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THE DOZEN.
v. EROSION
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"WHERE'D SHE COME from?"
"They brought her from Melbourne," a voice answered. If Adelaide had really wanted to, she could've glanced over and seen the two men talking, but all she wanted at that moment was to just go home. She didn't know anything about where she was, who she was with - all she knew is that she wanted to be anywhere but in the small room. "This is her stuff."
Boots clicking against hard cement, a man entered the room and stood before Adelaide as she lied on the small bed. He looked to be older, somewhere around 40 or 50, and wore a tight smile that almost frightened Adelaide. "Let's see," he breathed out as he pulled out her own wallet and began to rifle through its contents. "Adelaide Bishop," he read, holding her I.D. between his fingers. "What, your parents name you after a city?"
Even closing her eyes couldn't shut out his rough, chilling voice as he continued with his vexing statements and snarky comments. She remembered the stories of innocent girls finding themselves out on the street, selling themselves just to make a quick dollar, but it always sounded like something Adelaide would never have to worry about. Until it was all that she was worrying about.
Adelaide had never not felt before. Thinking back to the most traumatizing years of her life brought no effect, no wave of anger and depression like it used to. Part of her was thankful for what the doctors did to erase that traumatized part of her, but part of her felt cheated. Cheated out of a human experience - something that would hurt like hell, but consists of that pain that would remind her she was alive.
In other words, she felt more like a puppet that yearned to be a real girl, rather than an actual woman. And with no one there to manipulate her strings, she was helpless and at a loss of what to do. Independence was entirely unfamiliar.
And so she did the first thing her mind told her to, and that was finding out why the young woman called Ellie was vomiting and try to help in any way.
It was help she knew she would have appreciated when she was in need.
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"Oh, fuck- oh, fucking fuck- fuck-" The floorboards screeched beneath their boots as they entered the expansive office of the upper floor, with Jasper barking, "Close the door!"
Wide-eyed, Parker kept his eyes glued to a panting Jasper before scrambling to the wooden door and slamming it close, the doorway quaking at the harsh movement. A hand laid flat on the door, Parker breathed out, "What do we do? Jas, what do we-"
"Can you give me just... two seconds t-to process this?" Jasper questioned sharply, cutting the younger teenager off.
"One..." Parker, breathing heavily, began to count, "Two... There. You-"
The statement was cut off with a sharp gasp as the door across the room burst open, swinging into the wall behind it, and a man barged into the office. He was ghostly pale, significant sweat beads trailing down his forehead, with his shoulder and the torn shirt covering it covered in blood. Upon closer examination, Jasper could see that the tears were bite marks and that a large portion of his shoulder was simply gone. "Sir," he hesitantly began, extending a slightly shaky hand towards the man, "are-"
"There was nothing I could do," the man began with an uneven voice, advancing towards the teen directly in front of him. "They just came, they kept coming - they wouldn't stop! Even the pastor, he... They got him, too. Demons, all of them - they-" A thud against the office door cut him off, and he wailed, "They're here! Th-"
"Listen to me," Jasper interrupted firmly, "look at me." The man's bloodshot eyes reluctantly fixated on Jasper's own wide ones, and through the man's quick pants, he continuously attempted to blubber and ramble, though he just couldn't seem to form intelligible words. "It's going to be okay," Jasper spoke over him, "alright? You have to trust me when I say-"
The door leading to the stairs, the one that Parker had forcibly closed not even two minutes prior, burst open. One of the dead ones entered with a wicked snarl, its cloudy, blank eyes fixated on the man with the bloody shoulder. Its lip curled back, baring its rotted teeth, as it prowled towards the whimpering man at Jasper's side.
Jasper's eyes darted around the room in search of something, anything, and after moments they landed on the weapon lying against the desk pressed against the wall - a shotgun. Despite never having even held a gun before, Jasper bolted to the desk and lifted the substantial weapon into his arms the moment he could.
The dead one was still inching closer and closer, due to one of its feet just dragging behind its slow body - and yet, Jasper felt it was still moving too fast. Heavy breathing, shaky hands - he didn't even know how long it took him to line up a shot that may or may not have even hit the target, because, at the pull of the trigger, he was sent backward into the wall from the sheer force of the shotgun.
He didn't even see that he had actually killed the dead one until he was able to slowly stand to his feet.
"I, um, I-I think I found a way out," Parker's voice sounded from the room the bleeding man emerged from. He appeared in the doorway, reminding Jasper, "Jas, we saw how many of them t-there were. They all probably heard those shots, so I think we should go, like, um, now."
Jasper nodded, and as he entered the small bathroom, Parker exited and made his way to the motionless man standing in the middle of the room. "We gotta go," he emphasized, "like, now. Come on." He nodded towards the door to the bathroom, but the man didn't move an inch. Even his eyes only blankly gazed ahead.
"Let's go, Parker," Jasper spoke from the bathroom doorway. "You said it yourself."
Parker gave the man one last sympathetic glance before reluctantly stepping into the bathroom. "Here," he said as he nodded towards the open window. "I think we can get up to the roof. It's probably not a solution, but... Better than what we got right now."
Jasper nodded in response, and as he wiped away the snow from the window sill, Parker had his eyes fixated on the hazy man in the office. "Here, hold this," Jasper faintly said under his breath as he held the shotgun out towards Parker.
"Be careful," Parker replied, the substantial gun in his arms, as Jasper began to climb out of the window, "it's probably slippery."
"Kind of, yeah."
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The church was absolutely quiet. Adelaide remained seated in one of the pews that looked steady enough to support her, and quietly waited for Ellie to walk by. Passively waiting seemed better than actively searching for the younger woman, more so because Adelaide wasn't sure what she was supposed to say and the silence was opportune for thinking.
The silence was shattered by the sound of shoes against the hardwood floor. Adelaide, with high hopes, looked back at whoever was entering the church, and felt a rush of disappointment when she saw it was only Three. He was quick to notice her eye-roll and frustrated sigh, leading him to speak up, "You weren't praying, were you? You don't seem like a pray-for-us-sinners-now-and-at-the-hour-of-our-death kinda person."
"No," she was quick to answer, "I'm..." She paused, mouth hanging open as she struggled to find the words to adequately explain what she was doing without fully revealing what she witnessed earlier. Partly in an attempt to change the subject, she eyed the bag of potato chips resting in one hand, as the other brought one to his mouth with an audible crunch. "Where did you get that from?" she asked, speaking calmly while her eyes conveyed a mixture of confusion and anger, the latter simply because she didn't have any of her own food.
"Stole it from that one chick's house," he shrugged, still chewing. "I'd give you one, but wouldn't it just go straight to your thighs?"
Ignoring his last comment, she sighed heavily. "You stole food," she began slowly, too calm for his liking, "from a grieving mom's house? That doesn't seem at least slightly disrespectful to you?"
"Everybody grabbed some, it's not like she said we couldn't," he coolly replied. "Gotta eat somehow, and I'm not gonna let pity get in the way of that. You keep letting your moral compass guide you, you're gonna end up lost. And hungry, to boot."
It was an odd thought, knowing that the old her would've been far too scared to participate in banter with a man. The old her would've feared abuse, sexual abuse, and anything in between. Now, where there should have been traumatization and trepidation, there was just an endless, eternal void of nothing. Of numbness.
She wasn't sure which she preferred.
The sempiternal thoughts led her to go completely silent, stuck in a daze whilst standing directly in front of the younger man. It confused him as much as it intrigued him, not that he did anything to pull her from her thoughts.
The only thing that managed to was the sight of Ellie, standing in the doorway, observing the two. Adelaide's eyes widened in the slightest way, and she quickly walked towards the girl, pulling her out of the church. Ellie opened her mouth to protest, attempting to pull her arm from Adelaide's grip, but Adelaide cut her off with an abrupt, "Are we going to talk about earlier?"
Ellie finally pulled her arm out of the older girl's clasp, sharply answering, "No."
"I think we need to," Adelaide firmly countered. "What, are you sick? Pregnant?"
"No-"
"If you are," she continued, eyes softened and tone much less sharp, "you can tell me. I'll help if I can."
Ellie belligerently sighed, the sharp, warm breath smacking Adelaide across the face, accompanied by the constant frigid air consuming the both of them. "I'm not fucking pregnant," she emphasized strongly, wide eyes glaring at the older woman, who only watched as Ellie stormed into the church.
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The shotgun clattered against the cement, followed by Jasper's body as he plopped down beside it. His head buried between his knees as he attempted to catch his breath, his shoulders rising with every heavy attempt. Parker stood beside him, looking out at a frozen Boston from the rooftop they stood atop. They weren't too far from the ground; after all, it was only a two-story building, but it gave them an entirely different perspective.
They remained silent. Their breaths slowed, no more clouds of breath forming before them, and Jasper finally looked up at the grey sky. His gaze diverted to Parker, who stood as thunderously silent as ever, for reasons Jasper and only Jasper could ever recognize, and he spoke up, "Do you blame yourself for it?"
Parker's eyebrows furrowed as he glanced down at Jasper and retorted, "What?"
"Do you blame yourself for what happened?" Jasper reiterated, a bit more strongly and with more force as he propped himself up on his elbows, leaning back as he awaited his best friend's answer.
Tongue swiping against chapped lips, Parker let out a faint huff as he struggled to come up with a sufficient answer. He could lie and say no, end the conversation right there; or say yes, and finally get it out, but have to elaborate... and elaborating on such a thing was not something he anticipated. Mouth agape, the slightest of noise escaped him - it wasn't even a word, just the beginning of an undecided one -, but immediately was muffled by a scream of, "Help! Get back! H-Help me!"
Jasper instantly scrambled to his feet, bringing the gun with him, as both he and Parker ran to the edge of the roof where the screams could be heard echoing from. Jasper was the first to look over the edge, and there he saw the man from before standing on the edge of the bathroom window, as Parker followed suit. "Oh, shit," Parker breathed out, a cloudy breath forming alongside his words.
Beneath the man's desperate cries for help, a faint chorus of growls could be heard, just as hands began to appear beside the man's shaky legs. All it took was one clutch, a slight pull, and the man was slipping off of the icy ledge with a prolonged scream. The two men's eyes widened, hearts pounding in their chest as they could actually hear the older man's body smack the cement.
"H-he...," Jasper began haltingly with a shaky voice, "he should've known th-that it would be slippery. Just logic." Just as the uncertain words left the teen's mouth, a distant groan was heard as they watched the man slightly shift on the cement.
A gleam appeared in Parker's eyes at the sight of someone who could actually be saved. "We're gonna go help him," Parker spoke as he stood.
With furrowed eyebrows, Jasper disputed, "We can't," as he followed suit, standing to his feet as Parker began to pace towards the ladder on the side of the building. Parker turned, eyelids narrowed just beneath his eyebrows, both of which were pulled together in a mixture of confusion and anger. "Parker," Jasper continued calmly, slightly tilting his head to the side, "think about this, he can't be saved. We-"
"I think about it every day, okay?" The words burst from Parker's mouth suddenly, and even though Parker didn't mean for them to, he added, "What happened was our fault, but that doesn't automatically mean that nobody can be saved. Don't use my mom as an excuse for not being selfless. If I can get through each day, knowing what we did to her, then you can."
Jasper's eyes softened, his lips parting in a slight way. His stare diverted from clashing with Parker's own, and for a moment he simply looked down at his own shoes as he processed the words that burst from his best friend's mouth. Not only did Parker blame himself, he also blamed Jasper. And Jasper considered that entirely justifiable, considering he himself put both of them at fault.
A murder could be an accident, but that doesn't make it any less of a murder. If a life was undeniably being taken, he considered it a murder. The old him would consider it a sin, "And he that kills any man shall surely be put to death," and everything along those lines - but this him had already given up on religion.
Jasper inhaled slowly. "Let's just get ba-" He began, but his words cut off at the sight of Parker climbing down the ladder and out of view. "Parker!"
Parker's sneakers hit the ground with a light smack - it was the only bare cement he had seen thus far. Everywhere else was blanketed by snow, but not this narrow alley. Not that he stopped to pay a considerable amount of attention to it; he began to sprint towards the street almost immediately.
He'd hoped to see the man on his feet, fighting for any chance to live. To see the man contributing to his own rescue.
Instead, what he saw made his eyes widen in both fear and shock. The man had barely begun to sit up to his knees, blood already seeping from a gash in his forehead, managing out a groggy groan, when another wave of the dead ones erupted from the gun store and immediately tackled him back to the snowy ground. Discolored teeth tearing into his cheek, arms, and legs, crimson blood spurting from the gaping holes in which chunks of skin should've been. A bloodcurdling scream escaped the man, one that gradually died out from reasons that Parker just wouldn't accept.
He could be saved, even with pieces of him missing.
Just as he was about to go towards the motionless carcass of the man, he had been knocked to the ground, too; only, this time by something actually living. Jasper hovered above him, anger underlying within his worried glare. "What are you doing?!" he questioned vehemently.
Neither of them were exceptionally shocked when the dead ones heard his slight shout from feet away. One day in the new world, and they already weren't surprised at another wave of grave danger.
That didn't stop them from hurriedly reacting to the group staggering towards them, though. Jasper moved entirely too quickly, stumbling over Parker's body beneath him for the younger teen was also attempting to get up, sending the two of them back down into the snow. Parker's first attempt to stand was futile, his shoes sliding against the slight sheet of ice beneath the snow, but he rushed to scramble to his feet and trail behind Jasper, who had managed to stand and sprint with ease, as soon as he was able.
Parker vowed to patiently wait for the day in which it wouldn't be him always lagging behind. The day where he wasn't the shadow, but instead the light.
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Parker had entered the church like a toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum, pushing past the girl, Subject Nine, seated on the front steps, as to where Jasper calmly sat down beside her with a slight huff. She looked up from the thick book in her lap, eyes widening and a slight smile appearing as she spoke, "Oh, you're back. Took you forever. Did you, um, get what you needed?"
With a slight shake of his head, he scoffed. "Nope," he answered. "The place was empty, and the one gun I found got left on a rooftop."
"Rooft- What happened out there?" she asked, turning slightly on the cold concrete to face him more.
"Lots," he breathed out, the breath clouding before him in the frigid, midnight air. He genuinely didn't want to go on and on about how he wouldn't allow Parker to save a life (though Jasper knew that he was right), and about how the supply run gave him less hope that they would even make it to DC. Before, at the facility, he didn't take the man on the intercom seriously - and, thanks to the horde of walking corpses plaguing Boston, it was a cataclysmic reality. In any attempt to change the subject, he glanced down at the book resting in her lap and quickly noticed the cross printed on the front. "Really? The Bible?"
"Yeah," she nodded, forcing a polite smile. "I actually, um, noticed something," she added, taking the book in her hands and flipping to the page she had pseudo-bookmarked by folding over the corner, and began to read aloud, "For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed."
"This isn't some biblical plague," he was quick to sternly tell her. "We know what did this - your friends did this." In this fleeting moment, he realized she was just attempting to cope with what happened in the church previously. She was seconds away from getting attacked by a decaying, undead corpse - and looking to some higher power for comfort and for an adequate explanation.
And he didn't know how to break it to her that, even if God did exist, he wasn't assisting anyone in their lifeless city.
And so he only stood and entered the church full of the sleeping, shivering bodies of those who had also come to the conclusion that they were on their own. Just slightly differently than Jasper, for he had quite literally seen more than all of them. They told themselves not to expect any assistance simply to prepare themselves, as to where he wasn't at all prepared to be crushed by a crippling rush of loneliness.
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yo yo yo i think this is the best chapter so far??? idrk but I'm hella proud of it
+ a lot of this (flashback and such) is to be continued but i decided to split since it's already long
thanks for 1k tho !!
word count: 3400