[center][hider=Concerning:][left][@Xandrya][/left][/hider][/center]Sleeping was out of the question. His shoulders were too taut, too wound-up. Since he lacked an appetite too, he did the only other thing which he knew would peel some of the stress away: retreating eastward, away from the stench of the dead, and flicking at the carton until a cigarette poked its head out from its den, like a marten blinking at the sun. For a moment he was amazed that he had two left, and enough butane in his lighter to feed them. The Zone must have quenched his addiction some, overwhelming the withdrawal symptoms with all other manners of pain and discomfort, such that he hadn’t very much time to notice the headaches.

He had burned halfway through the stick already when he heard someone coming; not from the treeline but the building, so the tension, all mounted up again in his shoulders, dispersed quickly. They must have located him by the glowing embers, whereas the shadows draped over their faces were not so generous in kind. He knew not who approached until he heard their voices. Of course, throughout the firefight the possibilities had been whittled down a good deal.

“We need to talk, boss.”

“Ah, Ray. And who’s this with you? Kenny?“

“Put down the cigarette,” said Eirik.

A pause. “All right.” While one hand moved to his lips, and then the nearby pile of concrete slabs, leaving the tobacco to smolder and die on top of it, Marcel moved his other hand to his coat pocket.

Suddenly he was looking down the plastic barrel of a gun, thick and toy-like. Eirik’s Glock, no doubt. No one heard it as it was drawn. “Leave the Derringer, too. Come on. We’re taking a walk.”

They headed for the tunnel. The embers glowed in the nickel finish of the little pocket-pistol as plumes of acrid smoke dissipated into the air; all the evidence that they had been there.

For lack of a kerosene lamp or even a candle, they left the doors open, so they could see each other as they, no doubt, bartered their demands. Marcel thanked them for that, privately. Already he thought of how he would get that gun away from Eirik, turning it on Ray first and then its original owner. The others would have heard the shots, so he wouldn’t be able to go back for his pack. If he conserved bullets then he could walk all through the night, and the next day too, and probably reach Donnersberg even on an empty stomach. That’s if the boars and the wanderers left him alone. Trade a bullet or two and his last cigarette for a meal, a canteen, maybe a piece of advice…

“So what are we talking about?” The gun had vanished somewhere at Eirik’s side. The idiot’s arm must have gotten tired.

“Amelia.”

Was that all? “What about her?”

“’What about her?’ he asks. What about her? We need to know whether you’re letting her come with us to our new place.“

“Our new place?”

They looked between each other. “Don’t play dumb, boss,” Ray said. “She led them straight to us. By now their leader knows where we are. And he knows how many men his managed to kill. He’ll be dropping by soon to finish what he started.”

Marcel looked distant, his thoughts elsewhere, which angered both his mutineers, but Eirik composed himself sooner. “And before you ask: yes, we have proof it was her,” he said. “Johnny saw her in the courtyard, before he took a slug to the liver. If you get to him before the gangrene does, he’ll tell you this much: the shooting started once she showed up, and then she escaped using the backdoor.”

“And you didn’t say anything til now?” Marcel swelled his breast out; a futile gesture, but the others seemed to appreciate this display of bravery, hollow as it was.

Ray shrugged. “Didn’t think she had the balls to show her face here again. Thought we was done with her.”

“I see.”

“Look, boss.” Though Marcel flinched away from the hand as it tried to land on his shoulder, and Ray withdrew it thus, their eyes met. Marcel must have been listening carefully, grateful to learn he wasn’t going to be shot—yet. The gravity of his words, the decisions he had to make, weighed down on him, so he listened as Ray spoke down to him like the captain had already been thrown off the ship, and shouted down to him over the side of the hull. “The boys have agreed it’s not safe. They don’t know about Amelia, but they know Dmitriy is coming back to put an end to our ‘business relationship.’”

“She probably told him about the tunnel, too. We won’t be able to defend against an attack on two fronts, not with the few guys we’ve got left,” Eirik added. Maybe the Glock had been holstered already. Marcel couldn’t tell but he wished so badly that he could, craving that knowledge more than he’d craved any cigarette in his life.

“So what do you want me—well, uh, what are we going to do?” Marcel asked.

“Leave her.”

“We know you love her, boss. The way you look at her in that sugary, bullshit way. We won’t ask you to blow her brains out while she sleeps, even though that would be the smart thing to do. But she can’t come with us.”

“We’re at the ends of our ropes. Anyone who’s our leader has to do what’s best for the whole crew,” Eirik said. “ Right now that means cutting a traitor loose. Prove that you’re willing to do that, or we’ll choose someone who can.” There it was: a glimpse, a flashing image of that black plastic slide. Eirik had brought it up to the side of his head as if to scratch his ear with it.

Marcel had to think about it, but when he gave his answer, they must have approved. Because when Amelia awoke he was gone, along with everyone else and everything which they could carry; the food, the ammo, all hauled away in backpacks and a wheelbarrow. There weren’t enough men to take it all, of course; not the supplies they’d hoarded, not the personal effects of the men who had died. (In the pile which had been stacked up with their bodies, they had begun to stink, bellies bloated with fly eggs.) Their weapons were there, though the magazines and firing pins had been taken, and their belongings had been consolidated into a few backpacks, stacked along the wall nearest the cold, dead campfire. She was alone. She was alone with the corpses and all the remains of their micro-society, and if she looked to the tunnel, though the Derringer had been reclaimed, she saw the half a cigarette on the ground, brushed off the concrete by a gust of spring wind. And although he left behind no letter, no bittersweet farewell, she knew between whose lips it had once been clenched. What last words would he have wished to impart, had she only the time to listen?[hr][hr][hr][center][i][color=785D62]M[/color][color=7E6566]e[/color][color=856D6A]a[/color][color=8B756E]n[/color][color=927D72]w[/color][color=988576]h[/color][color=9F8E7A]i[/color][color=A78E7B]l[/color][color=AF8F7D]e[/color][color=B88F7F].[/color][color=C09081].[/color][color=C89083].[/color][/i][/center][hr][hr][hr][center][hider=Concerning:][@Fyre Unholy][@TemplarKnight07][/hider][/center]When Daniel awoke he found his knees pulled up against his chest, and his head, his tender head, cracked so easily like the mud of a dried-up riverbed, cradled between his hands.  This position is reserved for two kinds of people—the foetal and the forsaken—and he realized he must have been drinking again, and was loath to rattle his skull around as a test as to which he was. He began to rise from the couch and when a thunderbolt shot through his head, he had his answer. Upon the floor was his collection of glass bottles, and one or three of them must have been new drops added to this veritable ocean. Still, he pushed himself off the plushy gravity of the stained and dusty cushions. He checked his watched and it was much too early. Something must have woken him.

That’s right. As the fog of sleep melted from his consciousness, as his whereabouts sharpened around him, he remembered a noise. It was sharp and crackly, though not at all like the noises in his head, the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome]needly buzzing[/url] which sometimes stabbed at his grey matter when he attempted to fall asleep. It was something external; it echoed off the hills and bounced around between the broken windows of the village.

He tried to walk, but felt too much like a caterpillar turned to mush in its chrysalis. He realized he probably ought to pull his pants up before trying to walk, or at least his oiled jumpsuit. So he walked into the bathroom and pissed in the corner, and then he pulled them up, and cinched the belts around his waist and shoulders. Maybe it had warmed a bit, so he stuck his hand out a window to check, and decided promptly to zip all the way up. The dregs of winter hadn’t evaporated yet from his glass. His skin shrank when the cold struck it.

When he emerged from the house and walked down the road he was “naked”; he hadn’t brought his weapons along. Who needed them in this dump? As long as no one rummaged through his room—as long as it was, incontrovertibly, [i]his[/i] room—he wasn’t much concerned with who did what around here. Usually it was none of his business.

This tended to change when Max needed something.

“Holy shite!” Daniel exclaimed, as, although he was far enough not to hear what went on near the [i]biergarten[/i], he saw that the barkeep was outside, barking at this and that. Something had driven the fat badger from his den, rare enough a sight in itself, which put into perspective for Daniel how very seriously it all was being taken. He wasn’t the only one who had heard the noise, then, although the fat man and his guards fretted over it more so than the drinkers nearby.

As this figure, baggy and tattered, lumbered down the road, out from the village which served the community as a sort of ramshackle hotel, those near the bar meanwhile, and even those still inside, were inundated with Max’s excess of obscenities. Who dares? asked he, in his vicious dialect; disturbing his peace, his profits; letting the Zone’s violent diseases spread out over its body, its infection reaching even his humble empire there in the extremities?

“You want someone scouting around, boss?“ Crow asked.

“Hmm! Don’t trouble yourself. That looks like Barber down the road. I’ll make him do it. Bitchwork. You climb back up the tower and keep the customers safe.“ He turned to Andrew. “Are you sure no trouble followed you here?” A silly question, perhaps, since Andrew had arrived from the west, and the explosion from somewhere to the north; but anything like this could spoil the people’s appetites, notwithstanding the dangers which naturally followed stray bullets and bits of shrapnel.[hr][hr][hr][center][i][color=785D62]M[/color][color=7E6566]e[/color][color=856D6A]a[/color][color=8B756E]n[/color][color=927D72]w[/color][color=988576]h[/color][color=9F8E7A]i[/color][color=A78E7B]l[/color][color=AF8F7D]e[/color][color=B88F7F].[/color][color=C09081].[/color][color=C89083].[/color][/i][/center][hr][hr][hr][center][hider=Concerning:][@SilverFallen][@ TheMadAsshatter][/hider][/center]Speaking of people…

Whatever language they spoke, it was Latinized. Romantic. Maybe a dialect of Italian, or some-such. There were at least three and maybe more, and silence punctuated their presence more so than the words or the footfalls themselves.

Maybe they watched the farmhouse, with its crumpled silo and its tall, wild fields, all grown over with grass and spring onions. They bickered a little. If they had considered going inside then they had deemed it not worth the time, it seemed; after all, such a place, so close to the road, so easy to find, could not have anything of value inside it anymore. Everything useful was already stripped away, right down to the rusting tools, probably refurbished long ago and repurposed for sawing through fence links and snapping old, abandoned padlocks.

By the time Neasa and Scott were outside, the visitors were already down the road, heading north. They could still see them. They traveled north, toward Wiesbaden and Frankfurt. Toward the center.