forthedog | (no subject)

It's gray when he wakes up in the early evening.

That in itself isn't odd. Sometimes it's gray. Sometimes it rains. It happens in a place with weather. But there's something about the quality of the light that's both wrong and familiar, and for a few minutes he lies there staring up at the ceiling, Neil dozing warm against his side, trying to work out what it is.

At last he gets up and moves slowly over to the window, yawning and scratching idly at his bare chest and still only distantly confused--and then he looks out and sees the fog.

The gently falling ash, dusting the empty streets below like snow.

"Shit," he breathes, and then notices the encroaching twilight shade to the gray sky, and he knows exactly what it means. It had been late afternoon when he and Neil had fallen asleep tired and sweaty and tangled around each other, and he has no idea how long they've been asleep, but it doesn't feel like they have a lot of time left.

He practically launches himself back over to the bed, grabbing Neil by the shoulder and shaking him roughly. "Get up. Neil, get up."

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"Shit, not again." It's breathless, bloodless, the kind of whisper that might come from someone already dead. The jungle flashing by him in a green blur, the ground going away, the sound of his leg snapping, the dead eyes all around him and Lennox's hand in his. When he'd realized that they couldn't hurt him. That all they wanted was for him to stop running and look at what he'd done.

He doesn't think that's all they want now.

Other shapes are coming out of the fog behind it, but all he can see is the first one. Boy. Young. No older than Neil. Rounded up when they took north Philadelphia. Maybe he'd had ties to resistance groups and maybe he hadn't. It hadn't really mattered by the end.

He turns back, gun in his hand. Suddenly furious. He's not even sure who with. "I'm right behind you, you keep fucking running."

The boy opens his mouth too wide and lets out a long, hissing shriek, drowning him out.

"God, you fuckin' asshole," I snarl, because he's not right behind me, he's standing there, and they're swelling up around him, that boy at in lead. They're howling, all of them, a dull roar under that sharp howl coming from the boy's gaping mouth.

I take a step toward Mike, another, raising my gun and aiming for the boy's head when I pull the trigger, hoping it'll jumpstart Mike back into moving his ass.

"You keep fuckin' running, you dumb shit," I shout, taking off toward the church and praying to God he's following.

He doesn't know what he expects - maybe nothing. But the boy goes down. He goes down. They can be killed.

It doesn't comfort him at all. Even less when more of them swarm in to fill the hole made by Neil's shot.

He follows, breathless, firing off a few more useless shots behind him. Every one finds a target, but every one makes no difference. There are so many. So many. An army of ghosts, shrieking for his blood.

"They don't want you," he gasps when he draws up close to Neil, barely able to get the words out. "It's me they're after."

"What's the fuckin' difference?"

It seems like a fucking ludicrous thing to say. Like it makes any difference. Like it should be any fucking comfort to me. This is the perfect fucking time to make my getaway, because I'm not the one they're after? How fuckin' stupid could he be?

Even now that we're married, now that he accepted it -- asked for it -- he still doesn't seem to be able to wrap his head around the most important aspect of this whole thing. There is no him or me anymore. There's no separating us. Protecting my life means absolutely fucking nothing, if I have to risk his to do it.

He doesn't answer that. If he even had the breath for it, he knows Neil wouldn't hear what it means, which is a kind of practical truth, even if Neil won't let himself consider it. But it doesn't matter anyway. He can hear the breathless screaming behind them and he knows what they'll do if they catch up.

Knows because he did it to them. And it's true that if Neil is close by, they might not discriminate all that much.

To the steps. Are the screams fading? They might be. He can't turn around to check.