In the Darkest Days

[Kazanna]

Derrick paused, the glance at her, he shook his head, muttering, "Ally, Don't shoot anything if you don't have to. The sound will carry for miles." He offered the knife back to her as he found the key he wanted. The one that would open the trailer, and then just beyond it, he found the key that would open the vehicle. He grinned in victory as he moved to the back of the trailer, and worked the key back and forth, opening the lock that held it shut. It opened with a creak and Derrick was rewarded with a number of military supplies he thought he'd never see again. He nodded and muttered, "Okay... Good..." He closed it, and locked it again, then moved to the vehicle's front, and began fiddling with the locks at that end.

 

[Sequoia]

She rolled her eyes. "I know, I'm not an idiot Derrick." She muttered. she took the knife and put it back in her belt.


Ally peeked over his shoulder, eyes widening as she saw all the amo and supplies. "We could live off that for months!" She exclaimed, eyes following him.


There was another rustle and Ally spun. It was a dog. Ally lowered her gun and held out her hand. The dog came over and sniffed her, wagging his tail. She petted his head. "Hi buddy!" she grinned when the dogs tail started wagging in earnest.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick froze at the sight of the dog, and nearly dropped the keys, he took a step back from it, muttering, "Ally... Move away from it." He slid his kukri out slowly, sliding the key into the lock of the armored vehicle slowly, he jiggled it until the lock clicked open and he was able to open the door. He hissed at Ally again, "Get away from the thing Ally, There are no dogs left. It's a Shifter. It has to be." He shuddered as he readied his knife. He had watched the demons kill off any dogs they could, it was a natural response, the dogs could tell what they were, and reacted poorly to them, attacking almost instantly when demons were around.

 

[Sequoia]

"Oh hush Derrick! It's just a dog!" She kneeled down next to the lab and riffled his neck. When Derrick said something about shifters Ally's eyes widened. "Derrick! There is no way it's a shifter. Look at his sweet face!" She lifted her hand off the animal to face Derrick. And that was when the change happened. It shed it's dog covering and grew, big and black, covered in oils. It breathed heavily and looked at Ally.


Ally stiffened when she realized her mistake. "Derrick..." she whimpered, not daring to move.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick moved forward, his large axe coming off of his back, he grunted and swung the thing in a downward arc, the weapon dropping through the creatures body as it shifted. It was vulnerable for those seconds during a shift, and Derrick knew it, the axe bit asphalt as it tore the creature in half. Derrick grunted, and put his shoulder against the corpse, pushing it apart. Shifters modified their bodies by regenerating rapidly and changing how the tissue strands developed, so as he separated the two halves from one another, he pushed forward to make sure they'd fall apart. He grunted again, raising the axe in a second sweep, he sliced it's head clean away, finishing it off. He stood over it, shaking, soaked in it's blood, he muttered, "There... Aren't... Any dogs left... They all died..." He was gasping for breath, he'd exerted himself a lot to kill the monster cleanly, and had succeeded, if just in time.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally was splattered with the beast's blood, her eyes screwed tightly shut. She opened them when Derrick spoke and ran forward. "Are you hurt? I'm sorry, I didn't believe you!" She said, cupping his face and trying to wipe away the blood. She hugged him tightly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she kept repeating.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick shook his head at her, "Don't be, You didn't know. It's information... Which most people don't have... I found a military group a while back... Before I came here." He wrapped an arm around her, letting out a sigh, he muttered, "I didn't think they'd ever replicate to dogs though..." He closed his eyes and released his hold on Ally after a moment, "Come on, were getting out of here." He turned towards the armored vehichle and pulled the door open again. It actually still had keys hanging from it's ignition.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally sniffed and kissed his cheek after he let go of her. "Either way, I should have listened to you and I'm sorry I didn't." She whispered. She glanced back at the carcass and shivered. That had been a close call... to close. She stepped back after he released her and wiped under her eyes. she smiled and climbed into the vehichle. She strapped her self in and waited for him to start it.

 

[Kazanna]

It took him a few tries before he realized the things battery was dead. Frowning, Derrick glanced down at the floor, a rotary handle with a crank was attached to it. He reached down and began to spin it rapidly, muttering, "I always thought these things were a joke..." He found a moment later, the joke of a part was in fact a very finely tuned piece of machinery that recharged the battery. On his next attempt to start it, the vehicle came to life.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally watched him try to turn it on, biting her lip. She grinned when she heard him mutter about the crank.


"Wouldn't you know it. Something our soldier knows nothing about! Even I knew you would have to charge it babe." She teased, wrinkling her nose at him. She looked out a window as the vehicle started. Her eyes widened. "Derrick! Hurry! There is a pck of sniffers running right for us!" She said, urgently.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick frowned and shook his head, "Armored vehicle, Sniffers aren't meant for anything but tracking. So a pack means they're wild. We're fine." He said calmly. He turned the vehicles wheel and the thing began to lumber forward towards the edge of the school, where the side gate was open. With a slight twist of his right hand, Derrick sealed the metal shutters over the viewports by turning another crank. Within a moment, the frontal, outside camera came online and Derrick muttered, "Alright. We're in business, just gotta find the river..." He glanced to Ally, "Find the map. There's a paper one somewhere in the front storage container."

 

[Sequoia]

Ally relaxed again, noting that the pack seemed less aggresive than normal. She leaned forward and rummaged throught the container. She pulled out a small rectangle of paper and opened it into a large map. She studied it silently before pointing north-west. "It's that way. We should come across it in about 50 miles. Then from there, its only a little bit to the cabin." She smiled at him, folding the map up again and sitting back in the seat.

 

[Kazanna]

Blinking at her, Derrick turned and looked over at the map, "Ally, that map is in kilometers. That's fifty klicks. So that's about 30 miles or so." He let out a slight snorting laugh before he remarked, "Military uses the metric system for everything but parts, It's so bastardized." He sighed and turned the vehichle in the direction they needed to go, driving in a haphazard series of turns to shake anything on their trail. Once they reached the river, he'd find a good place to ford the river, drive down at least a few kilometers, and then ford it again. He'd repeat the process a few times on their way towards the cabin.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally looked and realized he was right. "Damn military bastards!" She mumbled, wrinkling her nose at the map.


She folded the map and sat back in her seat, closing her eyes and sighing deeply. She pressed her hands to her belly and blew out before opening her eyes and smiling at Derrick. "Good to keep them off our trail." She remarked, whispering in the silence of the vehicle.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick laughed at her humorously, he shook his head, "Everything is confusing in the military Ally. You've got a thousand people that know better then you and none of them know what's going on." He said as he drove the vehicle towards the river. There were many low spots in the river basin, areas the river swelled and fell when it rain, so he drove through the areas he knew best and within a half hour, had their trail so wound up that the sniffers would be hunting them for weeks. He pulled the vehicle onto the main road near the towns edge and began driving on the opposite lane towards the forest preserve where his family had their old cabin. It took little more then a half an hour to reach the cabin in the armored vehicle, but Derrick had remained mostly silent during the drive. He'd been watching for signs of pursuit since they had begun driving. The vehicle was loud, loud enough it could be tracked. So he pulled it towards the edge of the house and muttered, "We'll have to cover it up... Somehow..."


The Cabin was a two story affair with multiple bedrooms. His father had bought the cabin kit years ago when he was a child and had it installed with not only the two main floors but also a basement and a tunnel leading from the basement to the nearby lake for easy access. Derrick couldn't recall how his father had paid for it all, just that it had been built without stress or worry and had been built like a forest bunker, to survive when everything went wrong. It had done just that in the apocalypse, and his Father's tall fence that surrounded the building had grown over with the hedge he'd designed into it.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally laughed with him, a sad smile crossing her face. she quickly chased it away with a mask of indifference and desperately hoped Derrick hadn't noticed. She hated keeping this secret from him but she knew she had to. If she told him, he would do something stupid and end up hurting himself.


she climbed out after him and spotted some ferns.


"Derrick! We can use the ferns?" She called, pressing her hand to her stomach again.


While she waited for his response, she took in the cabin, smiling at all the memories that they had shared her. She wished she was still as carefree and innocent now as she had been then.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick nodded at her, muttering, "Yeah, Cut some lower limbs off the neighboring trees too, It'll take a bit to get it done." He pulled the vehichle right up alongside the house. The front of it was as high as the floor of the upper story, and nearly made it to the balcony, so he slid it in right against the house. With careful driving precision, he wrapped the trailer around the back side of the house, so it came to a stop right next to the back door, skillfully allowing the thing to become a wall for the house. This was the only edge of the house that wasn't fenced in, so now there was a only a slight break in the defenses around the building. He shut the engine off and sighed, muttering, "A lot to do before it gets dark, we have... three, maybe four hours till then..."

 

[Sequoia]

Ally nodded and pulled a machete from her pack. she climbed a tree and cut through some of the branches, letting them fall. As soon as she had enough, she dragged them to the vehicle and started covering it, interspersing the branches with ferns. She would stop periodically to take a deep breath, wince, and press her stomach. She kept hoping Derrick wouldn't notice but they day was taking it's toll on her body. She knew is he found out and asked her, she would not be able to keep her secret.


After she had done enough covering, she carefully took a seat, wincing as she did, on the grass.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick had watched her, had noticed. He was no fool. So as she sat, he eyed her carefully, tying down the remaining points to hold the branches in place, to keep them green longer, to disguise the vehicle, he asked her, "So Ally, What are you not telling me. What are you going to regret not telling me about later when it bites you in the ass." They'd played this game before when they were younger, but Derrick was grown now, he didn't play the games anymore. He got straight to the point. It was that or things got complicated, and complicated caused death.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally's head shot up. She bit her lip and looked away from him, breathing in deeply.


"C-can we talk about this later. Inside." She begged, still not looking at him as she felt dread curl through her body. She soo did not want to talk about it.


Knowing Derrick though, he would pull it out of her so she might as well just tell him. She knew he would do something stupid however so she wanted to delay it as long as possible.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick looked around, there was little preventing the discussion, so he pulled the axe from it's banister and let it's head bite into the ground, He stared at her and shook his head, "Nope, Spill." He said flatly. The sun was beaming through the trees, illuminating the area around them.

 

[Sequoia]

Ally sighed and blinked back the tears threatening to spill.


"When you first left after enlisting...I was inconsolable, I turned to your friends for comfort. surly they had some to offer. I was wrong. Most of them turned away from me, claiming that they never liked me. Except for one. Alex. He...He comforted me and we grew close...too close. One night...he cornered me in an alleyway and....raped me." Ally's voice broke but she didn't stop. She had kept this secret for so long and now, the damn had burst.


"I never saw him again after that but a few months later...I found out I was...pregnant. I don't know how Alex found out but he did. He came back and he...cause me to miscarry. He didn't know that it was twins though and that one had survived...I gave birth to a son...and gave him up. I used to visit him all the time, promising that once I had my own place, mommy would take him home. He turned 3 years old today. I don't even know if he's still alive. I was never a proper mom to him and it eats away at me every day. I curse alex for taking away my other child. I still get pains because of the miscarriage. I didn't want you to know. I didn't even tell you."


She looked down, sobbing.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick remained silent through her explanation. He nodded towards her after a moment, remarking, "So the doctor that fixed you didn't do a good job I take it..." He sighed quietly, and muttered, "Alex... Alex Ruiz... Yeah, I watched a patrol kill him a while back. Almost tried to help the bastard. Kind of glad I didn't." He hefted his axe, and stepped close to her, offering her his hand, "Don't worry about it Ally. Comere." He opened his arms to her. If she'd rise, he'd embrace her, and hold her tightly.

 

[Sequoia]

"H-He's dead?" Ally asked, trembling.


She rushed into his arms.


"I just want to know if my baby's is alive...i want to know." She cried into his shoulder.


"You must hate me...I'm not..clean..." she added.

 

[Kazanna]

Derrick shrugged slightly as he held her in his arms. He gave her a gentle squeeze before he remarked, "Most of us are up to our eyeballs in filth Ally. It's not about what you've done. It's about what you do in the here and now." He released his grasp on her and smiled lightly, kneeling down so he could look her in the eye. "You need to understand though, We can't go looking for him. It'd kill the both of us just to find out if he was alive. You gotta move on. Most of the kids were early to be sent to the camps. They were smart too, they relocated us across entire countries." He had a look of concern in his face, but he was sincere in what he said.