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Can I come and walk you home?
I’m not gonna wanna be alone.
An hour’s drive out from the Six Fingers, Sam’s hands have mostly stopped shaking on the wheel. You watch him in the driver’s window’s reflection, his face there and gone and there and gone. Overlayed with forest or open field or zoms in the distance as his voice so often is. You direct him to turn when Janine, talking through an info exchange with the Builder, forgets. Your hand on his shoulder, frosting it with sand and salt. Left here. Left here, again. Right coming up.
Maxine’s sitting shotgun, her arm bandaged deftly and one-handed by Janine in the first five minutes of the ride (the other held a gun on the Builder). Red seeps through it now, but not too much, you think. She keeps trying at pinging Abel, waiting for you to cross into range.
Up ahead, a deer bounds across the road and into the forest on the other side. A pair of crawlers drag themselves onto the road after it, and Sam stops the car just short of rolling over them.
“Sam, we’ve got to keep going,” says Maxine. Her voice takes on a tone it wears more and more the longer you know her. It reminds you of having blood drawn—it means this will hurt you, but it has to be done. “I think we’re just about to pass into range, and we’ve got to warn Abel about Sigrid.”
“Just drive over them, love,” offers the Builder. “Crawlers like these, rate of decomp, they’re barely speedbumps.”
Sam closes his eyes in the window, but reopens them almost immediately. He gives himself a little shake, rolls his shoulders back. “Right,” he says, and touches the gas. “Yeah, speedbumps.”
“No, Mr. Yao, you were quite right to stop,” says Janine, and the car hops to a halt again. “Running them over could damage the vehicle and prevent us from arriving in time to stop the Minister from taking Abel. Every second is valuable—I won’t have an engine coated in melted zombie intestines slowing our pursuit. Runner Five, please clear a path for us.”
You get out, take your axe in hand and walk on ahead. The crawlers don’t notice you right away—you’re soaked through with seawater and sand from the caves. You look like a Wakened Warrior or a concrete-dipped ghost. Maybe you should start practicing your Fimm voice.
You look back at the car like you’d said the last bit out loud and Sam might’ve heard it, but he’s got his eyes closed again in the driver’s seat. Maxine’s saying something to him; her hand’s on his. You test the axe’s weight in your hand, rub a thumb over the rough spot where you re-carved your number a few weeks back.
The crawlers palm your sneakers, edge earnestly nearer. You’ve got no problem using the axe on them, you tell yourself, but you put the axe back in its holster and coax them off the road anyway.
You lead the zoms a little ways into the forest, until you can’t hear the car’s engine. One of them’s got an eyeball dangling out by a pink spaghetti string of an optic nerve. Sara had hated those ones, but she’d always pointed them out anyway. You split their skulls.
Behind you, the ocean’s peeking through gap-toothed glen. You keep your back to it while you wipe down the axe. It feels like now’s the time for Moonchild (or Sara, if she was still there) to turn up and give you advice. Those two’ve started up a Runner Five Wiki-How in your head. How To Be Brave When You’re About To Drown. How To Stop Your Friend From Going Grey (For Now). Maybe they’ve got a How To Comfort Your Best Friend When He’s Struggling To Forgive Himself But You Haven’t Forgiven Yourself Yet So How Can You Possibly Advise Him On That In Any Meaningful Way article. Seems right up Sara’s alley, you think. But nobody comes, and Abel’s waiting, so you head back through the forest.
When you get back to the car, Janine’s holding the driver’s door open and arguing with Sam.
“I have little doubt of your driving abilities, Mr. Yao, but the facts are that we must return to Abel as quickly as possible and that of the two of us, I have significantly more experience in evasive driving,” she says.
“Evasive driving? They’re ahead of us—it’s just driving, Janine. I can drive.” Sam’s fingers fan open on the wheel and then grip it tightly again. “I’m fine. Honestly.”
“Whether or not you’re fine is only one consideration of many, Mr. Yao. Back seat. Now,” says Janine. Her jaw is tighter than it was when you left. “Runner Five, you take the middle seat in the back—do keep an eye on Mr. Sissay. He may say he wants to help us, but we all know how reliable the words of double agents are.”
“That’s unnecessary,” calls Steve from the back. “Suit yourself,” he adds as you take the middle seat, gun on him.
You drive on. Sam leans his head against the window, his knee bouncing against yours. A little avalanche of sand falls between you. You offer your hand and he rests his in your palm.
“God, Five, you’re freezing,” he says. He pulls his hoodie over his head and pushes it into your hands. You wedge your pistol between your leg and Sam’s and put the hoodie on.
He rubs the sides of your arms and a bit of the cold seeps out. “Is that better?”
“Sam,” you say, soft. He fusses with the hoodie some more; you let him.
“Mm.” He tugs the hood forward a bit, down over your forehead, but doesn’t meet your eye.
“Maxine’s right. You couldn’t have known," you say.
He nods. His knee bounces faster. You feel stupid almost immediately, because you know the feeling—it doesn’t matter, really, that he couldn’t have known. He knows now. So you nod too, pick at a bit of fossilized marmite on the sleeve until it gums up.
It’s quiet in the car but for the engine’s rattle and the dimmer and dimmer crash of the ocean, and you’re not good with words. But god, you want to give him something. You just don’t want it to be bullshit.
“It hasn’t changed the way I feel about you,” you say. “Nothing ever could. This doesn’t have to be the end of you, Sam.”
He squeezes your hand. “Thanks, Five,” he says quietly, and looks out the window again.
“You know, love—” the Builder starts, but Janine suddenly takes a sharp left and his head hits the window like an iron sparrow.
“All right, Sissay?” says Maxine. She doesn’t turn around.
“Ow!—that really hurt, De Luca!” The Builder presses an open palm to the crown of his head. You’re pretty sure that that crack in the window wasn’t there before. “…Ma’am.”