forthedog | 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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"Jesus. That's pretty fuckin' creepy," I mutter, watching the radio conk to life. You'd think after three years on the island, I'd be used to something like that, but for some reason, I'm more unsettled than I can really account for.

In the distance, there's a forest of twisted and devastated metal, and there's something horrifying about the sight. A fucking massacre happened here, and I feel the same type of sick fascination I might if I was looking at an explosion of blood and gore.

Tom's stomach twisted and he paled by a few degrees, recognizing the hazy skyline, the twisted heaps of metal that clustered hungrily around the road like vultures, stretching out bent and twisted claws. The trees didn't rustle here, but when the storms picked up you could hear the dead twigs snapping like broken bones.

"Fuck," he said quietly. He remembered Chicago, a weekend escape with Sophie and then, years later, the wasteland that had been left behind. They'd called it the second city, and with New York a ten mile crater on the East Coast, it was the biggest metropolis left in the States. Or it would have been. Swamp overtook forest, and destruction overtook cities like mold.

"There's gotta be something else we can do until...for the next few days," he muttered, squinting out at the desolate surroundings.

"And eat what?" he says tightly. He hasn't turned towards the city but the road is bending towards it anyway and it's drawing slowly closer. They must be in the near suburbs now. He's never been in this particular part, but it's still starting to look familiar. "You wanna risk trying to hunt out here, you be my guest, but I'm not chancing it. And we got potable water to think about."

Out the window and in the distance, he hears the whining howl of a dog. He hopes it's a dog.

The radio crackles again, still singing its mournful tune, and he shuts it off with a tense finger. "Fucking people," he mutters. "They get a transmitter, get a generator, let it run on a loop until it dies. Their idea of a joke or whatever." Only he still knows that it's not that at all.

Of all the shit that's happened, all the shit I've seen, I've never had to worry 'bout where my next meal's comin' from. Not really. Even in New York when we were living on sandwich meats and ramen noodles, there was still food. Not much, but it was always there.

Suddenly I feel incredibly sheltered and spoiled, a feeling I'm totally unfamiliar with.

"People live out there?" I say, looking out toward the ruins of the city and sounding more than a little skeptical.

"Mostly people," Tom said. People, amongst other things and people that...well, were only mostly people."

"Chicago rotted while it was standing right up," Tom said, mouth pulling in a hard line. "Didn't just fall apart like Detroit and Cleveland. People tried to reset the whole government there. The People's New Order." Tom went quiet, shook his head. "Pacifists, mostly. Old Quaker roots, if you look at any of their documents, which are hard to find now. Santiago made sure of that."

He sighed, looking over at Mike. He was right. Tom knew that. Didn't make the thought of chocking down Chicago any easier.

"Six months after New York got wiped out, the Order was doing a pretty good job of raking order out of...ashes. They...uh...they would have had a chance, I think. I mean, maybe in another place, it would have worked. They were just...helping people. Food banks, working with anyone they could find to keep the fields going, getting safe, public housing set up. Kept the PD in order. Chicago had the lowest crime rate in the world for about six months...

"The fourth time their Prime Minister appeared publicly, he was shot through the head. His wife got the next bullet. Every member of his cabinet was dead in ten minutes. His two daughters were sold into white slavery, and his son was hung in a cage over Buckingham Fountain until he died of exposure. He was thirteen."

Tom ejected the magazine into his palm, squinting at it for a long moment. "It wasn't even Santiago. This was long before his time. It was...gangs. Chicago's always been a gang city - Capone, Dillinger. The Old Order, it's what they called themselves. They've been getting bigger and more powerful since the day they took over. Second biggest thorn in Santiago's side to date."

Tom glanced back at Neil. "Welcome to Chicago."

Mike only grunts. There's nothing to add. Tom has gone into far greater depth than he would have cared to, and that's probably all to the good, because however nasty it might be, Neil needs to understand just what it is that he's facing.

People who look like Neil don't last very long here. And it isn't always death that sees to that. Sometimes death is the nicest option.

"It's not uninhabitable," he says finally. "Well. I mean, assuming it's still like it was, it's not that much worse than anywhere else." Which isn't saying much. "There's people, there's a market, we can get supplies at least."

"Damn, Tom, you oughta start writin' travel guides," I mutter dryly, smirking at him in the rearview mirror. There's nothing I can say, besides that. This place, no matter how much they might've told me before... it's worse than I could've imagined.

I don't wanna be here, but more than that, I wanna get them out. They already payed their fuckin' dues, they're not supposed to be here.

"Let's get it over with, then."

"Let the tour begin," Tom muttered, looking at Mike and Neil in turn, trying to look like he believed it was all going to work out alright.

Ahead of them, the jagged, gap-toothed skyline drew closer and sulfur-scented rain started to fall.

Derailment

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