(no subject)

[vervaceous]

Title: Vector
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.



-1-

Later, much later, he might think about the banality of evil, about the way things crash down on you out of a clear blue sky. The sky isn't clear when they drive into town, but everything else is mundane. Mundane for here. Bombed out houses, scorched walls. The empty hulks of looted stores with the front windows smashed out. Shelters made of canvas and scrap metal dotting the landscape here and there, or half-destroyed houses that somehow appear to be lived in. You live where you can. You live on what you can. This is supposed to be a big town for the area, the kind of population center that you don't often see anymore outside of the biggest cities, or the carcasses of the same. Tom leans against the wire mesh of the window and stares at the world moving by. A long time ago, he stopped feeling quite so much for these people. It's go numb or go insane.

Outside Pittsburgh. Outside Cleveland, outside Chicago, outside Indianapolis, outside St. Louis. Outside. It's all outside. There is no inside anymore. The world is gutted. Santiago City is makeup on a corpse.

He doesn't always think like this. They haven't eaten much in a couple of days. Dexter snuffles at his neck. This is what I have to save?

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Mike mutters from the driver's seat. Mike can hold his own in these settings, but Tom's never got the feeling that he likes it or feels even close to at ease. It makes sense. The more people, the more things to watch for.

“What for?” Tom reaches up to rub at his head. For hours now there's been a low pounding behind his eyes and it doesn't show any signs of subsiding. The dull, diffused light outside isn't helping either, more like sandpaper than anything that stabs, slowly wearing him down. He just wants to sleep.

“Anything. Place to eat, first of all.” Florence reaches forward from the backseat and nudges him lightly, directing his attention ahead and to the left, to a small ramshackle stand which appears to be displaying racks of some kind of meat. Cooked, that's what kind, Tom thinks as he sits up straighter. That's the most important thing, he's learned. Dog, cat, rat, food is food. And if it's dog he just tries to not think too hard about it.

They pull over in the dusty street and Dexter hops out when Tom opens the passenger door. Tom follows, less enthusiastic. He knows he's hungry, but the idea of food right now is almost nauseating. This isn't right. His mouth should be watering. He should feel stirrings of a deep and primal need, profoundly familiar by now. He never really knew what hunger was...

But that's not what he's feeling.

He hangs back as Mike and Florence head over to the stand, to the grimy-looking proprietor. He scuff his boots in the dust. This used to be a paved road, a main road, but then drought came, the long-distance ravages of a nuclear blast, and now the painted lines are mostly lost beneath a blowing shroud of dirt.

A woman carrying a bundle of rags passes, hunched and shuffling. He has no idea of her age. She could be any age at all, but time isn't kind to anyone here. She raises her head, squints at him, spits out of a toothless mouth and moves on.

The owner of the meat stand is making expansive gestures, talking rapidly. He can't quite make it out. He walks closer.

“Whoa, okay.” Mike is holding up his hands, looking like he might be about to back away. Not afraid. But not wanting any part of... something. “Look, we just came for some food. If you're not selling, I guess we're not buying. We'll be on our way.”

“No.” The man—Tom thinks it's a man—is gesturing down a back alley strewn with trash. “You must come. Her—” He points to Florence. “She is healer. Yes?”

How do they always know? Her muteness isn't obvious until you've spent more than a short amount of time with her. She doesn't wear white and she carries a gun. But she does have a sense about her, an aura of calm, and that's something that few people carry with them. Tom steps up behind them.

“What's going on?”

Mike shakes his head in exasperation and turns aside. “This clown thinks we're some kinda goddamn traveling hospital. Says his wife's sick. Wants us to help.”

“Well? Why can't we?”

Mike gives him a look that he's seen about a thousand times by now. “Because, Mother Theresa, if we stopped to help everyone who needs help we'd never get outta town. Look, I know it bugs you, but it's a question of what's practical.”

“He's one man.” With the headache he desperately doesn't feel like arguing, but somehow he can't seem to help himself. “I'm not saying we open up a goddamn charity, Pinocchio, but if we can help her, what's ten minutes either way?”

Florence has turned to them, forming a familiar little circle, listening to them. At Tom's last word she lays a hand on Mike's shoulder and gives him a look that seems to silence whatever protest he'd been about to voice. He looks down at his boots and then back up at her and allows a single grudging nod.

“Fine. But that's it.”

Tom shrugs. “If nothing else, he might give us free supplies.”

That thought seems to cheer Mike slightly as they head off down the alley, the man having called in a smaller and dirtier version of himself—possibly a brother or a son—to watch the food stand for him. The buildings arch over them, appearing almost to lean; everything now feels so much more fragile. Like a nudge is all it would take to send the rest of it over the edge. Tom kicks a broken bottle out of the way and it smashes against a loose brick, sending a rat skittering out of one hiding place and into another. Could be any alley, really, any time, until you look up.

The alley narrows, and they stop on the threshold of a half collapsed doorway buttressed with beams and two-by-fours. There's no door. A stairway leads up into the dimness and all around them there's the stink of human waste and rotting garbage. But that's not new either, and all Tom registers is that the smell is stronger here, and stronger still as they head up the stairs. He can't see much. Once it had been an apartment building, not grand by any means but nothing like the squalor it's become. Sheets hanging over doorways, or plywood standing up as a weak barrier. Up one flight and then the other, and while he doesn't see anyone he hears the squawk of a baby, pots clanging somewhere, two people yelling at each other in harsh, unintelligible tones. The floor under their boots is wet and slick. He doesn't want to see what with.

One more flight, and then at the end of the hall there's another curtained doorway to which the man appears to be making. They follow, he pulls it aside, and instantly the background stink of the rest of the building is smothered in an entirely new smell. It's not as familiar, but Tom knows it.

Sickness. Death.

He covers his mouth and nose with his hand as they step inside the room, and dimly he can hear Mike trying not to retch. Florence is the steady one, ignoring it as a distraction and moving forward towards the shape huddled on the floor, barely recognizable as human under a pile of blankets. He hears rasping breathing. The room itself is small and dingy, piled high with scavenged and broken furniture, all useless now. Ragged cloths hang in the windows, increasing the dimness. Off to the left he can see a tiny kitchenette. But none of that seems to matter. The air in the room, the light itself, is all being sucked towards the form under the blankets, as if she's drawing it in with each pained breath.

The man bends and pulls back the blanket.

The woman is small, emaciated, and even in the dimness Tom can see that she's deathly pale. She drags in another ragged breath before she manages to turn her head, coughing violently into a basin on the floor, and it's then that Tom sees what's in it.

It's red, dark, congealing. What's coming out of her mouth is a brighter red, somewhere between sputum and vomit, and thick. When she falls back onto the blankets again and stares dully up at them, Tom sees that the whites of her eyes are no longer white but a shocking red. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth and she moves her lips as though she might be about to speak but she doesn't.

There's a point at which horror becomes a kind of entrancement and he could be there now, as he bends towards her, trying to see her better. But Mike is dragging him back, Mike and Florence together, dragging him in a stumbling rush towards the door and through the curtain and down the stairs, heedless of the man's outraged yells. It isn't until they're out the front door and stumbling down the alley that Tom manages to open his mouth to ask what's happened, but he's cut off entirely as Mike leans suddenly against the wall and vomits. He's not sure he's ever seen that. So he watches dumbly, Florence's hand still on his arm.

Finally Mike pushes away, wiping roughly at his mouth and shaking his head. “Let's go. We need to go.”

“Why? Pinocchio—what was that? What did she have?”

Mike is pale. That's new, too. He's never seen Mike pale like this.

He's never seen Mike this obviously terrified.

“Look.” Mike reaches out and closes his hand on the front of Tom's shirt, holding him but not dragging him closer. Tom feels Florence release him and step away. “We have. To get out of here. Now. No questions.”

Tom nods again, and Mike releases him, and they move back down the alley, as fast as they can without running. Somewhere up in the buildings over them, a woman is dying. And Florence had left her. There's only one circumstance under which he can think that Florence would do that.

And that's if there's nothing she could do.

He shivers faintly, half trips over Dexter but manages to hide it. By the time they get back to the car the sun is close to setting, and they still haven't eaten.


-2-

'Out' turns out to mean out. Way out. Mike drives like a madman the second he gets behind the wheel and they bounce over debris and potholes, and Tom imagines that the people by the side of the road are looking accusingly at him. Leaving so soon? Got somewhere to be? Look at you go, look like you've seen a ghost.

A ghost. That woman... there are no ghosts here but there are shades and echoes. He shivers again. His headache is worse, and now after the sight of food there's a gnawing emptiness in his stomach. Dexter licks gently at his face and he pushes him away.

He knows better than to ask any questions now. They ride in silence. Once, as they break out onto a old country road, Florence leans forward and gives his shoulder a quick squeeze.

The trees bend over them like long skeletal hands in the twilight. It's winter, but it's a dead winter, without snow or even any real cold to speak of. Further north, he knows it's not like this; he'd shivered his way through the down months of last year. But there's something wrong with the landscape here. Something's been done to it.

When they finally stop for the night the shivering is more than an occasional thing, and there's a voice in his head that it's becoming hard to ignore. You're sick, buddy. Getting sicker. Let her know now and she can do something for you.

Unless she can't. It's hard to not think that way. How close to the woman had he got before Mike had dragged him back? How much of that poisoned air had he pulled into his lungs? Is he going to start to bleed?

But he'd had the headache before. But it doesn't matter. He steps out of the car under the fleshless trees and looks up at the sky, the last of the daylight, before Mike punches him in the shoulder—more lightly than he might otherwise have done—and tells him to stop fucking daydreaming and look for some firewood.

They eat squirrel, that night. Two between the three of them, and the meat is stringy and full of gristle but he chokes it down even as his appetite rebels. Florence gives him a significant look. Does she know? He turns away from her, drops a piece of meat onto the ground by Dexter's paws. The sky is still overcast so there's no moon, no stars. Tom huddles further into his coat and wishes he were asleep, except that he's afraid to dream, because he's afraid of those staring red eyes.

Out of the darkness, Mike speaks. He's eaten hardly anything, staring dully into the fire, and his voice has an equally dull quality of acceptance to it.

Or maybe that's just what Mike sounds like when he's frightened.

“You're not coughing yet,” Mike says. “That's a good sign.”

Tom looks up, squinting at him. Even in the dimness of the fire the light seems much too bright. “You still haven't--” He glances over at Florence, as if she might tell him something. “What was that?”

Mike sighs and stirs at the fire with a stick. After the sigh there's nothing and Tom's about to give any possibility of an answer up for lost when he speaks again.

“Our code name for it was Project Pale Rider. Pale Horse was the actual virus. It had another name, but no one called it that and I don't remember it now.”

Tom stares at him. So... he'd known, the second he'd seen Mike's face, he'd been sure that Mike had known what it was. So this is how. He feels something in him darken and sink, and he looks at Florence again, but she's only looking back at him with grave eyes. She knows too, he senses. Whether Mike told her before or whether it's just one of those things she knows. And once again he's so out of the loop, and finding it hard to keep from resenting it. Maybe he'll always feel a little like an outsider with them.

“This is when you were working for Santiago?”

Mike nods, once. Overhead, as if in some kind of clichéd response to the name, a bird screams.

“I was just in charge of the project. Had to report to him, but it's not like I was up on any of the science. All I know is what they told me.” He pauses and takes a breath. “All I know is bad.

“It's a slate-wiper. Ninety-nine percent kill rate. They told me only rabies is that good.” He laughs hollowly, reaching up to dig the heel of his palm into his eye, and just for a moment Tom wonders what exactly it's like to walk around with the shit Mike Pinocchio carries in his head. “I don't know anything about the genetics side of it, but if you wanna know what it does, imagine Ebola crossed with Spanish Flu.”

“Jesus.” And that's all he says. He's having a very hard time taking it in, and the pounding behind his eyes isn't making anything easier. He was in a room with that thing. They all were. That looming monster that he sensed but never saw directly until she looked up at him with that red gaze. He's been near sick people before, and maybe it's his own hazy, increasingly dreamlike perception of the world, but this is something entirely new.

Mike is staring into the fire again, and Tom has to watch him a long time before he blinks. “In the end we never deployed it. We couldn't make a vaccine. No way to protect our own men.”

“And now it's out.”

“And now it's out.” Mike looks at him, and what Tom sees in his eyes makes him want to look away. He's sometimes wondered what he'd do if he ever had to see Mike truly giving up. “I dunno how. Don't suppose it really matters.”

Tom stares down at his hands, the shadows of the fire moving over them and making them look twisted and as skeletal as the trees. He's trying to figure out what exactly this means, trying to parse it out. A slate-wiper. Out. In the population, and with that kind of overcrowding and poor sanitation it's just a matter of time before it spreads.

But then something tugs at him and he looks up, frowning. Beside him on the ground, Dexter apes the movement.

“That woman... she was dying. But her husband wasn't sick. We didn't hear about anyone else who was sick.” He pauses, teetering on the edge of the words. “I'm not sick.” Liar.

Mike stares at him for a long moment. “It mutates,” he says finally. “That was part of the problem. If it's out, maybe it's changed. The way it works.”

“Better?”

Mike answers in an entirely noncommittal shrug, and Tom sees how the question is stupid. Something like this, there's no such thing as 'better.' It's there and you're fucked or it isn't and you aren't.

“So what do we do now?”

Mike pokes moodily at the fire but otherwise he doesn't answer immediately. Florence only spares him a glance, a subtle look of sympathy, before she goes back to whatever counsel she keeps. Now, as so many other times before, she'll let Mike decide, and she won't intervene unless she feels she has to.

“I dunno.” He pauses again, chewing at something. A piece of gristle. His tongue. “We keep moving. Get as far away from the area as we can.”

Tom blinks. “That's it?”

“Yeah, that's it. What, you got a better idea?” He gives Tom a look and his eyes narrow. “You think we can actually do something about this? I told you, we got no vaccine. There is no vaccine. No treatment, either. Nothin'.”

“What about Florence?”

Mike waves an impatient hand. “We thought of that back when we were making it. She can't do anything to it.”

The bird screams again, nearer, and Tom is no longer sure it's a bird. A small animal, maybe. Something in pain. Do animals in pain scream? Or do they just slink off into hiding and wait for health or death? He read something about that once. He doesn't remember.

“We just left her.” He pulls further in on himself. Dexter looks up at him, whining softly. All the death, all around him, and it feels like things are racing toward some kind of breaking point. He's been here for three years now and he's starting to forget what it feels like to be anywhere else. He was never in theater for this long. This isn't a theater, and it isn't a game. It's real, whatever Mike says, it's real and it's killing him. “We just left her there.”

“Hobbes--” The world is starting to spin, and through the slow whirling he sees Mike leaning over, reaching for him with sudden concern on his face, but he feels strong hands on him and he knows Florence has gotten to him first. He pitches forward, is caught, lowered gently backward to the ground. Muzzily he hears Mike say “Jesus Christ, he's burning up,” and he thinks They were wrong, I've got it, I've got it and I'm going to vomit up my insides and die. He feels the cold wetness of Dexter nosing at his face and then he doesn't feel or hear or think anything else at all.


-3-

It's still dark when he opens his eyes again, and for a moment he's not sure he's opened his eyes at all. Not sure where he is, not sure if he's even alive or if this is whatever comes after, but gradually the world drifts back to him and penetrates and he hears night sounds, the quieter sounds of winter, and he feels Dexter's warm little body at his side, a blanket covering them both. A few feet away, the dying coals of the fire are still glowing. He flits his gaze to the side of the fire and sees Florence's sleeping face, and he flits his gaze to the other side and there's Mike, sitting up and looking at him. There's still no stars, or moon, and but for the coals he would have no idea how much time has passed.

He moves his lips soundlessly, suddenly aware of his own dry mouth, and Mike leans over, uncaps a canteen and holds it to his lips. He drinks, and drinks some more, and usually he tries to only take what he needs but whatever's happened to him has removed that inhibition and made him greedy. He half expects Mike to berate him for it. Mike looks on and says nothing.

When he's done he pushes the canteen weakly away and licks his lips. “What happened?”

“You were sick,” Mike says simply. Tom can't tell if he's annoyed or not. “Florence fixed you up. Were you gonna tell us about that at some point, by the way, or were you just gonna let us drag you around until you keeled over?”

“Was gonna...” He coughs lightly and feels a twinge of panic as he does--You're not coughing yet, that's a good sign--but it's just his own dry throat, raw in spite of the water he's drunk. “Was scared.” Because it's true and he's too tired to lie about it.

A flash of something that might be understanding moves across Mike's face. “You thought you had it.” Again, Tom expects to be berated, or at least mocked, but Mike only shakes his head. “Different symptoms. You'd have a fever, but you'd start coughing too. It always starts with coughing. I dunno what you had, but it wasn't Horse.”

The way he's talking about it... Tom shivers under his thin blanket and it doesn't have anything to do with the cold or any sickness left in him. “Pinocchio. Did you ever... did you test it on people?”

Mike looks away into the coals, his expression unreadable. “Yeah.”

“Jesus.”

Mike turns to look at him again, and when their gazes meet Tom sees something there that he doesn't know how to classify. Regret, it's like. Apology. Sympathy. He can almost hear it. I know you feel like you should hate me.

Does he?

“They weren't people to me, then.” He smiles a little, thinly, looking down at nothing. “Just VC. You tell yourself it doesn't matter what happens to them.” And it's strange to hear Mike talk like this, because he's always acted like he doesn't think it matters. Like there's no reason to care.

But there's Florence.

“Is that why you left?” The question is more direct than he usually dares, more bold, but there's something delicate and fragile about the air tonight, a feeling of something long-closed that's finally able to open just a crack. Just enough to let some light in. And Mike doesn't sneer, doesn't shoot back with a sardonic remark. He's quiet for a moment, seeming to consider.

“Not totally,” he says finally. “But maybe it was part of why. It was a lot of things.”

It's not much of a detailed answer, but it's more than Tom ever expected, so he accepts it without any other question. All that really matters is contained within it, he senses. It was a lot of things. Just like that. He pulls the blanket closer around his shoulders and closes his eyes again. “How late is it?” Because what time is it doesn't have a whole lot of meaning here anymore.

“After midnight, probably. You were out a few hours.”

“I can take second watch.”

Mike snorts a laugh. “Second watch, hell. You can sleep, dick. You need it.”

It's a kindness, though a kindness delivered in a uniquely Mike manner, and he accepts it gratefully. A full night of sleep is a luxury now and one he doesn't often get. Dexter sighs against him and snuggles closer. He's tired, bone-weary. He's tired in a way he's not sure he has any right to be when they've just left a woman to die horribly, with God knows how many others to follow. They could be standing on a precipice.

That isn't exactly new.

Tired doesn't know ethics. He feels himself plummeting back towards sleep, but just before he hits bottom, he thinks he hears himself whisper “And I don't hate you.”

He has no idea if Mike hears him or not. He's gone after that.


* * *


When he wakes again the sun is up, hazy and greased by clouds like the day before. He blinks and sits slowly up, groaning to himself and looking around with bleary eyes. He doesn't feel sick anymore, but the muzzy-headedness hasn't completely gone yet, and the last day feels almost like a bad dream.

If only he could believe that's all it had been.

Florence is stirring the ashes of the campfire with a stick, knocking down the last remaining coals. She pauses, looks up at him, spares him a small smile. Goes back to the fire. Tom yawns and rubs his eyes. He knows it can't be long after sunrise but he has the thick, logy feeling of having slept far too late into the day.

“Where's Pinocchio?” Because he's nowhere to be seen. Florence inclines her head off into the trees but otherwise offers no explanation. Tom's curious, but if Florence doesn't see fit to try to explain, an explanation must not be all that important. He shoves off the blanket and reaches over for the canteen, spilling a small amount into his hands and scrubbing at his face, sparing a little more for rinsing out his mouth. He has a toothbrush. Somewhere.

Hygiene is just something else that he only gives a cursory thought to anymore. He stopped smelling himself a long time ago.

Someone lightly cuffs the back of his head, making him cough sharply. “Quit wasting water, dick.” And there's Mike again, moving past him and scooping a few remaining loose items into his pack.

Tom glares up at him. “There isn't any around here?” Even when they can't find food, water usually isn't so hard to come by. But Mike glances at Florence and then shakes his head.

“Not here. Not potable.”

“Not even if we boiled it?”

Mike sighs. “Big chemical plant went boom about five miles from here, a few years back. All the groundwater's fucked. So no, not even if we boil it. Not unless you like cancer.”

He has no answer to that. What kind of answer could there be? For three years this has been happening. Fact, bald and inarguable fact, and he has to accept it no matter how much he might want to deny it. He looks up at the trees again, out at the landscape and the wrongness he'd sensed in it yesterday, which he hadn't been able to articulate even to himself. The deadness in the trees that seems to extend far past any winter.

He's hungry and Dexter is whining softly, nosing at the ashes. They're all hungry. He hoists up his own pack, the blanket under one arm, and walks to the car. If code defines this world, if code can be manipulated and rewritten, they should be able to conjure food out of thin air.

In the car he falls asleep again. In three years Mike has never once let him drive, so it's not a problem. He leans his head against the mesh, the metal webbing pressing lines into his cheek, and he dreams about Sophie. He hasn't written her a letter in months. There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of point anymore. He tells himself that soon enough, he'll be back with her and he can forget about letters forever. He tells himself that. It's a nice thing to try to believe.

In his dream Sophie is standing in their living room and holding that white dress to her bare breast, and behind its starched lines he knows her naked body is warm and inviting. He steps closer to her, feeling a wicked little smile pulling at his mouth, but a red droplet hits the pristine white of the skirt and trickles downward. He raises his eyes to her face and her beautiful lips are smeared crimson, and her eyes are blood red, and when she opens her mouth she coughs a bloody spray that spatters across his face.

He opens his eyes. They've bounced through a dirty puddle, and his face is wet from the splash. He wipes at it, fights down a wave of nausea. His dreams should be safe. He should at least have them untouched.

Red.

He shakes his head and glances back at Florence, looking out at the world with her face calm and inscrutable. He's never understood how she does it, whether it's simply that this is all she's ever known, whether her nature is just to accept. She doesn't fight. She flows. She bends. She works around things, while Mike alternates guile and brute force. Now and then he sees, clearly, how and why they work.

But it's still a mystery.

Red. Beating at the back of his mind, no matter how hard he tries to keep himself from thinking of it. He shudders and turns his attention back to the road in front of them, and approaching from the horizon are the low buildings of what looks like a small village. But it doesn't have that populated look so instantly recognizable even in the ruins of a place. It looks dead and long-abandoned. He glances at Mike, questioning.

“Are we stopping?”

Mike's mouth tightens. “Got to. We need food and squirrel ain't gonna cut it too much longer. Besides, not sure I'd want to eat them anyway.” They had the night before, and Tom now recognizes that as necessity. He's seen no deer here, he realizes. Nothing large but people. This is not really like anywhere else they've ever been. At least in New York City the damage had been clear and obvious, the cause the same.

He's seen lots of little towns like this in the midwest: one main street, intersecting with another a few side streets in between houses. Even in the Real World they'd been starting to die. No future, not much work, kids getting bored and leaving home, going to college and never coming back. Not like this, though, and as they get closer he starts to see disquieting things. Some of the windows still have intact glass. One screen door flaps open in the breeze, knocking gently against the frame. A tricycle sits abandoned in an overgrown front yard.

None of those things in themselves is so strange. But the windows... He's not sure about the windows. And there's more, more that doesn't have anything to do with what he can see. After three years he's learned to trust new senses and they're gently warning him now.

About what?

He can feel the tension in Florence, and when he glances backs he's sitting forward, her hand on her gun. Mike, too, jaw set as they move slowly down the street. But there's no obvious reason to run and the need is too great.

They stop at the intersection. It seems like the place; residential gives way to a tiny commercial district, stores with more smashed-out windows, so ubiquitous they're not even disturbing anymore. Looted a long time ago. But there might be something. Mike pulls the car to the side, partially shielded by a wall. The upper windows of the building across the street look like blank, empty eyes—cliche, but maybe that's why Tom can't keep the image away.

There's a stoplight in the middle of the intersection, fallen from the wires overhead. It's just sitting there, half-smashed but otherwise apparently undisturbed from the moment at which it fell. Tom stares at it for a second before Florence touches his arm gently and they move off.

The first store is a drugstore, and while a few bottles of vitamins and tubes of old toothpaste dot the white metal shelves, it's otherwise been picked clean. In a corner lies a vending machine, its front wrenched open and every can of soda gone. In a small pile next to it, like some kind of congealed bodily fluid, are quarters, dimes, nickels. A few bills. Money is useless now. It only had any value while everyone believed that it did. Money isn't sugar.

Mike makes a short dissatisfied noise and they move on.

Across the street is a small grocery store, and as they enter it, stepping through the front window and over shattered glass, Tom feels his already empty stomach sink. There won't be anything here. This is the first place anyone would go to. And indeed, as they stare out over the aisles, the shelves look absolutely bare. There's a faint, sweet smell of decay, but it's only residual; whatever was going to rot probably did so a long time ago.

“C'mon,” Mike mutters, his tone conveying only let's get this over with, when they hear something in the far left aisle drop and roll. A can or a jar, it sounds like, and although all three of them freeze instantly with guns drawn, Tom feels a sliver of hope. If there's one can of something left there might be more. Mike would tell him that it's too good to be true.

Mike is usually right about things like that.

“Come out,” Mike barks into the dimness. “Hands where we can see 'em.”

There's no response, but there is a faint scuffling sound, and Tom meets Mike's gaze for a second, both questioning. Tom mouths animal? but just as he does there's more movement and a low, hulking shape appears behind one of the checkout lanes.

“Hey,” Mike calls. “Hey. Stop right there.”

The shape doesn't stop. It doesn't even seem to have heard them. It's definitely human but besides that it's unrecognizable. It's cradling something in its arms, and it shuffles forward towards them, head down.

And it coughs. Hard, wet. Tom hears something spatter onto the ground and he's already thinking oh god oh god no when the light finally hits it just as it raises its head and it's a man, bearded, long stringy hair, face pale and beard matted with blood.

He opens his mouth, looks directly at them with filmy red eyes and coughs again, and it doesn't spray, not like in Tom's dream. It trickles, and then there's a chunk of something, something that Tom doesn't look too hard at. He's frozen, rooted to the spot. Later he'll be embarrassed about it; Mike still gives him shit for being green but it's been three years, more than that in the service, and he doesn't freeze like this.

“Hobbes, fuck,” Mike yells, and then there's a shot, oddly muffled, or maybe that's just Tom's ears. The man drops like a stone, flickers, goes out in a flare of blue light. On the bloody floor is what he'd been carrying in his arms.

On the floor is a baby wrapped in the rags of a blue t-shirt, a baby that can't be more than a few months old.

“God,” Tom whispers. “Oh, God.” Florence takes his arm, shakes her head slowly and sadly as Mike steps forward with a face so ashen he almost resembles the dead man. Tom looks long enough to see the baby's dull red eyes, a bloody spit bubble on its lips, and he looks away when Mike raises his gun again and fires.


-4-

“Why aren't any of us sick?”

Tom is standing in the middle of the road outside of town, standing where he'd stopped in his pacing when the question became too much to contain. Mike leans wearily back against the hood of the car, arms crossed. Florence looks up from where she's crouched by the side of the road, mild concern washing over her face. They're stopped here because going on had seemed like a joke, and because a next move has to be decided on, even if that feels like a joke too.

“I wanna know, Mike. If this thing spreads through the air--”

“It doesn't.”

Tom snorts a laugh, high and bitter. “Right, you would know that. What the fuck else do you know?” When he closes his eyes he sees the baby, the red spit bubble, the lax dying face.

Mike eyes narrow and his pale face seems to get just a little more pale. “Are you accusing me of something? You think that's a good idea right now?”

“I don't know what a good idea is right now.” He's not sure when he was last so angry. If he is angry. He's not sure how much of the anger is actually fear. There's a lot he's not sure about, and that's part of the fear.

He's not sure about this. He's not sure about Mike. He's usually so sure about Mike. It's like losing the north. Like the entire magnetic field might flip over on him.

“You know about this. I don't even know how much you know. What the fuck do you expect me to feel like? We killed--” He stops, leans over, rests his hands on his thighs and just tries to breathe. “We killed...”

You killed.

He feels a light touch on his back and he knows without straightening up that it's Florence. He can feel the calm seeping in through his skin, clearly external. She doesn't just heal wounds with her touch. He lets himself breathe, and gradually the tightness in his chest dissolves. When he stands upright she keeps her hand on his shoulder and gives him a look that seals what she's already done. Gentle and firm. Get a hold of yourself. This isn't helping anything.

Okay.

When he looks at Mike again Mike is looking away, arms still crossed and his teeth worrying at his bottom lip.

“It's spreading. Isn't it?”

Mike shakes his head. “We've seen three people with it. I dunno if I'd jump to that.”

“Three people in two days, Pinocchio. Miles apart. What the fuck do you call that?”

“Why the fuck am I supposed to call it anything?” Mike drops his arms, voice rising abruptly, and finally Tom can see the fear, the confusion, and under it the guilt. He feels a little relieved. This is easier to deal with, even if Florence's injected calm is melting out of the air. This is something he can relate to. “I'm not a fucking expert, Hobbes. I know a little more than you do. I don't know what the fuck is going on here. I don't know what's happening. Get it? I don't know.”

For a few seconds they simply face each other in the pitted road, jaws set and gazes locked. Florence tosses her arms skyward in frustration, turns and begins cutting out across the field away from them and the car, her gun swinging over her shoulder.

Mike turns to watch her go, huffs a sigh and drops back against the car again. “Now look what you did.”

Tom glares at him. “It's not my fault.”

“No, I guess it isn't.” Mike swipes both hands down his face, exhaling heavily. It's not just fear. He looks tired, more than Tom has ever seen him look. He drops his hands and raises his head again. “You think I got answers. I don't. I got no answers, Hobbes. I left because I had no answers.”

Tom doesn't have anything to say to that. So he says nothing, looking away, stubborn. Confused. Something's changed in the last couple of days and Mike is talking to him in ways he hasn't ever before.

Florence has stopped, standing a few hundred yards away with her head lifted to the hazy sky, as if watching or looking for something. Tom watches her. He'd like to be with her, feel that calm again.

“So now what do we do?”

“Not sure I got an answer for that either.” Mike closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, as though he has a headache. “We gotta keep moving.” They always have to keep moving. “I guess... look, we head back north and east is what we do.”

Tom looks sharply at him. North and east is where they've come from and they didn't come from there for no reason. “Are you sure? You don't think that might be a seriously bad idea?”

“What other fucking choice do we have?” Mike half-shrugs unhappily, glancing past Tom and down the road into the distance. “We keep going the way we been, it's just gonna get worse. I'm not even talking about Horse. Trust me, Hobbes, New York was nothing.”

And that could mean a lot of things. More bombs, more exploded chemical plants, any number of things. He could ask for details. Maybe later. Usually he would be curious, but now he's not sure he even wants to know.

“How're we gonna stay outta trouble?”

“We go careful. We ditch the car when we have to. It's still a big country, Hobbes. Santiago can't be everywhere at once.” And that sounds good, but they both know how it's less and less true as time goes on. Santiago's country is growing, the Guard is growing, more and more fence but sooner or later they won't even need a fence anymore.

They're losing. He's known that for a long time now.

“Okay.” He sighs and looks away again, and Florence is only a few feet away now. Somehow she's come back without him hearing her. He's a little startled, but not really surprised. She looks at him and then at Mike and nods once. Agreeing. He doesn't know how much she's heard but he knows she's heard enough. “Okay. Let's get going.”

“All right.” But Mike pauses, a hand on his gun, giving Tom a strange look. “I really don't know anything else, Hobbes. Nothing else we can use.”

Yet, Tom thinks. There's a lot Mike might know that he isn't telling, and that's another thing that's not even remotely new. Mike keeps himself to himself and for the most part that's fine. It's only now that it's starting to change.

Along with everything else.

So he just allows Mike a nod, short and not entirely committal, but it'll have to do. He can feel Mike's eyes on him as he follows Florence to the car, opens the door and swings inside. Dexter, dozing on the driver's seat, perks up and jumps into his lap.

It's still another second or two before Mike pushes away from the hood, gets in and starts the car. And then, bumping down the road with the blotted sun beginning to set behind them, he doesn't say anything else for a long time.


* * *


As dusk falls it starts to rain. They swing onto a highway going northeast, the side dotted here and there with abandoned vehicles, some of them only burned hulks. They've clearly been pushed off the road. Someone's cleared it for something else. It's not really a comforting sign, but they stay on it anyway, and they see no people nor any sign of the same. The rain starts and drums on the windshield, and Tom rolls up his window. The air inside the car becomes stale, sour with the odor of sweat and unwashed bodies and clothes. It's been a long time since he had a real shower. He watches the drops trickle down his window in silence, the small droplets at the top, the way they move downward and collect bigger drops on the way, growing in size, moving faster and faster. It's hypnotic. If he were any more tired he might fall asleep.

“We gotta keep moving,” Mike says when it starts to become truly dark, and Tom shoots him a questioning look. “We need food. Some kinda shelter.” Water. Between the three of them they used the last of the canteen hours ago, and that hadn't allowed them any more than a small mouthful each. Tom is thirsty, thirstier than he'd realized until he allows himself to think about it. Mistake. You always ignore things like that if there's nothing you can do about them.

It gets darker, and then darker, and they pick up speed and the sound of rain on the roof doesn't cease or let up. Tom remembers when that sound used to be restful, comforting, lying in bed with Sophie warm against his side. He hopes she still feels that way. He's glad she can't see this.

Eventually he does sleep again, and there's no nightmares, no dreams to speak of at all that he can remember. The hum of the engine, the sound of the rain, the warm little bundle of Dexter in his lap, Mike's silence and Florence's presence, and no matter how frightened he is the calm from before makes its way back into him, aided by exhaustion.

He opens his eyes in a grimy kind of pre-dawn light, and they're still moving. Tom yawns and rubs his eyes, looking around. Unless he missed a stop they've driven through the night. Mike is still awake. Mike has been awake for close to forty-eight hours now. It's not really that remarkable.

Lights ahead. He sits up straighter and Dexter sits up with him, whining softly. Lights... electricity. It's not unheard of, especially not closer to the fence, but it's still worth some notice, some comment. He doesn't remember coming this way, and as they draw closer and the lights take on a kind of shape, he sees something else that doesn't seem right.

Humvees, parked by the side of the road. Crossed swords. “Shit,” Mike hisses, pulls the car over so hard and sharp that Tom has to brace a hand on Mike's headrest to keep from ending up in his lap. Dexter actually does end up there, and Mike shoves him off, cursing. Tom peers out the window. Those lights look like giant klieg lights. Familiar.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“I don't know.” Mike is peering out too, face a mask of tension. Behind them, Florence sits. Waiting.

“They're not supposed to be out this far yet, right?”

Mike shrugs helplessly. “You got me. I didn't think so.”

“Should we get a closer look?” A second after he asks the question he expects Mike to give him an incredulous look, maybe a few choice words about his instincts, but instead there's silence, and when he looks at Mike again Mike is nodding slowly.

“Yeah, okay. We keep a distance. But something's up.”


* * *


It's a small cluster of buildings. Not even really a town. A gas station, a store, a couple of houses. But these aren't deserted. They don't have the same feel, but all feelings aside, as the three of them edge up behind one of the houses, it would be pretty clear anyway. There's a small cluster of people in the middle of the road, surrounded by humvees, surrounded by Guardsmen. One or two of them are crouched. All of them are huddled together, clearly terrified. Across the street, the front door of one of the houses slams open and three people emerge, hands on their heads, followed by two Guardsmen with guns pointed at them. Tom glances to the side; a little ways across the back lawn of the house they're crouched behind is a garden, dead for the winter but clearly well-kept.

A little settlement. Not like one of the bigger ones. This is a group of people who have banded together out of necessity and a desire for community, working and living together, sharing everything, watching each other's backs. He's seen it before and each time it's given him a little hope. People like this have fed them, given them shelter out out of pure kindness.

Now they're being rounded up in the middle of the road. Tom swallows hard, fighting down the outrage. It won't help anything.

“Probably nothing we can do, right?”

Mike shakes his head. “No.” He pauses, glances at Tom. “Sorry.” Mike hardly ever uses that word. But when they've stopped at places like this, Mike's been fed too.

“I still don't get what's happening. This isn't part of the expansion. They'd have a bigger force for that.” And they wouldn't have a significant force at all for a place like this. When the Guard expands the borders, the troops are reserved for major population centers. Smaller settlements get taken care of much later. “I count... Jesus, sixteen.”

“Eighteen.” Mike inclines his head forward; two more Guardsmen emerge from behind one of the houses, guns in hand. “You're right. Why so many? This is fucking weird.”

“You wanna get closer?”

Mike thinks for a second, glances back at Florence, who seems to be thinking as well. Tom has seen this a few times; Mike appears at first glance to be making the decisions, but in so many situations there's a kind of quiet deference from him to her. Maybe he'll make the final decision, but he won't make any decision at all without her okay.

In the end she nods and he turns again. “Okay. A little. But Christ, be careful. We still gotta get back to the car and get outta here without getting spotted.”

They creep around the side of the house, keeping it between them and the road, and one by one they duck behind a shed that gives them a slightly better view. “We split up,” Mike hisses. “Find out what you can, meet back at the car in fifteen. Hobbes.” He points off towards the gas station, half lit but outside the brightest circle of light. “You head that way. Florence and I'll go right.”

Tom doesn't wait for further instruction and he's too used to Mike giving the orders to question it much. He darts behind a hedge, staying low, circles wide outside the light, crosses the road and doubles back towards the gas station. For all he knows there's a hidden perimeter. But he can't think about things like that, not now.

He has to remember: there's nothing he can do.

From the gas station he has a slightly better view, and he can see that some of the people in the group appear to be in pain. A few of them are kneeling with their hands on their heads, but more of them are doubled over, crouching, holding their middles. Have they been beaten? The binoculars are back in the car. Shit. They should have thought to bring them. He slides behind one of the pumps, low as he can be without crawling.

Some of the people are coughing.

“What the fuck is this?” A man is striding into the light, authoritative and tall and it only takes Tom a second to identify him as Mel Waters. What the fuck, indeed. “Captain, why aren't these men suited up?”

One of the Guardsmen steps forward. They're not close to the prisoners, and close enough for Tom to hear them clearly. “We were told... it's not airborne.”

“Fuck what you were told.” Waters is mad. Tom's not sure he's ever heard him this mad. “They're handling the prisoners, they're getting close enough to get infected. You get them in spacesuits, Captain. Now. Unless you want them in the circle too.”

“Shit,” Tom breathes. Infected. More people. Further east and north. This is out of control. If it ever was under control to begin with.

He has to get out. He has to get back to the car. They can't do any more here and he doesn't want to stay to see what happens next. He turns, moves swiftly from the pumps back to the low building, prepares to cross the road again.

A sharp pain across the back of his head, his gun spins out of his hand and he hits the pavement jaw first, biting his tongue. He grunts, almost yelps, but the darkness takes him before he gets much of a chance.


* * *


“Tom Hobbes.”

He opens his eyes slowly. His lids feel stuck together. He's sitting on the pavement, his hands are tied behind him, shoulders aching, and half his face feels huge and swollen. He tries to lick his lips, tastes blood, groans.

“C'mon, Hobbes. Rise and shine.”

The light is incredibly, painfully bright, and when he lifts his gaze the face of the man crouched in front of him is cast in deep shadow, but when he looks to the side it's clear, and not a surprise. The husky voice had given it away in any case.

“Waters,” Tom croaks, and groans again. Better and better.

“Hey, Hobbes.” Waters smiles. It's not a pleasant smile. “Anytime anything's going down, you just keep popping up. Don't you?”

“Fuck you.” He coughs, spits blood, feels a twinge of pleasure when Waters moves back a little hurriedly. “Think I got it? Want me to cough on you, Waters? You really ought to be wearing a suit yourself, you know that?”

“Major Waters.” Waters straightens up and turns, and out of the light comes another Guardsman shoving two very familiar figures before him. “Found these two around one of the houses.”

“Fantastic.” Waters grins, but Tom notices with a certain satisfaction that he's now keeping his distance from all three of them. “Got a regular goddamn party going, don't we? How you doin', Pinocchio?”

Mike sneers at him and opens his mouth to speak, but he never gets that far.

“Hello, Michael.” Tom turns sharply, as much as he can from where he's sitting despite the screaming in his arms, Mike turns as well, and he hears Florence draw in a hard breath.

This changes everything.

Omar Santiago steps out of the shadows of the shed, flanked by two Guardsmen. He smiles. “It's very good to see you again, son. Been a long time.”


-5-

Mike doesn't say anything. He meets Santiago's gaze with a kind of blankness that Tom is guessing is taking an extraordinary amount of willpower. Santiago looks from him to Waters, smiles again. It's a very pleasant smile. Santiago's always had a very pleasant smile, Tom thinks; it's one of the disarming things about him. A smile like that, it's easy to think that maybe he's right, maybe he really does have the best interests of everyone at heart, especially you. Maybe it would be better if you just went along.

“We're going to have to test your blood. All three of you.” Santiago inclines his head slightly, as if this is a regrettable thing, worth apologizing for. “You understand, in this situation... we really can't afford to take any chances.”

Three Guardsmen with tiny, blocky looking devices are stepping forward. One of them bends and takes Tom's arm. He considers fighting, but only for a moment. Wait. Watch for a chance. This isn't a good one.

“We haven't been close enough for an expos--ah.” Mike winces and at the same moment Tom feels a sharp pain in the meat of his forearm, quickly withdrawn.

“It's not that I don't trust you, Michael.” That smile again. “Believe me, in this case, I'd trust you. It's just that... well, like I said.” One by one the three Guardsmen look up from the devices and nod, and step away again.

“You're all clean. Good. It would be a shame if one of you wasn't salvageable.”

“Salvageable for what?” Tom doesn't like the word. He doesn't like any of this, obviously, but if it were a question of getting the three of them out of the way, he's pretty sure that would have been taken care of by now. The fact that he and Mike and Florence are all still alive is suspicious in itself.

“Well.” Santiago drops into a crouch, faces Tom squarely. In three years he doesn't seem to have aged at all. “I'm guessing you know about Pale Horse.” He glances up at Mike. “I know Michael isn't always forthcoming, but I'm assuming he's told you at least a little.”

“Yeah.”

“It's becoming... a problem.” Santiago folds his hands together under his chin, and looks entirely as if they're two friends discussing this over coffee. “We were hoping that you—you and your friends—might be able to provide us with some assistance in dealing with it.”

“You're a long way from home, Omar,” Mike says, cutting in before Tom can reply. “You got people to take care of one settlement. Why come yourself?”

“Yes, why,” Santiago says, straightening up again. His smile is gone. What's in its place is hard to find words for. Tom has never seen Omar Santiago afraid, and he's not sure it's an emotion the man is even capable of feeling. So this isn't that. But maybe it's somewhere in the same ballpark. “Why would I want to see firsthand the thing that could destroy everything I've spent the last decade of my life working for?”

“What're you gonna do with those people?” Mike's face is grim, set. Tom glances back at them, a sizable crowd, now, huddled together in the growing light of the sunrise, and the Guard around them is now dressed in billowing white biohazard suits.

“The only thing we can do.”

Mike sneers. “Right, because trying to help them is completely outta the fucking question.”

“We can't help them, Michael. You know that better than anyone else here.” Santiago looks to the side, sighs, and Tom almost believes that he's genuinely unhappy about it. “They're dead already.”

Tom gives Mike a look, questioning. Mike looks away again. Some of the people in the circle are crying. More coughing. Part of him—maybe the part that speaks in Mike's voice—wishes they'd just get it over with already. The waiting seems pointlessly cruel.

He turns back to Santiago again, straining his neck to look up. “So you want our help... you're saying you didn't deploy it?”

Santiago snorts a brief laugh. “I wish you thought better of us than that. If we'd deployed it ourselves, you'd see it a lot more than a few scattered cases. Besides, what would we gain by that? We have no vaccine.”

“That we know of.”

“Those men are in biohazard suits. Do you think we would take those precautions if it was as simple as giving them all a shot?”

“I don't know what I think,” Tom says. He's tired, his arms are hurting, his face is bruised and so swollen that every move of his jaw is pain. And behind him, ringed by soldiers, are dying people, and there's nothing he can do for any of them. “Why the fuck should we trust you? Why should we believe any of what you're saying?”

Santiago shrugs. “I don't know how you expect me to answer that. You do or you don't. And...” He glances over Tom and past all of them to the circle of people. “If you don't, we may have to figure out something else to do with you.” He looks down at Tom again, smiling. “We'll leave you alone to talk it over.”

He walks away, flanked by his guard, and the remaining soldier shoves Mike and Florence down hard into the road next to Tom, Florence grunting softly as she hits her knees. Mike turns to her, face showing concern, but she shakes her head. I'm fine.

“Shit,” Mike mutters, pulling at the cuffs binding his wrists. “Well, this is just great. What the fuck do we do now?”

“You tell me,” Tom says dully. He would have thought he'd be used to being captured and beaten by now. Maybe that's one of those things you never really get the hang of. “Doesn't seem like they're giving us a whole lot of choice.” He thinks about Dexter. Dexter, still back in the car. If he's taken a piss in there Mike's going to lose his mind, he thinks, and in spite of the pain and the awful helplessness he almost laughs.

Mike gives him a look. “What?”

“Nothing. Look, I'm guessing... they want us mostly because of you.”

Mike grimaces, sour, and again Tom sees that flash of guilt under the surface. “Yeah, probably. I'm not sure what the fuck I'm supposed to do, though. Like I said, I just oversaw the project. I never understood the science.”

“Well, I don't know. But I think we have to say yes. I mean...” He sighs a little fitfully. “Fuck, I hate this. But they're just gonna kill us otherwise.”

Mike is quiet for a few moments, thinking. Tom lets him think. It's almost completely light now, and a single bird wheels overhead, dropping down behind one of the houses. It's the first bird he's seen in days. For an instant he's captivated by it, by the life of it against the dead landscape, before it vanishes again.

“Okay, here's the deal,” Mike says finally, looking from him to Florence. “This could be one of two things. Either they're telling the truth and they didn't deploy it, in which case we all basically want the same thing, and if we help them... hell, maybe we could save a lotta people.”

“Or?”

“Or,” and Mike's voice drops slightly as he glances up at the single Guard standing a few feet away, “they did deploy it, and this is some kinda setup that we don't get quite yet. And if that's what's going on, we're in a better situation to find shit out from the inside.” He laughs a little and shakes his head. “And if we refuse, we die. So fuck it, I'm with you. I say we say yes.”

“For now?”

“For now.”

Tom looks at Florence. She looks back, face tight with obvious discomfort. She turns to look at the circle of sick people, something desperate flashing through her eyes. Then, slowly, like it's taking an effort, she nods. It makes sense that she would hate it most of the three of them. Tom feels a flash of guilt and he wishes he could reach out a hand, touch her shoulder the way she's touched him.

“Okay,” Mike says quietly, raises his head and yells. “Hey, Waters! Tell your sugar daddy we're in.” Waters looks up sharply from where he's talking to a group of Guard, and Tom has to suppress a grin when he sees one or two of them doing the same, covering their mouths with their hands and clearing their throats loudly.

“Like you didn't have your head halfway up his ass,” Waters hisses when he gets close enough to yank Mike to his feet. “You two! Get the others on their feet and get them in a vehicle. I want us out of here before noon.”

One of the Guard salutes. “Sir. What should we do with the people, sir?”

Waters's mouth thins into a grim line. “Go ahead and execute. Burn the buildings. Make sure everyone's suited and test them before we leave. If any of this follows us home, it's on your head, Captain.”

“Sir.” The man salutes again, a little less smartly. The Guards holding Mike and Florence shove them hard towards one of the humvees, and Mike almost stumbles.

“Wait.” Tom twists around, looking back towards the car. The car. They're probably never going to see it again. “Our packs... And Dexter's back there.”

“Dexter?” Waters snorts and rolls his eyes skyward. “You aren't seriously still dragging that fucking mutt around, are you, Hobbes? For Christ's sake, he's not even your real dog.”

He's real enough, Tom thinks through a sudden tightening in his throat, and then Mike is standing up straighter, shooting Waters a dark look. “Let us get our shit, you limp dick. And let the boy get his dog.”

Tom stares at him, grateful and confused. His pack... his letters to Sophie are in there. His picture of her. He's fairly sure that Mike would have let whatever's in his and Florence's own packs go, if it had been just them.

But it's not.

Waters glowers at Mike, and for a second Tom is sure he'll refuse, but finally he nods to one of the Guard and inclines his head down the road. “Get their packs. And the damn dog.”

The cuffs aren't removed, but at least their arms are recuffed in front of them. Dexter leaps up into Tom's lap as he's pushed into the backseat of one of the humvees, the three of them pressed together with Mike in the middle. Mike lets out an exasperated sigh as Dexter yips and licks frantically at Tom's face, but it all stops when the sound of gunfire comes in through the open door. Everything else goes strangely silent. There are no screams, and another short burst of shots, and then nothing.

Florence lets out a long breath, leans back against the seat and closes her eyes. Dexter whimpers softly. When Tom looks at Mike again Mike's gone very pale and he's biting at his lip.

“There was nothing else to do,” he whispers, and Tom is sure he's talking entirely to himself. “Right? Nothing else to do.”

Tom turns away, holds Dexter close and shuts his eyes against the rising tide of numbness. Nothing else to do.