Derailment

[forthedog]

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."

Comments

[little_moons]

I wake up being dragged by the ankles. Yanked from the open doors of the van, thumping heavily on the bumper and then hard on my ass in the dirt, the air knocks of of my lungs with a sharp cry and I flail helplessly, landing on my face in the mud and yanking hard at my bound wrists. The gun at my hip's gone, been gone, and I realize with part horror and part amusement that it never even occurred to me to go for it out there by the gallows.

"On your feet, sweetheart," one of them laughs, yanking me up by the hair and shoving me toward a dark, faceless building in the woods. I woke up, which means I fell asleep. We drove for a long time. The sun looks like it's gonna come up soon.

"Fuck you," I mutter, stumbling on a rock, and I get a sharp knock to the back of the head, sparks flaring up behind my eyes and my teeth snapping closed on my tongue. I groan in pain, spitting blood in the dirt, and they lead me the rest of the way by the back of the neck.

There are others inside, people scurrying around in the shadows. Women, skinny looking boys no older than me with haunted eyes, and kids. Some of them are bound and some of them are wandering free, snapping to attention as soon as me and my two blockheaded guards come through the door.

A girl, no older than fourteen, so dirty I can't even tell the color of her hair, gets up out of a chair in the corner, walks silently to a door in the back of the room and opens it.

It's a cellar, a short flight of stairs leading down -- A flight of stairs that I'm shoved down, tumbling into the dark, the door slammed and bolted behind me.