Cas almost collapsed as soon as she made the threat, the rifle falling from her fingers, and Henna rushed to move the thing out of her ex's reach. Helping Cas down to the mattress, Henna removed the broken gas mask and reeled back in shock. She had never seen Cas in such shape, not even during the worst parts of her basic training.

She had several patches of bruising on both sides of her face and her jaw. A cut lip that looked as though it had started healing, only for something to hit Cas again, opening the cut once more. A black eye looked old, maybe three or four days old, and the bags under her eyes showed Cas hadn't slept in days. As she tried to remove the ruined body armour, the injuries continued to appear. More bruises, cuts, an unset broken arm and, what looked like to Henna, bite marks.

"What the hell have you been doing?" She moved to a cupboard and found her scavenged medical supplies. "I didn't know you were active. What are you? Special forces or something?"

"No, man. I'm still fucking motor pool. Or was." Cas tried to sit up, but even a gentle press of Henna's hand forced her back down. "I can't stay. I've put you in danger. I ... I ..."

Before Cas could finish, she fell unconscious, her eyes closing no matter how much she fought to stay awake. Whatever had caused all these injuries, whoever, it looked as though Cas had suffered systemic domestic abuse, with frequent attacks leaving no time for the old injuries to heal. She couldn't imagine Cas allowing anyone to do that. No-one. She'd break anyone who tried.

While Cas slept, through sheer exhaustion, it seemed, Henna continued to clean the wounds, paying special attention to the bites. She was no doctor, yet even she could tell the bites were human, and not from only one person. One of the bites looked like a child's. None of this made any sense. Not unless the other looters and scavengers had turned to cannibalism. She couldn't imagine that, but, then again, things had only become worse the more people succumbed to the Screaming Sickness.

The last bulletin she had heard over the radio had stated over half the population had fallen to the sickness, with no explanation in sight. They had tested for viral infections, bacteriological, biological warfare. Environmental tests proved nothing. Those Screamers that had died through other means were dissected and the dissections had revealed nothing. An entire world, pooling resources between nations that would have killed each other before the outbreak, and they had found nothing.

And, as the world continued, as scientists exhausted every hypothesis, as more and more people began to scream, life became more and more of a struggle. Power had gone first, followed by the water. Looting had taken pretty much everything from the stores. People had fought each other, killed each other for scraps and, through it all, the screams continued. Never stopping, never changing tone or volume. Always screaming.

Even with precautions, putting buds in her ears and covering them with the cups of the ear defenders, Henna still heard those screams whenever she left the room. People, once full of vibrant life, who had families and friends and jobs and lives, left to rot on the streets where they stood, heads tilted to the skies, screams pouring from mouths that hadn't taken a breath from the moment the sickness caught them.

She could hear Carla. Her high-pitched scream, muffled by the mattresses in this room and in hers, still managing to penetrate through all that mass. Henna had tried to get doctors to treat Carla, at first, but so many had fallen to the sickness. Emergency rooms overflowed with dozens, hundreds of screaming people, carried there by terrified families. Henna couldn't leave Carla there, as some had. Brought home, Henna had tried to lay Carla down but, for some strange reason, Carla always returned to her feet, the scream never stopping.

In those early days, before Henna had practically perfected her sound defences, she had gone through more painkillers than she had during the entirety of her life. Headaches had become the norm. Sleepless nights. Days spent hiding from rioters and looters. Her Quiet Room, when she finished it, made all the difference. She had slept for days after that, but her peace couldn't last. Cas had proven that more than anything and, if she learned about Carla, Henna didn't know what would happen.

While Cas slept, Henna took the time to see what Cas had upon her. A pistol, as back-up to the rifle, with only six bullets left in the clip. The rifle had none. Not a single bullet and Henna didn't know whether Cas knew that, or whether she had become too tired to tell. A folded map sat in one leg of her fatigues, a large container of painkillers in the other, almost empty. She had no food. No water. Nothing else. Except.

Henna lifted the tank top up, looking for whatever caused the slight protuberance between her breasts. Something was taped there, and taped good. That wasn't coming away from Cas' body unless she wanted it to and Henna hesitated to even try to take it. Through fear of waking Cas, at the very least. The woman, very obviously, needed rest. Without it, nothing else would matter. Not that strange thing taped to her chest and not why she had come to Henna's home, of all the places.

For hours, Henna sat across the room from Cas, simply watching her breathe. The last time she had seen Cas, they had made their awkward goodbyes at a distance much like this. It was Cas' choice, to break up, deciding for herself what Henna deserved and, she had thought, it wasn't her. What Henna wanted didn't come into it. Cas made the decision and she stuck to it, the soldier following the plan of attack to the letter, except Henna wasn't Cas' enemy.

It had taken her so long to get over Cas, she had thought she'd never find happiness ever again. Until she met Carla. That was when she realised the difference between loving someone and being in love with them. She had loved Cas, with all her heart, but she had fallen in love with Carla. She could never describe it to anyone, but she knew the difference, even if no-one else did.

And now, Carla stood in a room upstairs, at the other end of the house, screaming. Always screaming. Wasting away to nothing. Unable to eat or drink or sleep. Henna had changed her clothes, at the beginning, after the normal human functions had happened, but even they stopped after a few days. By rights, Carla should have died months ago, yet she still lived. She still screamed and there was nothing Henna could do to help her.

Carla stood upstairs and her ex lay before her. If Cas knew about Carla, Henna didn't know what she would do. Even as she thought about her, Carla moaned and then sat upright, her hand reaching for her chest, patting between her breasts, panicked, until she felt the package. Her head whipped around until she saw Henna sat across from her, the rifle and her pistol at her Henna's side.

"It's still there. Whatever it is." Henna picked up one of her few bottles of water, holding it out for Cas, who almost ripped it from Henna's hand. "What's going on, Cas? You disappear from my life and then come back during all this, looking like you've gone the distance with an MMA champ. What have you got yourself into?"

"I've got myself into saving the world. More than that, I can't tell you." She drank the entire bottle of water in one long, gulping drink, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I shouldn't have come here. If any Screamers know I'm here, we're both dead. I just ... I ... I've been running for so long. So long."

Her head bowed, her shoulders slumped and Henna thought she was about to collapse again. Instead, she took a deep breath before looking around for her clothing. Her eyes fell upon the rifle and pistol more than once as she dressed. She checked the dressings Henna had covered her wounds with, giving an appreciative nod.

"That's bullshit and you know it. The Screamers don't do anything but scream. Whatever it is you're into, drugs or whatever, you need a hospital. Rest." Henna tossed the rifle across the room, followed by the pistol, and Cas checked them both. "And what do you mean you can't tell me any more? What am I going to do? Go to the news channels? Hop on the internet and tell all my followers? The world's gone to shit and no-one gives a fuck about state secrets anymore, Cas."

"I can't tell you anything because I don't know anything. What I have is for the eyes of the people still in charge, but it will change everything. We can get it all back. Everything." Cas saw the scavenged tins on the table, sorting through them without even asking. Same old Cas, same old arrogance and attitude. "And those Screamers? Oh, they can move alright. It's as if they know what I've got and they don't want it getting back to the brass. Bullets don't stop them, they only slow them down."

"Is that how you got all those injuries?" Henna pointed to her own face, but Cas understood. She nodded as she opened a tin of pudding, digging her fingers in to shovel the food into her mouth. "But they don't. They don't move. They just stand there, screaming. They ... what are you going to do?"

"I need to get to the extraction point. Once there, I'll be taken north, to the staging area. It's funny. We're acting like we're at war, but we don't have an enemy to fight. None that we can see, anyway." Dropping the empty pudding tin, Cas picked up a couple more and another bottle of water. "I'm taking these. I'm sorry for coming here, but I didn't know where else to go. I just needed a rest. I'm good now. Don't go near the Screamers, Henna, they aren't as dead as they ... I thought you said there weren't any here?"

Henna had heard it, too. A thumping noise from upstairs and then a crash. The sound coming from where Henna had put Carla away, safe as far as she knew. If anyone hurt Carla, they'd suffer for it. Then she heard something else. The scream of Carla, that Henna had come to know so well, had grown louder. So loud, Henna could swear it came from outside her Quiet Room.

Something slammed against the door of the Quiet Room and continued to slam against it. So hard that Henna heard the wood of the door cracking even through the mattresses, even over the familiar scream. A scream so loud, now, that it had started to become painful. Across the room, Cas had cocked her pistol, aiming toward the door and, before Henna could stop her, she began to fire.