starting up the car. There's an old familiar rumble and for a moment he's almost happy to hear it again, until he remembers where he is and it vanishes. It's too easy to slip back into old habits, far too easy, and it makes him wonder if all the change he'd thought he'd gone through might not be just a fresh coat of paint over rotting boards. If under the surface is the same old Mike Pinocchio, just waiting for the right time to reassert himself.

When they start moving he manages to steel himself, glancing at Tom and then back at Neil and making himself a silent promise. Not the same old shit. No way.

"We'll be okay," he says gruffly. "We just gotta work out where the fuck we are and we can go from there. Find somewhere safe to lie low." Or what passes for 'safe', here.

Edited 2009-07-08 00:14 (UTC)

There's about a hundred things I wanna ask, starting with for how fuckin' long?, but its not a question either of 'em can answer, and it wouldn't do a damn thing but make shit worse.

From what I've heard about this place, safe just doesn't happen. But I'm not worried 'bout that. I'm worried 'bout the looks on their faces. The panic I hear in their voices. I'm worried about the fact that the girls aren't here, and I don't wanna think about all the things that might now be lost.

I lean forward into the front seat, my elbow resting on the back of Mike's chair, and say, "Don't suppose the fuckin' radio works, huh?"

Tom laughed, sudden and loud and beyond grateful for the distraction. He fiddled with the controls, bringing up the familiar sound of static on all stations.

"Might be," he said, "If there was anyone out here running stations." He slid the scanner all the way up and down. "Guess that means there's nothing like Santiago City anywhere around here."

"You doin' okay back there?" he asked, turning to look at Neil, sitting in the same place Florence had, all long limbs and silence. But Florence wasn't here now. But somewhere in the Realm....

He wondered if she'd remember them, the Island-them, or if she was still wrapped up in revolutions.

"We went to Louisiana and heard some blues, once," he says quietly, almost to himself, the memory stealing up out of the depths of his mind like a ghost. "Crackly. Like it was really fucking far away." The echoes of a dead world. But someone, somewhere, wasn't letting it die completely. He'd smiled a thin, sardonic smile, made some kind of comment about whistling in the dark. But now he sees why people do just that.

Sometimes that's all you have.

"Hang on." He turns the wheel sharply, swerving to avoid a place in the road where the asphalt has crumbled away entirely, long years of rain or maybe one big flood.

I don't have time to brace myself, especially since I wasn't fuckin' payin' attention, so with a startled yelp, I fall back in my seat, jostling Dexter and flailing pretty fuckin' pathetically before I can right myself.

"Jesus," I mutter with a snort of sheepish laughter, craning my neck to watch the huge pothole disappear through the rear window.

Tom braced himself against the low roof and cursed as they clattered over the gaping hole in the road, banging his head on the ceiling in the process.

"Aw, Jesus," Tom muttered, glancing back to make sure Neil and Dexter were okay. "The roads here are crap. Makes the boardwalks look like a damn freeway."

He gave Mike a look over the gearshift and did something he'd never been able to do before, not here at least. It never would have occurred to him. He reached out and grasped Mike by the bicep, just squeezing gently, thumb swiping the inside of his arm.

"Hey," he said softly, "Take it easy. We leave the undercarriage up and down this footpath, we're twice as screwed as before."

Edited 2009-07-08 04:18 (UTC)

Tom touches him and instantly he feels himself calm and loosen. It's like a reminder: this is not how things were before. Everything has still changed. He's better, stronger, and Tom and Neil are with him, and that doesn't have to be all bad.

It's all right to be a little selfish.

"Okay," he says, just as softly, giving Tom a quick and grateful glance before reaching back and touching Neil's knee. "You all right?"

"'m fine," I answer with a slightly hysterical laugh, and for some reason, it's right this moment that it hits me how utterly out of place I really am right now.

Scrubbing a hand over my face and lounging back in my seat, I say, "I always did want us to take a fuckin' vacation."

"Yeah," Tom said, rolling his eyes, relieved to see a flash of what had become familiar from Mike. "But the beaches just get so damn crowded..."

It was a swamp, not a forest, once the car took a bend in the road. There were the remnants of a gas station sagging back into the spreading, putrid marshes, and all the water in sight had an oily, slick appearance. On the side of the road, a few ducks that had made the mistake of landing on the black water lay dead and rotting, feathers black and stuck to their bony frames. Even the scavengers had failed to pick them over.

Tom stared for a moment, stomach tight in his belly, hunger already starting to prickle through the nausea. It had been pizza at the Winchester last night. Who knew where the next meal would come from...

"Here," he said, popping the glove box and digging out the old handgun, a few spare clips, and the holster. He handed them back to Neil with an almost apologetic look. "You know. Just in case. We used to go weeks not seeing anybody out here. Still. Just to be safe."

He barely notices the dead birds; makes a note of them and passes on. On the Island, such a sight would have horrified him. Here, it hardly seems worth comment. It's all context, maybe.

"You remember how to use it?" he asks, catching Neil's eyes in the mirror as they bump and jostle over potholes and splash through mud that paints the sides of the car and sends dirty flecks in through the wire grille. He's sure Neil does, but he's asking anyway, for his own peace of mind if for nothing else. And to remind Neil that here, he might truly have to know how to kill someone. No more playing, no more games.

"Yeah, I remember," I murmur, slipping the holster on and checking the clips and the chamber of the gun, my thumb clicking the safety off and back on. I remember, but this already doesn't feel the same. I quit lookin' through the windows a couple yards back, and the gun feels heavy and strangely warm in my palm.

I always figured I'd be excited in a situation like this. Some real action, for once. But I'm not. I just want us to go home.

Derailment

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