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Futuristic ᴇɢᴏ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ

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I.I - Where There's a Willow, There's a Way New
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    • hery

    hery

    the fool



















    Some trips outside were nice.
    Keeping an open mind, the dust that caked every surface was reminiscent of a time in which that quality was of note. When there was a story to be told of the long untouched. Now, it was a grim reminder of a disrepair fixable only by divine intervention. Pale and sickly was the new palette of the world, which had ground to a hopeless halt. Along with most other things, it stagnated.

    Rupert's eyes were fixed onto the wooden floor. He'd driven a crowbar into the floorboards a few times already, hauling scrap wood into a haphazard pile to be transported back to base. "Home", as they'd grown to call it, was in need of more maintenance than one meager crew could manage, not for any lack of effort. The ongoing project was made even more daunting by the fact that, even in an age that had evolved past comfort, some still had no interest in getting their hands dirty.

    There Cara stood in the corner, listlessly peeling scraps of tattered, floral wallpaper. Her features were dulled by the muted gold of sunlight filtering in through cracked windows and holes in the abandoned abode's roof. Though the girl had certainly checked the pantry to be greeted with cobwebs and debris, hope had not left her just yet. Even nearly a half-century past society's collapse, the planet's population had waned to such an exponential degree that maybe a few scraps of supplies were still left to be scavenged. She didn't seem very hard at work, even if her intense, resolute gaze typically told a different tale. Maybe she was taking a break.

    Well, when would Rupert's be?

    It was a long shot, but to return emptyhanded was to deny a meal to the children who so eagerly expected them. Rupert, even in all his self-absorption, could at least recognize that responsibility. The few kids the group fed and clothed had a permanent soft spot in the handyman's heart. They needed him and he liked that. The concept of a "loser" was still foreign to their naïve perceptions.

    Rrrrrriiippp!

    There was another plank ripped, as signified by the sharp noise of splintering wood. Cara's head spun around toward the source of the noise, something she'd done each time without fail. Rupert paid her no mind; if she was going to be paranoid, she could address the intermittent sound of creaking floorboards further into the house.

    And where was Deron, that slothful prick?

    "Someone's getting punched in the nose." Rupert's voice was a low grumble, sweat dripping down his creased brows. "Makin' me do, fuckin'..." Crack! Rip! "...manual labor..." It was a job he'd never signed up for. Why couldn't be have been one of the eggheads that diced tomatoes or whatever all day?

    Others were doing their "jobs" outside. How nice it must be, running about filling up packs instead of slaving away over wood scrap. But if anybody asked, Ru wasn't bitter. Hell, he was happy to do it. For morale's sake.

    Yeah, right. As in, don't be yourself or else another person will rob the pantry and skip town. Happiness = productivity.

    Cara's position hadn't moved from the corner. Whatever was on her mind could wait for her diary. He knew her game, pretending to keep watch out the window as an excuse to mope around, absorbed in thought. God, he really wanted to give it to that fickle girl sometimes. And it was mutual, without a doubt.

    "If no one starts taking this wood to the truck, we won't make it out by sundown!" he called out to no one in particular, his gruff tone accentuated by the exasperation brought about by yet another headache. God, he was getting old. Without Mom up and about micromanaging everyone, the mental burden of responsibility felt so much heavier to bear. Especially when commands were usually being barked by Deron, who was perpetually in over his head.

    If he ran to the car now, Rupert could probably make it out without catching any followers. Oh, how often he thought about it... It was a shame who was waiting back home, or else he'd have done it in a heartbeat.

    One day.










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    • 982 Willow Way read the peeling
    words painted on the side of the rusted mailbox. Deron noted the name down in his yellow pad, placing two lines below 978 Willow Way and six lines above 1024 Cremona Lane. Of the list of things that vexed him about the world that felt to him foreign, ancient, and unreal, the skipping of numbers in the addresses of houses that were right next to each other was near the top of the list. He scratched a — next to 982 WILLOW WAY, and, standing back on his heels, looked down the driveway to the house which nature had begun to overrun. It was midday now, and the cool autumn sun cast a more faint yellow glow on the cul-de-sac that would darken into a hazy orange by eight o’clock. Ideally, this excursion wouldn’t last that long, and the plywood and floorboards and decor that the team of three managed to salvage would be back at the community by seven at latest, leaving about an hour of brown-ishness to do some final work before the torches had to be lit outside. It wasn’t like they could finish it all today, anyway, but with the plan (devised by Deron, of course), they should, if they stayed on track, be able to finish things a third of the way, at least.

    With his brother moving in its cracked window and young Cara barely in view in a corner of the room, the dusty, dingy, ivy-covered house looked more alive than Deron could ever believe it had been. It seemed gratuitously large to him, which was good for his salvaging team now: three bedrooms of different colors that had already been stripped from the last salvaging venture here; two bathrooms with their own unique biomes that had been ravaged last time as well; a room with just furniture they would salvage and a busted television they could scrap some metal from; a dining room with an unsalvageable table that had no accompanying chairs; a kitchen of sorts that had been stripped of its cabinets and cutlery and pipes and dishes and glassware; a room off to the side of the kitchen that seemed to be a pantry full of untouched cans that they would tuck away and rotted, bug-stripped food that would make the tucking away a bit more difficult; a room with some sort of heater in it; a room with washing and drying machines with molded, reeking clothing inside of them; rooms that went off of the three bedrooms and once held clothing that was now back in the community on the backs of whoever could fit into it; a room with things like moldy, unusable cleaning supplies off of a door in the hallway; and a room attached to the side of the house that surely once held the same vehicles that had blackened some of the pieces of the cracking driveway. Whoever had lived in this house had probably had two kids, a girl and a boy, and left it in a panic, praying with all of the might in their body that they might somehow escape the catastrophe.

    He wondered morbidly where their skeletons were, and if the skeletons were all together in death as they had been in life or if perhaps some wild creature — driven by bloodlust or hunger or instinct, one of them — had stolen them away from even that comfort.

    Then he decided that he didn't enjoy that thought, so he stopped thinking it. It was better just to think that these were ancient peoples, entirely unlike him in every way, shape, or form, he concluded; these people were strange and soulless, and their family was pitiable, and there was nothing more to say about it at this point. It made the salvaging feel less like stealing or desecration and more like excavation.

    Fifty years ago, according to what he’d read and what he’d gathered from the elders in the community, he would have been living in a house like this one, with the same kind little white fence around it as the last team had plucked from the ground, with a room for entertaining and a room for washing and drying clothes and a room for pissing and showering and a room for cooking and a room for eating and a room for his son and a room for him and his wife and a room for a daughter they would have and rooms off of each of each of those rooms for things like cleaning supplies and food and an absurd amount of clothing and perhaps a pet like his mom talked about having when she was young.

    But he couldn’t really imagine that, either. A family like that. It was just as unreal to him as he had made the family who once lived in this house, so it was just as worthless to think about.

    He tucked his notepad back in his rucksack, deciding to wait to mark their part of the project as complete until the day’s work on the had actually been completed, and he began to walk down the barely-existent driveway toward the doorway once again.

    “If no one starts taking this wood to the truck,” came a cry from the man tearing up the floorboards as Deron stepped through the doorway, “we won’t make it out by sundown!”

    “If you don’t stop complaining, you won’t make it out,” Deron said beneath his breath, bending down and picking up a one of the dusty wood planks. “Sundown or no sundown.” He suppressed a grimace at the sensation of the grime against his fingers and sat the boards back down; there was a reason why he preferred to wear gloves while he was doing his work. “That’s your job.” There was an implied dumbass at the end of his sentence. “You take the floorboards. I take care of the documentation and inventory and find salvageable miscellanea.” He glanced at Cara. “You know what to do,” he said, giving her a small nod, then he stepped over his brother and walked toward the hallway. “I know it’s boring, but grow a pair, Rupert,” he muttered beneath his breath, no sense of humor in his voice.

    He walked over to the girl who stood peeling away at the wallpaper. He gave her a small wave. “Status check,” he said. “How’s it all coming? On track?” He lowered his voice, just loud enough for Rupert to still hear if he was listening. “Rupert isn’t giving you too much trouble, is he?”










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    Forty-something years, to nature, was nothing.
    Most manmade constructs were far outlived by the nature's constant state of growth and decay. These dilapidated mass graves functioned as perfect examples. In this age, there was no image more symbolic than a great oak tree stretching its arms into a roof like a child digging through their toybox.

    At least, that was the comparison Cara was given. Few of her acquaintances had actually lived long enough to see the world before... oh, what were they calling it now? It seemed every person had a different name for it. To the youth, it was as much a historical event as the discovery of the Northwest Passage.

    There was a chatty family of mice somewhere in the walls; it was hard to believe that kind of thing would cause a meltdown in the humans of old. To Cara, it was as representative of the average salvage trip as couches that wheezed mold, or the ivy that had to be torn away to access some rooms. Given the size of this place, there was no doubting how well-off the family that lived there was. People really used to love their space.

    Rupert's voice, piercing and unwelcome as ever, cut through the teen girl's ruminations like a butcher knife. She offered him no reaction, merely looking at him up and down before turning back toward the window. She was on her break. Did he forget she was the one with a hunting rifle strapped across her torso?

    And to a similar point, it seemed Deron had neglected to realize that his brother was the one wielding a crowbar. Something would happen any day now, and Cara had no interest in being present for it. Feigning disinterest in their unpleasant conversation, she kept her eyes and her fingertips on the wall. At this point, she'd have just taken a straight-up fistfight.

    "Careful, might get some dirt stuck under your fingernails," Rupert spat, noisily dropping another plank onto the pile, "Or maybe a big, fat wad of maggots." He gave the pile a harsh kick, which was obviously out of childish spite. Now, Deron's attention had moved to Cara, though Rupert had one final attempt at a grumbling last word. "Kiss my miscellane-ass." In all fairness, waving around that notepad like an old-world environmental scientist outside wasn't a good look.

    Now facing the wiser of the twins as he moved past the woodpile, her dull, reticent face gave him permission to speak. "You know what to do," he said plainly. The two exchanged a nod, signifying that she should probably get back moving around.

    And as the clean-handed man drew closer, Cara's lips creased into a slight grin. "Status check. How's it all coming? On track?" Deron was always good at encouraging productivity, but not in an overly-pushy way. It was something she grew to admire, especially in comparison to their more abrasive companions. "Rupert isn't giving you too much trouble, is he?"

    The other twin's voice burst through, "Fuck you." Right on cue.

    Cara shook her head, paying the ever-present tension no mind. "Everything's going fine." She pointed two fingers further down the hallway, toward an inconspicuous closet. "There's some mostly-intact linens in there, if we needed any more. It's getting colder soon and, for Ava's sake, she could use another mindless task."

    ...

    Leaving Rupert to his solitude, Cara started down the hallway. "The whole area seems to be clear, just like last time. Your brother claims he's been hearing pretty consistent movement somewhere in the house, though. And his hearing is better than mine, so..." There was neither doubt nor endorsement in her tone. She'd checked the nearest few houses pretty thoroughly, but a once-over was by no means foolproof. Everyone in this life had to learn that the hard way.

    She stopped short of a bedroom door. The entire house was creaking, so to say there was anything but a structural fault or a raccoon behind the door was farfetched, but not impossible. And that never stopped being important. "Your call. But beyond that, you were right. For some reason, this neighborhood is abandoned even for abandoned's standards."










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    “Linens?” Deron echoed, glancing
    at the area toward which Cara had pointed before looking back down at the girl. “We could always use more. If not for bedding, the infirmary could always do with some fresh bandages. Especially with winter coming up.” Pneumonia was the main killer of people in the community; it took out at least three every year. The more deaths that could be avoided, the better. He hated seeing the cemeteries growing and hated seeing the faces of all of those who loved the deceased as they shoveled dirt over the body and hated having to speak, always speak like that would somehow make it better that the community had lost yet another to the vicious world that had been trying to devour them from their very beginning. “You can bring them to Ava when we get back, if you’re up to the task, and tell her that Deron said hi.”

    He followed Cara across the creaky remaining floorboards, though he veered slightly from her path to again step over his brother. “My brother,” he said, “is just eager to get out of work. He’s the only dangerous pest in this house. Pay him no mind. If something wanted to come and get us, or if this old…” He breathed out a sigh and watched his breath disturb the dust streaming through a window in the hall. “Place were to want to fall down, it’d have done it by now.” He reached into his rucksack, retrieving his pen and pad once more. Clicking the end of his pen, he glanced around the hallway. As he noted the condition of the house, he worked his jaw. “You’re right about this neighborhood,” he continued. “This place hasn’t been touched by anything but beetles and roaches since whenever that team came out here last. Perhaps a rat or two.” He clicked his pen, and he read his notes for a moment before dropping the pad in his rucksack again and sticking the pen on the neckline of his shirt. “You know the plan. It’ll be a long, boring day. Unless, of course, there is something in the walls, and then it will be a long, slightly less boring day. If you happen upon a raccoon after all, don’t get bitten. That’s all I ask.”

    He paused his speaking for a moment to walk to something that was framed on the hall’s wall. Stopping in front of it, he realized, after a moment of staring, that it was an sunbleached family portrait. In faint cyan, an aging woman stood beside an older older, one hand on a seated tween girl and the other on a young man who was most likely in his twenties. The woman’s face was squeezed together tightly, and her wide smile revealed both sets of teeth, now a perfect almost-white due to exposure. The man beside her — her husband, he guessed — seemed far less excited to be wherever they were, with lips that were pressed into a firm line. The tween girl, the daughter, wore the same expression as her father. The only one who looked somewhat normal, bearing a calm smile and a pleasant demeanor, was the twenty-something who held a small chihuahua in his lap. This must have been the family that lived in this house; Deron felt an ache in his chest.

    Glancing away from the portrait and back toward Cara, his tongue hesitated on a question. The team comes back tomorrow, he wanted to say to Cara, but he decided with a dismissive step away from the portrait that now wasn’t the time for a conversation like that — not when there was so much work to do.

    “I’m going to start in the pantry,” he said, walking past Cara again before pausing to look back at her. “If you would like to work on it with me, I’m sure we could make quick work of it.”










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    "Winter..."
    Cara's thoughts moved far away, dipping into the past then slinging themselves into the future. Summer was her favorite, and not because it included tank tops, games of soccer, and her birthday. Historically, everything bad happens when it's cold, so...

    Dragging herself out of her head, she smiled and nodded, making a mental note to rifle through the pile of faded towels and sheets later. "She'll be happy to hear from you." Though Cara had come to be known for her typically solemn outward appearance, there remained in her aura the sunny affability of a bright, young woman. Steering the conversation back to Ava was easier than worrying about the infirmary, anyway. A mere foot soldier needn't worry about the logistics of home base.

    Deron's less-than-forgiving remarks about his brother never failed to achieve a snort from Cara. From the corner of her vision, she could see an angered Rupert reaching out to trip him, but hesitating and faltering. Looking back, it seemed so silly to have been mixing up the two in her earlier days with the group. Regardless, all of that was dust in the air now.

    Words of insight drifted through her ears like the scent of mold wafting through the environment. The only difference between the two was that the former could hardly be ignored. "You don't find it odd," she protested, lips drawn into a tight curl, "That some places are crawling with predators, meanwhile we keep stumbling upon pockets of nothing, like this?" Then again, it did go to show that Deron's head tended to stay close to base and not the vast, alien world that lay before them.

    Actually, it seemed his attention was turned to a portrait on the wall, one Cara hadn't given so much as a second glance at on her first run through the house. She gave a quick, narrow-eyed inspection to the small dog in the weathered picture, then directed her own attention elsewhere.

    Leave it for the historians.

    Cara and Deron's eyes met at once. As had become the usual, she looked at him expectantly, head cocked to the side like a songbird. But much to her surprise, nothing became of the pause in their conversation. By instinct, she craned her neck into the hallway to get a glimpse at Rupert, whose work on the floorboards had been going on without a hitch. In fact, by some poetic phenomenon, his work seemed nearly complete.

    Wordlessly, she followed Deron to the pantry. It was almost mechanical how keen she was to follow his direction, with the added bonus that she was a fast-moving worker given a simple task. It was easy—and practically the norm—to bury oneself into menial labor to distract from the lousy environment around them. If Cara distanced herself enough from reality, she could pretend to be a deliverywoman hauling cans of cell phones and glitter and whatever else the people of old used to grab off the shelves in grocery stores. Now, those stores just served as rat nests and booby traps for the naïve and unwary.

    Hauling a makeshift wooden box down the driveway was light work at that moment, but as the daylight bled into sunset, it would be grueling. That's why she had to work fast, if only to get it done. And also because being alone with the twins on a bad day was a punishment in its own right...

    The box was dropped into the truck bed with no shortage of metallic clanging, leaving Cara finally able to lean against the vehicle and release a short breath. Deron wasn't too far off, and as he made it by her side, she contemplated asking a question. Giving him an intense stare, she silently willed that he stop in his tracks and hear her out.

    "Deron," she started, pushing herself off the truck, "Ethan told me something before he left with the others." Her voice was straightforward and vaguely pointed, but mostly filled with an innocent sense of curiosity. "Do you have any idea how Helen is pregnant again?"










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    His hands now half-covered in his worn
    fingerless gloves, Deron toted a hefty, clinking crate of Mason jars full of pickled goods, his back whined from the strain of the at least forty-pound box which’s contents were stacked two high and six long as he followed Cara down the driveway to the waiting truck. Am I getting old? he considered for a moment with a furrow of the brow, before he decided that it didn’t really matter, so long as he was here and working and not lazing around like his whiny brother and an increasing number of others in the community seemed to enjoy doing.

    CLAT — rattle, rattle. The noisy truckbed reluctantly accepted Deron’s cargo as company for Cara’s, and as he shoved it toward the back corner of the truckbed, the rusting vehicle’s terrible racket-making continued: clatter, shudder, rattle — CLAT — rattle — DING!

    Finally, with a sigh and a placing of his gloved hands on his hips, Deron concluded that enough shifting of the truck’s cargo had been done to make enough room for Rupert not to complain. He held his hands up before himself and, starting with a tug of the cloth around the thumb of his left hand, disrobed his hands and put their cloaks back into the back pocket of his tattered jeans.

    “I think that’s all of it,” he said, taking a step to go back toward the house before glancing toward Cara, who met him with an intense stare. His feet halted in their places, and he turned toward the girl with an almost morbid sort of curiosity. Though this was the closest that Deron had ever worked with Cara before, the look she wore had the same quality that his mother’s often had — a sort of probing expression. Finally, with a sigh, he relented to his curiosity, looking Cara in the face. “Say what you’re going to say.”

    “Deron,” Cara started, pushing herself off the truck, “Ethan told me something before he left with the others. Do you have any idea how Helen is pregnant again?”

    Deron blinked at her for a moment, quite obviously taken aback by the question though his body remained still. His expression drifted into unreadability for a moment or two, and then, blinking rapidly a couple of times, he lifted a hand to his head, his eyes darting away from Cara. “Uh…,” he mumbled, still processing Cara’s question. “Uh…” His brows furrowed together, and he put his hands on his hips, lifting his now squinting eyes to Cara. “Ethan told y…? Christ, that kid…” He let out a soft scoff. Kid’s spent too much time around his uncle, and now he can’t stop running his mouth just like him.

    Turning toward the truck and putting a hand on the side of the truckbed's body, Deron shrugged flippantly, his lips pressed together in a firm line and his eyes scanning the truckbed with a feign absence, as though he were entirely uncaring. “Hell if I know,” he said in as flat of a voice as he could. “She’s none of my business anymore, you know.” He dropped his hand from the truck and looked at Cara with an almost sharp expression, before leaning back against the truck and looking toward the house. “She made herself none of my business. Made herself everyone else’s business but mine. You probably know more than me.”

    He paused, pressing his tongue against the side of his cheek and breathing in a deep breath. This was just another piece of gossip, he reminded himself, and nothing to trouble himself on; the woman he was talking about was just another subject of gossip, and their history didn’t matter at the moment. Stop getting in your head. His left thumb absently worked at the worn, tarnished band on his ring finger, and it registered for the first time, though he had likely been doing it all the while he’d been speaking. He dropped it by his side, believing that it would keep Cara from noticing even the ring’s presence on his finger.

    “All I know for sure is…” He trailed off, looking down at the ground in front of himself, his lips folding in on themselves. All I know for sure is that she won’t tell me if it’s mine, so it probably is. And then, Get out of your head, asshole. With a soft sigh through his nose, he continued. “All I know for sure is that the poor bastard, as best as the Doc can figure, will be born in about four months.”

    His eyes slowly followed the driveway up to the house, his head slowly lifting as they did. “A winter baby,” he added, his voice pensive. Then, softer: “It’ll be lucky if it makes it.”

    His heart gave a painful squeeze, but, with a frown and a sigh, he pushed the thought from his mind and started talking again, ignoring the pulse he just realized was racing in his veins.

    “But, speaking of pregnant…” A small, almost teasing smile came onto his face, and then he chuckled. “Well, not really speaking of pregnant, but…” He looked over at Cara, his smile broadening. “You, Tai. You’ve been sweethearts for a long time, haven’t you? So when is it coming? When are you two finally going to, ya know…tie the knot?”










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    Deron's hesitation came as no surprise.
    In fact, Cara had somewhat been counting on being delivered such a telling reaction. She lifted a sooty finger, absentmindedly tucking a tousled lock of hair behind her ear. It was the same ear that housed a single stud piercing on the lobe, a gift from a birthday long past.

    Regardless of how much she had intended, there was no denying how flustered the question had made the formerly impenetrable man. Cara's smile weakened as their brows creased in unison. "Oh, was it a secret?" she said, nonchalant as ever. Yeah, those didn't tend to last long around the camp, anyway. "In that case, don't blow your lid if the whole team comes back tomorrow spouting about baby fever..." She paused, her laughter coming to a gradual close. "...and stuff."

    Clearing her throat to shift attention was another of Cara's subconscious habits. And there she'd just done it at least three times. Deron was happy, or at least willing, to get to the rest of the subject. While he made a point to idly glance around like the conversation was anything else, there was no hindering the pity that sat on the surface of Cara's eyes.

    She had only been around for the tail-end of Deron and Helen's relationship. And, all things considered, there was a lot more on her mind at the time than whatever conjecture Jesse and Bianca could come up with at dinnertime. There wasn't much she could say at the time then, and certainly very little now. There was no imagining what kind of feelings could be residing in that man's heart, not without experience. Cara couldn't know.

    Deron dropped his arm, and Cara's eyes darted toward the movement. She was nosy and pushy without trying and she knew it. That didn't stop her from peering at the glint of metal wrapped around his finger. Now that was a story. Hmm.

    What would their family portrait have looked like? Would they have had one at all?

    "A winter baby has all of spring to look forward to," she offered, adjusting her coat at the subconscious mention of climate. "What they should be looking out for is autumn kids." She gently poked a finger into the older man's chest. "Like you." There was a dry aspect to most of Cara's witticisms, and it was often difficult to distinguish between humor and outright fact. No one had taught her the difference, so speaking with certainty was second nature. "Dread isn't very nutritious for a newborn."

    Deron's voice returned to the scene, this time with a little more color to it. “But, speaking of pregnant…” And when a chuckle trickled off his lips, something felt off. “Well, not really speaking of pregnant, but…” Cara quirked a brow and made a quarter-turn with her head, bewildered.

    "But what?" A dubious smile played at her lips.

    “You, Tai. You’ve been sweethearts for a long time, haven’t you?" Oh, you've got to be kidding. "So when is it coming? When are you two finally going to, ya know…tie the knot?”

    Her jaw had dropped, her heart did a backflip, then a fleeting cold sweat washed over her body. Whether she was supposed to be amused or offended, Cara let out a sharp, monotone ha-ha. "'Speaking of pregnant'?" She shook her head, feigning flippancy, arms folded over her chest. "You sound like Ava." Though, supposing it was only fair, she didn't outright dismiss the question.

    "We're not in a rush. Unless you're anxious to plan us a wedding ceremony." Smirk. Maybe then she'd be allowed to drink without Ava giving her a disapproving glare. "Tai always is saying we should throw a party in the winter. For morale and all that." Personally, it sounded like a waste of resources, but Tai was good at keeping people's best interests in mind. "He thinks about that stuff." She really did trust his sense of goodwill.

    "A lot of people seemed to like the idea." While she was talking, she couldn't help but glance at Deron's ring finger again. "Ooh, and, it could double as a baby show—"

    Heavy, stumbling footsteps thundered toward the curb and a thundering voice rose to match it. "Out of the way!" Rupert's bulky figure was making its way to the truck.

    "Great thing you two left me lots of..." He sounded strained and slightly sarcastic. Cara did him the courtesy of stepping out of the way, just so he could loudly throw the rest of the wood scraps down into the bed. "...room."

    Okay, conversation over.

    Looking back inside, that seemed to be the last of the floorboards and thus, the last of everything for the day. "Okay, time to go!" the more gruff of the twins announced, tossing the crowbar in then climbing into the truck with enough force to rattle the whole thing. It was uncomfortable, but it was his own doing. And by the looks of it, he wasn't going to be hearing anything from Deron. In honesty, it was a good thing he hadn't seemed to hear much.

    Cara looked over her shoulder toward the other end of the cul-de-sac. She thought for a moment, then moved her gaze back to Deron. "There was something I wanted to show you, but it can wait 'til next time." She began to back away toward the front of the vehicle. "Are you driving?" She already knew the answer to that. From the truck bed, Rupert guffawed.

    And he spoke again. "Let's get a move on! I've got a busy schedule tonight."










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    Deron chuckled at Cara’s expression, and then
    laughed a soft “ha!” at the mention of Ava. Hearing that Ava too had been on her case about getting married was one of the least surprising things he’d ever heard; the woman, from what he knew of her, like his own mother, had always had a nose for everyone’s business (though making any comment like that to her face, he figured, was a good way to get slapped).

    "We're not in a rush,” Cara said. “Unless you're anxious to plan us a wedding ceremony.” A sly expression weaseled its way onto her face as she finished off her sentence.

    Deron shrugged. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind,” he said, grinning, though his voice fell a little bit flat as he remembered just how little he looked forward to weddings and the like. Tradition and all of that bullshit that his mom and the people like her insisted upon keeping. Weddings were rare enough that he didn’t make much of a fuss about them, but they really were kind of pains in the asses. Getting Kurt to make rings at this point in his life was like pulling teeth, and getting all of that food to feed everyone eat once always put them on lower rations for the next few weeks. Not to mention dealing with everyone drunk off of whatever liquor they could scrounge up and whatever sketchy hooch the communitypeople wanted to chip in. All that it amounted to was at least one case of someone injuring themself from something stupid, a new pair with wedding bands on their fingers, and a couple of lines in Deron’s log about a marriage and one of the empty shacks now being occupied and another shack needing to be built. Weddings — or at least, the community’s version of weddings, done with whatever they could hatch up on generally short notice — were impractical and a waste of time and resources, but a lot of the community got incredibly sappy over them.

    (”Wow,” Helen had said, frustratedly but affectionately, when he’d confessed that to her, ”you really are no fun. Seriously? You think it’s just a waste?” And when he’d nodded and said some other flippant comment, her half-smile had fallen into an accusatory almost-frown. ”Deron, you’re getting married to me — you know, the love of your life? — and you want the day that you marrying me to just be forgettable?” And then he’d thought to himself, I don’t want to marry you in the first place, really, but he’d kept his mouth shut and rescinded what he’d said to appease her, because that was how it always went.)

    "Tai always is saying we should throw a party in the winter,” Cara said.

    Deron raised an eyebrow. “A party?” Now that she mentioned it, he thought he remembered Tai mentioning something like that…what, a couple of months ago?

    “For morale and all that,” she clarified. “He thinks about that stuff. A lot of people seemed to like the idea.” Her eyes flicked down to his hand, which he shifted behind his back self-consciously. “Ooh, and, it could double as a baby show —"

    "Out of the way!”

    As Deron, pushing off of the truck, looked to his twin brother, he chuckled and to Cara muttered, “Good talk,” as if to say, We’ll have to save the prying into each other’s business for another time. Raising his voice and stepping toward Rupert, who lumbered with his wooden cargo toward the truck, Deron said, “We waited up, just for you.”

    His voice straining, Rupert responded, “Great thing you two left me lots of..."

    SLAMCLATTERBANGDINGCLAT — rattle, rattle, rattle!

    “…room."

    Rupert glanced back, then announced, “Okay, time to go!” — then sent another metallic fit through the truck with the tossing of his crowbar in the back. Deron grimaced, biting the side of his tongue with his back teeth. The longer that he went on seeing that damned crowbar, the more and more he was tempted to throw it out of the window while he was driving. With a sigh, he watched his brother’s head disappear as he ducked into the truck. He waited until the truck finished squealing beneath Rupert’s weight to turn to Cara, who was staring down toward the end of the cul-de-sac.

    “What is it?” he asked, and her eyes moved back to him.

    After a moment, she said, “There was something I wanted to show you, but it can wait ’til next time.”

    Curiosity burned in Deron’s mind, and he looked out toward the end of the cul-de-sac, assuming that if he looked out that way, he could surmise Cara’s thoughts before she even vocalized them, but all he saw was the golden yellow sun casting its flaxen haze across the distant, sepia figures of some other neighborhood a few miles off.

    Cara’s subsequent question, quickly followed by Rupert’s laughter and yelling about his “busy schedule”, pulled Deron’s focus away from the horizon and to the task at hand. His fingers found the keys in his left pocket as he made his way toward the driver’s side.

    Deron had never quite enjoyed driving vehicles, or really doing anything with machinery. There was something that unsettled him about it — knowing that the thing beneath his hands could do so much damaged. It was the same reason why he didn’t use weapons, didn’t hold knives. And yet, he didn’t trust anyone else to do much driving, especially when he was in the vehicle, so he did much of it, at least when he was around.

    The engine growling as he started it up, though, was satisfying, he had to admit. Maybe it excited something primal in him, like hearing the growling of a monstrous beast while you were on the hunt with only a spear to protect you, or maybe it was something more simple like he was just amused by the sound. Whatever it was, he never gave it much thought; he was generally too focused, as he was now, on trying to remember the routes that he’d planned out for the quickest route back home.

    He drove to the end of the cul-de-sac, then carefully pulled off of the road. At this point, it was easier to drive through the tall grass than to bother with weaving the dead vehicles on the roads. The worst that he had to deal with in the grass was large rodents, maybe the occasional armadillo.

    “Ahead of schedule,” Deron commented when they had driven a bit in the grass. “Well done, team.”










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    It was a shame Deron had decided upon a three-person trip.
    Being subjected to sitting in the back of the truck on a bumpy, windy ride was one thing, but having to play nice was an entirely different ball park. Cara, though well-meaning in every right, was to blame and so, no empathy would be afforded to the invariably pensive girl.

    If ripping wood planks was a dull way to spend the day, spending the ride sitting in complete silence was a much-needed segment of entertainment. The butchered melody of an old friend's favorite show tune emanated from Rupert's mouth while his head lolled wearily against the truck's back window. His hand dangled off the side, skirting close to the driver-side door handle. Every other moment, the hilarious idea to swing open the door and scream bloody murder arose.

    Kindly, he refrained.

    It was inevitable that the silence would be broken. And it always had to be Deron, in his leader voice, addressing the "team" after an operation that was only successful because he'd deemed it as such. "Ahead of schedule," he made sure to say, "Well done, team." From the passenger seat, Cara gave the two of them each a little nod. It was hard not to notice the way her eyes lingered on his brother, her thoughts obscured behind a wordless haze.

    Rupert's mouth stretched wide, releasing a yawn that had been stirring in his lungs for quite a while. His head was throbbing, he'd begun to realize. "Anything to support Kurt's little craft projects," he joked, despite the grave danger of having a hole in the outer fence. Even something like that was enough to keep Rupert awake at night. It made Deron's worries feel just slightly warranted, but only temporarily.

    "Maybe then he'd be able to build himself a sense of humor." He laughed immediately, slamming a hand on the side of the truck as he did so. And that was the conversation.

    Before long, it had gone back to quiet sans a slight ringing and the sound of wheels running over dirt and grass. "What's that ringing noise?" he would keep asking, to no reply. The truck bumped up and down enough to rattle everything in the back like a puzzle box. Being in the bed meant making sure nothing flew out of the truck, not that Rupert cared enough about the job to take it seriously. If anything were to fly out, it would be entirely and only a result of Deron's poor driving.

    The wildflowers scattered about led to many a memory of drives beside the highway. Watching them be ripped and crushed flat under the wheels' path was never a pleasant sight as a kid. Amid all the death and desolation in the world, it seemed unfair not to treat all life like it was precious. A long, long time ago, Rupert would have a shed a tear for the loneliness all of it stood for.

    Looking back, things like that were probably why Deron learned to drive first. There were likely other factors that went into it, but being judged upon a handful of juvenile meltdowns felt a bit melodramatic of a call. But like mother, like son, he supposed. Both were apocalypse-resistant, but so were roaches. Didn't make them special, so why should humans get a participation trophy for not dying?

    And now that the terrain had become considerably flatter and emptier, the time had come to merge onto the dirt road heading home. With the trip coming to an imminent close, all bumps and rattling had long exited the ambient equation. All that was left was the pitchy sound of ringing from earlier, only this time no longer overlayed by anything else.

    Rupert turned around to poke his head inside through the sliding rear window. "Anyone ready to tell me what that goddamn sound is coming from?" he asked, his voice dripping with vexation. Cara seemed to be completely at rest, nearly dozing off in her seat. Deron could hardly be seen from his position, but there wasn't much doubt in his mind that his ears weren't as attentive as his eyes.

    If he could be heard at all. Rupert's question seemed to fall on completely deaf ears, as it wasn't enough to elicit so much as a turned head. His eyebrows angrily ducked downward, as did his frown. "What, so we're fuckin' ignoring me, now?" he pressed, slamming a hand onto his brother's shoulder and shaking him. He scoffed, then quickly recoiled as a sudden twinge of internal pain struck his temples. It was like his brain had inflated twice its size, pressing against the sides of his skull. It wasn't pleasant.

    "Ah...!" he cried sharply, doubling over with his head hanging through the window. Besides the pain, it was like someone had cranked up the volume of the ringing, tenfold. Cara, though initially ignoring him, whipped her head around immediately to observe what was wrong. Even so, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Not to the ones in the front, at least.

    When Rupert looked back up, there was a figure in the road. It stood directly in their path, halfway between the car and the front gate of the military base. It was humanoid in shape and, as the truck came closer in those few seconds, Rupert could tell that it was a person standing over something. There was a lump on the ground, but that was hardly the sinister part.

    Slowly—as in, slowly—the figure turned its head. It was covered in red. A river of it ran down their chin, creeping down to an arm that was drenched in a similar shade of carmine red from the forearm down. Rupert gasped, half for air and half out of the realization that it was blood.

    And in that moment, the ringing was ear-piercing. Rupert doubled over again, but his eyes were wide open. They were attached to the figure, which he could now tell was staring straight back. In a split second, ice shot up each and every one of the heaving man's veins.

    It's Ethan!

    To say Rupert's face was blanched would be an understatement. It wasn't just like he'd seen a ghost; it was like a ghost had suddenly hopped inside his body and drained all the blood in his face, then sent it in a steady stream out his left ear. And there Ethan stood still, his mien entirely unreadable. Once the ringing had died down, it became apparent to Rupert that he'd been loudly struggling to breathe.

    "Watch the road!" he'd finally managed to holler, but as soon as the words left his mouth, the figure was gone.

    And then there was nothing. No ringing, nor any obstacles in the road but the gate that the truck had begun to approach. Rupert nearly leapt out of the truck bed, blood still dripping from his ear. He made a straight shot into camp, halting in the very center as others walked by about their business. "Where'd he go?" he cried, his head spinning like a swivel chair. The sun had set, but plenty were still outside to turn their heads at the lunatic that had returned home.

    In moments, everybody went back to their business. But Rupert was frozen in place, peering back at Deron, Cara, and the truck. Cara had stepped out, eyebrows lifted in alarm. "What happened?" she demanded as the raving twin circled back, still darting his eyes around the scene for the nephew he'd seen in the road just moments before.

    "What the fuck was that on the road?" his voice boomed just in time to stomp right into Deron's personal space. His breath was muggy and hot and, though he hadn't drank that day, the aroma of whiskey was pungent on his breath. "Deron, what the fuck?" And he was sure Ethan was there, even though that was impossible. That shouldn't have been. Those groups hardly ever arrived back any time but the day they were due for. It was one of the most important rules.

    Both pairs of eyes were on Deron, one frantic and the other suspicious and foxlike. Cara had no explanation to give for the situation, nor any help to diffuse it. Meanwhile, Rupert's pounding head was cradled in his hands.

    "Ethan," he breathed.










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    Some people were born with a heart for
    adventure and eyes that were drawn to the horizon. They were never happy staying around and helping at home. They always had to be chasing some great unknown. A lot of them came to him telling him that they felt like there was “something more” out there than what the community had going; others just said that they thought they could handle it and insisted upon venturing out. Deron had never understood them — why they could be so content blowing off important work that was to be done for the world that they already had for sake of “staking out” a world that was a complete, dysfunctional mystery. To Deron, the abstract — the enigmatic, vast, yellow nothing that seemed to exist outside of their small universe — seemed so unreal, as opposed to the concrete, visible, obvious needs of the community of people who needed every single person to contribute what they could in order to survive.

    Beyond that, though — beyond the duty he felt to rarely leave the confines of the community’s fences — being “out in the world” gave Deron a bit of an odd feeling in his chest, a general sense of unease. When he was outside, he was surrounded by emptiness. Abandoned houses, like the ones they had been in today. Empty cars, like the ones that blocked the streets and made it virtually impossible to drive on the main highways. Dilapidated banks filled with voided money. Decrepit grocery stores filled with aisles and aisles of bug-eaten food and useless bull that no one had really ever needed in the first place. No matter how much you drove, you could rarely escape that emptiness, because there was always some empty building on the horizon or some empty truck on the road.

    But places weren’t just empty. Places were empty in the way that told that they had once been full. That in them, once, people had lived, and breathed, and raised children, and cooked, and cleaned, and laughed, and cried, and eaten, and pissed, and fought, and made up, and sometimes even died. People who never dreamed that they would ever be forgotten.

    But somehow, if you managed to escape seeing empty buildings or vehicles, and wound up in some field, surrounded by nothing but plants for hours, it almost felt worst, because it was so vast and so uncaring that it almost made you understand how it would feel to be forgotten and never found, like all of those people out there were now.

    Deron was glad to have a team with him this time, though; it was better than the times that he’d been made to investigate things alone. Plus, it made for a more comfortable silence, knowing that there were others there to hear words that he said even if he said nothing, and it made for a means of conversation, because when he did say things, there were others besides himself to give answers.

    Deron glanced at his brother’s reflection in the dangling rearview mirror as Rupert gave a rather theatric yawn from his place in the truck bed, then looked back out of the windshield, working his jaw. Deron could have sworn that Rupert’d climbed in the backseat of the truck, but to be frank, Deron didn’t pay that much attention to his brother, anyway. "Anything to support Kurt's little craft projects," Rupert joked. "Maybe then he'd be able to build himself a sense of humor,” he added with a laugh.

    Deron sighed softly through his nose. As much as Deron approved of digs at Kurt — any insults directed at his asshole father-in-law were automatically approved of — the fact that the words had come out of Rupert’s mouth made them irritating. If anyone else had said those words, Deron certainly would have chuckled and perhaps even added a joke of his own, but the fact that it was his twin who had said the words rendered any positive emotions void.

    Instead of giving any response, Deron continued to look out of the windshield, staring into the spot where the grass disappeared into the darkening orange sky, letting the hum of the engine and the slight jostling of the truck lull him into a state of near hypnosis.

    On occasion, there would be a few words from Rupert, the same words over and over again, but Deron couldn’t hear what exactly it was for the wind gently whipping through the rearview window, which had its small window slid open, and for really caring to hear his brother speak in the first place. Each time, he would simply sigh softly through his nose and, unblinking, refocus his thoughts on reinstating his road hypnosis as the wheels of the truck rolled over overgrown wildflowers.

    He had been lulled into his hypnotic state for a time — how long, he couldn’t discern — when Rupert’s voice abruptly became clearer. “Anyone ready to tell me what that goddamn sound is coming from?”

    Deron immediately sighed through his nose, then registered the exact words that his brother had said. He paused, listened for a second, and then, hearing nothing, drew in a deep, slightly agitated breath and said nothing.

    There was a long pause. Deron again tried to hypnotize himself by staring at the horizon, focusing on the gentle noise of the motor and the sound of his breaths as they released.

    “What,” Rupert’s voice cut in again, sawing through any progress that Deron had made once again, “so we’re fuckin’ ignoring me, now?”

    Deron felt a hard smack against his shoulder. Immediately he whipped around, Rupert shaking him all the while.

    Deron’s voice came out as an angry yell: “What do you —“

    Suddenly, as though he’d been struck by something, Rupert cried out, his head sagging down as if pained.

    There was a prick in Deron’s mind — an alert that something was wrong. Adrenaline kicked in in his veins, his stomach dropping as he grew more and more confused, concerned, and angry. “Rupert, what the fuck?!” he demanded, though his voice wasn’t as loud. “Are you…?”

    Rupert’s eyes lifted, but they immediately fixed on something just behind Deron. Deron was unable to take his eyes from his brother as a ball sank down in his stomach. After a second, Rupert, pallid, gasped as a fish struggling for air, then doubled over again, but, disturbingly, his eyes stayed focused on the road, wide and almost shocked.

    Deron’s heart pounded in his chest. “Ru, are you —“

    "Watch the road!" came Rupert’s sudden yell.

    Immediately assuming that they were moments from a collision, Deron’s foot slammed on the brakes, both hands gripping the wheel with white knuckles. In that instant, his head jerked back forward, his eyes, wide and stunned, turned back toward the windshield, and his entire body pushed forward as the truck dug its tires into the ground.

    He thought for a moment that this was it — that they were dead, that that feeling of his heart falling to the floor was the last feeling he would ever feel.

    And then, he realized, as he continued to stare ahead, that there was nothing in front of him — nothing besides the camp, 300 or so feet away, safe behind its fence.

    Confused and angry, Deron snapped his head around to look at Rupert, only to find him missing from the truckbed; a quick glance out of the windshield revealed his retreating figure. Furious, not sparing a glance toward Cara, Deron let off of the brake and sped to the fence, again slamming on the brakes when the vehicle reached the fencing. He jerked the truck into pdark, shoved the keys into his pocket, and rushed toward his brother.

    Rupert had played some asshole jokes on Deron before — really, he was used to it by now. And if this was a joke, this was a really, really asshole one. But he realized, with a degree of unease, that something about staring at Rupert’s figure in the midst of the camp as the man cried, “Where’d he go?” as though yelling into a void when Deron was still several yards off made the pit sink lower in his stomach.

    This didn’t feel like a joke.

    Cara had also stepped out of the truck, and she demanded of the wild-eyed twin: “What happened?”

    "What the fuck was that on the road?" he yelled, as though he hadn’t heard her, as he stopped in front of Deron. He stepped into Deron’s face; Deron, staring, bewildered, at his brother, could smell whiskey in his stale breath. "Deron, what the fuck?”

    For a moment, Deron was frozen, his fingers trembling at his side as adrenaline continued to course through his veins. Staring into his brother’s eyes and seeing the wild look in them, in spite of himself, he felt a flash of fear in his skull — an instant where he thought that his brother was going to hurt him, and not in the way that he’d been hurt by Rupert before. Though he’d fought his brother many times, there was some kind of deeper fear within Deron than fear of a black eye or a bruised jaw — no, this felt more dangerous, more lethal.

    But past that flash came an overwhelming flood of almost maternal concern, as though Rupert were his crying child convinced of monsters in the night, and this overtook him.

    Deron reached out, gripping Rupert by the shoulders. “Hey,” he said, and then, sharper, “hey! Hey, look at me — look at me.” Though Rupert was already looking at him, he thought that saying that to him might tame him, might bring down some of the lunacy that his brother’s eyes read.

    Rupert cradled his head in his hands. “Ethan,” he breathed.

    The mention of his own son’s name made Deron’s brows flick down. “Ethan?” He stared at Rupert for an answer, then looked at Cara, demanding of her some kind of explanation and finding none in her eyes.

    Suddenly pissed off by the fact that Rupert had mentioned Ethan, Deron looked back to his brother and gave him a shake, his grip suddenly aggressive. “I’m going to need you to take a breath, okay, jackass?” he said between grit teeth. “This isn’t funny. You’re…”

    He felt something warm and wet drip on his hand, and he glanced down, trailing off. “Shit!” he hissed, stepping back and flinging his hand in disgust before his brain could properly register what it was. He looked at Rupert with a confused and disgusted look as he recognized what the vibrant red liquid had been, and he found that Rupert’s ears were bleeding. Regaining his composure and stepping toward Rupert again, agitated, Deron said, “You hurt yourself.”

    He gripped Rupert’s shoulders again, gentler this time, then turned him around and gave him a gentle shove toward the infirmary. “Go the hell to the Doc,” he said. “I don’t have time — time — time for th-this.” In spite of his words, stammered perhaps because of his rushing mind or perhaps because of the adrenaline still thumping through his veins, he kept his hands on Rupert, nonverbally saying that he would be coming along.

    He glanced over his shoulder at Cara. “Cara, you don’t have to come with,” he said, though his tone implied that she could if she really wanted to. “Thanks for your work today.”










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    Rupert's head was swimming.
    There he stood, face to face with his cherished twin. Most would have thought it'd have been like a mirror, but that couldn't have been further from the case. When he and Deron met, eye to eye, their differences burned all the more into one another's brains. It was the only reflection he wanted to punch more than his own.

    His head hung low like his upper vertebrae would fully give out at any moment. He had his nose pinched and his eyes shut tight in a vain attempt to make sense of the thoughts and sensations running through his head. All that was left was the ghost of a migraine that hadn't been around for long at all. And, try as he might, Rupert had neglected to retain the exact frequency of the violent pitch that had briefly invaded his ears.

    There was only one symptom that remained: the scarce drops of blood leaking from his ear. In his haze, the twin took a quivering finger and wiped it against his ear canal, gathering a bright streak of red on his index. It immediately ran down the side, pooling beneath his cuticle before splashing pitifully onto the dirt below. Rupert watched, eyes fixed to the ground, with a deeply thoughtful expression. For once, the gears in his skull looked to be turning.

    And when his gaze finally made its way up and he uttered that name, something primal awoke between himself and his brother. His slack-jawed mouth tried and failed to produce more, anything that would suffice as an explanation for the peculiar episode that had spooked the three of them. “Hey!" Deron repeated, several times, "Look at me." That voice, as frightened and combative as his own, fell on mostly deaf ears. Rupert almost missed the fact that he was being shaken by the shoulders until his brother's voice came through.

    “I’m going to need you to take a breath, okay, jackass?” Deron's grip tightened as the force in his shoulder jerking followed suit. Rupert's breath caught in his throat, and he coughed hard, flecks of spit flinging out of his otherwise bone-dry mouth. After that, his breathing began to slowly stabilize. “This isn’t funny. You’re…”

    And after a million years, his bleeding ears became glaringly apparent. “Shit!” Deron hissed, recoiling. In all his nausea, Rupert's eyes still rolled right over the ozone layer. Again with the clean hands... "You hurt yourself," the healthier twin concluded, reaching for the other's shoulders again.

    "I didn't hurt myself," Rupert mumbled, despite his lack of resistance in being turned toward deeper into the camp. His eyes lingered one of the few inhabited buildings, which happened to contain a great many of the community's living quarters. "Let's just go to yours for a little," he insisted, persistently keeping his eyes on that direction, "He must have... hm." Mid-sentence, his voice petered out as if blown out like a candle in the wind. It was a rare sight to witness Rupert lose steam so fast, but with keen attention to his contemplative face, there was a conflicted, unspoken reason for his sudden tight-lippedness.

    Earlier, it was Ethan. It. Was. Ethan. That couldn't be denied. But parts of him were so red, so gory, though it would take more than a face of blood to obscure Rupert's nephew completely from recognition. In actuality, the only component missing was something far beyond explanation. Something, from one glance at the headstrong adolescent's demeanor, was off. And the more he thought about it, in that quarter-turn, the more difficult it was to tell if he was staring straight at Rupert or straight through him.

    “Go the hell to the Doc,” Deron said, snapping him from his thoughts. “I don’t have time — time — time for th-this.” It seemed Rupert's crazy was infectious, but that wasn't the totally odd part. The greater curiosity lied in his brother's elevated concern and his treatment of what very well could have been a nonsense outburst. It gave Rupert's stomach a sinking feeling, but it also kicked him into an even higher alert. He didn't want to be right. He needed to deflect, distract.

    Actually, the more he thought about it, the more he was just being... deranged. As more and more moments passed, the more that ringing and that headache made more sense as mere coincidence, if not psychosomatically exacerbated symptoms of boredom and anxiety. Something felt wrong, but not something a doctor could treat. And as a heavy fatigue began to crawl up Rupert's body, the more enticing a long, unsupervised nap started sounding.

    “Cara, you don’t have to come with,” Deron said over his shoulder, “Thanks for your work today.”

    Rupert had almost entirely forgotten she was there. The girl hesitated, revealing a wit that gave way to healthy apprehension. "You sure you can handle him alone?" she asked, a hand on her hip. She peered past the twins, anywhere but at the strange scene in front of her. Her voice was riddled with uncertainty for the matter, but her body language seemed to suggest a common disinterest for getting involved. Living in the shadow of a collapsed society didn't do any favors for natural empathy, not when it wasn't explicitly asked of. She gave another pause. It was hard to tell if she was having an internal dialogue or if she was trying to psych them out through super piercing eye contact.

    Finally, her emotionless voice spoke. "Have a good night," she decided, sounding like she'd definitely been giving something a lot of thought, "I'll see you in the morning." And with a long, hard peek into Deron's eyes, she turned around and stalked off toward the garden.

    Once Cara was out of earshot, Rupert turned his head to his side to address the brother still guiding him forward. "Listen Ronny, I just need to lie down somewhere. It's been a long day." His feet dragged more the closer they got to the med clinic, also known as the small, repurposed office building on the west side of camp. "You're half to blame for that, but I forgive you, so why don't we..." Aaand... they were at the clinic.

    Rupert took the hand of an exasperated yet unwavering Deron and shoved it off his shoulder, heaving a sigh as he swung open the door of the group's makeshift medical center. "Evening, 'Doc'," he sleazily greeted Marie, the current staffer, tearing off his coat and carelessly tossing it onto a nearby table, "Had a little bleeding, if you could kindly clean me up." He gestured toward his ears, each of which were soaked with bright red from the inside.

    Marie seemed to be working alone—bless her heart—with the striking absence of a certain Helen, whose duties typically overlapped with the older woman. Rupert glanced into the next room over, doing his best to conceal the disappointment that had struck him upon arrival. And now that he was alone with Deron and the ex-sister-in-law's stepmother, there was even more reason to deny any sort of an earlier spectacle. He didn't need to hear it from either of them all over again.

    "And I must say," he said smarmily, glancing with a snicker at his twin, "It's been too long." Rupert was a regular at the clinic, mostly from alcohol-related incidents and the not-so-occasional injury that required a day's rest. "Hope your day wasn't too busy. Deron was just asking about you," he continued, making himself at home on the nearest cot, "Funny how coincidence strikes." He reclined in the bed with a smile, his arms folded and resting against the wall to support the back of his head.

    And still, that image never left his mind.










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    "No. Get over yourself."


    “You get over yourself. Brat. I know your hearing isn’t that bad, 'cause mine is worse.”

    Cara’s head snapped to the side with a resounding crack. If looks could kill…

    “That doesn’t work on someone who used to change your diapers.”

    Very few were ever allowed to skate paper-thin ice with Cara. Not unless one happened to be a blue-eyed man, yay high, and with a weird half-beard that didn't really work all that well. And there a guy fitting that profile stood with his hands in his pockets and something smoking between his cheeky, grinning lips. It was an almost God-given power to still be able to locate something like that during these times. But with the smell alone, Cara could never manage to find the appeal.

    That didn't matter anymore; it was eons away from her mind. Now, she was silent. Observing. Ruminating.

    “Carina.”

    “I’m thinking.” When Cara raised her voice even slightly, it sent shockwaves around the world. Waves crashed and mountains crumbled.

    “Tell me, child," he cooed. His voice was lifted and needlessly bravado, flowing well into a corny impression of what a T.V. character might sound like. And there, for a split second, Cara’s ire reached a fervent crescendo. But he was content to bear the brunt of her ridicule, and so she saw no purpose in snapping.

    It was the price she paid for talking to ghosts.

    Cara, with all of her fierce, intense aura, rolled her tongue in her cheek watching the twins, who were taking their eventual leave from where they'd once stood getting worked up over nothing. Their eyes, even when hidden, never failed to bore big, searing holes into the girl's skull. Her features softened and, from there, her mirage of a father became the sole center of focus. In the real world, imaginary friends were juvenile at best, delusional at worst. It was a huge relief she never considered her dad a friend. But there he was, by some miracle or curse of the mind.

    A sigh was let out, leaking with the yearning for a universe in which the truth could be forever delayed. Unfortunately, the only punishment to Cara worse than lying was being wrong. "Okay. He said he saw something." Everybody sees things. If Cara didn't even trust her own eyes, there wasn't a chance she was going to do the same for anyone else. Especially not the town drunk. "His ears were bleeding and it reminded me of something. That's all." One truth at a time.

    She kicked her feet in a patch of crabgrass. Most of the ground that wasn't asphalt or pavement was dirt. In certain seasons, there was more real grass than dirt that the kids liked to play in, but there weren't very many of those lately to appreciate it how much there was this year. Talking to her dad was like casting a net and dredging a million childlike feelings up to the surface. She was years older than the last time they'd spoken. Outside of her head, at least.

    "Are you worried?"

    What a dreadful question. Cara turned to where the man was supposed to be standing with a mixture of feelings resting on her face, he was gone and thus it was over. Her shoe lifted gently from the small hole it'd shaved into the dirt. She didn't know what she would have said anyway.

    Cara was a certified crazy girl. Tai knew that and, hell, they would have been kidding themselves if they didn't ever have the thought that he may have been attracted to it. The conversations with her late father were just a way of coping, they both agreed upon, even if Cara intuitively knew it was anything but healthy. But it was her life support and she'd rather have been alive and nutty than dead and sane. Only a handful of people knew about her quirk.

    With the hope of gaining a clear mind, she set off again toward the gardens, which was a slightly prettier name for the makeshift farm toward the center of camp. Most of the area was a clashing aesthetic war between old, gray buildings and newer, shanty town-esque structures, but the gardens were what fully tied the former military base into a cross between the two.

    Much of the space allocated to grow fruits and vegetables was in a large dirt patch that surrounded a shed and the repurposed wreckage of an old building. The small building was entirely missing its roof and many sections of its walls, the rest of what stood being covered by windows or blue-painted, dust-caked sections guarded by armies of splinters lying in wait. Eloise had once said one of the sides was shaped like Idaho. Nobody knew which wall she was referring to. The larger question was why it was the only structure on the base in such disrepair.

    The season's crop was doing well surviving the bugs and rot that occurred often in the early days of the settlement. No one seemed to be attending to it at the moment, but the ground was damp and the leaves were dripping water. Inside the crumbled building was a similar story, except for the variation in plant life that subsisted thanks to people like Georgia's tender care. And thank the heavens for all the peppermint, in all its powerful aroma.

    It was the closest thing they had to a greenhouse. Cara heard stories about one they used to have, much of it being failed growing endeavors on Rupert's behalf. She never bothered to ask what happened to it, or how they'd even managed to pull off constructing one in the first place. That being said, the herbs they had in the building were pretty alright on their own.

    To her surprise, she wasn't alone. For real this time. Legs up on one of their makeshift benches was Jesse, fiddling with something in his hands. Cara stood still for a moment, quietly observing. Hopefully he was gathering some of the peppers for dinner. They were her favorite, so probably not.

    "We're back," she greeted. And we're alive, if you were concerned at all. She took a few steps closer to the bench while maintaining a much preferred distance. "We found a bunch of linen-type materials for Ava." She cleared her throat. "Your mom." Keeping her busy was good. Usually kept the mood lighter.

    This shouldn't have been awkward. Jesse never seemed to help it, therefore it was his fault. Whoever called it first. "What are you doing here?" Jalapeños, please.










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    I.II - Infirmity New
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    • The truth was that Deron usually didn’t
    give a (pardon his French) flying shit what his brother did. Rupert, for both of their lives, had never really been “hinged”, or whatever the opposite of “unhinged” would be. Growing up alongside him meant that there were countless pranks and endless fights, and blood was, for some reason, involved more often than not.

    But it was the way that Rupert, the endless jackass, had name dropped Ethan that made Deron incredibly…

    He didn’t have the words for it right now; when Rupert got settled down, he would certainly have them.

    “You sure you can handle him alone?” Cara asked.

    Deron gave a curt nod. “I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

    His entire life. Saying that made the anger in within this clouded, indiscernible, un-wordable emotion that he felt flare like a crash of lightning: my whole life.

    His whole life, he had been his brother’s keeper. It was always his responsibility, his, his, his; it was always “Deron, you have to watch out for others, you hear?” and “Deron, make sure your brother stays on track”. It was always making sure that Rupert didn’t hurt himself, that he wasn’t dead or trying to become dead. Rupert could never be trusted to take care of himself, at least not by Mom. Deron always had to stand over him; that had always been his job.

    And the endless pranks, the endless jackassery, the endless unappreciativeness — he could kill him; Deron could kill Rupert; he could kill him right now.

    Cara peered intensely at Rupert, and then at Deron, and then, finally, said, in a flat voice, “Have a good night. I’ll see you in the morning.” Her eyes shifted to Deron for a final time, and they fixated at him for a moment, to the point where he wondered, briefly, if she was trying to tell him something through her gaze, but then she just turned and walked away.

    Deron, with a soft sigh, began to push his brother in the direction of the infirmary.

    Rupert, yet dripping blood from his ears, inclined his head toward Deron. “Listen Ronny, I just need to lie down somewhere. It’s been a long day.” His heels dug into the dirt; pick your feet up, jackass, Deron thought, resisting the temptation to knee his brother in the backside to speed him up. “You’re half to blame for that, but I forgive you, so why don’t we…”

    Deron stopped at the door of the infirmary, then reached forward to pull open the incredibly squeaky door, but Rupert stopped him short, grabbing the hand that held his shoulder and throwing it off before sighing deeply and grabbing the heavy door to the clinic.

    Marie, dressed in her stained lab coat, stood beside a large glass cabinet filled with numerous multicolored vials, glass bottles full of pills labeled this and that, and countless jars of powdered substances. She lifted her eyes from the thick pocketbook in her hand to the twins as they entered through the door.

    “Evening, ‘Doc’,” Rupert greeted, and Deron’s lips pressed together as he tried to will himself not to say anything to his sleazy brother. Self-control. “Had a little bleeding, if you could kindly clean me up,” Rupert continued, taking off his coat and throwing it haphazardly onto the table.

    Marie’s brows pressed together in slight displeasure, and her nostrils flared briefly. She, composing herself, folded her pocketbook and placed it into her pocket, and she smiled pleasantly. “I see you’ve returned, Rupert,” she said. “The cots have been missing you.” She walked over to grab a pair of gloves.

    “And I must say,” Rupert said, “it’s been too long.”

    Deron shot him a glance of warning as Marie chuckled softly. “Too long…?” she said absently, obviously more focused on getting to work than anything.

    “Hope your day wasn’t too busy,” Rupert continued. He sat down on a cot, and Deron shoved his hands into his pockets, sighing deeply and trying to look casual in hopes that Marie would neglect to acknowledge him. “Deron was just asking about you.”

    Deron’s eyes jerked to Rupert, his brows flicking down in irritation. “Asshole,” he mouthed.

    “Funny how coincidence strikes,” Rupert finished with a grin, leaning back on the cot with his arms folded behind his head.

    “Oh, yes!” Marie said in her friendly way, searching for the gauze and peroxide. She spared a glance from her work to the twins; Deron paused his furious glaring at his brother to glance toward Marie with as pleasant a look as he could manage, then went back to glaring at Rupert. “Slow day today; Kurt’s pain medicine was just about it, and one of the toddlers — Wright — he got a scraped knee; oh, and Deron, Helen came by to get checked out again.” At his wife’s name, Deron flinched slightly and looked up at the ceiling; Marie didn’t see it as her eyes searched the cabinets for — aha — the gauze. Sliding the glass door open, she continued. “She’s glowing, Deron, very much glowing; Kurt says it’s going to be a girl, but by the way she’s carrying, it has to be a girl — oh, but she is so very down, so she just came in to tell me that she wasn’t going to be working. Isn’t that just…hm.” With a sympathetic knit of the eyebrows, Marie grabbed the peroxide.

    Sometimes, Deron wasn’t entirely sure that Marie remembered that he and his wife weren’t on speaking terms, and that they hadn’t been on peaking terms in about ten years. In his chest burned a ball of anger, confusion, and something else — but he willed himself to feel none of those things, and, looking back from the ceiling to his brother, he focused his thoughts back on the fact that he was pissed at Rupert, even as he spoke. “I haven’t seen her,” he said hollowly.

    “Oh, yes, I don’t imagine you have,” Marie said, her voice as pleasant and harmless as ever. She seated herself on the cracked, squeaky rolling chair; it let out an unhappy squeal, and she smiled softly. “But you know“ — and here, Deron looked at her to see her looking amicably up at him — “I think that she would like to see you again. I think that that would mean a lot.”

    “Would it?” Deron asked, consciously blocking this conversation from his mind.

    “Mhm,” Marie said, and then she looked at Rupert, smiling. “I would love to see a little family reunion,” she said at Rupert, though she was really speaking to Deron; her prodding sort of intentions were clear.

    She cleared her throat, then scooted forward in the whining chair. “Let’s see what we have here…,” she said thoughtfully, her lips pressing flat in concentration as she leaned forward to examine him. She reached forward, gently taking Rupert’s face in her hands, and she softly tilted his jaw until she could get a good view of his ear in the light of the candle on the wall. “What exactly is the story of this?” she asked, unfazed, as she tilted the peroxide upside down and dripped some onto the gauze.

    Before Rupert could answer for himself, Deron cut in: “He hurt himself, being a…well, you know, he’s Rupert.”

    She chuckled. “Mm,” she said, smiling softly as she dabbed up some of the blood. “Is that the story, Ru?”










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    • Being a hunter and all, Jesse O’Malley thought that he
    was the type who had “seen some things”. When he laid down at night, sometimes images would come back to him: pictures of hares struggling in traps, their black, beady eyes darting around before settling on him and his bow, begging him to spare them in their silent language; the pus-oozing infection that his leg’d had once and the throbbing pain it came with, and the look in his dad’s eyes when he was assessing whether or not to cut it off before eventually, thankfully, deciding not to; the one time that he saw a deer in real life, the way that it looked only vaguely deer-like, in a way that his brain still struggled to comprehend. And when these things would come into his mind — these sleepless nights where he would set up in his bed and stare out of the window, searching for something out there to listen to him without calling him a coward or saying that he was brave or saying that this was normal or not normal, just something out there to listen to him, and finding nothing and no one — he would stand up, sneak past the beds filled with the sleeping bodies of his family members, and step out into the orange moonlight. And when he would stare up at the sky of ochre, dotted with spots of glowing saffron, he would imagine himself to be anywhere else — would picture himself some fifty, maybe sixty years ago looking up at this sky, going to stores and buying things and coming out and driving cars and going home and sleeping soundly, his biggest worry being some promotion he wanted at work. Then, he would go over to the woodpile, pick up one of the tiny pieces — one that they wouldn’t miss. He would put it in his pocket, and he would wander away from his house, then away from the other houses, and then to the very, very edge of the gate, where no one — probably not even the night watchman, whoever it would be that night — could see him.

    Then he would sit down crosslegged and start to carve.

    From late night carvings came late evening carvings, still hidden away but not from an escapist sort of necessity — just for the sake of doing it. It was as close to a hobby as he had, though he didn’t find much enjoyment in it — or, well, anything, really. Of course, he didn’t ever really say what he was doing when he did his whittling, and if anyone happened upon him doing his work — which was a rare occasion — he would never voice what exactly he was up to, but he’d gradually grown less and less ashamed of his hobby. Sure, sometimes he hid it away when he was found, but that was just to have a secret to himself. People drank on the job; a little bit of wood-carving and whittling off of the job was perfectly acceptable, he reasoned. He hid his results, though — kept them tucked away in the small chest beneath his bed, and when the box would fill, he would take a short trip a few hundred feet from the camp and bury the trinkets in a hole before coming back and working on refilling the box again.

    Now, Jesse, crosslegged, tucked away in the corner of the decrepit greenhouse-like building, whittled away at a small piece of wood. The place smelled stale, dirty, with a twinge of manure, but it was like its own little world that few people dared to disturb, especially toward nightfall, as it grew eerier and eerier. He was working on the thing’s cheek right now — the right cheek, to be exact. The longer that he went along, chipping off tiny pieces with gentle, artful shoves, the more and more it looked like the little finch that he was envisioning.

    This trinket was going to be for Bee — though he would never claim to have made it. He would say that he found it, happened upon it, and he didn’t really want it, so she could have it. “Take it as a welcome-back gift,” he would say, flippantly and sarcastically, and he would give it to her and see her eyes light up. She would never know that he had made it; that was how he wanted it to be.

    His small carving knife tchr, tchr, tchred against the wood. He had to make quick work of this if he really did intend to give it to Bee; she was going to be back tomorrow. Her first mission, he thought, almost sadly, when I remember her being born…

    Then again, she was eighteen, and he was twenty-three now; since when was he so old, and since when did Bee get so…?

    “We’re back.”

    The voice of Cara cut through the still air of the greenhouse; Jesse tensed and paused for a moment, his first reaction to hide his work from the girl, before he decided that he really didn’t give a shit, since it was Cara. He breathed a small sigh through his nose. “Yeah,” he said, starting to chip away at the piece of wood again, “you are.”

    “We found a bunch of linen-type materials for Ava.” Cara cleared her throat, then added, “Your mom.”

    That was good; leaving Ava alone with her thoughts was a good way to get her to stare vegetatively out of a window for days on end. Still, he gave a small scoff through his nose. “Thanks for clarifying,” he said flatly. “Never would’ve known who Ava was had you not told me.”

    There was a beat, and Jesse, feeling somewhat awkward, slowed his whittling.

    “What are you doing here?” Cara asked.

    He sighed softly through his nose. “Nunya,” he said, pausing and holding the finch out from himself to glance at it. He leaned closer for a moment, forming an O with his lips, and blew off the sawdust with a quick huff. With a soft sigh and a look up through his brows to Cara, Jesse pressed his lips into a flat line and turned the half-formed bird toward the girl, pausing to let her get a glance at it before he tucked it back toward himself and put to whittling again. “What are you doing here?” he asked, voice uninterested. Tchr, tchr…pause. He glanced up at her, gave her a once-over, then looked back to his bird. “You came back with all of your limbs,” he said. He blew off the sawdust from the bird’s face again, then continued, “What was all that noise out there? Rupert, Deron, one of them finally go psycho mode?”










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    Marie was a hoot.
    When everybody hates something so much, it's an almost innate reaction for some to resist it. There were people who really felt the need to be contrarian for a deeper reason, and then a small minority of those who simply reveled in the conflict. Deron was often predisposed to assume the latter of his brother, as being misunderstood was a trait willingly bestowed to Rupert by his know-it-all of a twin.

    And that was why, after he'd met Deron's fury with a teasingly pointed tongue, he swiftly covered it up so as to not rouse suspicion from the nurse on-call. He was beaming, channeling the spirit of the Cheshire Cat while his brother was forced into the charade of pleasantries. And whether she ever came to realize it or not, Marie was a perfect pawn in Rupert's game of understated public shaming.

    He suppressed a yawn as she had the audacity to answer his question tell them about her day, seeing no real interest in what the thrilling life of a post-apocalyptic physician might look like. Between scrapes, bruises, and medicines guarded by lock and key, the job seemed like a piece of cake. And then on what could be any day or night, some unlucky, incoherent mess would be rushed in covered in blood and dirt, only to be met by Marie Mark in her fake lab coat waving around a spool of gauze, her airy voice filling the air with "get me 'this'" and "what happened 'that'." Harpy. Rupert made sure never to indulge her curiosities during his visits to the clinic, but by now she didn't seem to hold all that much interest anyway.

    After a brief session of tuning the woman out, he was in time to catch a rather prolific mention. "Oh, and Deron, Helen came by to get checked out again." Rupert was like a dog, the way he perked up at the sound. Deron shifted similarly, but placed his gaze elsewhere. “She’s glowing, Deron, very much glowing; Kurt says it’s going to be a girl, but by the way she’s carrying, it has to be a girl —" Rupert's heart skipped a beat, and he found himself staring self-consciously down at his hands. They weren't shaking anymore, but the phantom of an adrenaline rush lingered. "Oh, but she is so very down, so she just came in to tell me that she wasn’t going to be working. Isn’t that just…hm.”

    All eyes were on Deron. In honesty, with all the sharp comebacks Rupert could have come up with, even he hadn't a clue what he'd have said to that. In another universe, maybe he'd have been offended on his brother's behalf. Didn't help that they were actively shooting daggers at one another. “I haven’t seen her,” Deron answered coolly, and Rupert had to wonder if that was the truth. His vision narrowed to slits while he turned the thought over.

    All materials in hand, Marie responded casually, “Oh, yes, I don’t imagine you have." Her rolling chair squealed across the floor enough to camouflage the snickering coming from Rupert. “But you know," she continued, entirely focusing her attention to Deron and not the bleeding man in the other direction, “I think that she would like to see you again. I think that that would mean a lot.” Again, Rupert's pulse leapt and crashed; his heart was folding in on itself.

    He started making gestures behind Marie's back, all of them obscene and unsavory. He was smiling so wide, his lips threatened to rip straight in two. His teeth were clenched hard, primed to shatter into millions of yellow-stained pieces. "Would it?" Deron drawled with an obvious lack of interest, causing Rupert to gesture harder.

    “Mhm,” Marie said, and then she turned to Rupert with enough haste to catch him in the act of an exaggerated fist-thrusting movement. “I would love to see a little family reunion." Her words were somehow aimed straight toward Rupert and still managed to land on Deron. While he had Marie's attention, he gave a big, empty-eyed smile dripping with sarcasm. He wiggled his head and did jazz hands, mocking the very notion. And then he involuntarily coughed like an old man.

    The nurse finally cleared her throat and got to business, leaving enough of a pause in the conversation for the twins to glance at one another. Rupert's constantly-changing expression dropped to neutral, but one look was enough to communicate their shared appreciation for lovely Marie.

    Her gloved fingers grazed the coarse stubble blanketed across Rupert's chin, which held a newfound playboy smirk. He allowed his head to be tilted to the side as she got a better look into his ear while still holding his jaw. "Like what you see?" he joked, having fully mastered the art of masking the erratic thoughts that stuck to his head like gum on a heel. And they were growing heavier. That's aging for ya!

    Antiseptic soaked onto the gauze with ease; Rupert shuddered. Try as he might, it was impossible to dodge the aging beauty's deft hands with his head alone. “What exactly is the story of this?" she asked, the operative question finally having reared its ugly head.

    And just as Rupert lost his vocabulary, jaw half open, Deron spoke up. “He hurt himself, being a…well, you know, he’s Rupert.”

    The aforementioned twin shot his brother a stern, warning look. He could have a pass, just this once. He did a cutesy little shrug for Marie as a soft round laughter fell off her tongue. "Mm," she said, "Is that the story, Ru?" This was going to be a hard pill to swallow.

    "No." Rupert's voice, when lacking its easygoing lift, had a way of silencing a room without trying. He made an attempt at exchanging a look with Deron, uncertain if the smug washout was being attentive. Not a second passed, but still, his one word hung heavy in the air.

    And then he continued. "He shot me in the ear," he deadpanned, congratulating himself with a subdued chuckle. He shook his head with a long, defeated sigh. "Yeah, I was just being silly old Ru." The further he got into his sentence, the less genuine it seemed to sound. But this time, he made no further corrections.

    "After lifting wood planks for you people all day, maybe we could go easy on ol' Rupe, yeah?" Through his flippant exterior was still a tired, tired man. He halfheartedly swatted at Marie's now bloodstained bundle of gauze, rubbing an eye with the other. "You all are constantly fussing over nothing. It's not gonna solve any actual issues," he grumbled, then yawned.

    Sufficiently exhausted, he scooted his legs downward so he was laying flat, whether that was an optimal position for Marie or not. She could have been done right then, for all Rupert cared. After all, it was just a little bleeding.

    His eyes were fixed to the ceiling. An orange circle of candlelight pulsed on the ceiling tiles, distorted by the shadows of the other two in the room. With closed eyes, it was easy to forget what was going on. And as the cunning reach of slumber caressed Rupert's brain, a flicker of the figure in the road stained itself onto his eyelids.

    His eyes jolted back open, returning to watch Marie by his side and Deron a little further away. Very little time had passed—perhaps a minute—but it still felt like he'd just awoken from a nightmare. And how fitting of Deron to be the one right there watching. Rupert lifted his head and directed his gaze toward him. He appeared calm, but there was an unnaturally tranquil, almost medicated note to his tone. And yet, it held some urgency.

    "Where is your son?" He needed to know. Idiot probably knows less than I do, he had to remind himself. He hadn’t even been napping, let alone sleeping. And yet… “Are they back yet?”

    Feeling the moment of grogginess begin to fade, Rupert slowly straightened up, pinching his nose. He wasn’t supposed to do that. “Sorry, I don’t…” It was like his throat was lined with cotton with how quiet it was. “That didn’t mean anything. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Something’s making me so…” He waited a beat.

    Then, he shoved two “claws” in Marie’s face. Loudly, he warbled, “Crazy!” He coughed a round of gravelly laughter out his throat, fighting past its cotton layer.

    “Heheh,” he forced, laying back down and turning to face the wall. His legs curled up, pretending to be nestled in a warm blanket. It wasn’t hard to get cozy on these stiff clinic cots anymore; that young age had long passed. That was what really cemented Deron in the role of the baby twin in Rupert’s eyes.

    “Now get the hell out of here, man.”










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    "No.”


    Deron stilled, a coldness running through his veins as Marie’s hand hesitated by Rupert’s ear. What are you saying, dickhead? he demanded of Rupert in the dead silence, his eyes a sharp, glinting blade of warning, waiting for a reason to strike — yet silently, curiously waiting by to see if Rupert really had the gall — the gall to say anything about that episode, whether it be a prank or a momentary psychotic break. Are you going to tell her you flipped out like a toddler? Or make up some bullshit story that isn’t that, so that you have to be locked in a shack by yourself?

    There were a few moments that passed silently; Rupert’s word hung heavy in the air, filling the room, drawing the tip of Marie’s subtly higher and higher in curiosity and tugging the corners of Deron’s mouth subtly lower and lower in icy suspicion.

    “He shot me in the ear,” Rupert said finally, with a chuckle, and Marie puffed out a small laugh and continued her doctoring; Deron breathed out a soft sigh of relief, his glare immediately dropping from his face, his eyes darting away in a silent sort of thanks to his brother — as thankful as he could be for what was effectively self-preservation.

    "Yeah, I was just being silly old Ru,” Rupert said.

    Marie hummed out a sort of laugh, glancing at Rupert’s eyes for a moment to gauge the truth of that statement. Judging by the way her lips pressed slightly upward as she looked back to her work, she didn’t believe him; she hummed another half-chuckle.

    "After lifting wood planks for you people all day, maybe we could go easy on ol' Rupe, yeah?" Rupert swatted gently at Marie, who continued her dabbing uncaringly. “You all are constantly fussing over nothing. It's not gonna solve any actual issues.”

    This elicited a sigh from Deron. “You were bleeding,” he stated, deadpan. Obligation, duty, all of that. Whether or not it “solved any actual issues” didn’t matter much at the end of the day; it was a waste of Deron’s time to begin with, whether it solved issues or not. Though, admittedly, while he’d brought his brother here because of the ear bleeding, most of the reason he was still here was just to figure out just what that was back there — and to cause Rupert to feel at least some sense of shame. But the longer he stayed, the more futile it seemed, and the more he felt that he should probably just leave Marie to the snooping and save yelling at his brother for a separate occasion.

    Rupert scooted his legs down and lay flat. Marie’s lips pressed together unhappily. In an almost docile manner, Rupert closed his eyes, and Marie’s work began again.

    “Any injuries you can see?” Deron inquired, taking a step closer to the cot and craning his neck slightly for a better view.

    “Mm…,” Marie hummed at first, not quite answering, then she shook her head slightly. “Not that I can see yet, no.” She frowned, glancing at Deron. “Exposed to loud noises?”

    Deron shook his head. “No — nothing that the rest of us didn’t hear.” He scanned Marie’s face, the corners of his mouth tucking in as he remembered the fact that he’d been babysat with this woman as a child — this woman now had fine wrinkles forming beside her eyes and lips, too. He looked away, clicking his tongue. “He’s probably just trying to get out of work,” he said beneath his breath, not expecting either of the people in his company to hear or answer but not quite just speaking to himself.

    There were a few beats of rest in which the only real noise was the soft sound of Marie carefully rubbing the cotton against his brother’s face, and Deron drew in a long, deep breath, his eyes scanning the room. In the soft orange glow of the candles on the wall, his eyes only really registered the dark, fuzzy, foreboding forms of the cots that lined the walls. They were just as unwelcoming in the daytime, but something about the stillness of night made the cots seem almost…vicious, ensnaring, as though, when there were patients, it was the beds rather than the sickness that laid claim on the people, kept them down, tried to keep them from ever rising.

    There was a deep stirring in his stomach that softly extended into his chest as his ears remembered the sounds of pained groaning that echoed off of the infirmary walls when last he’d really visited, when the midwinter air clawed at his nostrils as he shivered in the cot, as he began to figure just from the noises coming from the chapped lips of the man in the far corner of the room he wouldn’t survive the night though he was only in for the removal of the stitches in the sole of his foot. It had been morbid curiosity that had brought Deron into the infirmary in the first place in form of his injury, and it was the same dreadful morbid curiosity that brought him, with a linen cloth over his mouth, to go and look at the dying shadow that had once been called Anton, Sr..

    The pained, stern look that Ava had given him had warned him to go away before he got a good look, but something deep within him insisted that he look — really look — the man in the face.

    He wished that he hadn’t; it often came back to him in a flashbulb image, and even now, as he closed his eyes for a moment and turned his gaze toward the ceiling, the sick picture emblazoned itself on the back of his eyelids.

    Marie made a soft sound of confusion, and Deron opened his eyes to look toward his twin.

    Rupert stared straight at him, a strange expression on his face. “Where is your son?” The lilt in his voice was…different — calm in an odd, unrupertlike way.

    Deron’s brows knitted together. “You know where he is,” he said, confused, blinking.

    “Are they back yet?”

    Marie looked to Deron, obviously expecting some kind of answer other than the obvious one, but Deron just stared at his brother, confused. “They get back…tomorrow,” he answered, his words slow.

    Rupert slowly straightened up, pinching his nose. “Sorry, I don’t…That didn’t mean anything.”

    Deron sighed deeply. I don’t have time for this… “What, Rupert?” What’s gotten you like this, huh? It’s not even funny; drop this shit.

    “I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” Rupert responded, as if reading the unspoken question on Deron’s face. “Something’s making me so…”

    The moment of silence made Deron tense again in anticipation of what Rupert would say; Marie halted, her brow raising.

    Then, as if he were playing peekaboo with a toddler, Rupert shoved two scary “clows” in Marie’s face, causing her to flinch back slightly. “Crazy!” Rupert concluded in a yell, then laughed; his words echoed off of the sick walls, bouncing back to the three in short waves before dissipating into uncomfortably thin air.

    Marie smiled politely; Deron scowled irritatedly.

    “Heheh,” Rupert laughed in an obviously forced way. He rolled over, curling into fetal position, and faced the concrete wall.

    Marie frowned over at Deron, a look of concern in her eyes, and Deron dismissed the look with a shake of his head. He’s just being a dickhead.

    “Now get the hell out of here, man,” Rupert said.

    You don’t have to tell me twice.

    Deron sighed deeply, shoving his hands into his pocket. “Say hello to Carter for me, Marie,” he bade to the doctor, giving her a wave.

    “I’ll put a word in with Helen, tell her that you’re doing good,” Marie said, a glimmer of humor in her voice, as though she understood and was amused by the fact that it threw Deron off.

    Deron blinked. “Mm,” he said, walking toward the door. His footsteps echoed off of the walls for a moment, then hindered as he looked back toward the figure of his brother in the bed. “If you die, do it quietly,” he said at him, and then, without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out of the door.

    He stood outside of the hefty door for a few moments, a slight frown on his face as he debated whether or not to go back to his home, after such a long day as this.

    But it’ll be empty, he remembered, and his heart gave a longing sort of squeeze.

    Work, then, was the better choice; so odd he went.

    Marie looked at Rupert’s figure, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Your brother,” she said. “He is a…he needs to be…well.” She struggled for the right words — words that wouldn’t seem too pressing. “His little family,” she began, “Helen, Ethan, and he…eighteen years, right? And yet…”

    And yet…and yet…

    She sighed softly, shaking her head to finish off her thoughts. “But you really care about Ethan, Rupert; I appreciate that,” she said. “You would make a good father…”


    She trailed off, then reached out to give Rupert a touch on the shoulder, half out of thanks and half to get his attention. There was an almost implied comment about Deron somewhere in her last comment, but she didn’t mean to be disrespectful — at least, not overtly. “Why haven’t you married, Rupert? You are…” She trailed off again, and then, after a long moment of pause, asked, “Are you in pain? Do you need to stay overnight?”










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    There existed such a thing as tangible contempt, and it was looking Cara square in the eye.
    But even in a society without laws (at least of the ratified variety) it was considered by most abnormal to simply speak every thought into existence. The hesitant stillness of the air that married Jesse's lack of enthusiasm was enough of a testament toward the degree of warmth in their acquaintanceship.

    For every sigh that blew out the man's nose, Cara puffed one twice as heavy. And much in the way Jesse's tone of voice hardly lifted or lowered, Cara's penetrating stare was firmly affixed onto its subtly morose target. To her earlier question, he at last breathed a reply.

    "Nunya."

    A roll of the eyes was far from enough to articulate Cara's chagrin, but she was tired and found no pleasure in raising her voice during what was already an interruption of someone's solitude. With crossed arms, she slightly craned her neck out to peer at the lump of wood in Jesse's grasp. She made a quarter turn to leave, but stopped short as a partly-formed carving was held out in her direction. What was more shocking than Jesse's willingness to share was the half-decency of the piece; Cara gave an approving grin.

    It wasn't without an uncertain delay that she shuffled her feet aimlessly, then took a few steps closer to him. "What are you doing here?" he repeated back, not without one of his famous up-and-downs. Given the ambivalent look on her face, there wasn't much of a response she could give that wasn't already easily discernible. "You came back with all of your limbs," he observed, earning a shrug. She may as well have been a moth drifting with the dust. “What was all that noise out there? Rupert, Deron, one of them finally go psycho mode?”

    Cara snorted. "Try both." The whole trip was too much of a dreadful nothing to retell, and she wasn't even sure Jesse would have wanted to hear it. But much like his father, he was a decent listener, or at least looked like one. "They never stop fighting. I thought twins were supposed to get each other and all, but..." She heaved a sigh, not much joy left in her speech. "It's mutually-assured destruction, if you ask me. And I keep getting stuck in the middle of it."

    She kept her arms crossed, then pointed at the wooden figure. "Is that a bird?" Cara asked rhetorically, almost in disbelief. Never had she witnessed Jesse partake in any form of craft but the art of sarcasm. "Who taught you that?" she added in what was supposed to be a compliment toward his hidden talent. The voice of a probing younger sibling was not much of something the matter-of-fact girl could control.

    "Are you gonna fill it with gunpowder and chuck it or something?" Lionel or someone of the sort brought the notion up a couple of times, but there wasn't much of a need for anything like that in a long time. Engineering was their most powerful weapon now. Seven years off the run and it was still a mystery how people were able to sleep without a knife under their pillow. And mattress. And nightstand. "Sometimes Doyun says there's old land mines hidden around camp, you know."










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    He couldn't be going crazy.
    And if it was happening, it sure as shit wasn't going to be by the diagnosis of these two. Crazy was more than this; if Rupert really was, he'd know.

    He'd know.

    Maybe he hadn't heard anything. Maybe he hadn't seen anything. In fact, something in him knew he hadn't. But that was the least of his fears. The harder truth was the quark of a chance that it was all real. That Deron, for once in their miserable lives, had been wrong. His eyes were fixed onto the concrete wall. It took nothing but a slight glance to tell that the surface of it was cold to the touch, but what wasn't? This was a world where indoor heating seldom had more sophistication than a flaming pile of logs or the vain efforts of an ancient space heater.

    Rupert shifted with a grunt. His mocking smile lingered, but the fire in his eyes had left the moment he tore them away from the others. The quiet sound of his legs curling up indicated a comfort that, in truth, had no hope of existing here. The clinic was one step away from a boneyard. The whole base was. But regardless of the conditions, Rupert pretended to nap to make a point and there was nothing that could distract him from that. Not the lack of give from the cot, not the dampness of the alcohol on his ears, and certainly not the puffs of blasé trickling out of Deron like a snoring dog.

    The entire time, he was conferring with Marie like his brother hadn't been in the room, a mere meter from his position. Like he was a ghost. A ghost who was listening, regrettably, and whose heart sank at the additional mention of his ex-sister-in-law. "Mm," Deron answered, followed by a not-so-hidden snicker from the specter in the room. He had almost considered turning around to see him off but Deron, in his derisive, dry tone that had grown mundane from overuse, had more. "If you die, do it quietly," he spat. Awkward.

    And that was all that remained in the stillness of the room besides the tired, sauntering footsteps that faded beyond the door.

    A surge of fury shot up Rupert's veins, spearheaded by a hot poker with his brother's name on it. "Not gonna happen, bitch!" he wanted to shout, but he had been more or less quiet for the past half-minute and he wasn't going to sacrifice that last piece of humility for anything. How ignoble he surely looked, like the dirt-covered shadow of not one, but two of the community's most exalted leaders. It would have been no wonder that he was the single twin had that not been the case for both brothers now...

    With the next few moments' passing, Rupert and Marie were what would officially be called "alone". And while he could have shut his eyes and pretended to nap, there was an implied pretense that Deron's departure was conducive to more riveting conversation. It was one of few things his brother could not and would not ever be in on, and it would have been just as satisfying as sneaking rations had talking behind Deron's back not been a pretty routine facet of, well, any sort of figurehead at all.

    Not an atom stirred within Rupert's field of repose, the rising and falling of his chest a convincing act from any angle. Yet still, the woman who had grown up beside him, so to speak, knew better. It was almost as though he could feel the movement of her eyes upon his back, lolling between his figure and down at the linoleum flooring. The imaginary, but predicted sound of lips parting, but hesitating, seemed to fill the air, as did the uneasy sensation of words unspoken.

    "Your brother," Marie started, the lift in her candied voice struggling to keep pace with the weight of her speech, "He is a…he needs to be…well." The tension polluting the room began to vanish, replacing itself with more of a faint haze as a result of the lack of seriousness in which Rupert took her. A sigh could be traced from his vicinity. There he lie, rooted in place, possibly attentive but in no way attuned. “His little family. Helen, Ethan, and he…eighteen years, right? And yet…”

    And like that, a chord struck. "Grgh..."

    “But you really care about Ethan, Rupert; I appreciate that,” she said. “You would make a good father…” He winced, his stiff body tightening upon the gentle touch of the nurse's hand. And though his muscles were steadfast in their firmness, it wasn't long before they started to melt. She really ought to have known not to say that.

    Rupert gave a long, hard stare into the wall. In the gray, one could paint any picture they wished. This time, Rupert came up empty. He knew what he'd see if he looked hard enough. When he spoke, it went to show that his erratic bravado had once again deflated, "I'd do anything for that kid." The sentiment alone bore no explanation, but the indistinctly cryptic note attached rang clear. "No one can tell me I'm wrong."

    The hand lifted, and a hole was punched into the pressure tank of his body. Somehow, he found a way to sink deeper into the cot. Marie continued, "Why haven’t you married, Rupert? You are…" He knew she wouldn't finish that. And thus, the question was greeted with a resounding silence.

    A good amount of it.

    "Are you in pain? Do you need to stay overnight?"

    Rupert's back was still turned, his arms folded within each other. "No, not really." And he made no move, not an inch. Again, silence ensued, except it wasn't all that uncomfortable of one. At least, not to him. He was sure it was painstaking for a chatty lady like Marie, but perhaps that wasn't giving the woman enough credit.

    A moment later, Rupert turned to his side and at last the vaguely placated face of the twin was revealed. He looked up at the nurse with the waggish pair of eyes he was known for. "I'd rather sleep here." Going back to an empty bedroom didn't exactly feel like an attractive end to the night. Pity was written all over him, either by truth or poorly-disguised manipulation.

    "Not a damn soul is worrying where I am, honey," he thought to add, "Like you meant to say, more or less." His smile was flippant, but stained with tragedy. "Lying, drinking, coming home late... not exactly a 'little family's' favorite thing, right?"

    He cocked a brow. "But what would I know." And, sarcastically, he added, "What would you know?" With his head resting the way it was, he almost looked like a child awaiting a bedtime story. Only with Rupert, his version of stories were trivial little mind games, no doubt the fault of Eloise's tendency toward deeply abstruse, oftentimes nonsensical riddles.

    "I think we all got stuck with the 'stupid asshole' gene, anyway. Better it dies off with the kid unless he manages to find a girlfriend, somehow." His vision clouded for a moment, a rare sliver of fondness filling his cheeks with the warm glow of red. "But hey, here's hoping he'll make like Carter and skip the whole 'teen pregnancy' bit. Hats off to you and the husband on that one." He chuckled, then cut it off abruptly. "But don't tell Kurt I said that."










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    Marie stood at Rupert’s answer
    that he was not in pain. Good. That saved some of the medical supply at least. It really was better not to use painkillers if she could help from it — they’d been running low recently. (She suspected the teenaged nurses-in-training as the perpetrators, but she was in the middle of snooping that out herself.) “Good,” she said, slipping one hand into the pocket of the stained white overcoat and feeling for her ink pen.

    Rupert’s eyes lifted to her, and she suppressed an expression of un-amusement at the mischievous expression written in them. “I’d rather sleep here.”

    Marie had a nose for trouble — and something about Rupert, though she held a slight admiration for him, made her suspicious of letting him stay here alone. But she held her tongue. She’d gotten at that in the last twenty years especially, good at not saying what came to her mind. One had to be good at that to deal with the Mark family, and she’d learned that it also helped in milking information out of people.

    "Not a damn soul is worrying where I am, honey," he added, smiling flippantly. “Like you meant to say, more or less. Lying, drinking, coming home late...not exactly a 'little family's' favorite thing, right?" He raised an eyebrow at her, and she pursed her lips slightly, considering her next words. “But what would I know. What would you know?”

    She let out a single, short laugh at his backhanded sarcasm. “The lying, the drinking, the coming home late…I’m sure that could be tamed out of you.” She smiled pleasantly. “Besides, you’re practically a second father to Ethan anyway. And wouldn’t you love to have someone you could call your child?” She pulled her pen from her pocket and aimlessly gave it a click. “I think that there’s something within you like there’s something within me,” she said, coating her pointed words with an air of harmlessness as she looked around the room. “You want something more…something that you’ve maybe tasted but have never had for your own…a family like…hm.”

    A laugh bubbled out of her — perhaps a slightly derisive if she were honest with herself, coated with her poised smile — as she spotted him in her periphery. Knowing what she knew — or sensing what she could sense, rather — about Rupert’s dislike for her, she was tempted to add something about Helen — about how Deron had painted himself out of her picture, no matter how righteous he considered his own actions to be, and how Rupert could probably sweep her off of her feet if he ever tried to go after her, since she was still definitely stuck on Deron, and hadn’t he ever considered it or wanted it for himself, and weren’t twins practically the same? — but she resisted the urge.

    Instead, she clicked her pen again, and she laughed another single laugh. “But what would I know, hm?”

    She looked down at him again, and her smile faded into a more gentle expression. It was harder to be even subtextually mean to someone who she was looking at, especially when they were posed in such a childlike manner as he was.

    "I think we all got stuck with the 'stupid asshole' gene, anyway,” Rupert said. Though it may not have been in his tone or even in his posture, Marie read his words as melancholy — as saddened, as lonely. “Better it dies off with the kid unless he manages to find a girlfriend, somehow." His vision clouded for a moment, a rare sliver of fondness filling his cheeks with the warm glow of red.

    A soft smile curled onto Marie’s lips. The Fraziers were human; it was often easy to forget, especially with Rupert, but the Fraziers were human. They, like everyone, felt happy sometimes, and felt anger sometimes, and, even if Rupert would never admit it, felt love sometimes. Though she knew of Rupert’s distaste for her husband, she could see the resemblances between Kurt and him. Whether that was a good or bad thing in Marie’s eyes depended on how she felt toward Kurt on any given day; but today it was a good thing.

    "But hey, here's hoping he'll make like Carter and skip the whole 'teen pregnancy' bit,” Rupert said. “Hats off to you and the husband on that one." He chuckled for a moment, then cut himself short. "But don't tell Kurt I said that.”

    Carter would skip pregnancy entirely, if he had his way, Marie knew. As highly as she thought of him — and as much as it pained her to know this of her only biological child — Marie had come to realize and admit that Cart had no paternal instinct, and as far as he was concerned, there was no one in the community who even came close to the standards that he held for not only beauty but also exceptionality in all areas. The only way there would be any pregnancy with Cart would be entirely on accident, if he happened to be intoxicated enough not to care about visage. Of course, Kurt was trying to work on that. She knew all about Kurt’s opinion on marriage and standards for spouses; after all, she was married to him. In his eyes, love had never mattered — or favor, for that mattered. So long as a woman wasn’t incredibly homely or incapable, she was wife material. To her credit, Marie felt much the same, too. Marriage was for survival. For her, it was for children, for stability, so she could feel as though she’d at least somewhat helped sustain the human race, but even speaking broadly and not personally, having a family unit meant having someone to depend on, having some structure to your life beyond the governing-ish bodies. Love could come later, if it came at all; toward Kurt, love came and went, and from Kurt…she was never really sure, and she tried to keep from thinking about it too much. For the most part, marriage was a business relationship. But while she desired for her son to marry, she didn’t feel nearly as strongly about it as Kurt. Certainly, it would be a shame not to have a grandchild from her only real child, especially when even her stepdaughter’s son was all but estranged from her, but she wasn’t as willing to force her son into existential loathing for sake of her happiness as Kurt was for what he said was duty.

    “Ethan is a good kid,” Marie said, choosing not to comment anything from the line of thought she’d just had. In spite of all of the odds, “I think that you and Deron have raised him well…and I just hope that he winds up with someone…” Better than his mother. “Someone good,” she finished. “He deserves it. He really does.”

    Her words came across as genuine, she hoped, but they were mostly hollow. It was hard to wish the best for a step-grandson who seemed to want her dead. But, for that matter, it was hard to wish good for, well, anyone, when you worked long days to save lives of people who wouldn’t stop to thank her and in the two weeks time time wouldn’t remember her name beyond to say that they thought she was vapid or dull or any number of insulting things.

    But when they were here, they loved her as much as anyone loved someone who was currently saving their life — like starving captives loved their captor, like spiteful children loved their mothers. And knowing that was enough to keep her going in those hard times — knowing that she was doing as much as she could possibly do and that good was coming from it — and not thinking about what they thought of her at other times was enough to keep her going in the other times.

    For the night, she supposed, Rupert was like a boy, and she was like his caretaker.

    “You can stay here if you’d like,” she said, rolling the chair she’d sat in back toward the desk in the corner, “but you’ll be alone, and I think it’d be lonelier here than it will be elsewhere.” She pocketed her pen again, and then smiled softly, almost amusedly. “Or,” she said, half teasingly, “you could come stay at the Mark house. I don’t think Kurt will be in until the wee hours of the morning, so you could sleep in our bed and I could sleep Cart’s old mattress.” She chuckled softly, then added, “And I mean that genuinely.” She paused a beat, then commented, as absently as she could manage, “Ah, and I suppose Helen will be there, too, in her own room.”










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    Jesse scoffed, the corner of his mouth twinging
    up ever so slightly; tchr, tchr, tchr went his knife against the wood. The bird’s cheek was growing rounder and rounder and more and more cheek-like, but now he couldn’t decide if its other cheek was level with it. Tchr. “Two for one,” he muttered. Tchr, tchr.

    "They never stop fighting. I thought twins were supposed to get each other and all, but..." Cara sighed. “It's mutually-assured destruction, if you ask me.” (“Emphasis on the ass,” Jesse murmured beneath his breath — as close as he would ever get to agreeing with Cara.) “And I keep getting stuck in the middle of it."

    Jesse paused to see if she would say more, then sighed. “Wow,” he deadpanned. He started carving again; tchr, tchr, tchr. “Sucks to be y-oo-ou,” he half-sang in a mutter.

    “Is that a bird?” Cara asked abruptly.

    Jesse glanced up at her, instinctively and self-consciously tucking the bird into his elbow to hide its face. “It’s just a little thing,” he said sort of shyly, feeling his face beginning to heat up.

    “Who taught you that?”

    Was it more embarrassing for him to say that he’d taught it to himself or that he’d learned it from someone else? He debated this for a moment as he looked at his own bird. If he said he learned it from someone else, that would take the blame off of him for having such a stupid little hobby…but then he would have to give someone else credit for getting him to the point of artistry that he’d reached, which, no, he’d done it by himself, so his pride wouldn’t let him say that…but his pride also wouldn’t let him say that he’d come up with the idea for it himself.

    Finally, he resolved his inner monologue with a, “Quit pestering,” and he went back to carving.

    "Are you gonna fill it with gunpowder and chuck it or something?” Cara asked.

    Jesse looked up in an almost offended manner, his mouth agape and his brows knit and lowered. “Why would I do that?!” he asked, his voice passionate for a moment before he got a grip on himself. “Oh yeah,” he said sarcastically, “I’m putting all of this effort in for some little thing I’m going to blow up. Obviously that’s what I’m doing.”

    He held half-formed bird up. “This probably wouldn’t even do a good amount of damage, right? It wouldn’t even make a good noise, either. It’s wood. That’d be the lamest…fire-thingy ever.” He cocked his head slightly, looking toward the orange night sky as he considered what the right word for it would be. “Bomb, I guess…I guess it would be a bomb.” His gaze moved back to Cara. “And who would I even need to bomb? Or…landmine or whatever?” He grinned slightly. “Bunnies?” He scoffed. “You look like you would landmine bunnies,” he said impishly, looking back to his little bird. Tchr, tchr. “But no.” Tchr, tchr. “Not gunpowder.”

    "Sometimes Doyun says there's old land mines hidden around camp, you know,” Cara said.

    Jesse guffawed at the comment. “Doyun is an old coot,” he said. But he somehow winds up with all of the good liquor, his mind added. Jesse only drank at celebrations, but seriously, how did the crazy old guy get all of the good drinks, huh? “Doyun also told me when I was younger that if you ate a watermelon seed, it would start growing in your stomach. Which isn’t true, apparently.” Maybe it wasn’t Doyun who said that — he couldn’t remember at this point — but it helped out Jesse’s point, so, yeah, it was definitely Doyun. “All of the old people are kind of unhinged, though. Miss Eloise, Kurt, Doyun. And then the twins. Momma’s probably the most stable, but she doesn’t count.” He paused a moment, reviewing all of the rest of the people of the community. “Min, too, I guess,” he added to the list of sort-of-stable people. “That’s what we got to look forward to.” Tchr, tchr. “Unless we die.” A beat. “But that’s not gonna happen to me. Maybe to you, but not to me.”

    He sighed softly and pocketed the little wooden bird and his knife, concluding that he couldn’t accomplish any more good work on it tonight with Cara around. He kicked one of his crossed legs out flat from himself and folded the other one in a triangle to prop his elbow up on. Placing his head on his hand, he looked up to Cara, closing one eye as though she were standing in front of a bright light, though the moon was rather dim tonight. “They come back tomorrow,” he said. “You missing your little boy toy? Bet you are.”










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    Cara returned Jesse's snide remarks with a needle-tipped glower.
    Day by day, she had become more and more resigned to the emergence of premature wrinkles. There were too many things that warranted furrowed brows and derisive squints. Then again, a regimen of smiles and laughter hadn't done Doyun any favors, much in the same way surly Ava had managed to maintain her skin's smooth, satiny finish even into her older age. Even so, her bags carried a weariness few could comprehend.

    Finally, Jesse had endured enough questioning, engulfing the greenhouse in an uneasy stillness. Cara could see how therapeutic the craft of the bird must have been, especially with her familiarity toward repetitive, menial tasks. But those were tasks, not hobbies. What was Jesse's excuse? "Are you gonna fill it with gunpowder and chuck it or something?” she dared to ask, half-serious.

    Immediately, the innocent-looking girl was met with astonishment and disbelief. “Why would I do that?!” Jesse cried, just as a self-satisfied smirk began to play at Cara's lips. “Oh yeah, I’m putting all of this effort in for some little thing I’m going to blow up. Obviously that’s what I’m doing."

    Got you!

    With folded arms and a decisive loll of the head, Cara made an intentionally poor attempt at stifled laughter. "Yeah, you're putting in a lot of effort," she echoed, her voice slowed to a mocking drawl as a mischievous gleam danced in her eyes. He had a point, though. Deep down, she understood the futility of the bird as a bomb; it wouldn't even insult her worst enemy. "The only rabbit I'd blow up would be your buck-toothed ass."

    The conversation moved to Doyun, courtesy of Cara's manipulation. "Doyun is an old coot," Jesse swiftly responded, to which no rebuttal was offered. Whether the landmine rumors were true or not, Cara knew better than to hold any faith in the man's inconsistent ramblings. “All of the old people are kind of unhinged, though. Miss Eloise, Kurt, Doyun. And then the twins. Momma’s probably the most stable, but she doesn’t count.”

    Jesse was right, as usual. But while Doyun was a drunk and Kurt and Deron were control freaks, most of the group's vices paled in comparison to men like Rupert. Everything was his poison, a fitting consequence for a fractured mind. Something had to be seriously wrong with that oaf, with the scene he'd caused. The beginnings of a comment on the situation rushed to the edge of Cara's tongue, but quickly dissipated.

    “Min, too, I guess,” Jesse continued with his analysis. “That’s what we got to look forward to." The greater curiosity of the statement was the implication that people were still looking forward to things. What would a guy like Jesse be looking forward to in life, she had to wonder. "Unless we die." Then came a teenaged-girl roll of the eyes. Like that was happening. "But that’s not gonna happen to me. Maybe to you, but not to me.”

    "Bite me," Cara teased defiantly, only removing her eyes from the round-cheeked little bird carving once it was safely tucked away in her adoptive-brother-of-sorts' pocket. And from there, it was just the two of them. Three's a crowd, and that bird was hogging all the attention. Now, Cara's had drifted to how the building, in all its disrepair, had managed to feel more like a proper building than most other structures in the camp. If she had to guess, it was probably because of how shoddily-modified it appeared, like a small team of people had fixed it up in a day. It was homier that way, an air of resilience emanating off of it.

    Jesse's eyes kept fixed onto Cara, soft moonlight glowing atop his head through a patch of exposed ceiling. He left one glittering eye open, because he was a weird guy with weird emotes. “They come back tomorrow,” he said, taking Cara by surprise. “You missing your little boy toy? Bet you are.”

    He knew her well enough to know that was all she'd been thinking about for the past week. "Obviously, I am," she answered, blushing. Having a group return after a while was like a big sigh of relief. Life at the camp was always a bit more jovial for the day, except for the older leaders of the place, whose protocol demanded that they scurry off and voice a million concerns over the results of the expedition. All Cara knew was that she couldn't wait to have her boyfriend back and if that made Jesse annoyingly correct, then so be it.

    "How do you suppose Bee's first big mission went?" she queried, having personally seen her off with a big, proud smile on her face. She idly picked at her fingernail, mulling over all the frankly exhilarating experiences that come with a journey of this distance and duration. "You should be glad my 'boy toy' is there to keep an eye on her. If it were up to me, he'd be here and you'd be out there rummaging for claw hammers in a hardware store somewhere."

    But now that they were discussing it, Cara's eager anticipation was beginning to bubble up. The only thing that was going to put her to sleep was the aches of day-long manual labor she had grown accustomed to ignoring during the daytime. A shy smirk drew at the corners of her lips. "Actually, I'm really excited," she confessed, as though Jesse needed any more fuel for his running "boy toy" bit. "Don't act like you're not, too."










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    It was true that, among most alive and sane people, Marie had witnessed some of the worst of Rupert's behaviors.
    “The lying, the drinking, the coming home late…I’m sure that could be tamed out of you," she had reasoned, sparking a double-take from her sullen patient. The fleeting temptation to say something crass swept through Rupert's thoughts, but there was little time to act upon it before Marie carried on with her point. “Besides, you’re practically a second father to Ethan anyway," she pointed out, a kernel of truth nestled in the sentiment, "And wouldn’t you love to have someone you could call your child?”

    With that hypothetical left to steep, a bitter aftertaste settled in Rupert's mouth. He gave no response. “I think that there’s something within you like there’s something within me,” she said with a shocking level of honesty. With Marie, Rupert could never be sure. “You want something more…something that you’ve maybe tasted but have never had for your own…a family like…hm.” And then she laughed, her vague trademark of a punctuation.

    Rupert's voice turned flat, serious, and demanding. "Like what?" he interjected, his hand supporting his head as he lay on his side like the subject of a college art class. With each adjustment of his body, the metal bedframe beneath him let out an unsubtle round of metallic squealing. "What are you saying?"

    The doctor merely chuckled, much to Rupert's ire. “But what would I know, hm?” she mused, carrying an air of intrigue.

    Rupert found himself dumbstruck by the workings of Marie's mind, even if her insights were often well-informed through countless hours of what he presumed to be gossip. Marie's probing gaze had far crossed the line of a doctor's observation to a therapist's learned curiosity. Realizing this, he shifted the topic to their shared acquaintances. There was no color to be found in Rupert's musings of life, family, and love. Seldom was there in anyone else's, either.

    Survival had stripped the vitality and vibrancy of most human emotions, replacing them with a languid sense of duty and dread. Most people were born after society's collapse, their understanding of what life was like confined to old literature and the occasional anecdote from anyone lucky enough to have survived into their older age. People cherished the elderly, instead of treating them like the burden Eloise made herself out to be. Love, like many other feelings, had since become nothing more than a luxury.

    More interesting was the branching of philosophy in starting families. There was a good population of believers in the imminent and eventual end of the human race against their otherworldly threat. Naturally, there also existed the people who truly believed humanity could endure, even outlast them. And then there were some zealots who actually bought into the idea of coexistence, like this hopeless way of life was sustainable in any form.

    The truth was that Rupert didn't know why he cared so much for his nephew, especially when a wolf spider had more nurturing instinct than himself. Even if a biological human instinct had come into play somewhere along the line, he could never align with the beliefs of men like Kurt and Deron, whose children were born solely for the purpose of propagating a dwindling species. The thought of children was foreign, yet enticing, and for years he would leave it at that—just a thought.

    “Ethan is a good kid,” Marie said, capturing the group's ambiguous attitude toward the troubled teen, “I think that you and Deron have raised him well…and I just hope that he winds up with someone…” Between that breath, Rupert had to wonder what Marie was thinking, if only she would verbalize half the thoughts that crossed her face never to be seen again. “Someone good,” she finished. “He deserves it. He really does.”

    Rupert nodded thoughtfully, choosing to find solace in her carefully-chosen words.

    "You can stay here if you’d like,” Marie offered, “but you’ll be alone, and I think it’d be lonelier here than it will be elsewhere.”

    "That's the point, sweetheart." Rupert retorted, a masochistic betrayal to his true need for company.

    “Or,” Marie continued, the click of her pen weaving a sound into the twinkle in her eye, “you could come stay at the Mark house. I don’t think Kurt will be in until the wee hours of the morning, so you could sleep in our bed and I could sleep Cart’s old mattress.”

    Bewildered, Rupert lifted a brow, in near-disbelief of the proposition. It was the last place anyone would expect Rupert, and some part of that struck a mischievous chord within the man. "How charitable," he said, his gruff tone a mixture of sarcasm and sincerity.

    She chuckled softly, then just as Rupert readied himself to raise an objection, added, “And I mean that genuinely.” She paused a beat, radiating an air of nonchalance. “Ah, and I suppose Helen will be there, too, in her own room.”

    And with that, his decision was made. With enough tact to keep himself from perking up like a puppy, Rupert feigned some semblance of a thought process, resting his chin between his thumb and his index finger. "Please, no need to go the extra mile for little old me," he joked, revived from his earlier haze in an instant, "I'll take the deal. Cart's mattress is perfect." He sat up straight for a moment before pushing off the creaking bed, rubbing his hands together like he was raring to go.

    "In that case, I'm ready when you are." He made a start for the door, hardly letting Marie gather her bearings before spinning back around and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Also, I think it'd be best if we don't go telling the whole town about this," he made sure to bring up, sounding vaguely sultry but by no genuine intention. "My brother, he... well, you know him." Rupert shrugged and weighed his hands, gritting his teeth to sell the apprehension of his convictions.

    Somewhere in there was a "thank you" for the compassion Marie had displayed, albeit there was certainly an ulterior motive to it in Rupert's eyes. Not that he was ever known as the type to think ahead, nor act upon any doubts that didn't endanger his life. A few years ago, Kurt may have been more of a threat, but even he was in no way immune to the creeping docility of older age.

    And from there, Rupert swore never to grow up.










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    • You’re just the same as your mother,
      her father always drawled when he was drinking his milk jug of hooch and downing large gulps that raised large, visible lumps in his throat as he forced them down. He never meant it as a compliment. Same type of bitch, he would say, same type of gossiping whore.

      Hearing her father say those things about her dead mother when he was drunk never made Marie feel great about herself, but as she’d aged, she had found herself finding a little bit of solace in the words that he hurled at her, like the gossiping, mischievous, pot-stirring nature of Marie was some kind of thread that connected her to her mother, to some greater past. Though Marie was nowhere near enough of a romantic or an air-head to get caught up sitting and thinking about it that way, there was something in her that recognized that truth: that this way of living was in her blood.

      It made it easier for her to excuse it away that way.

      Marie saw the shift on Rupert’s face as the offer she extended settled into his mind, and she suppressed a chuckle.

      "Please, no need to go the extra mile for little old me," Rupert said after a moment. "I'll take the deal. Cart's mattress is perfect."

      “Good,” Marie said, now allowing herself to smile pleasantly. She shrugged, then chuckled slightly as a thought crossed her mind, which she amusedly formed into words. “You ought to be glad that you didn’t jump at the opportunity to sleep in my bed. If my husband came home and found another — a younger — man in his bed, you might not have made it out of the house with all of your limbs. Or with your life.” She faced him for a moment to wink, then turned and approached the shelves of medicine to quickly make sure that everything was in its place. “Or worse, he wouldn’t realize,” she said, scanning the shelves to see if anything was obviously missing, “and then you’d wake up with Kurtis spooning you, and it would kill my self-esteem to know that you were stealing Kurt from me that easily.” For the sake of the joke, she tapped at her chin, “Hmm…but would that mean no more waking up to Kurt’s snoring…? In that case, come to think of it…are you sure you don’t want to take my bed?”

      A laugh bubbled from her, which gave her mischievous smile a second to slip across her lips as she faced away from Rupert.

      Rupert was going to be in her house; Helen was going to be in her house.

      Rupert, brother of Deron Frazier, was going to be in her house; Helen, sort-of-ex-wife of Deron, was going to be in her house.

      Was this not the perfect opportunity for something to go down? Something — anything?

      (Marie’s life needed a little bit of something interesting right now. Things were getting boring.)

      Finding nothing to note, Marie walked back in the direction of Rupert. “But yes,” she continued, “we’ll be glad to have you.”

      "In that case, I'm ready when you are,” he responded, and he walked past her for the door. Before she could turn and face him, his strong hand found her shoulder.

      Her brows knit together in confusion at the touch, and she moved her head backward.

      "Also, I think it'd be best if we don't go telling the whole town about this.” There was something written in his words that her husband would have probably nearly snapped about; she chuckled slightly. "My brother, he...well, you know him." Rupert shrugged, taking his hand away from her shoulder.

      “Oh, you know me,” Marie said, lathering on a syrupy smile that perhaps slightly betrayed the fact that what she was about to say would not be the truth, “I won’t tell a soul.”










      ♡coded by uxie♡

     



















    Rupert, with his unkempt appearance and tired eyes, stepped into the house behind Marie.
    The characteristic clomp of his boots sounded against the still air of the house, no doubt an unexpected departure from Marie's comparatively softer, generally more coordinated footsteps. He entered with a certain apprehension, hardly hesitating but still visibly alert for any number of characters lurking around the corner.

    One scan of the foyer and beyond revealed a set of minute differences from the last time Rupert had dared set foot inside. Soaking his surroundings like a sponge, his rough-hewn face remained solemn and neutral as if carved from stone. Politeness wasn't his motivation; curiosity drove him. Before acknowledging Marie, who was in the process of removing her coat, Rupert knelt down and ripped his boots off his aching feet. At last, relief.

    Tick-tick-tick...

    The sound, faint but unmistakable, held meaning. Without so much as a glance elsewhere, Rupert gently rubbed his back as though dusting off the wary gaze that had settled upon it. Inside, the ocean in his stomach was roiling, churning, and yet slowly sinking. It was more than mere nostalgia, for this home filled Rupert with a rush like no other. It was an overwhelming sensation.

    It was as if the walls remembered him, recognized his presence, and held him accountable for the secrets that had brought him here tonight.

    "So where's that wonderful mattress of Cart's you were talking about?" he asked, his voice tinged with exhaustion. With a sideways glance cast toward a door ajar, Rupert's eyes flitted swiftly around before rushing back to Marie. It was hardly enough to even get a glimpse at anything specific, but that wasn't the point anyway. With a squeezing swipe, he wiped off his budding smirk. Helen was feeling down, Marie had said earlier. "Positively glowing," she had added. Intriguing.

    Rupert drew his arms into the air and flexed them in an upward stretch, a satisfying, resounding pop permeating throughout the room. That's how quiet it was, and he loved it.

    Are you looking?

    "I could use a quick wash too—if you don't mind," he said with enough tact to omit the amount of sweating he'd done that day. "Deron had me ripping floorboards while he and the kid were going on about how this abandoned neighborhood was too 'quiet' and 'suspicious'. Can you believe that?" He found it utterly ridiculous that Deron and Cara would conjure up suspicions about the silence that enveloped the neighborhood. To him, it was just the natural consequence of neglect and time, just as their hysteria was a consequence of prolonged semi-peace.

    "Meanwhile I'm catching splinters for a craft project that won't even begin until next year unless the builders get their shit in order." Suppose there was a bit of Deron in him, after all. One would simply have to squint to see it.

    What a day it had been. And to think just a short while ago Rupert had let it get to him. A shiver of unease and a cold, shameful sweat ran down his spine as he recalled his earlier episode. That brat Ethan was definitely up to something stupid if he was anything like his mother, father, or uncle. Whatever unnerving prank it was he'd seen the boy enacting (covered in red, no less), lest his mind really was playing tricks.

    Regardless of the matter, he was feeling a lot better now. "Oh, but you must be exhausted," he added, a certain lightness finding itself back into his tone. "I'll quit troubling you. Go get your beauty sleep." He gave a wink. "Not that you need it." An impish grin found itself on his face, weathered and genuinely fatigued as it was.










    ♡coded by uxie♡

     



















    Jesse knew Cara.
    Not really because he wanted to, but by some twist of fate or whatever (though Jesse wasn’t sure he really believed in fate), he knew her like the back of his hand. Seeing her admit that she was feeling a way that he knew she was feeling, though, still gave him a sort of delight — a little haha you’ve got feeeeelings sort of thing, if you would.

    Of course, that delight was short-lived, and the question he’d asked her was turned back on him. "How do you suppose Bee's first big mission went? You should be glad my 'boy toy' is there to keep an eye on her. If it were up to me, he'd be here and you'd be out there rummaging for claw hammers in a hardware store somewhere."

    Jesse felt himself tense, and his heart kicked up in his chest. Quickly silencing those reactions with a sigh and a shrug, Jesse dismissively waved his hand in the air. “You know her,” Jesse said.

    Translation: I don’t want to think about it.

    If he thought about it in any capacity, he would wind up driving himself to concluding that the worst of the worst had happened to her — that maybe she’d lost an arm or a leg somewhere, or she’d been irrevocably emotionally traumatized and would have to be shut in one of those places where they put the people who couldn’t handle being around other people — or, even worse, that she’d enjoyed it and wanted to go back again.

    I’m eighteen, Jess, Bee had said as she prepared to leave, slinging her backpack over her back, I can handle it, as though she had any idea in hell what she was getting into. Jesse wished now that he’d shared with her sooner the things that he’d seen on the expeditions he’d been on, wished he’d described in greater detail the injuries that he’d sustained — the time that he almost lost his leg to infection, or the time that he’d had his forearm sliced open by a rogue arrow and thought he would bleed out. But when he’d told her, he had just been met with an eyeroll and some kind of dismissal of what he’d said. Something like, You stay playing games, Jesse, but nothing you’re coming up with now is going to keep me from going, you realize that.

    “Guess it’ll be cool to see her again.” His voice still had the same sullen, cool tone. “And Tai, too. But honestly, I woulda rather gone.” He scratched at his shoe for a moment, then grinned. “But they realized I’m too sharp of a shooter to waste on a mission like that. Gotta save me for the bigger stuff, ya know. Things that only people like me can handle.”

    "Actually, I'm really excited," Cara admitted, and a mocking smirk crossed across his face. "Don't act like you're not, too."

    “For Tai to come back?” Jesse teased. He clasped his hands at his cheeks and looked dreamily up at the greenhouse’s torn ceiling. “Oh, I can’t wait to see that dreamy hunk-cake back on base. Gets me all excited just thinking about it.”

    Deciding that the bit was over, he sighed deeply, dropping his hands down by his sides again. For a moment, he sat, a deep frown on his face and a sort of kneading ache in his chest.

    Make it back safe, Bee.

    Shoving his weight forward abruptly, he hopped up from his sitting position. He crossed his hands behind his head. “Eh, I’m heading to sleep.” He walked past Cara, then turned around to face her with a shrug of the shoulders. “Have fun being alone out here or whatever.”

    With that, he turned back around and started toward his home.

    And he tried not to think about Bee. He didn’t want to spend another night crying himself to sleep.










    ♡coded by uxie♡

     
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