Marcus was having a perfectly fine evening with a perfectly fine bottle of wine in his perfectly fine apartment when the knock sounded at his door.
"Mandy," he yelled across his one and only room, "for the last time, I don't want a cat!"
Damn woman couldn't seem to accept that he was perfectly fine by himself. That his breakup with Emily hadn't made him a reclusive, desperately lonely guy, mourning over a particularly dull red with distinctive notes of vinegar and dirt.
Because it hadn't. Everything was perfectly fucking fine.
The knock came again, and the insistence made him rise up out of his seat angrily, burp aggressively, and stride towards the door grumbling. With a dramatic swing of his arm, he wrenched it open, eyes focused on where he thought Mandy's face would be.
Instead he found himself staring at a black flak jacket, and glancing upwards, the carefully neutral expression of a man with dark hair cut messily short and the faint hint of a mustache.
"You're not Mandy," he said, keenly observing the man standing in his doorway.
"Correct," the man answered. "I'm here to take you to the airport."
Marcus pondered this.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"To the airport."
Marcus nodded for a while, then tilted his head. "Are we going on a trip?"
"Yes," the soldier said, nodding back slowly, then spoke even slower. "To. The. Airport."
Now feeling the circuitous nature of the conversation, Marcus shook his head. "Sorry, I've been drinking shitty wine, so perhaps I'm missing something, but people usually go to the airport to go somewhere else."
"The Colonel told me-"
"The Colonel?" Marcus snorted, interrupting him, "What the hell does he want?"
The soldier outside his door sighed. "He said to tell you that your friend needs your help."
Marcus frowned.
"My friend?" he asked. "You mean R?"
"I mean nothing sir, I'm merely-"
"That's not true," Marcus said quickly, emphatically, leaning out of his doorway, "Never let anyone tell you that man, you mean something to some-"
"Sir. Please remove your hand from my shoulder."
Marcus blinked, then shook his head again. "Sorry. Shitty wine. Shitty week." He leaned back into the apartment and grabbed his keys from the small table by the door, before exiting and locking the door behind him. "What's wrong with Rowan? Is he okay?"
"That I don't know sir. The Colonel just gave me that message. I'm to escort you to the airport." He paused and looked Marcus up and down. "Is that all you need?"
Marcus stared back, not understanding, then looked down.
He was in a pair of blue boxers and a plain white t-shirt.
"Ah." Looking back up, he held up a finger. "A minute."
After said minute, he was walking behind the soldier in jeans and a light jacket as they made their way down the stairs and out onto the street. A patrol car sat idling at the curb, and the man opened the door for him before walking around and climbing into the driver's seat.
Marcus leaned back as the car pulled away from the curb, then leaned forward again, pulling the radio handset out of its cradle and clicking the switch a couple of times.
The soldier reached over and calmly took it from his hands, returning it to the cradle.
"Please don't touch anything in the car sir," the soldier said politely, glancing over his shoulder as he took the next left towards the interstate exit.
"Right," Marcus answered, and crossed his arms. "Sorry."
For a moment, he simply stared out of the window at the dark streets, and the wild tapestry of the stars behind the edge of the city. Then he reached down and pressed the button to the glove compartment, which shot open onto his lap. Papers, a packet of cigarettes and two cassette tapes spilled over his jeans and onto the floor, and he fumbled for a minute to gather it all again, before straightening up with one of the tapes.
"Huh, you guys still have these?" he asked, turning it in his hand to read the song list. Then he caught the soldier's glare. "Sorry." Quickly closing the glove compartment again, he dropped his hands to his lap.
The soldier let out a loud breath and turned back to watching the road.
"So, what's your name?" Marcus asked, bringing the cassette back up as he tried to read the label in the bounced glow of the headlights.
"Gimmel, sir."
"Jewish, huh?" Marcus asked, as he pressed the tape into the slot on the dash. There was a manic burst of squealing guitars, with some wacky distortion that only added to the sound, before it cut off with a sharp click.
Gimmel plucked the tape from the deck, and threw it over his shoulder into the back seat.
"I prefer silence."
Marcus glared at him.
They drove in silence then, and as they neared the airport exit, Marcus stared out over the stretch of dark tarmac. One runway was faintly lit by solar lamps, and his eye was drawn to a bloom of light spreading from a cluster of hangers on the north boundary.
Marcus let out a sigh without meaning to.
It wasn't the first time he'd been back to the airport since he'd walked out with a crowd of zombies over a year ago. His most recent visit came after answering an open call for 'those with special talents - living, dead or inbetween' posted on the common room noticeboard back at his apartment complex (or 'The House of the Dead' as it was unaffectionately known by the regular city inhabitants).
He'd answered the call, and after a special screening process, he'd had a few fun helicopter flights with a guy named Dale, showed off his markmanship - poorly, he hated guns - and demonstrated his ability to teach.
And that's where they'd ended up placing him. In a school. As an elementary teacher. For first graders.
If he had any hair, he'd have ripped it out by the end of the first week.
The problem was, he was a damn good teacher. It didn't matter that, before he'd died and turned into a rather sharp looking corpse, he'd absolutely hated kids. Couldn't stand the little snot-nosed shits. Pre-apocalypse, anyone who'd tried to get Marcus to hold a kid and turned away for a moment, would turn back to find him nursing his drink again and their child gurgling on a nearby couch, or in the arms of a complete stranger.
It was like a magic trick.
Then, on one of his many culinary strolls through the city, he'd gone and eaten someone who'd spent her life helping the little bastards learn things. Like colors, shapes, letters. How to use the crapper without asking for help.
And now, he adored them. As soon as he walked through the school doors, he was transformed from a scowling, balding man feeling like he was about to face a firing squad, to a smiling, balding man who couldn't wait to see what his class had brought for show and tell, couldn't wait to read out the new book about morally righteous mice he'd unearthed, and couldn't wait to lead them in a counting song about rabbits.
She'd never had kids of her own, the teacher he ate. Her class had been her family, one she'd always struggled to let go of at the end of the year. He felt her pain and her love, and it made him a truly exceptional teacher.
And it drove him nuts.
He'd been a perfectly good salesman before everything went insane. Apparently there was no room for 'his type' in the brave new world. But that'd probably change once folks started looking past the basic needs situation again.
There hadn't been any room for a piano tuner either. That guy had been an interesting meal. Scales had reverberated around his empty head for about a week after he ate that guy. Everything he heard during that time - doors opening, rasps and groans, shattering glass, sobs and screams - turned into notes that needed just a little nudge to be perfect. It'd been the only time he'd ever truly stopped to listen to a bird. Then it'd faded, as he'd eaten a couple of cashiers, a postal worker (he could sort mail like nobody's business)... and a librarian.
What a fascinatingly quiet mind. He didn't often wish he'd had more of a certain person's mind after consuming it. There were only a few. The librarian's had been one of them. Calm, like sitting beside a lake with no breeze, but vivid. Filled with unreal worlds, and journeys that stepped sideways from normal and kept going.
He could have eaten her mind for days.
And the porn star's as well. That guy's brain had been magic. Though, at the end, he was a little disillusioned with how bored everyone seemed to be once the cameras stopped rolling.
"We're here."
Marcus snapped back to the present with a start, turning to look out of the driver's door as they pulled to a stop beside the large hanger and Gimmel climbed out. Through the window he watched the soldier walk towards the bright interior of the building, then the man turned back and gestured for him to follow. Another figure, who Marcus immediately recognized as the Colonel, detached from the group inside to greet them.
"Great," Marcus muttered, and stepped out of the car, then quickly ducked in again to grab the cassette tape from the backseat. Tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans, he turned and strode towards the Colonel.
"John," he said, with a short nod at the man.
A scowl formed on the Colonel's face for just a moment. Probably because he'd used the guy's first name.
Oh well.
"Marcus," John answered, making his name sound like a swear word.
Marcus looked over the man's shoulder towards the group of men clustered around the tables inside. He recognized Dale, and the other pilot, whose name escaped him, but that was it. Big sheets of paper covered the tables, and Marcus quickly saw they were maps.
"What's going on?" he asked, looking back at the Colonel. Only then, in the light spilling from the hanger, did he notice the emotional tells around the guy's eyes.
The man was exhausted. And worried. Really worried.
In a flash, he did a quick inventory of what could possible make the man as worried as he looked. And apart from an invasion of new and improved dead who really meant it this time, there was only one thing Marcus could think of.
Julie.
And if he was worried about her... then...
"Where are they?" he asked quickly, as the Colonel's worry started to infect him too.
The man raised an eyebrow, apparently surprised by Marcus' quick assessment of the situation.
"We don't know," the Colonel said, and nodded at the soldier who'd driven him over. "Thank you Gimmel, please return to your post."
"Sir," Gimmel replied with a nod, and saluted to them both, with a small smirk at Marcus, before returning to the vehicle to drive away.
Marcus turned back to John as they walked into the hanger, and the smell of sweat drifted over him as they neared the group. None of these guys had had a shower recently. They must have been at this, whatever this was, for a while.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" he asked, frowning.
"Hey Marcus," Dale said from the group, giving a small wave. "Feel like flying again?"
"Let me explain please, Dale," the Colonel sighed, and pulled Marcus over to the bigger of the maps.
Marcus glanced over it quickly, and felt a familiar stirring inside his head, the life experience of someone he'd taken, waking in response to the familiarity of a moment. The cop. Pouring over a map, interpreting markings that showed what ground had been covered, what had been dismissed, assigned search quadrants and the projection of possible flight paths with jotted timestamps.
The Colonel started speaking then, as he stared down at the map, telling him that R and Julie had been en route to the Davis Outpost two days ago, and had hit a storm about forty minutes in. They'd actually missed the mayday in the city, but the outpost had caught most of it and relayed what they'd received.
'storm, severe... blind west... the Adiron... unknown, emergency land...' They'd received no contact since then.
Marcus stared at the map, and felt a quick tightening in his chest.
"Shit," he whispered, eyes tracing the possible routes the men had marked in, the few circles of possible sites, the broad X's over the ones that'd been explored and dismissed. All over mountainous country with few airstrips to speak of. "Shit."
"Apparently Rowan was calm," John said quietly. "Which is good. I've no doubt he'd bring them down safe."
"But would the plane bring them down safe?" Marcus wondered out loud, still staring at the map.
The room grew very quiet around him, and he felt a sudden tension in his shoulder blades.
Mighta been the wrong thing to say...
"Marcus," John growled. "You can think those thoughts, but you sure as shit can't say them around me, you got that?"
"Sorry," Marcus said, and straightened up. "Sorry." He glanced down again and nodded at the map. "You check this airstrip?"
"First thing we tried," Dale answered, meeting him on the other side of the table. "But the storm system was still active - big sucker - we couldn't get eyes on the ground at all. We did another flyover of both strips yesterday morning. Still too much cloud cover, too low to punch through. Fared better in the afternoon, and landed in Ticonderoga today. They aren't at either airport."
"What're these?" Marcus asked, tapping the map.
"Identified crash sites. We've crossed out the ones we've confirmed aren't the Cessna they were flying, but some we need to get in for a closer look."
Marcus nodded over the map. "Any nearby settlements?"
"A couple, but we know very little about them. Lake Placid and Saranac seem to be deserted, but there's some activity at Keene. There's something further west too, that looks fairly fortified, but we haven't surveyed that yet, been sticking to this projected path."
With another nod, Marcus straightened and found the Colonel watching him closely.
"So," he said, looking between Dale and John, "When can I go?"
The Colonel did not answer straight away. John simply stared at Marcus, judging, measuring him, until the silence got a little uncomfortable. Marcus could see the gears working in the guy's head. Knew the questions the man was asking himself. Could Marcus do what they needed? Was he responsible enough? Could he take orders?
Marcus could read John like a damn book. Wasn't hard. He knew the type. A man who needed to be in control. Who needed obedience, and meted out punishment with an overbearing hand when he didn't get it. A man who believed his way was the only way.
It was no wonder they didn't get along.
He smirked.
The Colonel scowled.
They'd been much more civil the first time they met, with a handshake to bridge the divide between living and dead. A lot had happened between them since. Mostly at high volume. Mostly one sided. Marcus had an unerring ability to meet a roar with a whisper and still somehow get his point across. More than one of their exchanges had ended with the Colonel practically frothing at the mouth.
And Marcus loved it.
But this wasn't the time for that.
He met the Colonel's gaze and dropped the smirk.
"What do you need me to do?"
The effect on John was palpable. Marcus watched the slight easing in the man's shoulders, the slow exhale, the tension fade from the man's eyes, and the Colonel nodded then, glancing at Dale.
And together they made their plans for the next day, the movement of men and supplies, parts for possible auto repairs and food for an extended operation plus essential medical gear. They moved to the hanger that housed the helicopters and assessed both the Huey and the Bell 412.
The latter aircraft felt so familiar to Marcus it was a little unnerving, touching it for the first time yet knowing every panel and instrument intimately. It was a big jump up from the Enstrom, but it had been rigged for police work, and Marcus was pretty damn sure his inner cop had actually flown it before.
The Huey was a write off, but they were able to use some of the parts to bring the 412 up to operating capacity, and while they couldn't get the FLIR camera to work, the spotlight came on without a hitch.
It was perfect, but a damn expensive rig to fly in terms of fuel, which is apparently why they hadn't activated it before. As long as the Ticonderoga strip had a decent fuel reserve though, they'd be in good shape.
And Marcus couldn't wait to get up in the air.
The moment finally came as the sky was just beginning to lighten to the east, and a squad of soldiers sat behind him in the extended cabin - he could hear the metallic jangling of their harnesses as they buckled in.
Dale had settled in beside him, and was going through the pre-flight checks. Marcus stared at him, slightly annoyed, his body on the edge of tired.
"I can fly this myself you know," he said. "I don't need a babysitter."
"Not my call sir," Dale answered in a weary voice. "Colonel wants backup on this flight. Once we're at Ticonderoga, you'll be doing solos."
"Sure," Marcus grumbled.
Dale smirked and slapped his arm. "Hey, once we're airborne I'm planning on getting some serious shuteye. How's that for faith?"
Marcus smirked back. "I'll take it."
The Colonel approached then, ducking down as the rotors picked up speed, and Marcus pulled his headset off one ear to catch what he had to say.
"You'll be on a night shift once we've settled in up there," John yelled, "so hit the hay as soon as you find a spare corner, got it?"
Marcus shrugged. "I guess."
The Colonel stabbed a finger at him. "No guessing," he snapped. "You find time for sleep, we need you tonight! I want a round the clock operation, can't do it if all my pilots are searching during the day!"
"Fine," Marcus sighed. He glanced over at Dale. "We good to go?"
Dale nodded, and his voice came through the headset. "Clear for take off."
"Ed and I will bring the jet over at ten hundred hours," John yelled, fighting the buffeting wind. "Mark will operate the Piper from here, and we'll be in radio contact en route - got it?"
"Got it!" Marcus yelled back, trying to resist the urge to just take off and leave the man on the tarmac.
John leaned into him. "Standard response is 'yes sir'!"
Marcus pulled back and gave a sloppy salute. "Sure thing!"
The Colonel scowled, but didn't seem to have the energy for a fight. "Just keep my men safe!"
With a slight nod, Marcus smiled, sincerely this time. "Will do."
John gave a small nod of his own, and stepped away then, ducking to jog clear of the blades, as Marcus eased the helicopter into the air.
It felt good, and he couldn't help but grin as the airport shrank beneath them and they gained enough altitude to push forward. The 412 was a monster compared to the Enstrom he'd flown before, and he felt that power as he pressed forward into their cruising speed.
It was good to be back in the air.
And he knew it was the cop in him that made him feel that way, but that was alright. Long as his inner fuzz could help him find his friend, it could go on feeling anything it liked.
The grin slipped from his face, and he looked out over the dim land passing beneath them, just starting to feel the first touch of morning light.
Christ, Rowan better be alive. There wasn't any other scenario he wanted to consider save the one where they found the two of them alive and well. And maybe humping like rabbits as a big screw you to the odds.
Because the odds weren't good. Storms could tear a light aircraft to pieces, or make it drop right out of the sky. R might have eaten a good pilot, but he couldn't do shit if a wing fell off, or a microburst slammed them into the ground. Plane might as well be made out of a paper then, and there wouldn't be much of anything left for them to find.
His once dead best buddy would be well and truly dead.
Crap, stop thinking like that.
Scowling at himself, he shifted against his harness and gazed towards the sunrise. The sun was almost clear of the horizon now, and the world was crisply golden around them. They'd cleared the outer suburbs and were crossing over broad patches of farmland, dotted with lonely farmhouses with long misshapen shadows, most with crumpled roofs, sagging barns and fields roughly overgrown.
Occasionally he spied a property surrounded by a wall of sorts, and it looked like the fields were still being tilled, though on a much smaller scale. That was doing the apocalypse right - living away from crowds, growing your own food, a stash of shotguns to keep the crows... and zombies... away.
He'd never eaten a farmer, had no idea what that kind of life was like. But it didn't look too bad from up here.
A soft sound finally reached him through the headset, and for a moment he wondered if there was some mechanical problem with the chopper, before he realized Dale was snoring.
His co-pilot was slumped against the far wall of the cockpit, one hand relaxed around the stick between his knees, the other dangling beside the collective lever.
Marcus had no doubt that if he pushed the 412 into an impromptu dive right now, Dale would be on the controls and steadying it before he'd truly woken up.
He smirked. Tempting.
Nah. Poor guy was exhausted, he needed any sleep he could get.
Marcus stared ahead, thankful for the clear skies, and focused on getting to Ticonderoga as quickly as he could.
But his thoughts kept wandering to ugly what ifs, kept tugging at him with an unwelcome and premature sense of loss, and he kept dwelling on the face of his friend sitting beside him at a dust laden airport bar.
How many hours had they spent together like that? Not really talking, or doing much of anything... certainly not breathing. Occasionally it came in handy, obviously you needed it to groan or whisper, but most of the time they just sat like statues, sharing a moment of intense stillness. But very much aware of being in each other's company, and oddly thankful for it.
That was the weird thing. Before he'd met R, he'd been pretty much a blank, hot off the press zombie. Thoughts around that time were vague sensations he felt inside. Like hunger, recognizing what was food, and what wasn't. When the stimulus went away, so did those thoughts, leaving him a listing nothing, frozen and empty.
But then there was R. A tall shambling figure in red. The red had confused him at first actually, he'd tried to bite R in the shoulder, stirred by thoughts of blood, even though he couldn't smell anything living for a mile. The heavy cotton was a big let down.
R had simply turned and looked at him, and as their eyes made contact, something changed. They must have stood like that for an hour, just staring. Then R said something.
Well, it was more of a grunt than a word, but it was close enough to a word that Marcus, not even M at the time, stood there for another stretch of time just devouring it. Like it was something hanging in the air he could physically take into himself.
R said "Hey."
Then he turned, and walked away, towards the escalators leading to the baggage claim.
M stood there for a while longer, his being caught up in doing something it hadn't done for a very long time.
Thinking.
Small, slow, simple thoughts, but powerful enough to eventually propel him to follow in the footsteps of the tall red man, to track him down in the airport filled with shuffling dead who looked through him and away, until he finally found the guy drifting like a ghost on a long people mover.
And Marcus watched him, drift away, then drift back, then away again, and every time the guy came back, their eyes would meet, and Marcus would feel that questioning again, the something inside responding to... a connection.
And finally, the red man got off of the mover, and walked over.
And Marcus opened his mouth, and said,
"Hey."
Or at least, that's what was supposed to come out of his face. Instead, it was a hollow voiceless gasp, because he hadn't taken in enough air to do the job.
But when R heard it, he did something that no other dead had ever done before.
He smiled.
Marcus smirked in the cockpit of the helicopter. Okay, wasn't really a smile.
To a human being, it would have looked like the discomfort that visits a person's face after they've eaten a suspect burrito.
But to M, at the time, it was as if R had laughed out loud. The faces of the dead moved of course, they had to - you had to open your mouth to eat somebody. And sometimes there were snarls, brows drawn low, the wild screeches and groans, but that was theneed expressing itself, taking over.
This was different. This was... well, he didn't know what it was at the time, it was all rather new.
It wasn't like he'd never heard words before, or seen emotions cross people's faces. Plenty of people had screamed at him, shouted at their friends over him, or pleaded with him as he'd torn into their innermost innards. But it all just washed over him, because he was wrapped in need. It was in control. They were living, they were food.
It was that simple.
R left him then, as M stood thinking small thoughts, and feeling something he could not express outside of the boundary of what he was. When he moved again, it was with a strange purpose. His body took him somewhere he'd only passed before, but now called to him with a shadow of an urgency.
Because he needed...
...a stiff drink...
And he found the place, and sat at the counter, surrounded by dusty glasses, facing a wall of broken bottles and the corpse of a man with a shattered skull and gaping ribcage propped up against an ice chest.
And he wondered if he was having the stiff drink yet. He wasn't sure. But it felt... it felt...
Why did it feel?
M sat there, lost in being lost, until the need grew so loud inside he could no longer think his small thoughts, and he rose and wandered to the front of the airport, where clumps of needful dead waited for a corpse with greater need to start the slow migration to hunting grounds.
But before he left...
... he looked for R.
And found him, staring at a mug of pencils in a gift shop.
M stared at R, stared at the pencils, then back at R. And watched as R pushed his finger through the mass of colorful sticks, making them shift in circular patterns around the confines of the mug.
Then R picked the mug up and put the whole thing in his hoodie pocket.
Marcus was befuddled, another new thing for him that day, and he sniffed the air, wondering if perhaps the gift shop held real gifts of edible things that he'd just missed before. But no.
R was just...
...not all there...
Which confused him even more, because R seemed to have all of his pieces, unlike many of the dead in the airport. There was one guy in particular who'd been eaten clear through before he turned. The man had been set upon by a mass of dead when he'd run through the security gate on his way to the tarmac. M knew this because he'd been a part of the group, and pieces of the man had been flung clear over his head in the frenzy. The guy looked like a boney at the end, only he had hair, and everything was still wet inside. Black and oozing, dripping from a yellowing scaffold of spine, ribcage, pelvis, and not much else.
The need screeched inside, just like a boney, and M could not wait any longer. He reached out and took R's arm.
And both of them froze and stared at his hand, the grey fingers wrapped around R's red hoodie.
R looked up, and tilted his head, the slightest tremor of confusion on his brow.
And M stared up at him, releasing his arm, and took a step backwards. Feeling... feeling...
Afraid.
This wasn't the way of things. This was not... natural and he did not know what that meant. He did not know why he was wondering why.
And the questions made him... angry. And he was hungry. So he stopped, and he looked up at R, and his mouth opened, and with breath this time, he said,
"...eat..."
The word hung in the air between them, sharp and brittle, and R's brow trembled again, dipping lower.
A whisper drifted from him then, and it made M angrier still.
"..w..hy.."
M's face twisted as the dark thing inside took control, and a voice that didn't feel quite like his own came from the dark cavern of his mouth.
"..HUN..GRY..."
At that, R's face changed. The confusion, the questioning slid away from him, leaving his features slack, and empty.
"..hungry.." he echoed, with a whisper.
M turned then, no longer feeling or thinking, driven only by need, and left for the exit, towards the waiting dead.
And R followed.
And they hunted, they killed, and they fed, surrounded by a sea of scattered pencils.
Marcus sighed. Blinking, he turned to the rising sun, suddenly needing to push the dark memories back. The blades chopped the air wickedly above his head as the helicopter cruised forward, and the land turned thick and wild beneath him.
He hadn't revisited that moment for a long, long time. And seeing it again, playing in his head, he could see Rowan trying so hard to break free from inside R - from a body stilled by infection, reanimated by something truly dark and hungry.
And Marcus had basically acted like a bad father, told him in no uncertain undead terms to get a grip, grow up and act like a proper zombie.
He snorted. His own father had been like that. Marcus had rejected it, rejected him, but somehow, even dead, he'd passed on the same lesson. Not literally, sure, but close enough for a corpse. Christ, he'd even tried to get R to eat Julie!
And not in the fun way either.
Least the kid had enough sense to ignore him then.
With another sigh, Marcus stared out over the undulating green slopes of the Adirondacks, dotted with deep blue lakes, stretching out almost endlessly before him as he turned northward on the approach to Ticonderoga. Lake Champlain shimmered below, a thin sliver of a lake snaking up and widening grandly on its way to Canada.
It was truly beautiful country. Something he'd appreciate more if R hadn't gone down in it.
Christ, he wanted to see his friend right now. See him and give him a big hug. Marcus wasn't really a hugging kind of guy, but he'd break that rule for the kid. Might even give him a big sloppy kiss that they'd both regret.
He felt pulled west, and he had no idea how they expected him to wait till evening to search. The urge to veer left and start a weaving coverage pattern with the whole squad in tow was overwhelming.
Because R was out there. Somewhere. Maybe dead. Likely dead, his head offered. Maybe hurt. Maybe dying.
And maybe, by some fucking miracle, alive and waiting for a rescue.
His hand clamped tight around the stick between his knees. Dale was asleep, and probably wouldn't even notice. He'd burn through a shitload of gas with this heavy a load and seriously deplete their supplies...
But R... needed him.
Just as he was about to pull off from the descent path, Dale stirred in his seat and looked blearily over at Marcus as he straightened against his harness.
"We there yet?" the man asked, glancing out over the scenery below, as he rubbed his face.
Marcus just looked at him.
"Yeah," he said finally, releasing a heavy breath, and edged the nose down slightly as he eased into a descent over the airfield.
"Yeah."
He took one more look out over the expanse of green, before it disappeared behind the nearest peak as they sank to the strip.
Hang in there buddy. I'm going to find you, and I'm going to bring you home.
Whatever shape you're in.
—-
Ah Marcus, you rock. This chapter was a breeze to write, and such a fascinating journey into this guy's head. Hope you enjoyed it!