Henry huddled close to the small fire Annie had set inside the barn, the meagre light affording little comfort in the cold night. Here, away from the house, he didn't have to suffer the stench of the dead, but it did hold straw that gave his bedroll a little more in the way of a softer bed for the night. A meal of lukewarm beans, a nub of bread and a thick, black coffee failed to fill a stomach that still roiled at what he had seen. The sounds of the night did not help his constitution.

Annie had dragged the pleading man out into the corral, leaving him upon the dusty ground as she found a suitable length of wood which she then dug into a deep hole. Once upright, she tied the man to that makeshift post and left him there as the disease wrought by the bites of the Drifters did their work. Henry could still hear him, out there, in the night. His moans catching upon the winds, his cracked and fading voice begging for a mercy that would not come.

More than once, wishing to hear the man's suffering no more, Henry had cocked the pistol Annie had given him, ready to offer the man the peace of a swift, painless death, but Annie had stopped him with a glare so cold, Henry thought she could freeze hellfire. Instead, he had to listen to those moans and groans long into the night.

After a while, he removed his note book from his pack, and his pencil. Wherever he ended up, whether he lived or died on this expedition, he wanted to record everything. Even if his story had to see publication posthumously, it needed to be written. The tale of this man, this pitiful creature that had caused so much suffering, would garner much attention back East. That he had attempted to arrest the development of the disease by removing his own arm and foot, and failing, would give much needed information about the ailment that had ravaged the land.

He also needed to write about this woman. A woman without mercy who appeared to feel at home in a world fallen to monsters and death. She showed no fear, no hesitation in her actions and Henry couldn't help but consider what had brought a woman to such a life. She sat, stiff-backed, against a support beam, her legs stretched out before her, one hand upon her flat stomach, the other reaching down to rub her knee. She looked in pain.

"Are you injured, ma'am? Is there anything I can do to allay your pain?" With the pencil tucked into the spine of his notebook, Henry leaned forward. "I fear I have not the skills of a physician, but I can offer comfort if that is what you require. Why, I aided a surgeon in ..."

"Ain't nothing you can do for me." She removed her hat, resting it to the side revealing a head of luxurious auburn hair, almost an ember red in the light of the fire. With a wince, she began to remove the pins from her hair, allowing it cascade about her shoulders. "Got a thing them there doctors call 'Lupus'. Nothing 'cept laudanum gives any respite and that clouds a woman's mind. Got no need for it."

"Lupus. I confess, it is not an ailment of which I am aware of." He shuffled to the side, trying to take the glare of the fire's flames from his eyes. "This is only conjecture, but would you concede that this ailment may be the reason you survived Drifter bites?"

Her eyes fell to the fire as she tugged and twisted and pulled at her hair, teasing it straight and winding three separate lengths into a long braid. After some time, her consideration of Henry's thought came to an end. She shrugged. Holding the end of her braid, she leaned forward, hand delving into the back pocket of her pants, and pulled out a small strip of leather, tying it to the end of the braid. Once done, she flipped the braid back over her shoulder and leaned back.

"Don't see as it matters whether you figure I got by through my disease or through God's good graces. Figure He knows I ain't ready to die. Not yet." She rubbed her knee one more time before looking at Henry. "Reckon it can't hurt to think so."

With her eyes locked upon Henry's, Annie began to unbutton her blouse. Of course, Henry looked away, adjusting the spectacles upon his face and feeling his cheeks burn as hot as the flames before him. Outside, the moans of the dying man had started to fade and other night sounds had risen in volume. Coyotes yipping and barking. Cicadas buzzing a song of the night. Wolves howling and ever the hissing and gurgling of the dead, never far away outside settlement walls.

He chanced a glance back to Annie to see she had not removed her shirt. Instead, she had brushed the garment from her shoulder, the strap of her underwear, too, showing Henry what he had wondered about since first hearing of Annie's miraculous, fabled survival. A bite mark, healed yet still looking as painful as the day teeth had torn into the flesh. The Drifter had taken some of that flesh with it, leaving a ragged pit in Annie's shoulder.

Keeping his hands to himself, he shuffled closer, on his knees, adjusting his spectacles once again and moving to the side in order for the meagre fire light to illuminate the wound. He had never seen a bite on a living person before. That was a lie. He had seen people bitten, but blood tended to cover those wounds soon enough. Here, he had a clear view and it horrified him.

She shifted, pulling her shirt and underwear strap back onto her shoulder. Then she began to roll up the sleeve of her left arm. There, below the elbow, another bite, the impressions of once-human teeth still clear to see. Once she had allowed him a look at that bite, she rolled the sleeve back down and then patted her right leg, near the top of her thigh.

"Another? Fascinating." Without thinking, he sat beside her, opening his notebook and licking the tip of his pencil before writing down everything he had observed. "Fascinating. Did you suffer the fever? Were you confined to your bed? For how long? Do they still pain you? Absolutely fascinating. How did it happen? Were you among others?"

In mid-flow of his questioning, he looked up to see Annie scowling at him. The fire light danced across her features making her demeanour look even more dark, almost demonic. The rough patches of skin could not hide the fact that Annie was once a pretty woman, perhaps even more so at one time before circumstances had forged a permanent scowl upon her countenance. But that scowl showed that a dark ugliness held sway within.

His questions had touched upon something that brewed anger within the woman and he had no intention of becoming another victim of that anger. There were scarier beasts, out there, hidden away waiting to strike, that had emerged after the Starfall, but the Drifters were the the most persistent. They were the most numerous and the most dogged, chasing the living for as long as they could move, never tiring, never pausing. They moved in packs and herds and could attack as fast as lightning once they sensed a chance to feed.

The others had their own terrifying properties, but they did not number as many. Skinchangers could turn another to become one of their kind, if they ever left enough of the unfortunate soul to begin with. Skinchangers devoured their prey, leaving nothing to turn. Murcies chose who they turned. Unlike Drifters and Skinchangers, their bite didn't spread their affliction lethally. Only by a Murcie drinking the blood of a victim until near death could someone become one and Murcies were loathe to share what they considered their 'gift'. Mostly, Murcies would drink a victim dry, leaving them truly dead.

Drifters were the ones that had brought humankind to the brink of extinction. Drifters were the ones whose tiniest bite could fester upon their victim and create within them another Drifter. Save for the fever, no-one could tell who would become a Drifter and that had caused mayhem in the beginning. Settlements had built walls, only to find themselves confined with those who would become monsters, tearing through towns and cities. The faster people died, the faster the number of Drifters grew.

That was why towns and cities like Prescott had grown wise over the years. The practice of checking teeth and looking for bite marks, putting those with fevers under guarded quarantine. It had helped. Helped to secure those that still lived, but outside the walls, Drifters had taken over. Many families had become ripped apart by attacking Drifters. Many individuals, only growing the population. But not Annie. Annie had lived.

Henry returned the pencil to the inner fold of his notebook, closing it and fastening the leather ties. He had said enough for this night and, despite the noises outside, he needed to rest. Annie had a location to head toward to find others on her bounty list. He stood, brushing the straw from his backside as he returned to his side of the fire, her eyes boring into him the entire time. In the future, as he asked more questions, he would have to watch what he touched upon. He did not doubt that he could get the answers to his questions, he only needed to bide his time and understand that Annie had suffered much in her life.

Before long, he rested his head upon the straw, before sitting back up. He removed his spectacles, returned them to the case in his pocket and laid down once again. After a while, he turned on to his side, not wanting to feel Annie's eyes upon him, but it did no good. It felt as though knives plunged into his back, delivered by the anger within Annie. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes, curling his arms and legs tight to his body.

He couldn't say when he fell asleep, but it came soon after he heard the final words of the outlaw that Annie had tied up outside. For long moments, the man had fallen into silence and Henry believed the fever had finally taken him, only for a choked coughing to break the silence once more. The man had held on for far longer than Henry had expected. Yet those final words disturbed Henry and they filled his nightmares that night.

"I apologise. God save me! Have mercy! I apologise!"