Aegis
Dreamer
Lincoln
The Night Before the End of Skip
It was night by the time the two met again. Tanner had spent the better part of the day considering how they were even going to get into the locked cage to begin with, and decided they’d simply bash the lock. He wasn’t exactly a skilled locksmith– Connor may have been able to do it, but not him. Then, there was the issue of weapons. That proved to be the easier of the two problems as he simply snagged a couple from the wall guard shack on the extra shift he asked to pick up earlier that day.
Everything was perfect, or as perfect as it could be.
The boy sat outside the rabbit cage draped in the shadow of the night. Tanner had leaned against it and held his weight loosely on the fingers he interlaced with the chain– his face scrunched in clear thought.
Minnie had briefly considered not coming. She felt a bit sick, imagining what they were about to do next. She got changed and got into bed, like she did any other night, then waited. She stared at the ceiling, her hands resting on her stomach to try and soothe the churning. Cabrera was gonna be mad… but why did that matter? She was just as mad at Cabrera! But Xander might be mad, too… she was putting herself in danger by getting in that cage, and she was breaking the rules and risking angering their new dictator.
Haewon and Xander snoring was her sign to go. She slipped out of bed, pulled a pair of proper trousers on, grabbed a pair of shoes and headed to the meeting place. She hadn’t been out at this time at night since she’d arrived at the school. She didn’t exactly have a strict bedtime, but there was no need to move at night anymore. She was safe, she wasn’t travelling, she might as well spend the night relaxing.
She quietly made her way through the school and outside. Tanner had said he would sort out all the logistics - the weapons, how they were getting in, how they’d actually do it. She just had to show up. She spotted the dark silhouette of his shape leaning against the rabbit cage. The rabbits were long asleep by then, huddled in their hutches.
“Tanner–” She called out at a whisper, tentatively heading over.
Tanner’s eyes snapped over to the source of a whisper, Minnie shrouded in understandable worry and anxiety. The boy sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils before letting loose his grip on the fence and turning toward his friend. He whispered back, “Hey– are you okay? Are you sure you want to do this?”
Tanner knew that this was a dangerous undertaking. There was no denying the sense of impending doom that churned at his stomach and clutched his heart in a terrifying grasp, but he could get through that for Minnie. So, that only left her resolve.
Minnie swallowed before nodding. They’d come this far, Tanner had put all this work into doing this, she didn’t want to let him down. She’d never be ready to do it, so they just had to get it over with. She took a shaky breath, pulling something from her boot. A knife. The same knife she’d used to maim him almost two months ago. The knife his friend had ripped from her hands.
“You’re coming in with me, right?” She asked, keeping her voice low.
“Yeah, I’m not gonna leave you hanging, or make you do this on your own Minnie.”
As he spoke, the boy approached her and loosely gripped out at her fingers holding both their hands by the tips slightly above their hips. It wasn’t meant to be romantic nor was it meant to offend. The boy kept a bright, brilliant smile as he let the moment endure for as long as Minnie would allow it– his face the most accurate recreation of Connor’s reassuring demeanor as he could manage at thirteen.
“I hope… that was okay.”
After a pregnant moment, Tanner let their hands drop; he hoped that was reassuring or that she felt better, but he didn’t know. She had a knife in her other hand, having come prepared, so that gave Tanner the choice between a tire iron or a lead pipe. Choosing the lead pipe, The Boy tucked the tire iron into his belt just in case, and nodded for Minnie to follow behind him quietly.
Minnie appreciated the gesture, letting go of his hand as she felt his grip loosen. She swallowed, adjusting her grip on her knife as she followed after him, anxious her sweaty palms would let it slip from her hands.
As they grew closer, the familiar gargles became audible, now much louder without the sound of the gardeners to drown it out. She never got used to it. She felt sick every time she heard it, but it was much worse knowing what they were about to do. Without any humans to attract him, Nate wandered aimlessly around his prison, in search of anything remotely edible. As their scent drew closer, he slammed his body into the mesh of his cage, clawing at them as they approached. He followed them around the outside of his container as they headed for the padlocked door.
Tanner watched the way that the thing’s moans crawled around under her skin and left her on edge. It wasn’t pleasant– that was for sure. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to look at one of them and see someone he kne–
Maybe he did. However, it wasn’t the same way. Her hatred would help her through this and so would he.
The Boy stepped up to the door as Nate’s corpse followed them along. It sat on the other side of the chain door with only the lock that Tanner sought to destroy between them, but all that meant was that he was going to have to be quick. In a wide swing upward, The Boy brought down his lead pipe against the lock and smashed the thing from its place in the handle; the sound of something smashing against the fence was all-too-normal having a Zom in there for so long. Muscles screamed and bone quaked as the contact of forceful metal on metal was enough to leave him shaken to his physical core. However, now was no time to tend to his own pain– he was here to help Minnie deal with her pain.
The Zom smashed against the door one last time, sending it open as he stumbled out of his cage and into the courtyard. Tanner wrenched the pipe back and swung it upward clocking Nate across the chin eliciting a sputter of dried blood as his corpse tripped backward over the concrete and onto its back a couple feet inside. Nate’s Zom had aged, slowed. It was dumb. In a show of confidence to Minnie, Tanner stepped into the cage with The Zom. Nate tried to get up onto its knees and eventually its feet, but each time Tanner would simply throw a kick out at its elbow and knock him to his back once more. After a few rounds of this, Tanner ventured into the cage deeper allowing Nate to his feet. The Zom trailed behind after The Boy, but as slow as it was he simply managed to avoid it.
Tanner slapped Nate's hand with the pipe and snapped several fingers backward as the pain seemed to anger The Zom sending it into a fit of growls, but no amount of simulated emotion could reach The Boy. Pipe met bone once more as Tanner bashed at the thing’s knee and sent it tumbling onto its stomach. The Zom screeched out and swiped its hands out at Tanner, yet he simply planted his steel-toed boot in its face and swiped its few remaining teeth from its gums as it plopped over in a pool of its own blood– not dead. Nothing Tanner had done could be considered real damage against a Zom. Sure, he had hurt it in a few ways, but it's not as though he had bashed its knees in or– better yet, its brain. No, that was all for Minnie.
It would’ve appeared completely psychotic, what he was doing to Nate by leading him around only to smash him down, were it not for the distance present in Tanner’s cold eyes. His body language was loose with slack shoulders accompanied by unbothered breathing– almost overconfident, but there was real experience behind his movements that were something akin to handling a wild animal. From Tanner’s point of view, Nate was just a Zom: a threat, something that would kill him at worst, and a rabid animal at best. There was no need for remorse in his mind.
“Okay Minnie, get in here.”
He beckoned her with the swing of his arm toward himself.
Minnie had been watching from behind the mesh, keeping her distance from the door. The thin layer of metal made her feel detached from the scene before her. Tanner was doing the dirty work, she was just a bystander… but she knew it would be her turn eventually.
She anxiously took a step inside, clutching onto her knife with both hands. That thing stared up at her, its mouth hung open, gums dripping with old, black blood. Somehow, he was less disgusting than the day she had met him. She stood by Tanner’s side, watching it try and claw its way over to her.
“I want the pipe.”
Tanner seemed a bit confused as she had brought her own weapon, but he obliged nonetheless, “Okay, here.”
The Boy handed it over to her by the part he had been using by the handle letting his hands soak in the blood at the bludgeoning end.
Minnie took it from his hands, flicking the blade of her knife back in and tucking it into her pocket. She adjusted her grip on the pipe, staring down at the creature at her feet. She wondered if this was how he felt, standing over her sister, planning his next move. Her nose scrunched up in disgust. He deserved every bit of what she planned to do to him.
She stepped forward, pressing her foot against his shoulder and turned him onto his back. She pressed the ball of her foot against his neck, pressing down until the wet noises erupting from his throat became hoarse. She remembered trying to scream as he leaned his weight against her throat, his fingers digging into her skin. Was this what it felt like to him? His broken fingers grazed her leg, trying to claw at the denim of her jeans. She felt each muscle in his neck squirming beneath her foot. She shuddered, shoving him back and taking a step away.
She took a deep breath, raising the pipe above her head and slamming it down on his head. His skull cracked under the weight but it wasn’t enough, his arm reaching for her ankle. His head crunched beneath the force, reverberating up her arms and through her body. She brought it down again, and again, and again, letting out a battle cry with each hit. She wasn’t sure how many times she beat him, but soon she was hitting more concrete than she was skull. She took a wobbly step back, the pipe clattering to the ground as she tried to catch her breath. Her hands trembled as she wiped the sweat and old blood from her cheek. Her arms ached, her old wounds burning. Her fingers still buzzed from the force of the lead pipe against solid bone.
Tanner watched in attentive silence as he drew the tire iron, and watched for any potential dangers to her. It was unneeded. She gracefully took after his example and manhandled the Zom with relative ease– her anger showing in the violent quickness of her blows. Then, she went to town. The gruesome brutality and emotion she transferred from pipe to skull was enough to leave The Boy awestruck.
Her vicious attack continued and continued until Nate’s head held a closer resemblance to ground beef than a human, but she eventually tired and dropped the pipe to the ground. She had been roaring– screaming out her battle cry. That was not a noise normal for the night. The guards would be coming, and they needed to be somewhere else and then back in their beds as quickly as possible.
Tanner ran up to her in her moment of catharsis and snatched her bloodied, sweaty hands, “We have to go. NOW!”
He whipped around holding her by the wrist and took off running into the school, “Where’s a good place to hide, clean up, and then get back to our beds as quickly as possible?”
Minnie swallowed the bile rising in her throat as he grabbed her, snapping her out of her daze. She ran after him, leaving the lead pipe behind.
“Uhhh–” She murmured, her thoughts running at a mile a minute, “There’s a hose in the farm– the one in the sports hall.”
She took the lead, pulling Tanner up to a fire exit. She scraped her trainers on the mat outside in an attempt to remove some of the guts from her soles. She led him inside and up some of the more secluded staircases she’d discovered during her explorations of the school, eventually taking him to the drain against the back wall. She opened the faucet to the hose, rinsing her hands underneath the stream of ice cold rainwater. Her hands were shaky, shivering under the water, the hose itself trembling in her grip.
“What do I do with my shoes?” She whispered, the white tongue of her trainers stained a dark brown.
There were few words exchanged as they fled from the scene, and each corner they rounded seemed like it may be their last. However, they made it to the hose at the back of the farm in the sports hall. He managed to avoid getting too much blood on him during the fight, but he still ran his bloodied fingers through the rainwater as she held the hose. Tanner’s shirt had a couple drops of viscera, but if he tucked his shirt they could be hidden well enough.
“Uh, do you have any other shoes? If not, we could try bleach– they’re already white.”
“I have others– where do we hide them?” She asked. Part of her wanted to go up to the roof and huck them as far as she could into the surrounding woods, but one slip up and there’d be a bloody shoe in the courtyard.
Unlike Tanner, Minnie had been splattered in guts, staining her shirt and jeans. She looked down at herself, taking a shaky breath.
“We have to get rid of all of it…” She murmured, the weight of what they had done… what she had done, finally setting in.
“There’s a jumpsuit in the storage cupboard,” She told him shakily, jerking her hands to dry them before quickly making her way over.
She soon emerged from the storage cupboard, once full of mats and sports equipment, in a jumpsuit a few sizes too big. She held her soiled clothes at an arms length to avoid staining the garden’s property. It would do until she could get back to her room.
Tanner kept his eyes trained on any possible entrance to their temporary fortress as Minnie changed. Eventually, she popped back out in clothes that were obvious, but at least not covered in blood. Okay, okay. Where to get rid of everything?
“Well... there’s the body pile where we put the Zoms we kill--I could take them for now, and then next shift I’ll dump it in the pile. Bloody clothes blend in perfectly.”
Minnie felt relief as he explained his plan, nodding in response. She kicked her shoes off, collecting her soiled garments in a pile for him to take.
“Thank you…”
Tanner rolled up his sleeves and took the pile from her. If he wore these clothes to work tomorrow, the blood wouldn’t look too suspicious. He killed Zoms all the time out there. The Boy gave Minnie one last smile for the night, “Okay, this is where we separate for now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Without another word, the two disappeared into the night.
