3

I was reluctant at first, but Tomás eventually wore me down into giving him control of the steering wheel after we’d woken up from our rest.

Driving for miles down the single road that never seemed to bend, from the backseat I held on for dear life as the musician swerved left and right nonsensically, giving me a newfound respect for my own abysmal driving skills.

“Care- Hey, careful! Do you know how much trouble I went through to get this car?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, I’ll slow her down a little… jeez.” As he revved the engine once or twice just to piss me off, I pointed my throbbing headache over to the nervously-drumming Alisha.

She had been plotting out points on the road map laid out on the dashboard with a rare smile plastered over her face, it was a rather contagious sight to behold.

What we’d heard last night was very hard to dismiss as a coincidence… I tried to think rationally, but every fibre of my being wanted it to be true.

If Stacie had somehow gotten off of Alisha’s school bus, then there was still a chance for every one of those kids. Tracking down the other end of the CB radio wasn’t going to be an easy task, though.

We were too far away to transmit any kind of message, and even if something did get through, it seemed as though nobody was there to answer. Our only solution was to keep heading forwards, with the blind hope that we were entering a better broadcasting range.

On Alisha’s stitched-together map, according to the surrounding landmarks at least, we were somewhere on the Western side of Oklahoma. Much closer to the coast than I had anticipated, we were already past the halfway point.

“…Holy…!! Hang on guys, we’ve got company!!” We all practically hit the roof as Tomás slammed the brakes abruptly, spinning the car out noisily on the dusty trail. After nearly a full revolution, my eyes darted to him in disbelief.

“…Company?! And you stopped the fucking car?! Get us the hell out of here!” I hadn’t even seen what he was referring to yet, and I honestly didn’t want to. The only thing I cared about was getting out of there as fast as possible, before we could get caught up in another disaster like last night.

Glaring back at me as though the answer was obvious, the musician jerked his head to the road in front of us. “I can’t!! Just… take a look!”

When I saw the cause of our delay, the wave of dread threw me back to my time in Scotland. The days when I still felt attached to any kind of family, the exact moment on the Forth bridge when I realised how unlikely it was that any of us were going to survive for long.

“F-Fenrir…” I breathed, and Tomás exhaled with a hint of recognition. Glancing between the two of us, Alisha knew that from the creature’s appearance alone, it was better not to ask.

If it was just one, I would’ve suggested driving straight past. Two, maybe we could distract them or something.

Five of the towering werewolf-like Flesh monsters lay in the middle of the road, still sleeping off the early hours of the morning without a care in the world.

Their pasty naked bodies were positioned in such a way that driving around them on the bumpy off-road would undoubtedly awaken every single one of the beasts.

The worst part was that the roadblock had nothing to do with any assault on us by Telos; we were used to having the things dropped on us via Carriers, but these creatures in particular were unleashed potentially months ago. After all of this time, they had become accustomed to living in the wilderness… some kind of sick joke on nature’s part.

Former humans. That was what I had always struggled to come to terms with when looking them in their delicately-Lost eyes. In that moment, sleeping in the dirt with no clothes on and blood smeared across their elongated faces, they looked more like rabid dogs than anything remotely civilised.

Regardless of social status, it wasn’t my place to judge or pity the current form of the test subjects. It was their main advantage over us after all, that broken humanity of theirs.

They had been injected with so much power and raw survival instinct that not even The Found would dare to challenge one face-to-face.

“What should we do…” Tomás whispered with a trepid voice, despite our distance from the wolf pack. “We don’t have any of Serah’s Blood Bombs, and there’s no way that Dan can get close enough without losing an arm, or something…”

The creature closest to us on the road stirred slightly, and every muscle in the car tensed up with a silent gulp before watching the Fenrir slump back down again. Exhaling, Alisha’s focus returned to her map for a brief second.

“There aren’t any other roads for miles… We need to get past them. Maybe we should just reverse a bit, go off-road in a huge circle…?” While I didn’t like the idea of wasting fuel and risking the integrity of our tyres, it was certainly better than the alternative.

Carefully, Tomás shifted the car into reverse, and slowly eased the pedal down with a face of stone… A startling bang filled the outside air, and I could already see the ears pricking up outside of the windshield, low growls began to encapsulate the vehicle.

Staring blankly out of the window, our driver could only whimper in response. “P… Please tell me you guys didn’t hear that…” It wasn’t a gunshot like we were used to, but even one of those would’ve been quieter.

I could only shake my head at the chances of our new car backfiring at such a critical time. “F-Forget it!! Forwards, drive!!” Our car roared into life as the gears changed once more, letting out another couple of backfires as we charged into the heart of the Flesh huddle.

As expected, it only took one of them to throw its large paw against the chassis before we were knocked sideways, skidding horizontally along the ground as the others howled in approval. Soon they all converged on us, just as we had started to pick up speed again.

“Daniel, here!!” Alisha smacked the back of my head with a metal club of sorts, and it was only when I turned around that I was greeted with a massive pump-action shotgun from her bag of goodies. She held onto an assault rifle herself, rolling down the windows just like last night to poke her weapon outside.

Copying her actions, my barrel was already pointed against one of the Fenrir’s clenched faces from the moment it touched the lip of the window.

These things could probably give us a good chase at over 60 mph, easily… The rough terrain made it difficult to maintain any kind of speed, narrowing our chances of escape.

As I squeezed the trigger, I didn’t expect much of an effect… After all, our primary method of taking Flesh monsters down had been reduced to chucking buckets of O-Negative blood over their heads. Drawing from that fact, I had built them up in my mind as immortals with only one Achilles heel.

I wasn’t dancing around with logic or weaknesses this time. My surprise was overwhelming when I blasted the poor creature’s brains out at point-blank range, the grey matter splattering all over my face and shirt just like any old Lost.

They were old news, I thought to myself cockily. After seeing many more of the horrors that Telos had concocted, including their own twisted schemes, I had concluded that all monsters were equal in death.

With a shotgun pressed right up against their head, threatening their entire conscious being, no one could overpower me in that moment.

Scanning the area for my next target, I could only see two Fenrirs left… Glancing forwards to Alisha in the passenger seat, she looked around with a similar expression and shrugged. If she didn’t kill them… did the other two give up the chase?

I caught the sight in the rear-view mirror. The last two Fenrir, still sprinting after our car on all fours had just rammed their shoulders into the back of the car when one of them suddenly collapsed, shortly followed by the other with a curious yipping sound.

Writhing in pain on the rocky ground, with growing distance they shrunk into a mush of pink flesh as they let out roars of agony before fading into the dust.

“W-What the hell was that…?” I started, but déjà vu kicked in as Tomás halted the car and tilted his head back at me to see what he should do. In front of us, seemingly materializing out of nowhere was a massive yellow lorry with three wary passengers climbing out.

Wondering how on earth that behemoth of a vehicle could get the jump on us, I promptly cocked my shotgun under the dashboard and waited in silence.

They were approaching us, but I still had no idea who they were or what they wanted. Perhaps they had something to do with the Fenrir just then…?

It was two men and a women, seemingly one of them was a couple. The other man, an oddly-trim boy around my age approached the car with a salute wave and a wide grin.

His accent was strange, the thick Swedish voice seemed to be an oddity in the dead-centre of infected America. “Hello, friend! Didn’t mean to intrude, but we were just having our breakfast over there and we saw those horrible things attacking-“

“That was you?!” I blurted out rudely, gripping my shotgun tighter out of his view. The man seemed friendly, but then again, so did Rayner. It was beyond me to thank him for helping us out, all I could do was analyse each of his footsteps, watching them creep ever closer to our vehicle.

With a nod in response, he ruffled his jet-black combed hair coyly and reached behind him, grabbing at what looked like something metal which was all of the motivation I needed.

Jumping out of the car door, I raised my gun and screamed at him to back off. “Put it down!! Get back in your truck, and drive the fuck away! You’ve got five seconds before I start shooting, all right?!”

I could feel the judgement coming from my two companions already, but I almost didn’t care about what they had to say. Something about this smiling man felt off with me, and I wasn’t going to wait around and find out what it was.

“…Look.” He held up the metal object, which almost confirmed my suspicions. It looked like a pistol, but it was too dinky and slim to contain any real bullets. Staring at the device, I carefully watched him take out a long needle with a red bulb attached to the end.

“Dart gun. Those monsters can’t stand certain blood types, so a quick injection with this vial and they’re down for good. You’re lucky that I’m a crack shot with this thing, especially the way you drive… haha…”

It was suddenly clear that he had no intention of harming me, but what bothered me most in that moment was how calm he was, acting all bubbly with a gun being shoved right in his face.

Lowering my firearm slightly, I double-checked on the fair-haired couple behind him, who seemed equally unarmed and petrified from my outburst just then.

I was the only violent one there, it seemed… Alisha could see how foolish I felt, getting out of the car as well and thanking the stranger for saving our lives. While she asked him about his curious attack method, a hand touched upon me from our driver-side window, almost making me jump.

“You can’t accuse everyone we meet of trying to kill us, Dan. It’ll just cause us more trouble down the road.” Glancing down at Tomás, all I could do was give an amused huff in my embarrassment.

“…Then maybe everyone should stop trying to kill us.”

Eavesdropping in on Alisha’s conversation with the short dark-haired stranger, his features looked similar to mine aside from the dorky haircut. He could’ve been my younger Swedish twin, for all I knew.

The other man and woman steadily approached the conversation, once they were certain that I wasn’t going to blast any holes in them. Apologising awkwardly, I still couldn’t bring myself to let go of my shotgun. I simply watched as they worked their way into Alisha’s attention.

“F… Forgive us. We’re not so good, with speaking any English. Our daughter, do you see?” Holding up his wallet, the man forced a vacant stare with each of us as he showed everyone a picture of a small girl with a lovely smile, most likely his daughter.

“My… My girl, missing recently. I have want to know, do you people here... err, find... any blonde child nearby?” Stepping forwards, Alisha touched upon the photograph before shaking her head with a frown.

“I’m sorry… I can’t say I have. It’s funny, we’re looking for a blonde girl too. You haven’t seen one the same age as your daughter, her name is Stacie…?”

It seemed as though no one had come across either child in a long time… They had lost their daughter in a scuffle with bandits two weeks ago, she was forced to run off into a nearby forest and didn’t return.

Alisha bit her lip to control herself, the pain of the distressed parents was a little too close to home. “That must be horrible… I’m very sorry. I can promise though, we will keep an eye out for her. Are you heading West as well?”

The friendly man took over, as the couple seemed a little dishevelled after the talk. “Actually, we were just on our way to Patch, should be about a day’s ride from here… Can’t wait to put this whole Route behind us. Will we be seeing you guys there?”

“H-Huh? What do you mean, ‘Patch’?”

His eyes flitted over us briefly, and he let out a hearty laugh. I couldn’t understand how lightly he took us, especially after how we’d just met…

The curious man just waved us off, pottering back to his lorry with the couple he was travelling with. “You know what…? It’ll be a fun surprise for you guys. My lips are sealed…”

Left with more questions than we came with, the truck took off with eagerly-fake smiles peering from the windows as we tried to shake off the awkward experience.

I held Tomás and Alisha back for a good five minutes before letting us drive away in our own car… I would've felt bad, that is, if the sob story about their daughter was even true. In any case, if  we never met those strange survivors again, it would be too soon.

----

It was dark. She knew it was the middle of the day, but whenever she was downstairs in that place, time held no meaning.

No one came for her when she cried, and more often than not, she would spend nights shivering in the cold when it wasn’t her turn to stay upstairs.

They locked her in there… Why would they do such a thing? Why did she have to keep up appearances with this silly game, when all she wanted was her mom and dad back?

In the basement, there was nothing to do except sit there in the abandoned chair, looking into the abandoned mirror, carefully watching the abandoned soul contained within. That was her… just a lonely child, left to rot until she was desired by those who kept her hidden away.

A toy. That’s all she was to them, a children’s toy to be brought out when her owners wanted to give her attention, and thrown back into storage when playtime was over.

Her cold reflection glistened with the dolled-up blonde hair down to her shoulders… that was the reason why they liked her so much. How it reminded them of a person she could never be.

Taking her shoe and smacking it against the mirror with a scream, she watched the shards of glass fall around her. The blonde girl picked up a large one from the dirty floor, feeling its weight as she brought it to her beautiful strands of golden hair.

If that was the reason why she was here, she didn’t want it anymore…

“M-Mom… Dad… Please, I want out…”