#dszrp

[sl-walker]

[dszrp]

He woke in a cave, coiled next to a familiar heat. The acoustics of water dripping off a stone were clear to Ben before the breathing in his ear. Perhaps it had been too long since anything had gone right, and that was why his mind refused to accept that. Diefenbaker. Ben was dreaming, or dead. He didn’t know how long he had let the sleep-within-a-dream take him. Whatever this otherworldly nightmare was, its surreal quality was clearer to him under the familiar scent of his wolf. He laughed into warm, tactile fur, feeling like a boy reaching out for his father’s furs in the snow, breathing coming shallow through it. He felt a familiar lick to the top of his head; he pulled himself out to look at his lost friend. Dief released a labored whuff by way of greeting, but Ben’s own was far less grim. It was elation. He stole what must’ve been an hour under that protection to simply pull himself apart and together again. Shared pets and whimpers, tears and prim refusals that lapsed to rare acquiescence gave way to offering his bandaged stump to their shared grief. Was it real? It felt real.  It hurt real. Was any of this real? The fire Benton found time to build, with help, came from scattered twigs left some long time ago in this place, but as Dief watched on, Benton knocked away one larger branch for a seat. Underneath was a bundle of old pages. Some blank. Some blurred, damaged, or burned.  Some perfectly clear; scrawled with sharp handwriting. Others, scribbled with crayon and signed with a great big VM. Benton looked up.  Diefenbaker looked away. The war outside raged on without them.

[dszrp]

The fact that it was dark outside didn't make anything less ominous.  Seemed like any second, something would start groaning in the shadows, if the guys with guns didn't get 'em first.  When she was little, this was the kinda thing she mighta watched on television too young, hiding under the coffee table in the family room, fists stuffed in her mouth to muffle her squeaks.  But she wouldn't have been really scared 'cause Pop was way worse than any fake monsters on television, with bandages hanging off their arms and shuffling steps.

Fear to Frannie, growing up, was the smell of whiskey and cigar smoke and stale beer.

Fear to Frannie, the past few days, was the reflective glow of eyes too tall to belong to cats or dogs or deer.

Now, Frannie had long since passed the point of fear.

They managed to knock down a couple guards who had been running for backup, passed the guns along.  Elaine shot one more, sprayed him down with gunfire like he'd been a zombie, and got them another.  They were still pinned down, but this time--

Well, none of 'em knew how to work a tank, but right now, her brother and Kowalski were in one trying to figure that out, while the rest of 'em used it and the trucks beside it as cover, and Reems, the vet guy, he was searching through those trucks for more guns and ammo.

"Two o'clock," Elaine said, and yeah, okay, it took Frannie a second but when she looked closer in the dark and shadows, she saw the group of guys trying to break towards the trucks to their side and aimed her stolen pistol at them while Elaine kept the rest backed off.  She didn't think she hit any, but somewhere in the back of her head, she--

She didn't care if she did.

She'd had enough of people telling her that she was safe.

And when she heard the motor on that tank come to life?  Frannie smiled.

[dszrp]

Just queued up the first brand new material for the Radioplay since 2011.  We’re so excited, we can’t even tell you.

[dszrp]

The building exploded.

Once they buried the tank in it, backed the tank up again and turned it over to Frobisher, Ray and Kowalski scrambled out of the top hatch.  Frannie had been spot-on -- and wasn't that a kicker! -- about this place, because there was an ominous looking doorway with an 'Authorized Personnel Only' sign in giant red letters, which led to a staircase down.

Ray's heart was hammering, but for the first time since the world had ended, he felt like he was actually really alive.  Not waiting for the next horror, but determined to make sure there weren't gonna be any more horrors.

They'd already figured that whatever they were doing to Benny, it was probably gonna be ugly.  That was why Reems, the vet, was with 'em.  A decent guy; his hands shook around his borrowed pistol and he seemed scared half out of his skin, but he was right there with them with determination in his eyes, to get back the two who had been taken for whatever awful purpose.

"I got the lead," Kowalski said, practically on Ray's ear, and Ray nodded.  He'd bring up the rear, they could keep the vet between 'em.

Going through that door was--

The smell of it.  Disinfectant, and a lot of it.  That chemical, hospital smell that Ray knew from some bad arrests and his own occasional landing in it.  Distantly, he heard someone scream.  A man's voice, but it wasn't Benny's.

God.  God.

The staircase lights flickered, the fluorescent hum of them feeling like the worst kind of prelude to whatever was coming next.  There were movies that started like this.  Even after all he'd seen, Ray's skin was crawling.

Kowalski edged down the steps, gun at ready; Reems followed, and Ray went down and kept swinging back to keep an eye on their rears.

Despite the horror-flick style lighting and the ambient noise, though, nothing happened.  No one jumped out at them.  They got all the way to the bottom without incident.  And it was a long ass staircase, too.

Above, he could hear the battle still going on, getting further away, more echoey as they went.  Below, he didn't hear anything, but the smell got stronger and stronger.  He didn't know what the fuck to feel when they were clustered at the bottom of the stairwell, peering into the dimly lit chamber beyond, wilfully ignoring the smear of something on the wired glass.  Kowalski looked between them.  Reems nodded, then Ray did.

Kowalski turned the door handle.  They went in.

[dszrp]

Ben followed Victoria like a lost puppy, no more idea what to do with the afterlife than he had with how to cope with an eternity of limbless space where his hand had once been. He tied off the tourniquet with his teeth, coping with the most base, rational skills he knew. He grit his teeth every time his unsanitary hand brushed the ragged space where his arm became wounded void.

Victoria’s cold back was the alternative view. Lit up in otherworldly blue light.

“Where are you taking me?” His voice was shaky with pain and weakness. He didn’t feel dead. Like death, maybe, but not dead. The pain felt visceral; so did the abandonment. He wasn’t following her to join her so much as to figure out where the hell his father was.

To find out where his mother was. To find any answers at all.

Victoria was in his face so quickly that for an instant, Ben wasn’t sure he saw flesh on her bones. Her eyes seemed endlessly, cloyingly black.

“You tell me, Ben,” she whispered. For the whip-crack instant that she’d appeared, it was achingly gentle. She seemed to search his eyes as he looked into hers. “Heaven? Hell? What’s it like being with me? What do you believe in? What have you earned?”

Ben found her tone didn’t matter. His blood trail trickled to a close against his haphazard dressing as he took a large, wary step back and laughed another incredulous sound. “What?”

“She hardly seems like Saint Peter, does she, son?” Ben could’ve cried to hear his father’s voice. Bob Fraser looked as if he’d fought his way up all 30 floors of a sky scraper after a mischievous child had decided to press each floor on the elevator. Hat askew, clothes torn, and a bitten sort of anger on his face that said he’d fight to the bitter end and save one last spit for the spite of it.

“What’s happening, Dad?”

There was sudden blackness, oil-slick and angry, and it drowned out whatever his father might’ve said.

There was light, too, even without words Ben knew the light was somehow surprised with itself.

He was lost in it, fighting to find horizon in the maelstrom. Somewhere in between, Ben felt a beckoning. Familiar and grey.

Ben reached for it and held tightly.

[dszrp]

Blood stained the snow red, like spilt wine drifting across a table, inevitably drifting toward the edge.

Benton let it fall, trudging through snow under an alien sky. He followed the strange motion in the distance, his only ragged and beaten thought remaining was that of his broken compass. He had nothing else to follow. No emergency kit. No friends. No family. Just blood and a dying will to keep moving.

No tourniquet. Just a drip. Speckling crimson in a field of white.

He could feel his life leaving him with his blood. There was no way out of this place, and no fighting what happened outside of it.

Collapsing was peaceful. Somehow warm, despite the stabbing kiss of the snow against his exposed skin. Benton watched the sky, the dancing moons, and nightfall as it began to take over. The breeze stirred powder snow from the trees above him, and it was with that sting that she arrived.

Victoria’s fingers felt achingly good at his forehead.

“Hey,” she said, as if this were normal. She actually looked worried. Pained. Her eyes reflected the foreign moonlight just so to make her look like an angel of death.

“...hello,” he answered with a manic note, suddenly shivering. His heart was broken; he was in pieces. Benton searched her beautiful eyes

She smiled kindly. He waited for the razor teeth he was certain must be behind it to appear.

“Ben, it’s time. You have to come with me,” she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the universe.