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The sun had set an hour ago.
Thirty minutes before that, the scanners went on the fritz.
So ninety minutes, then. It’s been ninety minutes without a single sign of Runner Five.
Sam slumps over his comm’s desk, one ear of his headset pressing uncomfortably into his forearm. He stares blankly at his monitors, numb to the static screens. The cameras are blind, the scanners less than useless; not unlike how he feels at the moment, actually. He doesn’t know if Five is even alive, but he keeps talking.
It’s all he can do.
Hours go on. All of the others who kept vigil beside him- Maxine, Runners Four, Eight, and Seven- have gone to bed. They have their own runs to worry about in the morning, especially if-
No. Sam doesn’t think it. He can’t.
The farthest reaching cameras outside of Abel are starting to pick up the first zoms shambling toward the gate. They’ll have to close up soon. He tells Runner Five that. Keep running. Just. Please. Keep running.
Sam rambles, desperate to fill the airwaves with something, anything but the endless silence that darkness brings. God, not even the Major knows everything that he’s spilling out into the void. He’s never told anyone about his parents, about his sister.
No one… Except for Alice. His Runner Five.
Of course. It’s fine to tell Alice about it. She already knows, from those long nights in the station, the afternoons in the quad. He can’t hear her, but she has to be listening. They’ll talk about it some more later, when she comes back. Alice always makes it back.
His eyes droop. He’s so tired that his words are slurring, punctuated by deep, bodily yawns. But he can’t sleep. He has to watch. He has to hold on. For Alice.
A knock sounds at the door. It opens before he can answer.
“Mr. Yao?”
Sam doesn’t move, except to scowl into his folded arms. “Janine.”
“Mr. Yao, the zombies are getting closer. We… The gates must close in ten minutes.”
“Is that all?” Sam’s voice croaks from grief and the hours of uninterrupted talking. “Thank you, Janine, but I’ll stay put for a while longer.”
Janine’s face should have invoked empathy, but it simply made him angry. How dare she give up? How dare she lose hope when it was her damn mission, her stupid mistake, that got Runner Five into this mess to begin with?
Runner Five. Sam runs a hand through his hair and groans. Not his Runner Five. Not Alice. The other Runner Five. His fourth bloody Runner Five. Not Alice. Alice isn’t coming back. And his friend is out there, either dead or dying, and all because Janine couldn’t- becausehe couldn’t-
A hand on his shoulder. “You’re exhausted, Sam. You need to sleep.” Then a whisper. “I-I’m sorry.
Sam shakes her off and glares into the dim space around them.
"So sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
He doesn’t want to forgive her. He wants to shout at her for letting Runner Five disappear from their sensors. From his scope of perception. From his protection. From his world.
But now she’s looking at him with those red eyes, and he knows then more than ever that he isn’t alone in this. They both feel it, him and Janine; the guilt of sending a friend to certain death and being helpless to do anything about it.
He has to face reality. It’s astronomically improbable that anyone returns from an overnight stay outside the township.
“Maybe…” Sam reluctantly sits up and puts a hand to his headset. “Hey, Runner Five. They- They’re telling me I should probably go soon.” He swallows thickly. “We’re losing hope over here, Five. Why am I even still talking to you? You probably can’t hear me anymore… If you ever could, that is.”
And that’s what’s eating him up. It’s what’s been eating him up for months, the futility of flinging his voice out into the unknown while his body stays in place, unable to do any damn bit of good when the runners are in danger. He takes a deep breath and continues, already reaching up to switch off the monitors. It’s just routine now. The same spiel he gives every time someone’s spotted outside the walls at night. “But if you are still out there… And not gone grey, obviously… Try to hole up in a bottleneck somewhere until we can-”
Janine gasps beside him and Sam’s hand freezes on the off button. He sees what she sees, via the gate’s front security camera: a figure flying through the shambling undead in a direct line toward Abel.
He dares to hope. “Wait. Janine, do you see? Is that…?” Sam’s heart leaps into his throat. “It is! Runner Five! Runner Five, I’ve got you on camera! I can see you!” He’s clutching at his headset, at Janine, at anything he can reach, trying to contain himself. “You’re alive. Thank God, you’re actually alive!”
The figure on the screen lunges forward, sprinting full throttle toward the gates. Sam can’t believe his eyes. Runner Five is running faster than he’s seen anyone run, faster even than Alice. Runner Five is almost home.
Sam finds that he still can’t stop talking to Runner Five. He’s repeating himself, thanking whatever God there may be in this apocalypse, practically singing how relieved he is that Runner Five is close, so close, another runner hasn’t been lost after all, he hasn’t lost another friend to this disaster. He hears Janine screeching outside the shack, demanding the gates to remain open, ordering cover fire- and there it is, the bullets shattering all around the gate as Runner Five breaks through.
Sam doesn’t know quite what he’s doing until his headset is on the desk and he’s down at the gate, still screaming to Runner Five. He’s the first to tackle the runner, wrapping Five in his arms and squeezing as if he’ll never let go.
“You’re home, Five,” he chokes, burying his face into the runner’s shoulder. “We’ve got you, you made it, you ran on home, just like I said.” And he had said it, hadn’t he? Run on home, be safe, just keep running. He’s said it a thousand times, and he’ll say it a million more if it means that his runner makes it back to him.
There’s a pause, and then Five’s arms return the embrace much more fiercely than Sam anticipates. They really haven’t talked all that much, after all, and Sam knows that the runner is exhausted from sprinting that last stretch.
The three little words that are whispered in his ear, however, hold more weight than all past conversations between them combined. Three little words that he had wanted so badly to hear from all of the runners he’d lost, but had given up on hearing until this moment.
“I heard you.”