Chapter Text
There was no sound of the cities out here, not even a whisper of the existence of man. There was the wind, whistling through the tree branches. There were the sounds of insects and birds carried on each breeze, and somewhere a wolf was howling. The sound caused Felix to raise his head, looking to the south. There wasn’t a sure fire way to tell, but he was almost positive that that was the sound of a non-infected wolf. It was always difficult to tell the difference between animals; the virus didn’t seem to affect their vocal chords the way it did with humans. In any case, it sounded far off – and he hoped that wasn’t the wind talking. He hoped that wolf, wherever it was, stayed far away from him.
Right now, Felix was alone. The only company he had was the forest and a bird that was becoming increasingly agitated. He was busy climbing a very large tree, one with a very thick trunk. His assault rifle was slung across on his back, banging into him as he rose further. Tied tightly around his waist with a coil of rope was a pack, one that held the few supplies he had. He was forced to pause every so often to look down, make sure the bag hadn’t caught on anything, and then pull it loose if it had. It could be difficult, balancing on branches with only one hand for extra support, but if the bag was stuck, then so was he.
The bark was slicker on this tree than the usual ones he climbed at night, so when his hands slipped from the branch he grabbed onto, it wasn’t the first time. At least now he only fell two feet before catching himself. Soon, Felix had climbed more than thirty feet off the ground, pulling the pack up after him and placing it in between his legs. He sat now on a large branch, leaning against the trunk behind him, rifle digging into his back. One leg fell casually off the side of the branch as Felix allowed himself a brief respite. He had been moving most of the day, and before he could catch a few hours of sleep, he had to make sure he wasn’t going to fall out of the damn tree.
Dusk had fallen by the time Felix pulled open his pack. It had multiple compartments - one with ammunition and a set of throwing knives, another with two bottles of water and a few military rations, the last with a medkit and another rope. He grabbed the rope, pulled it out, and rose carefully to his feet to reach for one of the branches above him. It took a while, but he managed to secure the rope around one branch and then around himself before he settled back down with his pack in his lap. Night was coming, and he hoped that this high off the ground, nothing would find him. Before the last light left him, Felix pulled roughly on the rope; his knot held. Good. That knot would be the only thing that saved him if he rolled off this branch during the night.
Felix hated being out here alone.
He had been with his partner. He’d had a van loaded with anything a guy would need to survive. Weapons, ammo, food, water, clean clothes. He’d even had a motorcycle, one that spent most of its time locked to the floor of the van, but it was still his motorcycle. He wished he had it now, wished for the bike and the full body armor he had been given at the beginning of this job. Nothing deterred zombie bites quite like kevlar suits reinforced with pliable steel sheets.
Now all he had was the clothes on his back and one gun. He shifted his weight on the tree branch, pulling the assault rifle into his hands, and sat scowling into the darkness.
While he was at it, Felix wished he was back at his apartment hundreds of miles from here. He could have turned this job down, denied Locus the right to take the van, and watched the asshole try to find another reliable vehicle to take into infected hot zones. Have a nice laugh before calling someone over for dinner and sex. But Felix was an idiot. He had seen the estimated payout, the huge bonus tacked to the end for the jobs’s completion, and he had agreed right away. He had let himself be fucked into exhaustion that very night, their last night before setting off. Then again the next night, and countless nights after that. He had shared damn near everything he had - and how did Locus repay him?
By taking the van.
By leaving Felix in a hot zone with hardly any protection.
And by not answering his fucking phone. Felix left him messages, sure, angry messages filled with threats that got him nothing. He left another one tonight after digging the phone out of his pocket. High-quality, best phone money could buy, upgraded with illegal tech to get a signal no matter where he was, and Locus had one exactly like it. Which meant that his calls were going through, and that Locus was just being a giant prick for no reason.
He had only one other person in his phone that he could trust to contact out here, but she answered even less than Locus did and he wasn’t about to waste his time.
It was his third night since Locus had sped off without him, and Felix was pissed. He sat in the tree, and listened. Birds. Insects. An owl called somewhere nearby, and another answered. The wolf howled again, closer now. Night was the most treacherous time to be out in these zones, where the lack of light could lead to death with one dumb accident. Trip over a tree root - caught by the walking dead. Fall out of a tree - snap a bone, lay helpless and wait for the walking dead.
It was hours later before Felix fell asleep, crouched over his rifle and his pack and dreaming of zombies eating Locus’s smug face. He could even smell the rotting flesh coming off the dead in waves. It was a pretty good dream, up until he opened his eyes and the smell of rotten flesh didn’t leave. Still groggy from sleep, Felix squinted against early morning rays of light and frowned. HIs back ached, his legs ached, and despite the disgusting smell lingering in the air, his stomach growled.
It took a while for the noises to reach him, the gnawing and mashing, and when he looked down at the ground, he saw three zombies eating the flesh off a wolf. It was very likely the one he had heard last night. All the weariness left him as he stared down, watching in sick fascination. Three of them, two men, one woman. The woman took a bit out of the wolf’s throat, dragging muscles and fur from the corpse as she pulled. None of them looked up.
Felix sat still, thinking. He could wait for the three zombies to finish feeding and wander off, or he could put bullets through their heads from where he sat. He could even use his knives if he didn’t mind leaving three of them behind in the skulls of these bastards.
His phone going off cut off his train of thought. The loud music also drew the attention of the zombies, and all of them stared at him silently. He said, “Aw, shit,” and then they started groaning. Felix dug the phone out of his pocket without taking his eyes off the zombies. They were reaching up toward him, fingers scraping on the tree bark, groans turning angry. He didn’t look at the ID. “Who the fuck is this?” he snapped.
“Felix.”
Oh. Great.
“I need your help.” There was the sweet sound of regret in her voice, like she hated having to stoop this low. He would have enjoyed that in any other situation.
“That’s nice, but you see, I can’t do that.” Those zombies really looked angry - well, except for one missing an eye. That one just looked stupid. “Some zombies have me treed.”
“What - ? Why are you in a tree?”
“I like to get close to nature. Please hold.” He stowed the phone in his pack and focused the rifle. No other option left. He stared down the rifle’s sights at the one-eyed zombie and whistled. “You’re an ugly fucker,” he said quietly before he pulled the trigger. One bullet through the head of each one. He watched them fall before picking the phone back up. “Thank you for your patience. How has your day been? Because I almost got eaten.”
On the other line, there was silence for two seconds before she said, “I still need your help.”
Just as reluctant as earlier. He balanced the phone between one shoulder and his ear, reaching up to start untying the knots holding the rope to the branch above. “Give me a ride and maybe I’ll consider it.”
“I thought you had a van.”
“Locus took it.” If he sounded bitter, he was. Probably not something he wanted to make obvious around her, but too late now. “That’s why I’m in a tree. He took my goddamn van and now I’m out here playing with zombies. It’s a lot of fun, really, don’t know why I haven’t done this before.”
She cursed, sighed. “Fine. Do you know where you are?”
“Yeah, hang on…” Felix let go of the rope, knot half untied, to take the phone in his hands again. There was a GPS locator on it, something he had been forced to add before he and Locus had started doing jobs in the hot zones. He pulled it up, copied the coordinates of his location, and sent them in a text. Easier than reading them to her. Then he went back to the rope, waiting for her response.
“...Felix.”
Suddenly, she sounded way too serious. Felix froze, the slightest edge of anxiety creeping up. He hated when she got so serious. “What…?”
“You shouldn’t have fired your gun.”
“Why?”
“Because I just came from there, and there were about thirty zombies. Maybe more.”
Felix cursed. Loudly.
“And they’re probably on their way to you right now.”
“I’m going to fucking kill Locus when I see him again,” Felix growled. He let go of the rope, grasping his gun and straining to pick up any sounds of more zombies. On the other side of the line, he heard the sound of a motorcycle revving to life. “...Tex?”
“Be there in twenty.”
And then the line went dead. Felix cursed again, taking the phone in his hand just to shove it back in one pocket. He rose to his feet slowly, using the trunk of the tree for support. He yanked the pack up by the rope still tied to it, swinging it onto his back. Then he stilled, tensing, and waiting. Twenty minutes, he thought as the wind carried the first moans to him. I can do this.
Of course he could. Felix could do anything.
The first zombie stepped into view, shambling around a tree, and Felix had a bullet in its skull within seconds. He shot down three more the same way. They kept coming, like always, walking over the downed without hesitation, moving forward at different speeds. The older ones, the ones that had been dead longer, those moved slower. Felix ignored those in favor of taking out the ones that were moving toward him at a speed that was almost a run. Fresher zombies moved faster, having more dexterity than the older ones. A fresh zombie could take down a fit human easily, he had seen it happen.
But a pack the size of the one that was coming out of the trees would be a threat to anyone. There were far more than thirty, he could tell that at a glance. Felix was calm while he was shooting - the act of lining up steady headshots and killing these things usually kept him calm. But that dull edge of anxiety was digging into his gut. Every minute that passed since Tex had hung up on him just shoved it in deeper. He kept telling himself he could last twenty minutes on his own easily, that he was good, that this was what he did and he got paid for it.
The zombies were crowding around the bottom of his tree by now. He aimed down at them carefully, thanking every god above that the walking dead never figured out how to climb trees. He didn’t think of how many there were, he thought of the extra ammo in his pack and how many he could kill before he ran out. He thought of the fact that he wasn’t wearing his body armor. Didn’t even have the helmet with its reinforced visor.
Every drop of zombie blood became its own hot zone and Felix watched the ground turn red around the bodies when they fell. Asked himself how the fuck he was going to get out of this tree without stepping on zombies, without getting a drop of blood on his clothes.
Felix was not panicking, but he was becoming increasingly concerned for his own safety. It was the type of concern that came with biting anxiety and set his nerves alight with adrenaline. And if he was going to stand in a tree and think of the many ways this could end badly, he was going to blame it on the anxiety. Blame it on Tex and her stupid phone call.
He lowered the rifle when the magazine was empty, listening to the crowd below him scream angrily - because that was screaming. There was something that happened with zombies when they got in packs, where the moaning and groaning started to be abandoned in favor of growls and guttural screaming. When he was prepared to take on piles of zombies, Felix would laugh at their noises. He had, in the past, made the same sounds back at them. Right now, the sounds chilled him straight to the bone. And, all right, he could admit it to himself - the sight of them reaching for him, those goddamn noises … it scared the shit out of him.
Felix took the time to pull his phone back out, moving carefully. Afraid or not, he wasn’t going to do something stupid like drop his expensive phone into a pack of hungry zombies. He dialed Locus’s phone, waited for the voicemail to kick in, and spoke quietly. “Hey, you remember me, right? Your partner? Yeah. It’s me - again. Listen to this, will you?” He crouched down, stretching his arm out toward the zombies. They reacted like he expected them to and screamed louder, reaching for him and gnashing their nasty rotten jaws together. He was still too far for them to reach him. After a few seconds, he pulled the phone back to his ear. “That’s how my day is going. How’s yours? Have a nice breakfast? Enjoying the comfort of the van?
“I will fuckin’ murder you if you do this to me again. You’ll be lucky if I don’t shoot you when I see you next. I know, I know - you think you’re better than me. You’re wrong, but whatever, think what you want.” The mechanized voice interrupted him - twenty seconds left before he’d be cut off. “If I die, my entire goal in zombie-dom will be to find you and bite your fucking throat out, do you get me? This is bullshit. And I hate you.”
He dropped his phone back in his pocket, pulled the pack back around to take out another magazine for the rifle, and set to gathering up more headshots. At least Felix wasn’t one of those pansies who started to shake any time fear took them; his aim stayed steady, zombies kept falling.
The sound of a motorcycle’s engine was the best thing he heard the whole morning. Add the image of it flying out of the woods and Felix actually smiled. Crowd of zombies, meet Texas. Where Felix was good (very good), Texas was the best. Even he would allow that - there really wasn’t a zombie killing force quite like her.
Her bike screeched to a stop, and the zombies at the tail end of the pack turned her way. She drew pistols from her hips quickly, firing without hesitation. Four zombies dropped, each bullet slammed into a skull. She moved fast, downing four more before she even stood from the bike. Tex wore a suit crafted in the same way his own was, but hers was bulkier. Extra layers of steel were woven in between layers of fabric, making everything heavier but offering more protection. The helmet she wore was sealed shut, her gloves and boots strapped down and sealed as well - not a goddamn thing was getting through to Texas.
Which was a good thing, because Felix was watching her engage them directly. Sure, she shot them down, one bullet for each zombie, never missing. But she moved fast, aiming blows at their legs that broke their kneecaps and sent them to the ground. She slid the pistols back in their holsters, and began fighting zombies with her bare hands.
Felix would engage zombies at close distances, shove knives through their eyes and up their jaws - but he had never, never punched a zombie in the face and yanked its jaw off. He stared at Tex as she moved through the pack, watched her lift a zombie and throw it into three more, and then he called down, “Y’know, I don’t have protective gear you fucking psychopath!”
Tex paused. There was a rifle on her back and she swung that around to shoot the nearest zombie in the face. “Where the fuck is your gear?” she yelled back. Angry. Tex was angry. That was great, an angry Tex wasn’t a bad thing at all.
Felix scowled. He untied the rope from the branch quickly, jumping down to a lower one. He didn’t answer her, but raised his rifle and started firing again.
Tex didn’t punch anymore zombies, but she still shot them down faster than he did. There were only ten left when she spoke again. “Get to the bike,” she said, a touch of anger in her voice. “There’s an extra pair of gloves and some goggles in one of the sidebags. It’s the only thing I’ve got to give you.” She paused to shoot a zombie that was reaching for him. “Try not to inhale anything.”
He let go of his rifle, edging out on the branch as far as he was willing to go. The zombies underneath him had turned to Tex, so he leapt to the ground without them noticing. It was a fifteen foot drop easy and he had to resist the urge to roll with the impact - his boots landed in a fairly large sized puddle of blood. Thick, coagulated zombie blood. Felix grunted, feeling the impact up past his knees, jarring, and pushed himself forward. The bike stood less than twenty feet away, and Felix charged. He heard Tex firing as he ran, could even hear the wet crack as one of the zombies was hit.
Tex’s bike was clean, painted a sleek black, and probably wasn’t big enough to carry two people. There was a bag on each side, and Felix found her extra gloves in one and the goggles in the other. By the time he had snapped the goggles over his head, Tex had backed up to the bike. She swung onto it a second before he did and had it roaring an instant later. Felix barely had time to sling one arm around her waist before she was speeding off through the trees. The sounds of the dead were drowned out instantly by the engine. Tex steered smoothly around the trees, racing back towards the road, bouncing over tree roots.
Once the road showed up, she turned sharply, pouring on speed. Felix slid his other arm around her waist, turning his head out of the wind. Tex’s bike was absolutely not made to support two people and at the speed she was going, he felt like he was going to fly off the back of it at any moment.
She drove straight for what felt like hours, way past the point where Felix would taken a break to stretch. The road changed from maintained and well-paved to being full of potholes and cracked asphalt that Tex swerved around without slowing down. They passed some uninfected deer once and Felix caught a fleeting glimpse of them bounding into the trees. A pang of sadness hit him as he watched them go; he would have stopped to shoot one. Fresh meat was such a rarity now.
Tex finally slowed when she pulled onto a dirt road. They were headed up now, into the crest of mountains that overlooked the forest. Eventually, the endless trees on either side of them started to fade into sparser forests and clumps of bushes. The road became more rock than dirt, and still Tex drove on. The sun was nearly in the center of the sky when she finally stopped by a small cabin that sat near the edge of a very steep, very rocky downslide.
Felix stepped off the bike instantly, stretching his arms over his head before sighing. “Oh my god, I think my ass is numb,” he muttered.
“Don’t be a baby,” Tex said dryly. She reached up to pull her helmet off, shaking her hair loose. She looked in his direction, staring at him fiercely. “You’re lucky I saved you.”
“I would have lived,” he said. “You’re the one who said you needed my help.”
She got off the bike then, flicking the kickstand down as she did. She hung the helmet on one handlebar and didn’t look his way, heading instead into the cabin. Felix watched her go, frowning slightly. He was never on good terms with Texas. Not that he was on good terms with anyone these days, but those that went by codenames? Yeah, those were the worst. All of them had some hidden temper and Felix held the skillset to flare up every one of them. The only reason he knew Texas, the only reason he had her number in his phone, was because they had met so often by chance in the past few months.
She was always on her own, armed with more guns and ammo than one person should carry at once, always searching for refugee camps. She was looking for something, but whatever it was, she wouldn’t talk about. Wouldn’t accept help from people unless it was absolutely necessary.
Which was why Felix was suddenly so very wary about having ridden all the way up here with her. He sighed and started toward the door of the cabin. Once there, he pushed it open a few inches, calling, “Hey, Tex?”
No answer.
“Seriously, what the hell did you want from me?”
The door was ripped open and he was faced with Tex’s glare from two feet away. “I wanted your help when you had a van and all that riot gear,” she spat. “Not you with nothing but one rifle - and give me back my goggles.”
“If I could find Locus, I’ll have the van again,” he said. He reached up to pull the goggles off and she snatched them out of his hand. He wasn’t sure yet if he wanted to help her, but if he could convince her to help find his van then maybe he’d feel more like handing out favors. “And with the van comes all the gear, and the weapons, and the ammo - ”
Tex leaned against the cabin’s door. “Why did Locus take your van? Having a little fight with your boyfriend?”
Felix opened his mouth, shut it, and huffed. “Wow, no, don’t… don’t ever say that again. I can’t - just no, okay? Not my boyfriend.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Whatever you wanna tell yourself.”
“He’s not. Okay?”
“Pretty sure you’re protesting too much.”
“Tex, for god’s sake - ”
He stopped.
Tex frowned.
Felix’s obnoxious ringtone blared from his pocket.
“Why don’t you turn that damned thing off?” Tex asked.
“No one ever calls,” he said, fishing it out and staring down at the screen. Well. Speak of the devil. Felix answered the call, saying in the most overdramatic fashion he could, “Light of my life! If I knew a zombie hoard was all it would take for you to call me back, I would have gotten attacked sooner!”
Tex snorted in front of him, trying and failing to stifle her laughter.
Over the phone, Locus sighed. “There’s no need for this, Felix.”
Translation: No need for the bullshit. Felix dropped the act, glared at the door frame, and spat, “I almost died because you took my goddamn van, you fucking bastard. Pretty sure I can talk to you however I want. I earned it, y’know, what with managing to not die.”
“About that.”
“Unless you’re going to offer to give me back my van, I don’t care.” He watched Tex disappear inside the cabin again as he talked. “Or you could die, that’d be a good enough bargain - if I get to watch it. I want to watch you get torn to shreds by a pack as big as the one that tried to eat me. Either that, or the van.”
“Felix.” Locus sounded like he was tired - which was either hilarious or panic worthy, Felix wasn’t sure which. “I have called you three times today.”
“Oh, really? Is that supposed to make me feel better? I called you a lot too, y’know - didn’t get me anything, you giant dick - ”
“My phone wasn’t charged.”
Felix scoffed. “Bullshit.” There was a charger in their van, one that he and Locus shared. “If my phone can stay on the entire three days you left me in the fucking wilderness, then yours should have been charged too.” He neglected to mention that he had kept his phone off for most of those three days, usually only turning it on to check the time and leave Locus angry messages.
Locus ignored him. “Is there any reason I had over fifteen messages all from you?”
“You’re a dick? I hate you? I was stranded in a zombie hot zone and had no one else to bitch at?” He had almost said that he had no one else to call but saying that would have meant signing his dignity over. “Do you have a point in bothering me? Like - ”
“The van,” Locus growled. “I know. Where are you?”
Felix paused. He glanced around him at the wilderness spreading out in every direction. High mountains to his right, steep decline to his left, and lots and lots of trees. Birds flew overhead. It would have been a nice view if he wasn’t so angry. Or so goddamn starving. “Tex’s mountain retreat. Had a thrilling ride here. Sorry you missed it.” Off in the distance to the left, he could make out the skyline of a city, hardly anything more than a haze. If he hadn’t known what it was, he might have written it off as a strange rock formation. Felix kept looking at it as Locus talked.
Locus said to meet him in a nearby town, one that had been abandoned years ago. He said he had no idea where Tex’s ‘mountain retreat’ was located, something that Felix doubted once he pulled his phone from his ear and had a look at the coordinates of the place Locus was talking about. It was less than an hour away, he figured, judging by how fast Tex drove the bike. “There’s only one hotel,” Locus was saying. “Meet me there.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“I’ll explain what happened then.”
Felix resisted the urge to hang up on Locus. And the very strong urge to throw his phone off the side of this mountain. “No, I want to know now. Why the fuck did you take my van?”
Locus was quiet for a few seconds, leaving Felix to listen to his stomach growling and the singing of birds in the sparse trees. “I didn’t take the van, Felix. Someone stole it.”
“...What.”
“It’s not important.”
“How is that not important?”
“I have the van now.”
Three days ago, Felix and Locus had stopped a fair distance from a camp. There had been no way to tell how many people were there, but it was the first one they had seen for days, and Locus had insisted that they stop and take care of it. So they had left the van. Felix hadn’t bothered to put on the protective gear because they were going to be facing people - uninfected people, not zombies that would claw his eyes out and chew on his flesh. It hadn’t seemed like a problem.
It was supposed to have gone just like all the rest of these encounters had. Felix would stumble in, act like a scared and lost survivor of some nearby zombies. He was to charm them, the ragtag groups of people, get them to trust them as quickly as he could. It was never a sure thing because no one out here in zombie hot zones wanted to trust anyone else - and Felix was suspicious to almost all of them. What usually tended to happen was that Locus would watch from the shadows, waiting. Felix would be a distraction.
And when the moment struck, Locus would strike. He and Felix would knock each and every member of a group unconscious, they would take the most powerful weapons these groups had, and then they would finish their job. Which, depending on the current orders from Control, usually involved killing everyone there.
But the last one hadn’t been right from the start. Felix had stumbled out of the trees and had guns pointed at him instantly. These people hadn’t looked like they were going to fuck around - four of them, all with real expensive looking equipment. Not just their guns, but the vans they had parked alongside their campfire. The gear clipped to their belts. One of them had had a pair of night vision goggles strapped to his head. Another one was the biggest man he had ever seen, and one of the women looked as if she could have eaten him for breakfast. Felix had stared at them, they had stared back, and then Felix had heard the unmistakable sound of his van revving up. When he had left them, he had heard one guy say “Let him go”, as if Felix wasn’t a threat to them at all - and then the road had been empty. There hadn’t been a van, there hadn’t been any sign of Locus, and Felix had cursed and threw what was, in retrospect, a rather childish fit.
And now he was hearing Locus tell him that he shouldn’t have run off when he did.
Because Locus had stayed behind, Locus had gone into that campsite. Locus had asked all those heavily-armed people if they had seen anyone else come by - and they had described Felix. No one else, no one who could have taken their van. “You left,” Locus said now. “I didn’t. You did this to yourself.”
Felix didn’t want to believe it. He was not that stupid, not by a long shot. Still, he felt the heat rising in his face and cursed softly. “Okay, assuming that you’re telling the truth here,” he started slowly. “how did you get the van back?”
“I got a ride to the nearest town,” Locus said. “It had been left there.”
He had a lot of questions about that, like: Why someone would take their van and drive it to an empty town and then leave it there? Was anything else missing? Did Locus really think he was stupid enough to believe this kind of story? But his phone was beeping incessantly in his ear now. “Look. My phone is dying.”
“Meet me tomorrow.”
“I don’t believe you, y’know.”
“Not surprising.”
Felix frowned. He lowered the phone and stared at the screen, at the little blinking icon that prompted him to charge it. He thought about Locus’s bullshit story and his face heated up again just at the thought that he had been so stupid as to set out on his own when Locus wasn’t even the one who had taken his van. There were a lot of holes in the story, he told himself. And it wasn’t true.
Still. Totally embarrassing.
He vowed to never let Locus tell that pile of bullshit to anyone ever again - not even to Felix himself. Sighing, Felix fought to relax again. He didn’t want to walk into Tex’s small cabin blushing because as much as he hated hearing about how stupid he could have been, Tex would never let it go. And that was something he did not want.
Before he entered, he stole one last glance at the city on the horizon. Civilization, and so very far away. Felix took a deep breath to steel himself for a night spent with Texas and walked in, slamming the door behind him.
Tex’s cabin was small. It was almost completely one room, with only the bathroom actually walled off. The kitchen took up the space directly to the right of the door, consisting of only the bare essentials and not a lot of counter space. The fridge was the largest thing there. Right next to the kitchen, she had redone an entire wall with weapon racks framing a large map of the countryside that had been pinned to the wall. Large areas had been marked off in black, others in blue, but none of it seemed to have an actual pattern. A small bookcase stood in the corner to the left of the door, a smaller dresser beside it. There was one tiny table in front of the map, which was where Tex sat. In the back of the cabin was her bed, large enough to fit two people if they didn’t mind close contact. Felix was positive that was not where he would be sleeping tonight.
First things first, though. He demanded the use of her phone charger, which she obliged with a nod toward where it was plugged into the wall.
Second: “I want food. What do you have?”
Turned out that Tex had stew made from rabbits, birds, wild mushrooms, and onions, with spices she had lifted long ago from small towns. She pulled a pot of it out of the fridge and reheated it for dinner, along with two bottles of water. Felix ate three bowls with her silence as company. He told her about meeting Locus as she read a book. He had the feeling she wasn’t exactly paying attention to that book at all, nor him for that matter. Once dusk set in, she left to drag the motorcycle inside and then locked the cabin door behind her.
Felix took one of her books to read until he was bored enough to sleep, some tattered old thing full of myths. She let him borrow one of her startling amount of three pillows and a light blanket to sleep with, gave him the whole range of the floor, and advised him not to touch her bike or wake her up. In the darkness left after she turned out all the lights, Felix retrieved his phone from the charger and texted Locus. He didn’t expect Locus to answer, but it was still better complaining to the guy than having to lay in darkness and wait until he fell asleep.
He told Locus that Tex had boring books, that her cabin was too small. That her bike was faster than his, but not as nice, not by a long shot. That up here in the mountains, Tex’s cabin had three windows and not a single one had been boarded up or even given reinforced glass - and he knew this, he said, because he had knocked on each one until Tex had snapped at him to stop fucking around. He told Locus about how Tex wouldn’t talk to him and then stared at the next message he had typed. It said that even though Locus was a giant douchecanoe, Felix was looking forward to company that would actually respond to him.
After a second, he deleted it and typed, “You’re still a dickwad.”
That one got sent.
Felix tossed his phone aside, rolling over and trying to get comfortable on the cabin’s hardwood floor. It was easier than sleeping in trees, no ropes tied around him and no gun in his hands. He didn’t trust Tex and her perfectly breakable giant windows, but that did nothing to stop him from falling asleep. He dreamt of the job he and Locus had signed on for, of the many months they had already been at it and the long months that were sure to drag on before they could go home again.
Nearly ten months ago, Felix and Locus had signed a contract, one that had sent them out of the well-guarded city where they lived. They had signed on with a very shady company for a very shady job, but the payout was so sweet that Felix hadn’t been able to turn it down. And once he had signed, Locus had done the same. The man they had to answer to... he wouldn’t even give them his name, just a number and the codename ‘Control’. In all the months they had been out in the wilderness, Control had only called to send them on to big hits.
He and Locus had handled the bulk of the job themselves. It was simple, after all. They had been tasked with exploring the zombie infested hot zone that spread throughout most of the continental United States and up into the wilderness of Canada. It was rumored to dip into Mexico too, but thankfully their job didn’t involve traveling all the way down there. And throughout all the exploring, Locus and Felix were to hunt down anyone who had been living there illegally.
And then they were to kill each and every person they met.
It hadn’t always been that cut and dry. In the beginning, Locus had been given a tool, something that adhered electronic signatures to individuals and transferred their locations back to Control. They had been informed that this was going to be used to track every person and that, eventually, the forces that worked with Control would find these people and extract them from the hot zones. They had not been told where these people would be taken, and they didn’t ask. They did their job: Felix distracted everyone they met, Locus tagged them, and they moved on.
Every couple of weeks, more money was deposited into Felix’s bank account. Every time he saw the amount rise, Felix would grin and nudge Locus, and tell him another new thing they could do once this job was finished.
When the call came to start killing instead of tagging, Locus had shattered the tool Control had given them. He hadn’t explained why, but he had broken it into small pieces and then he had set fire to those pieces, and Felix had watched him from the back of the van. After that, Locus had started driving longer distances before stopping. They saw less people, and spent more time on their own than doing anything Control had asked of them.
In the darkness of Tex’s cabin, Felix awoke to a sudden loud roar. He jolted upright, half-formed images of zombies and Locus burning expensive things in the midafternoon sun layering together. The last vestiges of dreams about the past made him think, for a moment, that he was with Locus and not Texas.
Tex stood by one of her windows already. She glanced down at him when he moved and whispered, “Just a puma. Go back to sleep.”
Felix squinted in the darkness. Sleep sounded good, but pumas were big enough to turn into zombie cats and that was not a fun idea. He laid down anyway, not moving until he heard Tex get back into her bed. Then he groped in the dark for his phone, winced at the brightness of the light, and sent Locus one last message. “When this is done,” it said. “I want to go somewhere that doesn’t have giant zombie cats. Deal?”