Smacking the sides of my own head, I tried to contain my own wails of desperation as the morbid scene spiralled out of control around me. Mister-E was nowhere in my field of vision, and I'd resorted to stripping Tanner of his shirt in order to clean up the impossible levels of blood surrounding him.

  I don't know what my thought process was, maybe I thought I could cover it up? There was no way I could sneak his body past Charlotte, Blessing would be awake soon and even the mayor had seen everything. Speaking of him, he'd been tapping on the door for minutes now, trying to get my attention.

  "It wasn't your fault son... The boy was troubled, everyone knew that. You did what you needed to-"

  "Shut up, just... shut up!!" I threw my bloodied rag of clothing towards his solemn face, falling short due to its spongey weight. "None of this shit would be happening, if it wasn't for you!!" I knew he wasn't the one responsible for Tanner's death, but at least it felt good to try and pass the blame.

  My eyes tore over to the magician, still hunched over Blessing's slowly-regenerating body as he fiddled around with his flask. Peeking past the waistcoat, I saw him pinch her sliced wounds with two fingers, dribbling some of her redness into his twisted little cocktail.

  "And you... What the hell do you think you're doing, with that?!" I paused, remembering that Puppets were on a whole other tier from regular Flesh monsters. "You were chasing her, this whole time?"

  "What? Is that what you think?" His lips curved into a threatening grin, although it felt forced as usual. "I couldn't care less about the First One's legacy, all of those soldier types are so dull. This is just to add to my collection, that's all... There's no telling when a pinch of the virus could come in handy."

  I knew that Blessing would never allow the theft, if she was conscious. I wasn't exactly sure of what Telos could do if they got their hands on a sample of her blood, but it was clear that this man was not on their side. With any luck, he might even drink her charged fluid and become so infected that his O-Negativity wouldn't be able to save him.

  The Swede could tell that I was on the fence, and so he tucked his flask under his belt before stepping away to the back office. I assumed that he was about to leave through the fire exit, before he turned his head to the side with a pitiful look.

  "This is my stop. There's no place for me up ahead."

  "Good. Fuck off, and don't come near me again," I hissed, glad to be rid of him.

  "...If you let me walk out of here alive, Daniel, I don't know what I'll do." His eyes glazed over, almost as though he expected me to beg him to stay with us. I didn't, of course. After admitting that he was a sociopath, a person with a paper-thin conscience, he'd been raising red flags with every single move he made.

  "You still want me to kill you? Why?"

  "That's just it, though. If you don't, a whole lot of people are going to die." I wanted to scoff, but something about him seemed a little too sincere. He wasn't the type to be dishonest, not even for a sick joke.

  "...What?"

  "It's my goal. I don't want to hurt anyone, and I won't use TS-19's blood for anything, don't worry. It's just that you're still too weak, too insignificant to face what's coming next. I'm expendable, so...  If you won't kill me here, just promise me that you'll wait. We'll open the Ark, together."

  "I don't owe you shit." I ground my teeth, tired of this man who kept on acting like my best friend. He spoke of things that I 'wasn't ready to hear', talking in nothing but riddles.

  "She's going to get you killed, you know. That Puppet... She'll be the death of you all."

  With that, his head turned back towards the corridor and he marched until he was out of my sight. Even though the mysterious man was finally leaving, I still couldn't breathe freely. Glancing down to observe Blessing's dead body, I shook my head at the sociopathic Swede's words.

  "I hope she is. Better her than the Lost."

----

  The following hours were a complete blur, passing me by as I sat patiently beside Blessing's corpse and let it all happen. Parked in that corner for the full night and the next day, I watched numbly as Charlotte discovered Tanner's battered body, beaten to a pulp as per the mayor's suggestion. 

  With my last action before falling into apathy, I'd set him free from his cell and he immediately leapt to pummelling the teenager's face, forcing an unrecognisable mush over his gory features. Couldn't let the others see his infected grey eyes, he said... 

  I thought about telling everyone the truth, but Talmadge confessed in my stead without a moment of hesitation. He claimed that he was 'defending himself' while Tanner tried to kill him in a drug-induced stupor. The magician supposedly caught him in the act, and ran away out of fear of his own safety. Charlotte barely listened to her father, uttering that he was still just a brutal murderer through non-stop tears.

  The only moment I did move, was some time after mid-day when Belle insisted that we press on to Nevada. I scooped up Blessing's spilling guts and pushed them messily back inside of her sliced stomach, letting it heal over as her breathing gradually returned.

  The teenage girl refused to sit in the car until we'd handcuffed her father and stuck him back in the trunk, but soon we were on our way. Belle was our pregnant driver, and between my comatose state, Charlotte's bawling and Blessing drowning the backseat in a mixture of milky pus and blood, she must have wondered how we survived this Route on our own. We didn't survive, was all I could think.

  "This is far enough," Charlotte croaked as the car came to a stop, in the middle of the sun-baked desert. Slowly recovering myself, I nodded and exited the vehicle to set her father free. Unclicking his cuffs with my one hand, I pushed him further back from the car with several prods until we were out of earshot.

  "Are... you sure about this?" I asked, tightly gripping the rucksack of supplies his daughter had bitterly packed for him before we left. "You can still tell her the truth. I'm the one who fucked up here."

  "No, I... No. This would've happened sooner or later." Talmadge eyed the cracked tarmac, desperately avoiding my gaze as though I could judge him after what I'd done. "I had a lot of time to think in that cell. What I did to my little girl, that's... not me. Not who I want to be, at least."

  "She could have asked me to kill you, but she didn't. That must mean something."

  "Yes, it does. She's kind, like her mother was... God bless." He shamefully reached out to grab the bag from my hand, that would keep him alive for maybe another day or two on the road. "If I stay with her, I don't know what I'll become. I just can't understand her sinful-"

  "Mayor."

  "Right, whatever you say. Just... Tell me one thing, son. This place she wants to visit, it's a guarded base? She'll be safe from the institute there, won't she? From the dead, as well?"

  My throat seized, and for some reason I almost told him 'no'. I didn't know the answer for myself, but through my own experience with the so-called resistance, I knew that they could be just as corrupt and heartless as Telos themselves.

  "I protect all of my friends, Sir. With my life, that's a promise." Except Tanner, I thought. Sinking my teeth deep into my bottom lip, I watched the mayor nod with a half-hearted smile before hiking away in the opposite direction we drove. I expected he would find his way back to the ruins of Patch, maybe to see what he could salvage from its ashes.

  As soon as I closed the car door, I heard Charlotte's voice quiver under the rattling of my seatbelt as it clicked into place. Her heavy fringe covered her wet eyes, glaring with hidden heartache into the rear-view mirror.

  "It's not the first time, he's killed one of my friends," she uttered. I simply stared back through her reflection, trying not to confess by accident.

  "Sophie, right? How did it happen?"

  "...The same way it always happens. When this all started, she and her family came to our farmhouse and begged for shelter. It was complete chaos. All of our neighbours were dying in the streets, rising up to attack again in seconds."

  Her legs curled up on the passenger's seat, burying her face into her knees with an exhaustive sigh. She must've been so conflicted by putting up with her father, a weight that had now been permanently, willingly cut off.

  "Daddy locked the door, made me stand there and listen to their screams. Sophie died with her family right on our porch, only because he knew how much I liked her." Her eyes closed, almost reliving the horrific scene.

  "Jesus... I didn't know. Sorry."

  "That man's not going to hold me back any longer, Daniel. I won't stand still and do nothing while my world burns around me... Never again."

----

  The sunset descended into a dark-blue shade over our parked car, signalling the end of our journey. Having trekked our way across the treacherous Route 66 and the grim reality it boasted, the sum of my entire reason for living stood before me. A cruel joke, considering the reception that awaited us.

  The road ahead was cut off via electric fence, the bodies of the Lost littering the landscape like blackened land-mines every couple of steps. Drawn to the lavish spotlights contained within the oversized iron cage, it appeared as though the entire city of Las Vegas was the 'Nevada base' we'd heard so much about.

  Locked out of The Strip by miles upon miles of high-voltage spikes, the only discernible entrance was a long drive to the North... Even then, we'd discovered the metal gate to be swarming with a concentrated stadium of infected, numbering in the hundreds. 

  Just to be safe, we kept our engine humming low and our distance far on the horizon. The spiral of the walking dead stretched out further than I thought possible, the dried-up corpses moving as one.

  Blessing had finally woken up, none the wiser to anything that happened after she let herself 'die' at Tanner's hands. After giving her the bullet points, she expressed her condolences to an unresponsive Charlotte before tending to her own wounds. I could still see a sliver of intestines poking out from her gut, but the once-dribbling blood seemed to have thickened in the heat-baked car.

  I leaned forwards to catch Belle's ear, noting her frigid grasp on the steering wheel. She must have been anxious to meet the love of her life, after thinking he was dead for so long. I almost regretted telling her, that Tomás never wavered in his faith. He always believed that she was alive and well somewhere, down to his very heart.

  "What are you going to tell him?" I asked, with a crack in my voice. She knew then, that I was referring to the wiggling bump she held firmly at her stomach.

  "Ha, honestly? I'm just trying to keep it all together, for you three." Her lips curved somewhat, slouching back against the seat. "After all, you're the ones who want to storm into a compound full of soldiers that will shoot on sight. Never mind my man, let's worry about that plan first."

  "Okay, thinking time. Those gates don't look guarded at all, right? We should assume that there's a second perimeter, behind this one. We're at the flytrap, the defence that zaps the Lost and anyone stupid enough to climb over."

  "So we can just walk through the front door? If there's no watchman, they must have an electric switch here on the outside... How else could their convoys come and go?" Charlotte cleared her throat, sounding a little more confident than before.

  "You're probably right, but look at how the infected keep circling that one spot near the gate. They've been baited, which means there's something there that they don't want us to access. Maybe a way in... Question is, how do we get past them?"

  "I could drive up and honk, while you guys sneak in." All of our eyes flashed towards Belle, forcing an awkward shrug over her. "W-What? It could work, right?"

  "I'm... I'm not saying you couldn't handle it, but... Tom would just kill me if I sent his long-lost pregnant soul mate to aggravate a horde of flesh-eating monsters." Smirking coyly, I barely reacted in time as I heard the car door slam shut to my left.

  I raced out after Blessing, who staggered through the dim night towards the overlapping groans and growls. Her noticeable limp made my heart twitch, realising how vulnerable she still was. Before I could get a word in, she stopped short just as the first few stragglers began to hiss at our closing presence.

  "Last chance, Daniel. Are you sure that this is what you want?" She asked, and I instinctively looked on towards the towering buildings that seemed to explode with muted colour. Perhaps not as extravagant as they used to be, but somewhere in that maze of a city, little Beth was worried about me. I had promised to stay with her, no matter what...

  "I'm sure." Nodding firmly, I raised my stumpy arm in light concern. "Bless, you can't be thinking... No, we'll find another way. I won't make you use it, not if you don't want to."

  Her head vaguely turned in my direction, and I just barely caught a whiff of a smile. After seeing how that ability of hers affected her mental well-being, I knew that further control could only come at a greater cost. Especially when faced with so many infected at once...

  "That's really kind of you," she waved me off, "But this power is who I am, what I was built for. It took me a while to realise it, but... I'm my own person now, aren't I? I was never in my mother's shadow. I was always just... me."

  I felt the desert ground starting to shake, or perhaps it was just my imagination. Blessing's irises slowly boiled over with her own scarlet essence, this time of her own accord. Determined not to let her go through this alone, I forced three heavy steps towards her before grabbing her hand tight in mine. She clenched back, and the energy coursing through her veins was indescribable.

  "If it hurts, stop. You don't owe them anything... Never apologise, for showing them what they really are."

  "Hah... Who do you think you're speaking to?" Blessing's grin grew wider across her face, an honest look that I had been dying to see since the moment I met her. "I'm the dead Queen. Now if you'll excuse me, it's about time I gave my subjects a good scolding."

  With my hand still being crushed in hers, she took a few furious strides towards the nearest horde of Lost. Just as the withered old corpses began to lunge at her, she flashed them a fiery glare and let her voice ring out across the open expanse.

  "All right, listen up!" About half of the rippling heads across the entire chain linked fence froze in place, as though they'd been caught by their mother doing something naughty. "I realise that some of you may be good people, but the way you are now... I won't stand for this! We do not exist to prey upon humans! Only you can free yourselves from this savagery, if you do exactly as I command!"

  Drawing her finger to the left, she directed most of their blank gazes towards the electrified part of the outer fence. It took her a moment of deep breathing to give the final order.

  "Grab onto that mesh, and let it take you to the next world... Your suffering will soon be over, I promise you that."

  A few disgruntled voices spoke out as the infected regained their lucid state, realising what they had become. While some cried out in pain, the vast majority appeared to slur words of gratitude in whatever limited way they could.

  The first couple of zaps brought the dead to their knees, and soon their crispy hands were replaced by another set. One by one, they divided themselves from the front gate as though the Red Sea was parting once more. Clutching onto the metal at both sides, they let the electric current flow through their bodies until their insides burnt out.

  Watching as hundreds of people committed suicide in front of her, I already knew what Blessing was thinking. Holding our combined fists up a little higher, I spun the blonde to face me as the redness dissipated from her eyes, revealing a most distressing look of shame.

  "You did a good thing, Bless... Remember, it was Telos that made them this way. You're just setting them free."

  "R... Right. Sorry, I just... I can't help it." It was rare for Blessing to stumble over her words, especially after that sudden burst of determination. After ending so many lives with just a few choice words, the unnatural world order that Telos had created must've been apparent to even herself.

  A sudden spark and fizzle snapped our attentions to the electric fence, and with a low humming sound that descended in pitch, I realised that the fence must have short-circuited. Dealing with multiple intruders at once, the generator used up too much juice and shut itself down... We wouldn't have another opportunity like this.

  "Come on!" Pulling the still-dazed Blessing back to the car, I saw that Belle had noticed it as well and was already revving the engine. We'd barely fell into the backseat when the vehicle suddenly lurched forwards, gunning straight for the chained gate.

  "W-Woah, aren't we going to unlock it first?! There's still more than half of the Lost out there!" Charlotte held onto her seat belt for dear life, realising that the decisive glare over Belle's eyes couldn't be persuaded.

  "Hold on!" Our pregnant driver roared, and we plowed straight through the electric fence along with a couple of splattered bodies. Bumping our car over their arched backs, we skidded across the barrier just as a blaring fire alarm began to sound across the entire desert enclosure. It seemed as though we'd broken into a prison setting, for a nice change of pace.

  At first it started as a low rumble, but then it gradually increased in magnitude. Startled, everyone glanced around the beaten-down car before I groaned abruptly. Their eyes fell to me, the only man present who coincidently was the only one that knew about cars.

  "Our tires, they've been punctured. We should've checked for spikes, shit!"

  "So? Can't we just drive on flat tires?" Charlotte protested, as though I had any control over the mishap.

  "On tarmac, maybe. In the sand? No chance." My prediction soon came true as our pace reduced itself to a slug's crawl. We would've been much faster by walking, which is what we ultimately decided upon.

  The very second we stepped out of the car, a set of headlights flashed into existence between us and the illuminated city. Turning our backs in fear, the remnants of the Lost who hadn't obeyed Blessing began shambling through the busted gate, catching us in a pinch.

  "Shit... Shit!" I repeated myself, being forced back against the snarling dead by the bright resistance vehicle, hurtling itself in our direction. Not even five seconds after breaking into the base, we'd already been caught by Elizabeth's guards. The infected progressed much faster than I anticipated, as Charlotte was narrowly tackled to the ground with a blood-curdling scream.

  In the dawning moon's light, I just barely glimpsed the shimmering object from the corner of my eye. Flying through the air, it drove itself into the gut of Charlotte's attacker and knocked the Lost sideways into a jagged bush. The metal case fell open, and my muscles immediately fell lax.

  "...It's about damn time." Raising my arms in the air, I began to approach the now-stationary resistance truck as a dark figure emerged from the driver's seat. Dressed in full combat armour and an eye-patch to boot, I would never have recognised him if he hadn't flung his prized weapon to our rescue.

  "Daniel! Blessing, you made it out okay?" My musician friend grinned back, enveloping me into an uncomfortably-tight bro hug. "Man, I really thought you were... Well anyway, that TB guy's waiting for us at the outpost. He knew you wouldn't leave us-"

  "Tom, this is... uh..." I motioned towards Belle behind our small group, but he almost didn't seem to notice.

  "We don't have a lot of time, those uptight bastards are gonna come to investigate soon. I nicked some uniforms for you all in the truck, hurry up and get changed!"

  "Listen! I'm trying to tell you, we found-"

  "Come on already, will ya?!"

  I threw an awkward glance back at his fiancée, who appeared almost paralysed at his curt dismissal. Something must have shaken it off, as her hormones clenched her fists tight and she charged out in front of us all, her stomach bobbling as she went.

  "Hey, idiot! You forgot your stupid guitar!" Slamming her hand into his shoulder, Tomás pivoted almost omnisciently and grabbed her wrist out of mid-air, keeping his back stiffly turned.

  Even as we were about to be overrun, the two lovers still found a moment to pause after months of undiluted tension... the stress of searching for one another, in such a turbulent world. With his one eye, I knew that Tomás couldn't make himself look at Belle that easily. From the pain etched across his face, he was just trying not to break down into tears upon hearing her voice.

  "I don't need that 'stupid' guitar anymore... I've got the real thing right here, and I'm never letting go."