Cushioned, stoic, and staring on, Russell's castle crowns the colony and all its people. Behind him, his most trusted advisor leans against his desk. Normally, he'd eye her in that pencil skirt in the reflection of the glass, but the vision of what's happening to his protected kingdom is enough to beguile him.
He's executed his God-given right to set into motion a future without the voices of the unsure to guide him. This little world of his needed protection, guidance, strict rules. Protection, from the outside, but most of all, protection from themselves. It took one weak link in this chain to destroy it all. As he looked on to the developing scene, he saw plenty of weak links bending to the will of unneeded chaos.
It was Hannah's fault. Before her, the sniper who came in with the nurse, who questioned his methods since his first day here. Enough so, that it fueled Hannah's fire whether she realized it or not. In line with his comments, his sarcasm, Sergeant Doyle brought back a corrupted military presence Russell did well to cast out when he took Richmond Hill for his own.
Out there, his nephew and last living family member perished. Gone to the infected, no doubt. In this knowledge, the last semblance of his former, empathetic self-cast out with the rough wind outside. Some of his men searched still for Ethan. A search he should be leading, but instead had to worry about the trouble amok in the colony.
In Hannah's torture, the concerned gathered. All of them, subject to her screams, brought to light by Ana Maria's bold display that they'd agreed upon, but was now backfiring. Instead of fearing them, they gathered in protest. Dr. Martin begged called for his own presence pleading for Hannah's life over the radios. To which, he ignored and ordered his men to do the same.
Hannah's torture gave them the strength to call out Russell and his regime for their brutal tactics, at last. What they had once feared, now ignited outrage.
They would learn. They all would learn. He'd reminded them before and he'd certainly, remind them again.
Trials. Mass exiles. Executions of Hannah, the soldier, anyone else who aligned with them, would find dangerous persuasive measures. For those that might choose to rebel still, they'd find starvation inside the colony's walls. Slow, smaller portions, contaminated water....whatever it took for them to remember like last time that an uprising against him, against their hosting district, meant death.
"You should expedite the trial to tonight before they start to revolt..." The voice to the pencil skirt offers her advice, treading lightly on his mood.
Kate, his advisor not only by choice but by the placement of District 4, had her own thumbprint on these people. Nothing more than a spy for the district at first, she avoided the misogyny in one place for a more tolerable position here at Richmond Hill. Here, her intelligence and career found value over her looks, which might have been the first time in her life, where her value shined in the right place.
In the impact of her own leadership here, Kate hid in the shadow of the darkness Russell cast on Richmond Hill. She had his ear, his bed, his best meals. It was far more than she could have in any district and easier to obtain, too. Here, she only had him to worry about, to control in order to control the rest. In District 4, Masters were difficult to blend in with. Super-soldiers, who saw women as property and entertainment alone. Thanks to placement orders from higher up, from their multi-district commander, she found a transfer. A down-grade, she presumed, at first, but it had been much safer here in Richmond Hill than anywhere else she'd been since the fall.
"If I kill the girl first it will show them exactly who is in power here. They'll see they have no voice, that their protests mean nothing." Russell retorts, finally spinning his chair to give her his attention.
The bright red of her hair shifts with her disagreement, but her spine stays poised as ever as she shifts weight on white pumps. "If you instill more fear in them it will cause an uprising against you and in turn, the district. There's more of them than us, this can get ugly quick. We've all seen it before when the virus shifted, how quickly our old government fell. Your guard here can't compare in numbers to Richmond Hill's civilians. Yes, most of them are a bunch of rednecks with nothing more than pitchforks, but they know how to use those pitchforks. Remember, your people are growing hungry and they are feeling the choke of the tight leash...."
A blow to his ego, maybe, but the man she helped build-up to this ego needed to hear the truth. Not just for Hannah's life, but obviously, for hers. She tended to stay hidden so to miss the blame, but hatred was a disease far more contagious than the carrion virus. It would spread, not just to Russell, but to those under his direct line. Kate fell completely underneath as second in command, thanks not just to the commander of District 4, but by her own charms. Next to her came that rat trap, Ana Maria. Her presence, nothing more than an instigator to Russell's desires for ruthless power in the colony that Kate tried so desperately to quell lately in the needing to keep his high-stature.
Like so many men she'd known, his desire for power and his cushy seat in it started to drive him to the point of madness.
He spins back, watching his guard taking control of the situation outside of the hospital. From his vantage point, he can hear the screams, the arguing, the need for his own presence should the crowd further in aggression. Standing, Russell knows he wants nothing more than to see that girl dead. Hannah, sister to a man he himself, slaughtered in the night in secret, had been on his shortlist for some time. Hadn't it been for the affections of his nephew, Hannah would've been gone long ago too. A nuisance gene, that obviously ran strong in their family.
"What are you going to do?" Kate asks, her freshly painted pink nails chipping in her fidgeting.
He lingers at the door, casting back to her, "Getting her away from Ana Maria before those parasites have something real to complain about..."
***
Russell's brilliant, shiniest smile planted, it grows to full fruition as he steps up before his people. Hand out to calm them, he puts on his performance that worked wonders in front of any crowd. A charmer to the masses, a sadist on his own time, Russell perpetuated another lie that they ate up quicker than the colony bakers could send out fresh bread.
"The sheriff will be punished for her actions here today and I assure you, whatever Hannah has endured has been put to an end. I ask for all of you to return to your homes, enjoy your supper, and meet me in the civilian center for picking jurors for Hannah's trial. We are going to need fair, neutral individuals to have our dear Hannah pay for her crimes accordingly. I ask you all to be forgiving of our sheriff, who is not in her right mind after the cruel attack from Hannah earlier today. I thank all of you for your concerns, but there's nothing left for y'all to witness here! It's merely a quarrel between two women gone out of control and it will be handled accordingly!"
He ushers to his right, like the parting of the red sea might guide them out of his sight.
They are reluctant, but as per usual, some of the crowd begins to dissipate. Looking back, but with tails tucked between their legs. Concern, that Russell knows won't keep them blind to Hannah's condition should Ana Maria have done anything horrific yet to the girl. If that were the case, Russell would have to keep her here to keep from instigating further panic. Imagining her wounds would need tending to anyway, it's not a twist of his arm given to keep her here, out of sight till the trial where her injuries might sway susceptible jurors to emotions and other nonsensical things building against him in their eyes.
The members of the guard alongside him, they make their way through the medical unit. Checking room by room for anyone who may have even witnessed any crimes here, Russell is displeased to see that Elisa is gone, and not a single person in their already diminished medical staff is on duty.
"Y'all stay down here!" he yells to his men as he continues on.
He climbs the stairs from the first floor, making Russell's complexion turn far redder since these floors were off-limits for his own needs. The trail of blood, the stench of it far fresher than what he remembered from his trip here yesterday on his own, Russell is ready to kill Ana Maria himself over the shit she pulled today. Not even she, was above his orders to stay off of this floor, and the other higher still.
Following the trail, Russell slowly opens the metal door that's already ajar. He finds the sheriff, covered in blood that's not her own, tied up, and gagged back with a belt to hide her furious screams.
Russell's hands are rough as he pulls down at the tight belt to free her mouth and they shake with the rest of him as he scowls down at Ana Maria.
She blurts as soon as she finds the small freedom, "They did this...the bastards from the beach! Those two...Nick and Dalton...they were sent here to fuck everything up. They took her! They took Hannah!"
Lifting her up in one furious swipe of her bound wrists, Russell can no longer hold back his fury. Slapping her open-handed with one and holding her in place by the binds of the other, Russell finds little satisfaction in his anger toward her...even as she spits out blood from her swollen lips.
Freeing her, he lets her fall to the ground from the dizzy spins of his strike and waits by the door.
Russell growls out, "I'll come back for you when I feel like it. You're a poison and I will not lose this place over your stupidity..."
He shuts the metal door, locks it, and ignores the screams that come from the woman he thought he could trust.
To his men below, he returns and shouts, "The two new arrivals and Hannah are making their escape! They're with the traitors by the beach! Find them! Bring them to the mansion! They're all under arrest and will face trial...or death!"
***
Ten Months Earlier
The RV rattled on against the pelting rain.
Their former stronghold gone, reinforced by feeble barbed wire and debris, the last town they'd turned into an illusion of safety fell to the horde. The escape vehicle carried them toward a colony that supplied a district based in Atlanta. Here, on the coast of Georgia. Many of them have talked about escaping to that very district, only a few hour's drive in the world before. Now, it's an unknown distance through the abandoned vehicles, damaged roads, and of course, the zombies.
After Russell had made the emergency call, after spending over a year off of any district's scent, the call sounded in contacting them in a plea for help. Living out in the elements, securing another town as he did previously, he knew, would be impossible this far along after the fall.
As if by some form of fate, an answer came to their radio loop broadcast. Kate, from District 4, mapped directions to one of the district's outlying colonies in dire need of able bodies to feed the mother district.
With Kate's help and promise that she'd meet them in the hosting colony, the small group of four traveled mere miles outside of Savannah toward their would-be safe haven The storm, however, made it a rocky ride.
***
The nausea wasn't lost on Hannah, nor her brother, or Ethan on the other side of her.
Hannah's expired mascara ran down her cheeks from both the rain outside and the tears built up too long within. They all escaped within an inch of their lives back there, holed up in the gun shop that the zombies curved a deadly barrier around.
Dozens of survivors, the community they'd built over the past two years, all dead. Friends, family—those they've gotten to know after the past year of surviving alongside them—gone. Russell, ruthless as always in Hannah's eyes, didn't have time to decipher bite from other injuries. If you were bleeding, you were shot point-blank. A maddened spree that all of them bore witness to, that Hannah's brother, Hamish, had dared to speak up about and now found himself on the minefield of Russell's last nerves.
The four of them were alive, thanks to Russell, and they could be dead by his hand all the same. The two cars of survivors following behind them, also knew that their fate rested in their tumultuous leader's hands. They'd stayed alive before, also, because of him and his police background, and the protected town he'd built under his wing.
Russell back there officially lost his mind at their fallen town's ashes.
His own nephew barely looked his way and in trademark Russell fashion, he turned his back on anyone who dared.
Blinds drawn down, they're hidden from the dead they pass outside. The large vehicle slows by Hamish's driving, passing abandoned cars and the damage on the freeway from the abandonment of time. Having ignored Hannah's idea to take the back roads, Russell grimaced against her accusatory stares as they stuck to his original plan that proved to be the wrong call.
Then, mother nature herself reared her ugly head. She flew to the ground in a swirling grey cloud when the RV made its final jarring stop. Hannah and Ethan fell on top of one another at the sudden stop, as Russell clung onto the cabinets near the sink where he stood. The cars behind screech, then a cloud of burning rubber wisps over the abandoned vehicles ahead.
The dead reaching after them began to bang against the casing, growling, then biting against the side of the RV.
The panicked gasps of Hannah and Ethan drown out by the hail that beats erratically. From the back of the RV, they crawl, trying to see just what happened when they make it all to the front and see for themselves...
"We have a serious problem!" Hamish shouts from the driver's seat as he struggles to free himself from the seatbelt.
The grey clouds touch down on the highway ahead, tearing up blacktop, absorbing everything within a mile's radius to the center of its violent vortex.
Hannah screams, "We need to run!"
Her brother helps her up as the RV rocks from greedy zombie hands. Not looking back after Hannah's plea, Russell takes control of the wheel in her brother's absence, backing up the RV over the zombies, hitting a few abandoned cars, as well as a car filled with their fellow survivors behind them. Hannah shrieks as Russell drives back the way they came to try and escape the tight trap of the highway.
A concrete divider separates the dual sides of the road, one that can't be run over with assured success should they simply choose to take the other side back.
One car abandons, the men run as Hannah wanted, and two are taken down by the infected and ripped apart on the hoods of abandoned cars, that plated them perfectly for feasting. Hannah yells to the other car through a freshly opened window, begging them to stay in their car, to turn around. As the RV climbs in speed away from the tornado and then, the other survivors, Hannah watches them grow smaller in the distance.
The others from the first car try to outrun everything that threatens them on the course she wanted to take herself. Hannah jumps as her brother's hand finds her back, but she stares on, rooting for them to make it. They both let out a low yelp as a piece of shrapnel sucked up from the wind, decapitating one man who'd once been her neighbor. Then, the parts of him and the shrapnel are pulled to the heart of the storm. The other is soon sucked up by the violent winds too as she becomes nothing more than an ant behind the RV.
The car Russell hit in his escape, falls far behind, creating smoke that gets blacker by the second. As the grey swirling violence scoops up the zombies, vanishing them, and any other debris in its wake, the disabled car vanishes from their sight. Now, the tornado rides on their own tail.
***
Glancing for a mere moment in the side-view mirror at the chasing funnel, Russell fixes his eyes ahead and on the shit-show, Hamish glided through earlier. Russell gives no warning to those in the back as he plows through abandoned debris and cars to try and beat the speed of the tornado. The plow reinforcements in the front of the RV spark and Russell smiles against the flash.
The others scream and struggle to grip anything as the RV nearly topples over and begins to make a scraping sound when it rights itself. The impact of the zombies he strikes down splatter and crunch under the wheels and the flat tires, as Russell braces for the horde they've drawn in up ahead.
The amber eyes heading their way walk from all sides, the ones behind, are sucked up into the tornado. Russell slams down on the gas for as long as he can. The blood, the bodies pile up on impact ahead, leaving him driving blind. Then, the RV stops in the build-up, by the sheer numbers of the tight undead both walking and crunched by the impact.
Grabbing his gun, Russell shouts to the others to take to the roof. After he points to the opened window from Hannah's earlier dramatics, she returns to the same window after grabbing the gun tossed her way from Ethan.
***
As she balances her ass on the window that won't quite drop all the way, Hannah's thankful for the last couple weeks of meager portions that she's able to fit smoothly. Against the hail that pelts against her head and the winds that blind her from the mess of her own hair caught in it, she curses. Her brother right behind her, she pulls up swiftly onto the roof of the RV and waits for Hamish to make the climb.
The RV rocks aggressively from the hungry creatures surrounding them, but Hamish makes it up with Hannah's helping hand. As his glasses fall from the bridge of his nose and into the horde below reaching toward them, Hannah shakes her head as he attempts to raise his gun and point out into the growling horde.
Her back finds his as they aim their pistols to the zombies and the Wolfe men join them.
They fire.
Though Hannah does her best to focus on the dead, it's the tornado that robs her attention.
The sound of bullets ceases with her own. She doesn't have to look to know they're all staring into their death.
The hail pelts down against them and the hard surface beneath her bloodied shoes. She lowers down, trying to find her balance against the horde and the winds readying to peel them from the hot RV's roof.
Then, the tornado shifts course, but they all continue to watch it suck up more of the zombies and hold their breath until they can hear their own thoughts again. As it tears through a mini-mall and plays with the decay, it lightens and disappears into nothing but a swirling tiny cone until it's nothing but light fog.
She hears her own lungs stagger to take in air. The full score of the monsters returns in full stereo. Back to her feet on shaky knees, the bullets reign down on the next death she knows she wouldn't prefer to the tornado. She'd put a bullet into her own skull before she'd feel the teeth of the infected.
Her brother starts shooting until he sounds nothing but an empty barrel. Hannah reaches for bullets to hand to him and reloads herself after he's accepted them. As she readies to shoot again, the strength of the collective dead on one side knocks all of them off of their feet, but Hannah's sent to the edge...and over.
As the RV threatens to tip on one side and send her first into the zombies waiting, it stops and rights itself, but she's left hanging with slippery fingers on that opened window.
The discolored hands reach, as she swings her foot finds on the open window. Pushing herself up, she's out of the grips of flesh that flaked off on her jeans. Her shoe squishes from the blood drenching it, absorbed from the pool of freshly killed neighbors they ran through hours ago. The blood trickles down the window, as her hands desperately claw for the roof of the RV.
Her brother reaches for her hand, grabs it, and tries to help her up. Ethan shoots at the dead that threatens to drag her down into the buffet line.
Then she sees Russell. His shotgun aimed not at the dead, but at her, and none of the dead beneath her find his target. The moment passes slowly between the dangling and the executioner, and as she stares down the barrel of his thread of life, she exhales when he turns his barrel to shoot at the dead instead.
Her ears ring, but she's dragged up by her brother when she's disoriented from the shotgun blast. Russell's there to help her up over the last hump that her brother can't quite lift her over and as her hand wraps within this psycho's hand she thinks, in passing, that she should thank him. Instead, she takes her hand back with a fiery glare.
The rumbles on the ground return. Her hearing slowly returns and the sounds of the dead shift in direction. They watch the horde moving on, toward the line of camouflage-printed tanks and black trucks as they draw in from the opposite side of the highway. As uniformed men and women of an unknown pattern make their assault on the hungry mob, Hannah tries to catch her breath. Again, she side-eyes Russell, calculating his distance from the edge of the RV.
He's distracted, watching their miraculous rescue unfold with a smile on his face. They all watch, all but Hannah, who wonders just how hard she'd have to shove to feel safe again