The Creeping Messiah Complex

Georgia,

eleven months after the treaty:

Worth had his hand in a box of ammunition.

It was a bruised, calloused hand with cracked nails and a scabbed bite mark between the thumb and forefinger. He didn't used to have hands like this, back before he turned into some kind of fucking revolutionary, odd-job man. He thought about that as he rummaged around for a .45 caliber bullet.

He wondered why the bite wasn't infected yet.

It'd been three days, three days since they last saw Hanna, three days since they left the hotel—the base, damn Hanna and his romantic tendencies—for a routine scouting mission. Three days since this clusterfuck exploded like a bombed armory. They'd been running since, outnumbered and out gunned by less than a dozen dipshit locals because it was a fucking scout mission. Fucking Hanna and his fucking diplomacy—hearts and minds his ass. If he'd known this was in the cards, he would have stayed in the goddamn hospital a state back—or at least packed extra rations.

His life is turning into a war movie. You know, typical weekday stuff.

"It's always us," Conrad grumbled from somewhere behind him. "We've practically got ninjas waiting the wings, and who gets to go out and die of exhaustion? Us, that's who. A hack doctor and a fucking artist."

"Grow a pair, Debbie," Worth bit out, "y' haven't been an artist since ya broke that piece'a shit laptop in California last year."

"What, you think I suddenly can't sketch because you broke the last computer in the new world? Newsflash Worth, we still have pencils."

"Nah," the doctor shot back, clicking a clip into his rifle. "I mean, you ain't been a artist, you've been Hanna's fuckin' call-boy, that's what you been. Welcome t' th' post-apocalyptic world of today, princess. Y' can stop bitchin' any time now."

"I'll stop bitching when you stop being the worst partner on God's green earth. I don't know why Hanna always splits us up like this. I think he must be under the mistaken impression that we like each other, or something."

"Aw, Connie, me thinks the lady protesteth too much."

"Oh, I'll show you what the lady—"

The blast of a gunshot punched through Conrad's response. A bullet whizzed into the bark of a close tree and Conrad dove backwards, cursing, as Worth tossed the pistol to him. Silence followed.

Slowly, Conrad slid up beside Worth and flicked the safety off. They'd gotten a bit indifferent with their guns in the last year, which worried Conrad (loudly) on occasion. Something about violence and humanity and whatever that other word was that Conrad liked to throw around. Recklessness? Tooth decay?

"Drop your weapons, spooks," a voice called over the hill, source invisible in the twilight. "We have you surrounded!"

Worth glanced over at his companion, feeling pretty amused. "Yanno," he called back, "I'm a human m'self."

"Don't you bother lying to us, we won't fall for it!"

Conrad hmmphed. "They never believe us. I don't know why you bother, you're a hell of a lot scarier than me. If anybody was going to pass as a human, it wouldn't be you."

"Ey, ya wanna talk to 'em? Be my guest."

Conrad peered out into the forest, trying to figure out where his opponent was hiding. "Look," he shouted, "if this is because I knocked over your house, I'm sorry! It was an accident, and in my defense, it wasn't built very well and I'm a lot stronger than I used to be!"

"It's about the principle of the thing!" the voice yelled back, a touch miffed. "We don't hold with spooks on our land, you hear me? Besides, my brother built that house, and now you gone and knocked the whole thing down so he's got to live with me! You damned well ruined my household!"

"I would be happy to help you rebuild it if you'll just stop chasing us for a bloody minute!"

"We don't hold with no spooks!" the stranger screamed.

Lying behind a rotted log with dead leaves caught in his ungelled hair, Conrad grit his teeth. "Double negative," he muttered.

Worth shot him a nasty look.

"We're coming down there an' killin' you," the voice informed them, a modicum of calm retrieved, "and you can't talk your way out of it!"

In the twilight, Conrad and Worth shared a quick glance. The beginnings of faint pinkish light framed the contours of the vampire's face, his straight nose and the grim line of his lips. These were the moments when he looked most alive. Wordless, the two of them slunk out from the corners of their makeshift campsite.

This had gone on too damn long.

Worth was always a good sneak, as far back as preschool when he was just a little bugger trying to steal the other kiddies' toys. Conrad, though, had taken a bit more practice—if by "a bit more practice" you meant three months of scaring off all the wildlife in a five mile radius that might have been dinner. He had gotten it in the end, of course—little fag was nothing if not meticulous.

"You come out with your hands up," the voice was saying, "and we'll kill you fast. Stay hidden and we kill you slow like."

A few steps up the side of the ravine, and the doctor spotted a silhouette highlighted against the first seeping purple of the sunrise. "Allow me t' return the favor," he muttered, and took the shot.

A deafening crack exploded in front of him and the silhouette clutched at its belly. On top of the hill, more silhouettes rushed into the patch of sunrise—a twin crack blasted from the opposite side of the camp, and another body hit the ground.

"Now," Worth called, "ya sure ya wanna fuck with us?"

There was a pause, and then someone up top shouted, "You killed Martin!"

"Motherfucker," Worth sighed. "If that ain't what they all say."

"Look," Conrad's unmistakable English impatience sailed across the ravine, "It's not like we want to kill you. Just go away and send somebody back to negotiate, we'll pay damages if you'll just act civilized for a minute."

Worth took the opportunity to slide a new clip into his rifle. You never knew when your next opening would be.

"Martin already told you! Non-humans—"

Worth fired off three rounds before he could manage another word; Conrad fired twice bare seconds afterward. Silence settled over the forest.

"Anybody else feel like negotiating?"

Silence continued.

Worth flicked on the safety and uncurled himself. The ash and charcoal remains of a recent forest fire crunched under his shoes as he made his way upwards—always sleep in a ravine, the fires never go that low. He could hear the twin shufflings of worn loafers in the shadow, some distance away.

At the top of the hill, he did a quick body count and checked for any stray pulses. One of the men he'd shot was curled some feet away, moaning softly. Worth poked him with one sooty leather boot.

"Hanna's going to be so pissed off," Conrad muttered, shielding his eyes from the first light. "If we were going to kill them we might as well have done it two days ago before they nearly blew our brains out. God… fucking sunlight. I don't know how I ever stomached it."

The good news and bad news about humanity is that it's just not nocturnal. Bad news because they can hunt your ass down while you and count Fagula are out for the count, good news because you can do the same to them. It's like phone tag with guns.

If there were any phones left, anyways.

They'd been doing a pretty good job of keeping hidden up until this morning, but Christ it was hard to defend a campsite when your partner is dead to the world in a low-pitch blackout tent. They were lucky, he admitted, that Conrad was a young vampire and the daylight was still relatively easy on him. Headaches were the worst of it, before the sun actually came up.

Worth nudged the bleeding local again. Didn't look old enough to be shooting anything, but then again, there's something about taking a slug of lead to the gut that tends to make everyone look like a squalling baby.

"'Ey," he said, kicking the man, "you ain't dead yet. Uncurl yer spiteful ass already."

The huddled mass tucked in tighter and clenched his eyes closed. Worth rolled his eyes.

"Connie, you go get yerself outta the sunlight before I'm stuck cleanin' up bloodsucker jerky. I'll take care of the bleedin' fuckface here. I'd tell ya you're on dishwashin' duty to pay me back, but I know how much you like them womanly type chores."

Conrad opened his mouth, glanced at the creeping sunrise, and hmmmphed instead. "I know you won't kill him," he said, half warning and half confidence.

"Don't be so sure, sweetheart. Gimme a kiss and I'll drain off a couple pints for ya."

"Go fuck yourself," the vampire muttered, rubbing his temples. "Ugh. I'll see you tonight."

As his partner stumbled back down to the now secure campsite, Worth turned his attention to the boy lying at his feet.

"Racist assholes," the doctor sighed, feeling a bit worn at the edges, "you just gotta make things difficult for everybody, eh?"

He knelt and unbuckled the flask of medical alcohol at his hip. The boy struggled weakly as his fetal position was forcibly unfurled, thinly bloodied hands batting at the intrusion.

"Don't be a sissy, I hardly snapped yer collar bone. Man th' fuck up."

With a dose of alcohol drying on his hands, Worth went to work digging out the pellet lodged between a shattered strip of bone and a shoulder blade. Well, this wasn't one he planned on bragging about come tomorrow. He might as well have missed.

"What's yer name, kid?" he asked, digging in his jacket pocket for the tequila-soaked thread he kept handy.

"John," the boy rasped, and from the voice he couldn't have been a day over fifteen.

Worth made a non-committal noise. Centimeter by centimeter, the bloody gash on the boy's shoulder closed. The morning came pouring over treetops and turned the Doctor's pale hands yellow like molten gold. He doused his handy work with one last helping of sanitizer and stepped back.

"Stand up, kid," he ordered, rebuckling his hip flask. "You ain't hurt, stand up or I'll leave ya where you sit."

A couple minutes of goading and pushing found Johnny boy lying near comatose on a black tarp under a cypress canopy. Worth shucked his jacket somewhere in the process, feeling the southern heat beginning its inescapable trickle downwards into the green cleft, and reached for a cigarette.

After a silent moment—as silent as possible anyways, with the damn birds going on like a couple bat-shit grandmas—he picked himself up and slid a hand underneath the heavy white plastic of Conrad's portable cave. He dug underneath the black sleeping bag he knew waited inside and felt for the slender length of the vampire's lukewarm fingers.

Satisfied, he collapsed underneath a tree and slept for ten hours.

-A-

They showed up at Hanna's latest camp the next night, Worth lugging all their compounded shit and Conrad lugging the pitiful fucker who didn't have the sense to die properly when he was shot, and who had passed out after an hour of forced march. Conrad had not been pleased with this arrangement, probably because someone had finally out-sissied him.

Worth tossed his own dead weight in the backseat of the Cadillac as they passed it, heading for long-awaited shelter, and glanced up at the shabby bed-and-breakfast with its kitschy hand-painted "Speak Friend and Enter" sign over the back entrance. Hanna's RV was parked between the building and the wobbly looking stable behind it, just as it had been when Worth and Conrad had stepped out four days ago. Runes scribbled on its new, pale wood walls glowed faintly purple when he passed by—homing spell, he guessed. Those hadn't been there when he left.

"C'mon princess," he called, half turning, "Hanna's prob'ly ruptured somethin' looking for us. Better check the damage before we're stuck lugging two brain dead fuckups along."

"If you want me to move faster," Conrad yelled back, "why don't you give me a hand already?"

He had the kid pulled off his shoulders now, his moon-white arms wrapped around the dirty flannel of the boy's torso. Sneakers dragged in the mud of the yard, and Worth decided he didn't particularly feel like getting that all over his jacket.

"Who's the superhuman around here, Fagula? Christ, suck it up. You oughta be good at that."

Conrad grumbled as he passed. "Is that a gay joke or a vampire joke, fuck it, I don't even care right now—"

Worth grinned to himself and fell into step behind his pissed off compatriot. He dug through his pockets for the last of his cigarettes, quickly finishing an assessment of the scenario. Too quiet, he decided, and reached casually for the holster at his hip.

Conrad pulled the inn's screen door open, and found a shotgun pressed against his head.

"Who ya'll think you are?"

Conrad tripped backwards off the step and landed in a heap with their unconscious prisoner. The double barrels glinted blue in the shadow of the doorway. The doctor lit up as Conrad cursed and untangled himself at his feet.

"We're friends, y' shift-sleepin' sonuva bitch," Worth replied, seeing that Conrad wasn't going to be answering any time soon, and with one thin finger he pointed upwards at the kitschy hand painted sign above the entrance.

The man at the door squinted, pulled back his shotgun and looked down at Conrad.

"Mr. Achenleck?" he asked, eyebrows shooting up. "I'll be a... Mr. Achenleck, is that you?"

"Conrad, please," the vampire mumbled, hauling their comatose local up with him.

"Mr. Achenleck, by god, I am sorry. I didn't recognize you under all that… dirt. An' Doc Worth! Jesus, I must be sleepwalkin' or something."

The pale man between them shifted his grip on the still smaller body in his arms. "Uh, it's okay, Bill. At least you didn't… shoot us. I guess. Look, is Hanna still here? We need to talk to him now."

"Sure, sure," the innkeeper replied, quickly unloading his shotgun. "Come inside, before somebody hears ya'll."

With a quick, nervous flicker backwards over his shoulder, Conrad and his human baggage shuffled through the door and Worth kicked it closed behind them. The scent of fried food and damp wood settled over them all.

"Jesus," Bill repeated, "I'm so sorry. Ya'll look like you walked though a hurricane. Where's the bike? Coulda sworn you left here on a motorcycle."

Conrad rubbed self-consciously at the layer of mud and soot caked over his bloodless face. "We wrecked it outrunning some local KKK dumbasses. I though you told us there weren't any branches around here?"

"There ain't," Bill responded, visibly confused.

Worth flicked ash onto the worn carpet. "Tell that to short, pale and stupid over here," he suggested, pointing at their prisoner. "Yer gonna want ter talk to him before you say that again. I'm down a cartridge causa those dipshits, and poor Lady Conrad here had to drag his sorry ass up three hills and a swamp. Roit ruined her manicure, it did."

Conrad shot him an evil look, but he ignored it. If it looks like a bitch and it bitches like a bitch, it's a bloody fucking bitch.

Bill mumbled something about finding Hanna and disappeared up the stairs.

As the last creaks of footsteps faded upwards, Conrad collapsed into an armchair. Worth unlaced the worn and muddy brown leather that had been clinging to his ankles for days, tossing them somewhere across the carpet. A quiet settled over the house, that same unreal quiet that followed a do-or-die escape, filled with the buzzing memory of shots flying and the ache of still tense muscles.

"Oi, princess, you break a nail or sumthin'? That's a downright unladylike scowl ya got there."

Conrad looked up at him, face twisting underneath an inch of dried mud and irritation. The camouflage jacket he hated so much twisted too, over his hunched shoulders and tightly crossed arms.

"Oh, fuck you Worth. You're just irritated that the rain ruined your disgusting cancer stick. I'm too tired to deal with your shit right now, so check on your comatose patient over there or go get some sleep. You look like shit. If you stood next to the zombie I wouldn't be able to tell which of you died first."

"Nice ter see you so concerned," Worth replied, cocking a mud-stiffened brow. "I'll make sure to clean up good 'fore you take me to dinner at the country club tonight. Wouldn't want ter offend yer ladyship's delicate sensibilities."

The vampire groaned and stumbled to his feet. "That's it. I'm going to bed. You can explain the whole clusterfuck by yourself, I'm done here. Wake me up tomorrow night."

"Girl needs her beauty sleep," the doc snickered, throwing himself into the now vacated seat. "Nighty-night, love."

-A-

"So what you mean," Hanna said, head propped up on chin, "is that Conrad actually knocked down somebody's house."

"Tha's what I said," Worth replied, taking a last drag on his cigarette. "Wasn't much of a house, t' be honest. Built in the last year, my guess. Her highness saw a mouse 'r summat, had a goddamn spaz attack an' knocked out one of the walls. Woke up the whole town."

"And then the Klan found you," Hanna guessed. He looked up at his undead shadow. "Didn't Bill tell us there weren't any branches around here?"

The zombie shrugged slightly. "He did say that, but perhaps this one is new."

"This sucks," Hanna muttered, reaching for one of the crackers splayed out on the counter in front of him. "There goes the simple delivery mission." He stuffed the thing in his mouth and turned towards the fourth, silent member of their table. "Are you gonna be okay, Mr. Fell?"

Mr. Fell brushed dust off one shoulder of his pitch-black Armani suit. Truth be told, his presence set Worth's teeth on edge whenever they were in the room together, like the kind of high pitched buzz you could never trace back to a source. The man was impossible to irritate—he took everything with the same cool amusement of a sunning reptile, and half the reason Worth had set out on that disastrous scout mission was to get away from the cold-blooded bastard.

Besides, Worth had sort of gotten used to being the tallest bloke in the room. Fell's seven-foot-plus put a crimp in that.

"I'll be fine, Hanna," their guest replied, smiling faintly. "It takes a bit more than a few racists with pitchforks to frighten me."

"Where'd you get the telegram from, anyways?" the redhead asked, curiosity lighting up his blue eyes. "I know you said we could leave you anywhere along the Wassisa river, but since all this local business is flaring up we should probably get more specific."

"I didn't get a telegram," Mr. Fell responded, one black brow raised.

"Oh." Hanna paused. "Really? When you said you got a message I just assumed 'cause, yanno, they got a lot of those lines working out west, but okay, what was it? Phone call? I haven't heard of any long distance phone lines, but I guess you could have some kind of relay system if there was a high survival rate between here and there—"

"It wasn't a phone call."

"Uh. Letter?"

"I'm afraid not."

The first orange fingers of dawn slid across the table, creating monochrome stained-glass patterns across the black tabletop. Mr. Fell glanced back at the window and then back at his unnerved companions.

"Dawn," he observed, sliding gracefully out of his chair. "I have some business to attend to with one of the local farmers. I will meet you back here this afternoon—don't look for me, I'll find you. Have a pleasant morning."

His sharp figure slid through the back door and disappeared immediately into the shadows of the courtyard. Hanna sat tapping the tabletop for a few moments and then frowned up at his undead friend as if Worth had also disappeared from the room just as quickly.

"Do you think we've ever seen that guy sleep?"

"I haven't," the green man answered, "and I've had ample opportunity."

Worth rapped the table hard enough to make his knuckles sting, and was gratified when the two of them flinched a little in surprise. Or Hanna at least.

"Look, Hanna, I'm just here to make sure none a' you dumbasses slits his wrist on a can a' tuna so I don't really give a shit what you do 'bout Mr. Antichrist one way 'r another. But it seems ter me you'd be better off dumpin' his ass and getting' the fuck out while ya still can."

The ginger waved him off. "Aw, Worth, you don't really get the whole 'duty bound' thing. That's okay! I have enough honor and all for both of us! And Polk here, him too."

Behind the kid, a dry, green mouth quirked upward in a tender half smile. Worth made a mental note to test himself for diabetes the next time he had a chance. This shit was getting ridiculous.

"Hanna, I understand y' ain't quite right in the head, but this time that honor bullshit's most likely gonna get you killed an' I don't wanna be the guy who mops it all up. These redneck bastards 'r too fucking inbred to remember their own names, y' can't reason with 'em. Don't even try. I don' want another Seattle."

If Conrad had said something like that, Hanna would have spent the next ten minutes lecturing him on stereotypes and tolerance. Seeing as it was Worth, Hanna probably hadn't even been listening. He had half a mind to strangle the little dipshit.

"Don't worry about it," Hanna insisted, grinning like a motherfucking clown, "The Wassisa is, like, not even two days south of here. We'll be there before you can say constant vigilance!"

"I don't say that," the doc grumbled, "you do, for all the good it does anybody. All the fucking time."

"Exactly! So it's decided, we'll load up tomorrow—um, this afternoon and we'll hit the road as soon as Connie wakes up! Sounds like a plan. Great. I'll see if the stable guy needs any help washing off those protection runes. Lee, would you start packing, please?"

As the magician ran up the stairs—probably waking everyone in the building in the process—Worth took a moment to steel himself against whatever terror and stupidity, which Hanna would inevitably label an "adventure", was waiting for them up ahead. He looked at the zombie.

"Oi, General," he said, "you think there's somethin' wrong with a man who throws 'imself in fronta every gun he kin find?"

"The world needs soldiers, doctor," the zombie replied, unblinking with his eyes like neon vacancy signs.

"He thinks he's doin' penance," the living man growled.

"I know."

Pale yellow sunlight crept through the windows, and it seemed almost alien after living by moonlight and candle light and electricity here and there, as it always did when Worth managed to make it till sunrise.

"I wish there was a way to convince him it wasn't his fault," the Zombie said, softly. "It's been a year now. Anyone else can see that it would have been impossible—the disease came too quickly, and we found the cure too late. We did all that we could."

"I know that an' you know that, but Hanna don't know the meanin' of the words 'not my problem'. This can't end pretty. He won't be happy till he's strung up like the motherfuckin' messiah of the new new testament."

In that brief moment, the shadow of quiet despair flickered over the undead man's lineless face. "I know," he said. "I know."

-A-

Something woke Doc Worth at six or so in the afternoon. He reached for the scalpel he kept under hotel pillows—no sentimental bullshit, he just happened to know his way around a scalpel and they were a whole lot easier to hide. Nothing moved in the room, though the drapes at the window were thick enough to hide a woman or a small man. His gun rested on the besides table, untouched since last night, still loaded. Shifting as little as possible, he slid it off the table and into his hand.

Nothing moved.

His undershirt was still damp from throwing it on as he stepped out of the shower last night—and damn Bill's Nazi housekeeper, while he was thinking about it, tell him when to take a fucking bath would she?—and one of those unpredictable March afternoons wrapped cold fingers around him as he stood.

Nothing moved.

He check behind the curtains, and then inside the closet, and then under the bed. Nothing. So he sat down on the mess of sheets and counted his cigarettes as he adjusted to the soft yellow light of the late afternoon. Something woke him. Something was off.

After a moment, he put away his smokes and walked out into the hall, ears open, and headed for Conrad's room at the center of the building. No windows. It had been a sort of common room, so the artist was curled up in some kind of blanket nest for lack of bed. Hanna had been loudly envious of that. The doctor pushed the door open and stepped inside—one step, just past the doorway.

The room was silent, and empty of everything but two chairs and a nest full of pale skin so still it could have been a corpse's. In a less symbolic sense, at least. Worth stood there for a moment, searching for something wrong, fingers sliding over the barrels of his revolver. His rifle felt better in his hands, but it wasn't much use in close quarters and even less likely to fit on his bedside table. Rifles you can use to shoot a deer—pistols are made for killing men.

When nothing out of the ordinary struck him, he contemplated shaking sleeping beauty awake just to see whether he'd bitch about being woken up or Doc Worth's state of undress first. Something was still off, though, so he stepped back out instead and left the house without diversion.

Hanna was awake—you could hear his voice somewhere a ways away, as soon as you went outside—which meant the dead man was out playing shadow, which meant that nothing had gone wrong in the conventional cosmic ass-fuck sense. The doctor passed one of the local guys carving off Hanna's dulled runes, grabbed a pair of somebody else's shoes lying empty by the stable and dropped them when they turned out to be too small for him. Saw that one coming.

"…Does not… never…. You just…"

Huh?

"…next…. Regret your…"

Worth followed a familiar voice to the back of the building and found Mr. Fell going at one of Bill's workers. Yellow eyes flickered. Teeth gritted. That was more emotion than Worth had ever dreamed of getting out of the self-satisfied motherfucker.

"—And furthermore, if you insist on such idiotic—oh," he paused, turning to face Worth mid-sentence. "My. Up a bit early, aren't you? And… so well dressed. It's a wonder you're ever attacked at all, with a stunning presence like that."

Worth watched the relieved stable hand slink away and rolled his eyes. "Yeah yeah, if y' wanna suck my dick you better get in line behind her ladyship Achenleck. I ain't got time for it right now. What're you chewin' out the local for anyhow?"

"He made a mess of my papers," the taller man replied, resuming his usual imperturbable smirk. "And then when I tried to correct him, he pulled out a crucifix of all things. Imagine the nerve. A crucifix on me."

"Yeah," the doctor responded, "imagine tha'."

Mr. Fell raised one perfect eyebrow in a way so condescending it probably would have made Conrad orgasm from sheer faggot-envy.

"I am not your typical guest, my good doctor," he observed, "or hasn't Mr. Cross told you?"

"What, y' got a big nasty secret? Yer suit's a knockoff? Oh, spare me the horror."

"He really hasn't told you," Mr. Fell mused, in a voice that was just begging for a fist in the windpipe. "Perhaps he doesn't know. I merely assumed…"

"Christ, if yer gonna tell me then tell me already. I got places t' be."

"A crucifix is the least of my worries, that's all. And by the way, you do actually have somewhere to be. The boy you dragged here last night woke up about ten minutes ago—he's waiting in the den, as the locals so quaintly put it."

Mr. Fell grabbed his carpet bag and strode off into the woods, and God only knew what a man like that was up to out there.

-A-

Three types of people survived the plague. With the smokers, you can hear it in their voice, see it in their skin if you look for the right shit. Smoker's families, they came through best. Still sound normal, still look normal. The immune ones, though, the ones that fought it off when the rest of the world was hacking up bits of organs and choking on their own blood? You can see it in their eyes. The little blue veins that heralded the first stages of the disease never fully faded, they just thinned.

Johnny-boy had eyes like the pale marble countertops of the house Worth grew up in.

"Yer a real piece'a work, kid," Worth muttered, eyeing the restraints on his unwilling patient.

"Let me go," the boy growled. "Don't you touch me, you slime sucking sonuva devil."

Worth patted the kid's bloodless cheek. "As I told yer illustrious douchebag mate, I ain't nothin' special. I'm a regular old human, same as yerself. A bit better lookin' though, as you can see."

"That makes you a traitor," John spat, pulling his head so far to the other side that the cords in his neck stood out like white lines.

"Kid, have y' even hit puberty yet? Th' fuck d'you know 'bout traitors?"

The doctor pulled a thermometer out of his bag, the former a gift from a latch boss in Arizona and the latter a relic from his days working in a back alley clinic.

"I know that those abominations got us sick and now they want our land and women, and you're helping them."

"There's so much wrong with that sentence, I ain't even sure I know where t' start."

"You're not helping them?" John guessed, lighting up like a fucking mega-watt bulb of sheer stupidity.

Mother of god. "O' course I'm helping 'em, moron. Didn' I shoot you clean through?"

The white ties around the kid's arms stretched taut, thinner and paler than his compressed lips. He had blue eyes, like Hanna's, blue as the midday sky that Worth rarely got to see any more.

"Why are you helping them? What did they promise you? They're liars, you know, you can't trust anything they tell you."

"Now," Worth replied, "that's a bloody sight different from what I've seen. Even the goddamn Devil, he can't tell you anythin' that ain't true one way 'r another. Humans now, humans 'r the only ones who can lie to yer motherfuckin' face without battin' an eyelash. It's a nice gig, bein' a daywalker."

"They promised you something," John insisted, shaking his head.

"Oh, sure," the doctor said, leering down at his patient. "Promised me as many babies as I could eat, an' plenty of Tabasco sauce. I tell ya, nothin' beats a fat li'l baby on a Sunday afternoon. Good with whiskey."

"Don't make fun of me! What did they promise you? Power? Women?"

The older man snorted. Some distant part of his consciousness muttered that he hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep to be dealing with this shit.

"Oi, y' take me fer some kinda politician? That's a dumb fuckin' waste of a soul if y' ask me. If'n you were gonna sell out, y'd better bargain fer somethin' ya couldn't get yerself."

The kid looked at him with blue-shot blue eyes. "What was it then?"

Outside, the sun was starting to sink—you could see the molten rim sliding behind the treeline through the old lace curtains of the inn. Time was running short. Conrad would be up in half an hour and Hanna was already gunning to go, racing back and forth across the yard outside like a Labrador Retriever. Worth lanced up at the grandfather clock—once a relic and now a godsend—and decided it was time to get finished.

He shoved the thermometer into John's mouth and silently dared him to say something else.

For his trouble, Worth received the ugliest look he'd seen in days.

"Kid," The doc mused, "lemme tell ya something yer Daddy musta forgotten ter pass along. Until ya can look inta some poor motherfucker's eyes an' know he's just as scared an' pissed off as you, ya sure as shit don't have the right to kill 'im."

The murderous look remained, but the kid kept his mouth shut.

"Y'don't know these people," Worth went on, "so don' talk about what y' don't understand. Makes you look stupid. Now, Hanna won't let me leave ya here to rot, fer some reason, an' judgin' by those eyes I'd say yer an orphan. Anyway, I ain't takin' ya back to that bloody village 'cause I don't wanna get shot up like yer sorry ass. Hanna says yer comin' with us down ter the drop point, an' we'll leave ya here on the way back up. It don't matter to me one way 'r another, but I don't feel like talkin' sense inter Hanna right now."

"Oo's Anna?" the kid asked, visibly buzzing with curiosity.

"Keep yer mouth shut," Worth snapped. After a moment, he turned and took a step towards the window, pulling back the heavy pattern of lace. "Y'see the little ginger kid? That one's Hanna. He runs shit 'round here, since Connie's too busy bitchin' an' the dead guy's too busy makin' sure Hanna don't run 'imself through with a toothpick. The kid's got a plan, at least. Y'can't lead without a plan."

The thermometer beeped.

Worth snatched the hunk of sterilized plastic out of his patient's mouth. Temperature was normal, which allayed certain concerns. He peeled bandaging off of the wound and busied himself with re-dressing it, prodding with long fingers and once elbowing the kid in the face when he complained too loudly.

"Dunno why you dipshits 'r so against nightwalkers, anyhow," Worth muttered, at some point. "Shoot 'em if they show ya their teeth, give 'em dinner if they pull out a liter o' gas to barter. Same as it's always been. Humans make it too damn complicated."

"Why do you like them so much?" John whispered, the last word catching in a hiss when Worth doused him with hydrogen peroxide.

"Eh? Y' kin trust 'em, fer one thing. If they wanna rip yer guts out, they don't make bones about it. I killed my fair share 'a wolfies in the last year, plenty 'a fangs an' gen'ral spooks. They got a better appreciation fer life 'n death. Promises mean somethin' to 'em, too."

"You'd trust one of those… monsters with your life?"

"I don't trust nobody with nothin', kid. But I made promises of my own, an' I ain't got much else ter live for anyway. It's better'n what you've been doin' with yers, I figure."

Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the visit, but John kept looking at him with those eyes that were so much like Hanna's, and that mouth pressed as thin as Conrad's when he sat in the front of the RV watching the destruction of the world race by at sixty miles an hour.

As the doc reached for the door, bag in hand, the kid finally spoke up.

"You're in love with one of them, aren't you?" he demanded, quiet and drawn from the stress on his injury.

Worth cocked a brow back at him. "Well, now, wouldn't that be a convenient explanation?"

-A-

Conrad came downstairs as Worth left the den, the last vestiges of sunlight fading to magenta at the rim of the world. Worth asked him if he'd slept well, and Conrad turned annoyed and defensive so quickly that Worth didn't even bother following up with a crack about his ladyship's beauty sleep. That was funny enough.

Gotta keep 'em on their toes, anyhow.

Worth searched out the bottle of whiskey he'd started on days ago. Conrad inquired as to the health of their accidental hostage, and Worth ignored him till the aggravated vampire grabbed his jacket and stomped out the door, squinting painfully at the dissolving light.

The doctor watched him go, eyes on the hunched shadow stalking away from the screen, and knocked back a shot's worth of burning liquid.

Weight settled over his shoulders, reminding him of exactly how much he was carrying.

-A-

A smart man learned not to look out the windows when they drove through empty cities. The window was like a square incision in a cadaver's chest, pulled open to reveal all the desiccated ruin of death, and it was easier to sleep if you kept the window shut.

Hanna, though, had never learned that lesson. He kept his eyes fixed on the pane of smudged glass, drinking in the devastation and there wasn't a thing in the world that could break his concentration, except the sound of "do you want to talk about it?". The zombie had tried once. They all ended up eating motherfucking pancakes with no idea how it happened. The next day Hanna was back at the window, as they passed through another city, watching the heaps of bones and collapsing skyscrapers as they rushed by.

Hanna Falk Cross lives to mystify another day.

Conrad hadn't learned either. Maybe he would've—Worth couldn't quite balance the dead man's impressive denial skills with his abject squeamishness—if left alone, but he'd been tossed into the driver's seat since day one and even at night you couldn't ignore the endless, stretching reminder of everything the world had lost. Particularly when a heap of mummified human corpses was blocking the only working road through the city. Kind of hard to ignore that.

It had been easier in the early months, before the highwaymen set up shop along the interstates. You could still take them through deserts, plains, empty expanses that dotted the Midwest and the great lakes, but they'd learned the hard way not to take the paths most traveled these the last few months. Cities were death pits, most of them, but if you were insulated from the miasma of death and pestilence they had turned out to be the safest routes from here to there.

So every revolution of the tires brought them toward some new kind of nightmare for their viewing pleasure, and anyone who rode with them stayed well away from the windows—with the notable exception of Mr. Fell, who was now doing just the opposite. Hanna and Conrad though, couldn't seem to disentangle themselves.

The Zombie spent most of his time sitting in the seat beside Hanna, watching him watching with the cool concern of someone who knows that their own safety will never be an issue. And Worth, much to his continuing irritation and bemusement, spent most nights sitting in the passenger seat of the RV, watching Conrad watching with the cool interest of someone who knows that his own safety will never be an issue.

And generally making a nuisance of himself.

-A-

Early in the morning, maybe two hours from sunrise, Conrad slammed the hulking multi-ton monster to an abrupt stop. Hanna let out some kind of animal whine on the other side of the cockpit, and Johnny-know-nothing started yelling somewhere in the very back. Six passengers had the RV cramped as Hell after third-world coup d'etat.

"The fuck 'r you tryin' to do," Worth demanded, rubbing his forehead where the edge of the windshield had burst it open. "Give a man some warnin', would ya?"

"It's not my fault," Conrad replied, teeth gritted. "Somebody put a fucking break in the road. Look."

As he rummaged in his coat for a bandaid, Worth peered down at the yellow-lit road in front of them. There was, in fact, a foot-wide gap in the pavement not far ahead, so completely black that it had to be dug into the ground.

"Somebody doesn't want us driving through here," the vampire muttered, shoving the vehicle into park. "If I tried to go through there with anything less than four-wheel drive, I'd wreck myself. In this thing? We'd never get out."

"Pain in the ass," Worth observed, slapping on his grungy bandaid. "Whatcha think they're after?"

"Human flesh?" Conrad guessed, narrowing his eyes. "You never know when you'll run into a nest of them."

"Wendigos?" Hanna piped up, somewhere behind them, probably extricating himself from the spilled contents of the cabinets. "Aswang?"

"Okay, Hanna, I know we found that manan… manana…. That Philippine monster thing in Las Vegas, but it's seriously unlikely to happen again. Give up on the Aswang."

"It may be that they simply don't appreciate strangers," the resident Zombie noted, his cool baritone drifted up towards them. "Someone doesn't have to want to eat you in order to want you dead."

"Whatever," Conrad muttered, switching them into reverse. "We're getting out of here. There's got to be another road going this way. Hanna, get Mr. Fell up here, I need to talk to somebody who knows what he's doing—and Worth, leave already, would you?"

"Yeah yeah, lord knows we can't have ya breakin' yer concentration," Worth mused, stretching out over the passenger's seat. "Y'd prolly drive us into a barn."

Conrad reached sideways and yanked Worth off the chair and onto the floor, scowling like a bespectacled gargoyle.

"Fuck you, dirtball. I'm a good driver and you bloody well know it. Which of us crashed the motorcycle, huh? If you hadn't been such a dick about riding bitch, we never would've run into the fucking Ku Klux Klan at all, and we wouldn't have the junior intolerance scout seeping through his bandages in the back right now! Do you realize what a pain it is to have him around? It's like wearing a turkey dinner strapped to my head!"

From his place on the floor, Worth crossed his legs. "Uhuh. Tell us how ya really feel, Connie."

The vampire let out a noise that was half PMSing rage and half animalistic lowing for blood. Worth lay back and grinned as the Zombie grabbed his shoulders and dragged him physically out of the room. Mr. Fell swept by while the doctor was straightening himself out, more or less, and trying to decide whether it was worth it to lay into the dead guy for yanking him around.

Conrad's face appeared over the shoulder of his seat for a moment, twisted in vindictive rage, and then the curtain swished closed with all the force and screeching of a slammed door.

"Eh, I'll be back."

The doctor creaked to his feet and threw himself into a window seat, settling his eyes on what little he could see of a moonless night. Far away, the shape of a radio tower pressed lifelessly against the stars.

He felt the jolt of the floor moving into reverse, and started to count his cigarettes.

-A-

A mile down the next road, there was another gap in the asphalt. Conrad's racecar driving nearly hit that one. After a few minutes of heated debate between Conrad and Hanna, Worth got tired of waiting and stomped out the door.

A step or two ahead of the stalling vehicle, he crouched and examined the gap.

"Worth!" Conrad hissed, leaning just barely out of the door behind him. "Worth, get your ass back in here! You're always telling us not to leave the goddamn car, you goddamn hypocrite, try following your own advice for once!"

Nice try, but that advice was meant for idiots and/or total pussies, wise-guy. Worth stood, scowling, and turned to dangle something silver in front of him.

"That fucker's two feet deep," he announced, "an' it's fulla spikes, if yer curious."

Conrad's red eyes popped wide open.

"Well damn," he muttered, after a pause, "we are definitely not going through there."

-A-

Four more roads and four more gaps, and every passenger on the ride was wondering what exactly waited on the other side. The Georgia-Florida border was still miles away, and morning was coming quickly.

While they parked at the edge of a forest highway, Hanna revved like a sports car engine.

"I'm telling you, there's something weird going on around here and if we want to get through we need to find out what!"

Conrad rebutted, as he'd been doing for ten minutes. "That doesn't mean you need to go gallivanting through the woods and get yourself killed!"

Seemed like it was somebody else's turn to talk the superboy down.

"Hanna," the zombie said, placing a green hand on the kid's shoulder, "please think this through. You have no idea what's out there, if anything at all. You may very well get lost before you find anything untoward—doesn't it seem more reasonable to take a detour, or at least wait for daylight?"

"I know yer gonna get me killed one day," Worth interjected, currently lying on a table, "but I was kinda hopin' it'd be with more of a bang. Dyin' a starvation in some backwoods tourist trap seems a bit anti-climactic."

Hanna frowned, stiffening. "Whoever these people are, they're going really far to make sure they stay hidden. Whatever's happening on the other side of these lines is probably mega-bad, and if you guys won't help me bust them then I'll do it myself!"

Doc Worth sat up faster than he would've thought possible. "Oh no, ya little brat, I abs'lutely forbid it. You take one step off those stairs an' I'll paddle yer backside so hard you'll think yer in pre-school again."

The magician's blue eyes turned steely. "I'm twenty-five, Doc, and I think you ought to remember that."

And then the RV door was swinging closed and the zombie was grabbing his hat off the rack as he raced after his charge and Conrad was cursing, and Worth watched as half their insane little crew disappeared into the forest. Motherfucking perfect. When he got his hands on that little shit, a spanking was going to be the least of his worries.

From the corner, Mr. Fell cleared his throat. "Well, gentlemen, it seems that you woke up the resident hostage."

Scratch that, now things were motherfucking perfect.

-A-

Half an hour later, Conrad was cleaning something in the kitchenette and Worth was waiting for the Zombie to drag back a kicking and screaming, redheaded little monster, and he was willing to pull out the burlap sack they kept in the back if it would keep the kid more or less quiet till they could drive the fuck out of there. About five minutes earlier, Worth had decided that if it took much longer, he was going out there himself, burlap sack and all, and hang Conrad's bullshit about efficiency.

Well time's up.

As he was reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the counter, something that sounded too much like a muffled explosion for Worth's liking rang through the clearing around them.

"Motherfucker," he muttered, and turned towards the kitchenette. "Ya heard that."

Conrad looked whiter than usual. "Yeah. Whatever it was, it didn't hit—"

BAM

The front of the RV quaked with a fresh explosion, and feet away from the Doc, Conrad fell against the corner of a cabinet and tore a ragged line down the side of his face. As the last rattles subsided, Worth grabbed the younger man by his collar and threw them both out the door, leaving behind the remaining two occupants of the metal deathtrap that had seconds ago been their de facto home. They landed on slick grass and slid a few inches more.

"What—"

Doc Worth took Conrad by the chin as he was staring horrified at the RV and gave his head wound a cursory examination. A trickle of thick vampire blood ran, already clotting—slower than for an older, better fed member of his race, but so much faster than a human.

"I don't believe it," Conrad was murmuring, face growing in shades along the spectrum from dismay to fury. "I don't believe it! That engine was one of a kind! It was a gift from a fucking warlock!"

Worth glanced over his shoulder and noticed a gaping hole in the metal above the front wheel. Smoke drifted out of it and disappeared into the starlight.

"Hanna ain't gonna be pleased," Worth mused, rolling to his feet. "Don't look like it's gonna blow, though. Got lucky, I guess. My jacket's in there. Shot had ter come from somewhere… got any theories, Princess?"

"Uh," the vampire started, looking up, "my guess? Two bucks says it was them."

Worth looked up too, and decided he never was much of a betting man anyways.

-A-

The four of them stood in a tense line, Johnny boy on the far end rattling like an electrocuted Chihuahua and Mr. Fell on the other, observing with a businessman's interested detachment. Moonless, the night seemed to swallow up the detail of the scene, leaving nothing but voices and movement.

A faceless line curled around their backs, and a lone figure strolled back and forth in front of them. Worth ran his thumb over the corners of the cigarette pack in his pocket, and watched.

"So," the figure said. "What have we here?"

At Worth's side, Conrad tensed as tight as a bowstring. "I hate that phrase," he hissed, the grimace pouring into his voice. "Of all the cliché…"

"Bet yer glad you stayed in the car this time, Conniekins," the Doc whispered.

"Shut up, Worth."

The figure in front of them turned on his heel. "Silence!"

Conrad went back to grumbling about wanna-be villain hillbilly douche bags under his breath.

"Now then," their captor began, sighing, "I want all of you to empty your pockets. I've got some of my boys cleaning out your vehicle as we speak, but I don't want to miss anything. If you've got any weapons, throw them over here. Anything else, you can drop at your feet."

The vampire and the doctor shared a glance. At the moment, neither of them posed as much of a threat to these guys as a basket full of kittens would. That could be remedied on Conrad's part, if the situation went sour. Worth pressed his thumb into the sharpest corner of his pack.

The figure stepped closer, close enough that the glitter of his eyeballs lit up the curvature of his nose. He pointed first at John, and then at Worth.

"You two are human. I'm rightly certain about your giant friend there, but it doesn't really matter. You're all together so you're all going the same place. Or. Hmm. You, blondie."

The doctor cocked a brow, although it was most likely invisible in the darkness. "Who, li'l old me?"

"Yessir, you." Immune to sarcasm, then. "You strike me as a smart one. The boss has me up to recruit anybody who seems useful—how'd you like to check out with these folks and get in with us?"

"Whadda I get out of it? Gift basket? New car?"

The figure crossed his arms. "Boy, I don't think you understand the predicament you've found yourself in. I'll make it real simple since I can tell with the way you talk you ain't from around here. Your automobile is busted. You're weaponless. My boys got you surrounded fifteen to four, and I'm about to have ya'll rounded up an' sent out to the capital in cuffs. Now, do you really think a gift basket is necessary?"

"Sorry," Worth said, "I don't make deals without free shampoo. My agent says it ain't good policy."

The figure's head tilted, and he took a step forward. "Maybe I'm not being clear enough. I'm about to take ya'll in as slaves. Any of these boys your brother? No? Then I cain't see why you're still standin' over there and not over here."

"Then yer not too bright, Sergeant Spacemonkey. It's cause yer hopin' I'll bend over fer ya the second I get outta this line, and I don't feel like playin' Tanto fer no small-time Ranger man. You must be dumb on top'a conceited."

The sky slid clear of clouds, and Worth's adjusting eyes locked on the figure's face, picking out the tight twist of an irate mouth.

"Well, then, friend, you better empty out your pockets. Those cigarettes look like the genuine article and there's no use in wasting 'em on spook-lovin' white trash like you."

There was the sound of feet shuffling closer behind him, and the air turned tense. Worth smiled, and he was pretty sure the man in front of him could see the shine.

"I don't think so, friend. See, I got two and a half packs to my name, an' I've been rationing those fuckers like it was World War Two come again, so if ya want 'em yer gonna have to smoke 'em off my bleedin', rigor mortis corpse, friend, cause I sure as shit ain't lettin' 'em go."

"I can arrange for that," the stranger announced. He snapped—motherfucking snapped, like some kind of hot shot SS officer—and Worth found a fist implanted in his kidney.

They went down in a tangle of limbs, the anonymous private and Worth, and the ragged edges of his nails scraped slippery corneas, knees in stomachs, and then another set of arms descended into the fray—and then another, and another, until Worth was pinned and thrashing. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Conrad straining against his own guard of privates, arms caught tight behind him.

A sourceless hand reached down and slipped the cigarettes out of Worth's pocket. He jerked one leg loose long enough to kick something in the gut, and watched the white packet fall to the grass inches away from his retrained hands. Son of a bitch.

"Ahem."

All heads turned left.

Mr. Fell tucked his hands into his pockets and looked upwards, like he was judging the hour. The snake couldn't even be bothered to pull those bastards off Conrad's back—fuck this, when they got free he was putting his foot down once and for all about Hanna's supernatural taxi service. And also beating the shit out of that guy.

"Ah, gentlemen," the towering man said. "It seems like matters are about to get rough, and so… I believe this is where we part ways."

There was just enough time for Conrad to squeeze out a wait, before Mr. Fell disappeared in a CRACK and a plume of dust. The dust cleared, leaving empty space behind. Their guards burst into a frenzy, the stranger started barking orders, and somewhere to their right John fell out in a dead faint.

"Fuck," said Worth. And, as he'd found it did in most situations, that seemed to say it all.

Hanna was definitely getting an ear full of this.

Vermont,

a month after the treaty (ten months ago):

Standing at the edge of a clearing, Doc Worth snapped the thin white latex of his gloves impatiently, waiting. The sun was high over head, conspiring with hours of hard labor to bake him out of his borrowed jacket despite the northern spring. They'd had some trouble finding one that would fit him—busted into three different houses, ransacked four different closets, but there was no way he was wearing his own coat for this kind of work. He liked that coat.

Some distance away, Hanna was running down the dusty road towards them, waving his arms like one of those flailing tube-men. Worth gave him thirty seconds before he tripped on a rock and hit the dirt face-first. He was feeling generous.

"Where's your friend?" a woman standing nearby asked, clearly looking at Worth although god only knew why. "The one with the nose?"

Still feeling generous. The strained, pulled sensation in his muscles did that. "Connie? Eh, he painted his nails last night—he's sleepin' off the exertion right now."

The woman gave him a weird look.

"Wha'? The delicate ladies haveta watch themselves, y'know. Eh." He took a look at her grime-coated overalls. "Guess ya wouldn' know much abou' that, actually."

"Is he really sleeping? In the middle of the day? I don't mean to be rude, but I thought Mister Cross said you'd all pitch in."

Christ. You ride into town with an ambassador and a bag full of corn seed one time, and suddenly everyone's calling you mister. He was lucky Hanna wasn't the ego-bloating type, or he might just have to take a dive into the pit right now and avoid a future of misery.

"Connie can't exactly pull his weight, lady. You try tellin' him sometime. All you get fer yer trouble is blahblahblah my life is ruined blahblahblah why don't you try being undead for a change blahblahblah. See how far it gets ya."

The lady froze. A solitary bead of sweat dripped down from her bandanna; her mouth hung in the first syllable of a reply.

Worth squinted. "You havin' some kinda seizure? 'Cause I don't do that kinda medicine."

"No," she answered, snapping her mouth closed, "no, I…. sorry. Your friend is a vampire. It… I heard that, from my sister, but I didn't—well, I mean I did, it's just—a vampire of all things. I always thought they'd be more like Dracula. You know… horror stuff."

The Doc waived her off. "Don't let the princess fool ya. Most of 'em do the Vampire Chronicles thing, at least. Most of 'em rather have ya fer dinner than debate th' ethics of starbucks with ya."

The lady yanked an old fashioned kerchief out of her shirt—well Christ knew she was flat enough, there was definitely room—and wiped her face, looking pained. "This just doesn't feel real, you know? Two months ago, I was closing a real estate deal with a man from Washington—now I'm rationing gasoline to pay for canned food and there's a… a frakin' vampire sleeping down the street from me!"

"Uhuh," Worth grunted. Same old story. "At least ya ain't like those poor bludgers there."

He pointed down at the gaping hole in the earth, the one he'd helped to dig hours ago when the sun was still cool, and the thick sheet of bone and putrefying flesh that filled it. The stench clawed its way up to them, despite the best efforts of the wind. They looked.

"No," the woman replied, after a moment, "at least I'm not like them."

Some distance down the road, another cart full of the shed skin of a changing world rumbled towards them.

Georgia,

Eleven months after the treaty:

They were thorough; you could say that much for the bastards.

Two jeeps drove at the front, two jeeps and a roaring camouflage fourwheeler racing back and forth like the world's loudest fore-scout, despite the four horsemen soldiers and the string of remounts trailing at the rear. They drove slow, at least, thick tires leaving thick tracks in the mud, pools of dirty water in the tread-marks. Worth quickly learned the sensation of boots sinking into inches of what used to be a dirt road, filling the smaller footprints of ragged loafers.

The first night, the night that General Good-Old-Boy rounded them all up and nicked Worth's cigs, the three of them had their wrists snapped into chain gang shackles—luckily enough, not a fatal amount of iron in them, although he predicted correctly that by the second night Conrad's arms were going to be an ugly sight. Something told him that was calculated. Dawn was already breaking over the horizon by the time that they'd stripped the RV of anything useful. Funny thing: out of all the buggery Hanna'd managed to get them into, this was the first time they had ever gotten the RV looted.

The first time a guard passed by, Worth swung one long leg out under the boy's feet and left him with a face full of mud. Dipshit threatened to shoot him, but it didn't take a genius to figure bluffing when he heard it. Let him bluff.

Minutes trickled by, each minute marked by the fresh realization that neither of them were any kind of Houdini. Conrad had gotten louder and louder, spiraling into a fit of supreme terror masked as indignation as the creeping yellow rim of the sky grew higher and higher. Eventually, to save his ears, Worth tripped another member of the sucker brigade and, while he was on the ground, informed him that if Count Fagula turned into a pane of ash-glass while they were standing there, absolutely everyone in the clearing was going to wish they'd been aborted when they had the chance.

A handful of guys unlocked Conrad and dragged him away.

Worth watched as they popped open the toolbox on the back of the bigger jeep, tossed Conrad unceremoniously inside and slammed the lid shut—something startled Johnny-boy, either the heavy bang or Worth spitting curses as his nails broke straight through the skin of his palms.

God fuck, he was going to need those palms.

The sun came up, and with it the two remaining prisoners found themselves hitched and moving down the road past the gap, taking them farther and farther away from the empty homestead, not to mention Hanna. They went south, mostly. Minutes blurred together, stretching into an indeterminable length of breaths in and out, footsteps, the sun sliding slowly in an arc across the roads. Heat poured down on them, gathering in the folds of the countryside, and curled into their lungs with the heavy wetness of southern spring. Chain clinked. Worth kept his eyes on the toolbox ahead of him.

Sometime late in the afternoon, maybe five, Lieutenant My-Parents-Were-Siblings pulled the truck over and told them if they were going to sleep they had better do it now. Fast as you could blink, the kid was out like the freaking Mets in the bottom of a ditch, but Worth kept one eye open as the day faded into dusk. He watched.

Sunset found Lieutenant Deliverance kicking them both awake with boots worn to patchwork on the soles. A faint click rolled through the cooling air. Somebody tossed a disheveled, tense-wound Conrad into the ditch. As the uniforms trudged off, Worth grabbed Conrad by the hand and did a quick medical checkup.

"You get burnt?" the Doctor asked, yanking the vampire by the hair for a better look at his neck.

"No," Conrad muttered, a flicker of the usual irritation at having his head snatched around. "It's actually a lot like a coffin. I think. I don't know, I've only slept in one once. My head hurts like bitch, though. There was a crack in the top of the lid."

Somewhere a dog howled. At the distant end curve of the road, the sky showed a flash of teasing pink between the treetops.

"First time we been captured like this," Worth mused to himself, loosening his hold. "Less ya count those cannibals in Wyoming."

"I don't," his partner replied, hands open and limp against his knees. "We got out of there in a couple hours. I don't know if you noticed this, but we're seriously outnumbered, and I left my bags in the RV fridge."

"Hadn't thought a that. Think y' got two days in ya?"

Whatever the estimate was, the sound of clinking chains cut it off.

The caravan rolled on, while the three of them trudged behind the last jeep and, on his companions' part, tried not to stumble and end up dragged along. The first sliver of moon drifted up over the canopy. Something gnawed at Worth's stomach, gaining strength with every bend they turned, an antsy pulse of "what now, what now?"

And the Doc kept his eyes open.

When the hangnail moon was just overhead, General Douche Bag deigned to visit them at the tail end of the train. He stood in the middle of the road, head tilted as they trudged closer.

"Ah, Nightwalker," he greeted, eyes settling first on Conrad's battered countenance. "Had yourself a nice nap?"

"You guys are fucking crazy," the vampire spat, lifting his joined wrists, "You know, I've seen cannibals who treated their prisoners better."

"Well, that's probably because they were getting a meal out of it," the General mused, vaulting up to sit on the back of their jeep. His legs swung lazily. "With ya'll, though, it doesn't much matter how you feel about our little field trip."

"Whatever you think you're getting out of this," Conrad hissed back, "I guarantee I'll die again before I see you get it."

"That so?"

The local reached down, looped the chain in his hands, and jerked what little slack remained so tight that the vampire's arms snapped out from under him and his feet tripped trying to catch up.

Conrad hit the ground, knees sinking into a particularly viscous track, and then Worth had his arms tucked under the vampire's shoulder. He pulled, awkward but obstinate, mud easing the tug on his leaner muscles—the smaller man came up with an instinctual pant that sounded almost like a plea, pale fingers squeezing bruises into the flesh over Worth's hands as he maneuvered Conrad against his side.

"Fuck, princess," he muttered into the smaller man's ear, "don' they have no gym class in Disneyland?"

He got a growl for his trouble.

"Now," the general went on, observing their struggle with a glint of humor, "you boys might think you got the short end of the wishbone on this one, an' I can see where you might get the idea. But, see, ya'll done two things wrong there and I think two's fair enough to get you fucked. Number one, ya'll went poking around where you didn't belong."

"You tore up the pavement, didn't you?" Conrad accused, shoulders tensing underneath mud-slicked cotton. "That was you guys."

"Well, it's a sight cheaper than a fence, don't you reckon?"

"No, I don't reckon. You want guys like us to get stuck, that's what I reckon; you've got a goddamn spider web set up."

The general replied with another sharp yank that send Conrad sliding back into the mud, chest first. Worth wondered how many times that could happen before Conrad had a psychotic breakdown and ripped his own skin off, trying to get clean.

Maybe twice.

"So, Gen'ral Kurtz," Worth said, inelegantly dragging the vampire up again, "what's that second mistake? I know yer dyin' ter tell us."

The man in front of them pointed first to Conrad and then at the Doc. "His mistake was takin' vamp blood for dinner wine. And frankly, it ain't done him no favors. Your mistake, friend, is that you keep on helpin' the bastard up."

Worth raised a brow, pushing Conrad ahead roughly. "I dunno if you noticed this since ya ain't too bright, General, but if the princess don't get back on her feet then I'm stuck trippin' all over her scrawny-ass legs till you fucktards call naptime."

Arms crossed. "Friend, if you don't give them insults a break pretty soon I'll rescind my offer an' you can keep hiking behind this jeep till we trade both of ya'll in Tally. Trust me now, you'd rather not go that way."

Tally? The fuck was Tally?

"Less get somethin' straight," the doctor replied, slowly. Conrad's heel bumped the toe of his boots. "You an' me ain't friends, we ain't now an' we ain't gonna be, and yer gonna call me Doctor if y' call me anythin' at all. I don' want yer Judas contract an' I ain't out ter sell my soul, if I got one."

"Strong words coming from a man who takes up with vampires."

"Yeah? And you got some strong words for a guy who'd suck his own daddy's dick fer a promotion."

The general's eyes narrowed to slits. The upward flick of his hand made a silver arc, and immediately the Jeep jolted to a stop. There was the rattling of a rough engine, and the knotted tension of Conrad's shoulders between them.

"You would've been an asset—we don't have many doctors, for obvious reasons." The shadowy man's voice bit into the air. "Lieutenant Jones? Get me the bible."

Worth watched one silhouette disappear around their jeep. "Bible, gen'ral? If ya think yer 'bout to cast some demons outta me, you got another thing comin'."

Lieutenant Jones reappeared, eyes averted, and dropped the book into his superior's hand. The smack of a dictionary sized book on flesh made Jones flinch.

"Oh, I don't have that sort of power. But God gets involved in these kindsa things, ya see, one way or another. Lieutenant Jones knows all about it, isn't that right, boy?"

While the young soldier mumbled something that might have resembled English, the shadowy forms of his brainless compatriots stepped into a close circle around the four of them. Behind Worth, Johnny-boy started breathing like a horse in labor.

Fucking distracting.

"Hold out your arms, doctor," the general ordered, marching closer. With one careless elbow he knocked Conrad away. "Let's do this quickly so I can go back to business."

Worth crossed his arms. "If you think I'm gonna fall for that one, more the fool you."

The general's lips thinned. A clump of his soldiers fell in, faster than gravity, catching Worth by the shoulders and waist and neck, but it was scrawny little lieutenant Jones who grabbed his wrist and stretched them out into the air. The doc thrashed, but considering how well that had gone last time, he wasn't counting on much. There had to be…

The General stepped to Worth's side and hefted the book. "You gotta smite the wicked, after all."

SNAP

The bone of Worth's left arm cracked to pieces, the thin skin instantly patterned with ridges of angry crimson bruises underneath the embossed blue cover—Worth choked on something that wanted to be a scream, the lungs he'd hurriedly emptied seconds before spasming for oxygen. Christ he was going to eviscerate that motherfucker.

He did not fall. He did not scream. He did not look at Conrad.

"I believe that'll do for now," the general announced, stepping back. He tossed the bible to his lieutenant, and the restraining hands on every inch of Worth's workable body slowly released like pistons in a steam engine. "Don't ya'll say I never gave him a chance—coulda done this real easy. Well. Try escapin' with both your arms broke, Doctor, see how far it gets you."

Doc Worth stared after him as he turned heel and left, soldiers filing away after him. Seconds passed, and the doc indulged himself in the ghost of a smirk that tugged one corner of his mouth. It wasn't much, but Worth hadn't lost this one entirely—halfway, you might say. Lieutenant Jones hadn't held on quite as hard as he should have.

-A-

"We've got to get out," Conrad muttered, bent over the makeshift splint on his companion's arm. "Wherever they're taking us, I don't want to see it."

It was some time on the far side of midnight, and the ragged strips of what had been Conrad's vest had come undone and they climbed down one particularly washed out road.

"You wanna go berserk on these fuckers? I ain't stoppin' ya."

The vampire grimaced, refusing to look up from his knots. "I can't just turn it on at will, yanno. I would if I could, believe me. I can feel blisters starting up under these cuffs, and I'm getting hungry. God, if I'd known this was coming, I wouldn't have saved those last bags—you always think you'll need them later and then—"

"Maybe ya can talk 'em to death. We might finally have a use fer that mouth of yers."

Conrad yanked the end of one makeshift bandage, and a shriek of pain raced through Worth's nerve endings.

"Stop smiling at me," the undead man muttered, making the mistake of looking up just then. "Uhg. Stop that. I'll break your other arm, you slimy motherfucking… dirtbag."

Worth looked pointedly at the inch-thick layer of grime on his partner's shoulders and arms. Conrad followed his gaze, and made a displeased noise.

"Okay. Okay. I admit, at this point, I'm actually dirtier than you are. God have mercy on me."

"Oi, yer prejudice is showin' again. When was the last time y' seen anybody take more'n three showers in a week? Admit it, Conniekins, ya like the dirt."

"I'm not listening to this crap. You always call me on shit when you're scared."

Worth narrowed his eyes, heavy with twenty or so hours of sleeplessness. "Who ya callin' scared, pussy?"

Conrad spat something about sociopathic dicks and gave the last bandage a yank to end all yanks, white artist's fingers wringing a white-hot bomb of pain from the shattered core of Worth's arm. The doctor hissed out a breath and grinned harder.

The hour faded.

-A-

By the next nightfall, Worth had been walking for thirty something hours and his balance was starting to suffer for it. Despite having spent two thirds of that time in a toolbox coffin, his partner wasn't doing much better.

The kid behind them, on the other hand…

With the first fading rays of dusk, Worth had felt his neck crawling from a new and growing scrutiny—eventually, he gave in and twisted to look back. Two puffy blue eyes regarded him with all the warmth of a corpse's chest cavity.

"Y' got somethin' ter say, kid?"

Eyes narrowed.

"'Cause if yer gonna say somethin' then y' better say it now."

"Do you have a deathwish?"

Worth blinked, somewhat taken aback. The back of his skull throbbed.

"Not really. You gettin' at something?"

The boy refused to look away, something steely solidifying in the premature lines around his mouth. An echo of Hanna rippled through Worth.

"All you had to do was ditch the leech," the kid said, cold as the day had been hot. "All you had to do was ditch that godless abomination and you would've been home free. Do you want to die? Do you want to… do you like pain or something?"

"Aw kid, that's an awfully personal inquiry. Ain't you a bit young to be askin' 'bout what grownups do in bed?"

The kid recoiled physically, and the chain yanked him along as the jeep went on rolling.

"An' whazzat about godless abominations anyways? Who ya been listenin' to so carefully?"

"Father Savonarola, of The Church Universal and Triumphant," John replied, stiffly. "The one true church of the ascended—"

"Yeah, yeah," Worth cut in, "another loony bin suckin' in the local populace, sure. Seen it before. Those gun-totin' preachers're all the same."

"Stop it!" the boy yelled, practically stomping with indignation. "I won't listen to infidel lies! And don't try and distract me!"

The doctor snorted and turned back to the exhaust pipe conveniently placed directly in front of him. "Oh, well, you sure told me."

"I'm serious! They were going to let you go! Is your pride really that powerful?"

"Oi, here we go with the seven deadly sins."

"Whoever it is that you're in love with, I'm sure she'd understand! Spooks don't have any loyalty, it's not like she would care about that bloodsucking faggot."

"Huh," the doctor grunted. "Well at least we're in agreement about something."

You could almost hear the kid's eyes lighting up. "Really?"

"Sure. Conrad is a huge faggot."

The boy let out a hysterical scream of frustration. Birds fluttered away in shock.

Countless minutes of obstinate silent treatment trickled away into night, and finally the caravan halted long enough to pull Conrad, shaking, from the back of the jeep.

"Why did you stay?" John whispered, suddenly, words bouncing off the back of Worth's head. "What do you possibly have to gain? It's not like he cares."

Tired of replying, Worth squared his shoulders and turned his attention to the approaching vampire and guard. His bones shook and his lips cracked, and he drew out a condescending grin through the itch of pain and salt.

"Hey, Achendick, have a nice nap?"

-A-

Three or four hours after sundown, things got going.

Worth had been watching the sliver of moon slide out into the black dome over the road, pinprick stars in a sky so clear that it was hard to believe he'd spent half the afternoon getting rained on by the best storm the gulf of Mexico could churn out on short notice. His muddied boots scuffed against asphalt.

For a while he'd been watching the billboards, now that they'd strayed onto the highway, entering Florida, Marianna Caverns, exotic dancers—and then, something drew his eye down to the shadowy depths of the forest. It might have been a sound, but if it was then he couldn't remember hearing it. But he'd had his eyes open, open for maybe fourty something hours now, and at some point the awareness of his awareness had faded.

He shifted his splinted arm closer to his chest.

There was stillness, and then the roadside erupted into motion.

Figures poured out from the darkness, whooping and screaming, light glinting off the shotguns and—was that a sword? The horses behind the three prisoners screamed and the jeeps jerked still in their paths, soldiers tumbling out the doors and onto the street, fumbling as they ran and loaded mismatching fire arms at the same time. With the first crack of gunfire, Doc Worth grabbed Conrad by the back of the collar and threw them both to the ground.

"Jesus, Worth," the pale man hissed, cheek flattened against the asphalt, "why is your first choice always to throw me down face first against the most uncomfortable—what are you doing?"

Worth lifted the cracked edges of his lips from the white underside of his forearm. "Getting' us outta here," he answered, and bit down with a thick snap.

"Ohmyfuckinggod, you just bit a hole in your wrist how can that possibly help us?"

The doc rolled over so that his splinted left arm rested over the line of Conrad's spine, shoulder thrown over shoulder. "You 'n me both know vampires're strongest right before a starvation blow-out an' right after feedin'. You drink me, we can bust outta here."

A shot whizzed over their heads.

"I'm not going to suck you—suck your—get that thing out of my face!"

"Oh, yer bloody lucky we're in a hurry right now. Just drink the damn stuff an' be useful for once, awright? I'm bleedin' here."

"But—"

"Ya done it once before."

"That was an emergency!"

"An' this ain't?"

"I—"

Worth took that opportunity to shove his leaking wrist into the idiot's mouth, to hell with reasonable persuasion. Red eyes went wide, but the damage was done, and the tugging pull on veins and aching flesh started.

"Try not ter kill me," Worth muttered, tucking closer over the vampire's exposed back.

Seconds later, seconds dragging on and on as the sound of shouting and gunfire faded in Worth's ringing ears and his muscles relaxed one by one—maybe half a minute later, and Conrad detached with a pop and a tug of fang.

"Chain," Worth muttered, unmoving as Conrad hurriedly crawled out from under his weight.

The sound of metal snapping cut through the sound of gunshots and shouting. And Conrad. Who was talking.

"—and for all you fucking knew I could have killed you!"

Worth blinked up at his companion, nerves rattling with a torn wrist and a shattered forearm and legs riddled with lactic acid; pain and the lingering phantom of artist's fingers clenched around his hand—and damn, but it was different when it was Conrad—

A familiar lightning bolt of agony shot through his left arm—the undead man wrenched his shackles apart, still seething loudly as the skirmish went on in the darkness around them.

"—Like you know every-fucking-thing, Doctor Shove-appendages-into-people's-mouths, I can't believe you made me—"

Worth wobbled to his feet, feeling like he'd been in one of those drunken bar-room brawls he missed so much. Conrad grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked him against the tailgate of the jeep, and his back made an odd thudding noise when it hit the green metal. Christ. Maybe he'd been a little hasty in not sleeping during the incredibly generous three hour naptime they'd allotted him yesterday.

"—for the love of sanity, Worth, can you even walk? You look like I just drank you motor functions or—"

A bullet slammed into the front of their jeep. How long had it been now? Night firefights were notoriously hard to end, good for ambushes and bad for battles, but it felt like hours since the first shot. At least a minute. He could hear shouts that sounded a whole lot like General Kurtz, somewhere ahead of them, and he thought he could catch snatches of the words.

"Less get outta here," Worth suggested, attempting to stand up properly. He fell immediately.

Conrad looked at him, red eyes dilated from feeding. There was a moment of silence while he appeared to be waiting for some miraculous recovery. It never arrived.

"Oh, god fucking damnit," the vampire groaned, at last, "I ought to ditch your moronic ass. I hate you, I hate you so much right now…"

The doctor's eyes snapped a little wider as he felt himself being pulled into some kind of half-assed embrace.

"Ey, what the fuck d'you think yer doin'?"

"You can't walk," Conrad muttered through teeth clenched so tight it probably hurt. "Don't say you can because anybody can see you fucking can't. This isn't even… why are you so fucking tall?"

Worth attempted to elbow his way out of the incredibly undignified position he was now being lifted into, but his joints moved like paddles through water and he remembered this one dream he used to have as a kid, trying to punch the devil in the face and his fists just passed right through no matter how hard he threw them.

Conrad muttered something like "before they come back", and then the world dissolved into motion, leaving the doc's brain and his right foot lying somewhere behind the jeep. His neurons decided that it was time to turn off, finally, the emergency power grid shutting down in relief, and as the lights in the control panel flipped off one by one, it passed through Worth's head to tear Conrad a new one for this the next time he saw him.

At the time, he didn't think to look and see that the kid was racing after them.

-A-

Worth woke up under a canopy of forest, in a darkness so thick that he felt its weight settling on his joints. The vague outline of another body filled the emptiness beside him, unbreathing and humming with something else in the silence. Near silence. Wind and the passing night bird made white noise for the blackness. He couldn't have been out for more than half an hour, judging by the way his muscles screamed up at him and the blotches of not-red clawed at the edges of his vision.

And Worth knew that there were things he wanted to say, things that his pride would never let him. The silence was something, for the moment, and the Doc let it fill the space between them with wordless communications, too stubborn to do anything more. His hand slid a fraction of an inch across dirt and tangled grass, and the curve of it found the humming curve of another, and halted there, moving no further.

"You try 'n carry me again, Xena, I'll take a chunk outta your jugular."

Conrad snorted.

They stayed like that for a long time.

-A-

A voice broke the silence, a young voice some feet away. "What are we going to do now?" it asked, resigned rather than curious. It snapped some invisible thread wound through the thicket.

Worth's eyes followed the trajectory, making out the hunched shape of a small man. Huh. So Conrad had broken him out too, after all.

"Why ya askin' us?" the doctor responded, deciding against sitting up right away. "You ain't foolin' no one, it's plenty clear ya think he's a baby-killin' Satan machine, an' I'm a devil-worshippin' Jezebel."

"Jezebel?" Conrad asked, unimpressed.

"What? Fuck you, I read the damn bible. Some of it. This little dipshit thinks I'm leadin' good Christian boys off into spook land."

"Yeah, but Jezebel was a woman."

"Well, it oughta make ya feel better about swingin' my ass outta battle like fuckin' Cinderella, eh?"

"Oh for the love of—"

"Shut up!"

The two older men paused, and sat up on their elbows for a better look at the screaming teenager.

"Shut up," the kid repeated, curling in on himself. "Can't you stop talking about each other for one motherfucking minute? I don't know if you've noticed this, but you jerks dragged me out of Chattahoochee—"

"Oh, big loss."

" –and you shot me—"

"Love 'n war, kid."

"—and you got me kidnapped—"

"We ain't exactly happy about it neither."

"—and now I'm a hundred miles from anywhere I've ever been, surrounded by people who want me dead for hanging out with the guys who kidnapped me and my shoulder hurts like a bitch every time I walk so you better damn well tell me where we're going!"

Worth looked at him for a moment, and then grinned. "That's why I keep him around," he said, nudging Conrad's lukewarm shoulder. "He reminds me of you!"

After five minutes of screaming, pleading, and accusations, they finally managed to calm down long enough to hash out the rough outline of a plan.

"How am I going to keep from dissolving when the sun comes up," Conrad huffed, "that's what I want to know."

Worth cocked a brow at him, possibly invisible in the darkness but pointed all the same. "Y' kin turn bat an' hop a ride in shorty's pocket, there. I'd letcha into mine, but I don't want ya gettin' the wrong impression, or bumpin' up against my junk."

Conrad made a pained noise and clutched at his head. "Why don't you come with a mute button? Everything would be so much better if you came with a mute button."

Johnny boy crossed his arms. "I'm not carrying the abomination around, and you can't make me. I won't degrade myself like that."

Oh ho? Worth stabbed the boy's chest with one long finger. "Look here, kid. Let's get somthin' straight. On the list of who here's expendable, yer on the top of it. If I say yer gonna carry Conniekins in a basket on yer head, yer bloody well gonna carry him in a basket on yer head."

Conrad slapped away the hand stabbing at John. "Worth, seriously, stop being such a dick. Nobody's carrying me, okay? I'm not a baby doll."

"Then where ya gonna hide, Xena? There ain't a friendly city fer miles an' whatever scrap'a dignity y' got left ain't worth toastin' for."

There was a moment of silence, and then Conrad looked up. "When we were escaping—when I was escaping—there was a sign on the road that said Marianna Caverns. If we can find a way there, if it's not too far, then I can hide in there—I mean, there's probably already people living in there, but if we can stay out of their way…"

Worth rubbed the splinting around his left arm, wishing he had a cast for the first time. Or a gun. The rip in his right arm had started to scab over, already, but the bone break—oh, that was going to take a long time. He had no misconceptions about how long a shatter-broken bone took to heal.

"An suppose sumthin' goes wrong, sweetcheeks? What're ya gonna do then?"

The vampire swallowed audibly, in involuntary reflex as much as the useless gasps he let out on occasion. "In that case…" he murmured, "we do what we did… last time."

The two of them looked at each other, and though it was hard to tell in the darkness, Worth knew that their eyes had met and they both knew what the plan was. The younger man clamped down on a shudder.

"Okay," Worth said, at last, "so we're lookin' for some caverns tonight. How 'bout tomorrow night, 'r the night after?"

"We could go back to where the RV was," Conrad suggested, hesitantly. "I mean, it wouldn't be too hard to find our way… probably."

"Connie, we been gone fer two somethin' days. Ya really think Hanna's still up there waiting for us?"

"No," the vampire muttered.

"A'course not. If that kid was ever a boy scout, you kin bet he slept right through that whole hug a tree business."

"So what then?"

The doctor shrugged. "It's possible he's still headin' down to the Wassisa, since fer all he knows we still got Nefarious McBackstabber along. I'd say that's our best bet, but y'know how Hanna does."

"Why do you need to find that guy so bad?" John interrupted, somewhere between curious and irritated. "Do you owe him something?

Conrad and Worth looked at each other.

"Well," the doctor replied, slowly, "far as it concerns you, we need Hanna 'cause he's got the RV, provided it still works, an' you ain't gettin' back home without some kinda transport. Chattahoochee's a long day's walk from here."

And that was that.

As they started off, tired and beat up and glad to be leading themselves finally, Conrad fell back to walk beside their erstwhile captive. A quick glance over his shoulder informed Worth that the kid was not pleased with this turn of events.

"Look," the undead man was saying, "if you hate us so much, why didn't you just tell the general that?"

"I could do that?"

Conrad's voice turned uncomfortable. "Well, yeah. I mean, I think so."

"Wouldn'ta done no good," the doctor called back. "Those buggers don't care whatcha done or whatcha ain't. That kind's just looking for a good reason to shoot ya in the face."

Or whatever it was that they wanted.

-A-

The next question was whether to hole up in the welcome station or try their luck with the caverns themselves. Dawn was still a grudging ten-paces-and-turn away by the time they stumbled onto the complex, or the better part of it after a year of decay in a place which Worth was increasingly aware had an annoying predilection for rain. The threat of jungle rot in his boots could speak for that.

The collapsed roof of the building solved their dilemma—traces of a small fire covered the back walls. After examining a couple signs, largely intact, the three males went skulking through the underbrush to find an empty cave. A sway of darkness at the bottom of one hill made Worth grab his partner by the arm, hard enough to bruise if he was the sort of being to bruise in the first place.

"Guards," the doctor muttered, eyes fixing on the blue-black shadows. Not professionals, but armed.

Silent footsteps backtracked the three out of visual range, and they slid behind a tangle of trees.

"Occupied," Conrad growled, surprisingly heated for a voice like a whisper of wind. They were both thinking the same thing—should have known better, should have been counting on that. Of course somebody was living in the caves.

"Shame that one has bars," John commented, quietly, although the sympathy you'd expect with that statement was suspiciously lacking. He pointed vaguely left.

Worth followed the direction with his eyes, attention falling on a chest-high cavern opening, silver bars over the pitch-black depths. Safety precaution from the state park days, most likely.

"Bet that's safe," he murmured, stepping closer.

"Are you kidding me?" Conrad hissed, behind him. "I'd never fit through there."

"Oi, trust me, fittin' inside ain't never been yer problem."

Conrad squinted at him, equal parts disbelieving and mortified. "Did you just turn this Freudian?"

"Mebbe." Worth crouched in front of the entrance, running long fingers over the stainless steel bolts. His shattered arm lay across his knees. "Looks like they haven't been able ter get this one out. It's safe as anythin' else."

"How am I going to fit in there?" Conrad demanded.

"Grow some wings, dumbass. C'mon, what kinda spook are you?"

The vampire made a face that managed to convey every ounce of displeasure and apprehension he was experiencing right then. The result was interesting to look at. After muttering something about never really getting the hang of this, Conrad took a second glance at the cavern.

"Better than the alternative," he sighed.

-A-

Worth and the kid slept in the station. There was enough roof to keep a human safely encased, and enough undisturbed wall to keep their presence concealed. The day passed in a kind of sleep that enters the bones, unaware of sunlight and birdsong passing overhead. There was no water.

And the doctor did not dream, that he could remember.

-A-

When Worth woke, it was nearly dark again. He left the kid asleep and ventured down to Conrad's rustic bedroom, checking to see that the bars were all still in place. Appeased, he returned to the station and took a seat against the burnt-out wall, scanning the room for something that could function as a weapon. He'd been three days without his rifle, now, and the empty place at his hip was driving him crazy. He'd settle for a knife, at this point, his scalpel even—though he hadn't used that thing as a weapon since the early days of the fallout, before the gun trading had taken off. A human being was only as good as his machinery.

Obviously, there was nothing in the station. He hadn't expected there to be.

At some point the kid must have woken up, because he came over and sat next to the older man like he'd been invited. The two of them waited for the sun to go down. He should have known better than to think the little bastard would leave him alone.

"How many people have you killed?" John asked, after a while.

"How many questions you gonna ask me 'fore you figure out you don't like anythin' I got to say?"

"How many?" the boy insisted.

Worth grunted. That took some calculating. "I dunno. I ain't countin' malpractice… Maybe sixty."

The younger man stared at him. "Sixty? You've killed sixty people?"

"Well, if it makes ya feel better, I only killed one bloke 'fore the plague hit."

Judging by the expression, it did not make him feel any better.

"It's like this, kid. I make my livin' chasing Hanna around while he's off rightin' wrongs and takin' down baddies. Not everybody's gonna see the light, an' sometimes yer better off shootin' first 'n thinkin' later. Somebody's gotta keep an eye on th' bottom line." He paused. "On th' other hand… 's hard ter make a classy lookin' hat outta human skin without killin' a couple humans, eh?"

John wasn't buying it. "…How about the vampire? How many has he killed?"

"Eh. Maybe twenty, sayin' the ones who lived didn't go out with an infection later."

John looked at him, bewildered. "How is that possible?"

Worth shrugged. "I doubletap."

He stood and made for the exit, deciding that it was dark enough for the resident failure to be crawling out now. The kid chased after him as he ducked under the remains of an exhibit on birds. Moldering feathers fluttered overhead.

"You didn't kill me," the kid pointed out, inadvertently reminding Worth to change those bandages next time he had the supplies. They probably needed it yesterday.

"Clearly. Most people I kill ain't so talkative."

"So, why not?"

The doctor shrugged again, noting the twinge in his forearm. Fuck, what he wouldn't give for a cast, immobility and itching and all.

"I gotta have a reason?"

"Well, yeah."

"Huh." The older man said nothing for a while, as they trekked through the underbrush. "Sometimes somebody needs to live," he answered, finally. "Besides, his ladyship asked, an' god knows we can't upset his delicate sensibilities."

John might have pushed farther, but at that moment a hand the size of a large ham settled on his shoulder and the screech he let out cut that off pretty well.

"So," the stranger behind him started, eying Worth carefully, "who d'ya'll think you are?"

-A-

"A doctor!" Mary Francis exclaimed, deep set eyes lighting up.

Worth and his reluctant ward glanced back at the man standing behind them, waiting for some kind of cue. The cavern was lit by machine-made candles, a fuck ton of them too, and a long table stretched out across the stone floor. Here and there stalagmites were shaved off to provide stands for table tops and carved inward for candleholders, and the floor was covered by a mixture of cheap carpets and dogs.

The younger people on either side of Mary Francis looked up too, a ripple of excitement passing down the line of the table. A few dogs pricked up their ears.

"Yes ma'am," the stranger behind Worth answered, slapping the skinnier man's shoulder. "Says he can do all that sawbones business, if you give him the right tools. I found 'em on top of the hill out front, they say they're passin' through to… where ya'll passing to?"

"Tally," Worth answered. The kid stared at him.

The old woman motioned for Worth to step closer, extending her hand as he did. Her handshake was firm, though you could see the blue, crisscrossing veins through her yellowed skin. A smoker, not a survivor.

"It's a pleasure to have you," she said, as he let go. "Who's your friend, there?"

The doc glanced back at John. "My cousin, on my mother's side," he replied, "from Chattahoochee. His name's John."

"And yours, doctor?"

"He says it's Doc Worth, ma'am," the stranger behind them spoke up.

The old woman made a shooing motion. "Let the man talk, Frank. Doctor, you and your cousin can have a seat. Ya'll consider yourselves guests, from here on. We got a lot of boys who could use your help."

Worth kept his mouth shut. He knew better than to mention that he'd never offered his services—law of the road was, if you got a skill you whore it out. Besides, he was really fucking thirsty. He took a seat opposite the woman, and John followed suit.

"We don't have much in the way of fixin's," Mary Francis informed them, gesturing towards the sparse plates along the table, "but it's dinner and you're welcome to it."

Over the next half hour, the old woman spun the tale of how her little crew had found its way here a little less than a year ago, after the riots and sickness had started to burn themselves out. She'd been a smoker herself, never could get off of it, just like the majority of the men and women in the room.

"When Bobby died," she said, looking away from the table, "I knew we had to get out of town. The schools shut down the first day, and the shops closed down the third, and by the second week everyone had their doors double bolted and their water cutting out. Television went down that Saturday. Electricity shut down the day after. It was hard, for a while, when we never knew who was going to get sick next. I lost my daughter while we were packing up to leave town."

Worth made a noncommittal noise. It was the same sob story everywhere, more or less, although the lack of actual sobbing was appreciated. "Y've done pretty well for yerselves," he noted, glancing around the cavern again, eyes passing over the faces lined up down the table. They looked stretched, but not starved. There were something like two dozen, and it wasn't easy to feed that many.

Mary Francis took the complement with a nod. "Frank was a sports hunter, up until last year, and so was Jimmy Thurman," she said, pointing down the row. "Most of us were at some point, actually—I used to go with my husband, when we were younger. Bein' Yankees—is your cousin a Yankee too? No?—well, I wouldn't expect you to know, at least. The fishing isn't bad here, either, if you catch it at the right times. Recently…" her lips turned down, "we've taken to fillin' plate space with bats. It's… better than starving."

Worth caught John looking at him, waiting for some kind of response. He grinned.

"Use whatcha got," the doctor agreed, taking a bite of what he now recognized to be a bat breast. "Even if it don't exactly hit the four star meter."

"I can see you're a practical man," the old woman noted. She picked up on her narrative again, and the doctor made an attempt to pay attention despite the hypnotizing presence of food and water—water you could never have enough of, and food he hadn't had in three days.

"Let me ask you something," his host said, at the end of it. "How did you manage to break your arm like that?"

"Got it smashed," was his quick response. "Our Caravan caught a bad case'a bandits—that's why me an' Johnny-boy are all alone out here."

"Ah," Mary Francis sighed. "You're a peaceful man; they must have been hard on you."

The doctor glanced down at his empty holster. "Yeah… well, that's what legs're fer, eh?"

The old woman reached for one of the little flat biscuits making their way around and called for someone to pass her the syrup. The candle in front of her flickered, lighting up the wrinkles around her blue eyes.

"Tomorrow is Sunday," she noted, quietly. "You're welcome to join us, if you like. We're Methodist ourselves, but I understand most folks around here are Pentecostal—they were, anyways. I haven't spoken to another outpost in months. We've been getting the cold shoulder from the ones around here who crossed over, and as to the others..."

"Crossed over?" John inquired, speaking up for the first time in an hour. "Crossed over how?"

Mary Francis reached across the table and patted his hand. "We don't have a spook infestation, honey, don't worry. It's nothing like that. It's just the Church Universal and Triumphant, creepin' around and stirrin' folks up. They're cuttin' us out since we don't want anything to do with any of that CUT foolishness."

Uhuh. Worth jerked a thumb sideways. "Chattahoochee's CUT territory these days, y'know."

The people on either side of them went silent. John hunched over on himself and avoided eye contact.

"My," their host murmured, "I didn't know it had gotten that far."

"C'mon, Johnny-boy," the doctor pushed, elbowing his hesitant companion. "Tell 'em how great the CUT is. Give 'em a lick of that chosen people business, eh?"

The kid glared daggers out of the corner of his eyes. "It's… we're not… What do you have against the Church Universal and Triumphant, anyways?"

Mary Francis made a small noise. "Maybe we're a bit old fashioned," she admitted, "but their missionaries don't sit right with us. Don't get me wrong now, boys, I'm no bleedin' heart for the negroes and Lord knows I don't take up with spooks—it's just somethin' about how they say it, you see? And that whole business with the crosses, last summer…"

"Crosses?" Worth echoed, surprised for once. He looked at the woman and then at his companion.

"Let's not discuss this sort of thing at the table," his host replied shortly, tucking away a green linen napkin. One translucent finger beckoned towards the end of the table. "Rob, would you show our guests to their rooms? If you think you're up for it, Doctor, you could take a look at our clinic tonight. The sick only get sicker."

Contrary to popular belief, Worth knew exactly when to make a nuisance of himself, and when not to. In order to dig down to the squishy rotten core of a human's bruised pride—to know how to really piss people off—you have to learn, in turn, how to sink back into innocuous dullness and when to do so. The doctor was a practical man.

So he stepped back and went to work.

Torchlight flickered in the echoing corridors they passed through, turning bulges in the walls and ceilings into fantastic half-real shapes as Worth trailed after Mary Francis' delegate, and John trailed after him.

"Not a bad place ter live," the doc observed, wondering if Conrad was still hanging around in a place like this. "Surprised there aren't more 'a you guys, actually."

Rob grunted. "There used to be. Mrs. Raffeild locked some of our men out, mid-winter, when the food ran out. The Dobson boys took up with the CUT in September."

Tough broad.

The sick room turned out to be a cavern with a long, undulating floor—wherever the back wall was, Worth couldn't find it by candle light. Ten bodies covered the floor, as far as he could tell, a few propped up against stalagmites and a few strewn across the stone like coughing confetti. The doctor checked a knot on his splinting and motioned for John to step inside. A new left arm was in order. He turned back to the local.

"Got a cigarette?" he asked, one brow cocked.

"Here," the shorter man replied, pulling one thin brown cylinder from his breast pocket. "I can spare one. You're gonna need it."

-A-

It was sometime late in the afternoon, and Doc Worth had been awake for three hours. First thing he'd done had been to check up on the sick room—the blond one was still sleeping and the skeletal one was seeping so he fixed that—and then he headed outside into the yellow sunlight to join everyone else in the party. Apparently, a solid half of them had lit out to the nearest creek to check their lines, and all that was left nearby were a few women trying to teach a crowd of children how to long divide with a stick of chalk and a dead tree. He gave them grudging points for sheer pigheaded stubbornness.

The doc went to check on Conrad's makeshift cage, although he didn't have much hope for it. Vampires sleep like the dead. After rattling the bars for a couple minutes, he settled down at the front of it and leaned back against the stainless steel like a guard. If he'd had a gun, he would have cleaned it.

Some time into the hour, John came walking up the same hill. Worth caught his eye; the kid made a face like a five year old who just got caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar.

"Oi, Johnny-boy. Come ter pay yer respects?"

The younger one shuffled the rest of the way and plopped down across the path, silent.

"Thoughtcha didn' like Connie, kid."

John picked up a leaf and twisted it between two pudgy fingers. "I don't like Satan's children generally, no."

"An' yet, here y'are."

"I'm stuck with you two, aren't I? And you're not going anywhere until he comes back out."

"Y'sure abou' that?"

John gave him a deadpan look. "I'm not stupid, you know. No clue why, but you like that… that…"

"Faggot? Dumbass? Lame-pire? Nail-breaking cock-sucker?"

"…that failure. You like him."

"I like pissin' him off," Worth responded, flicking a moth that landed on his knee. "An' I like knowin' what my partner's likely ter do in any given situation. Makes the job easier. Anyways, I figured by now you'd've noticed how bloody unsatanic the twat is."

"The devil's still the devil," John muttered, "no matter how many times he fails."

"You ever consider that with a failure rate like that, y'might be scared'a the wrong thing?"

"The devil is still the devil," his companion repeated, sounding uneasy. "I don't expect you to understand, seeing as you're already enslaved to one of their unholy seductresses."

"Christ, it's like the fourteen hundreds all over again. Whadda yer people want outta this, anyhow?"

Blue eyes went bright like summer skies. "To place mankind, created in the image of God, at the summit of creation where he belongs; to eliminate and subjugate the abominations of the earth; to supplant the rule of corrupt men with the holiness of God's chosen Prophet; to restore the natural hierarchy—"

"I get it, I get it. Yer all a bunch of pamphlet thumpin' Nazis with a hard on fer some prophet dipshit. Lemme guess, yer Prophet saw Aryan Jesus in the desert?"

"No," the boy retorted, scowling. "The prophet had a vision when the angel of Death swept through the earth in March of two-thousand—"

"Save it, kid. I'm sorry I asked. Should've known better than to expect somethin' original from the bludgers who think Conrad's the devil."

The scowl deepened to fleshy canyons. "The devil is the tempter and corrupter of men, the enemy of Humanity, the Other that leads the sheep astray and fills the believer's mind with false knowledge."

"Kid," the doctor started, lifting an eyebrow, "have ya ever considered that I'd make a hell of a better devil than his ladyship would, humanity be damned?"

And that was when one of the locals came jogging up the hill and dragged them back to the caverns.

-A-

Somehow, and Worth would never be entirely sure no matter how many times he thought back, the doctor and his teenage patient ended up stumbling into the arms of a new caravan. It had something to do with fear, he decided eventually, the fear of a small, hungry community desperately eager to remain under the radar.

And if that was their logic, he didn't blame them too much.

The switch off happened on the second day they spent in Mariana, sometime midmorning as Worth was force feeding a local woman a dose of homemade painkiller—his favorite part of the job, recipe one he'd picked up a little farther north in one of the Carolinas—and a whirlwind of anxious faces carried him off to the entrance of the caverns, tittering about this and that and how helpful he'd been and how they just couldn't possibly keep him any longer.

Silhouetted in the sunlight, Mary Francis spared him a thin look, the kind that seemed to say there was little choice to be had in matters such as these. Worth met it with a flat nod—she might be his host, but that never guaranteed she was his friend, or that she was looking out for anyone but her crew.

The man waiting for him had the same haphazard uniform as General Kurtz, and the doctor knew immediately that he was not going to be heading out into the woods to leave some kind of message for Conrad. The soldier said something about how generous he was to volunteer his time like this, while the locals ran around tripping over saddle bags and offering the invaders fried bat, talking about how they hadn't seen one with rabies yet—clever move, that, if they did it on purpose.

Someone was talking about how the doctor and his cousin were going to Tallahassee anyways, you know, that's where everyone goes, and Worth was shepherded away from the caverns, straining his ear for a hint of explanation. Mary Francis caught him by the arm, and the rush of tittering madness spun out away from them for a brief moment. She pressed something into his hand.

"Keep your mouth shut," she whispered, "and everything will be fine. Listen to your cousin, he knows how the CUT operate. I'm sorry about this."

And then the old woman slipped away, and the soldier slapped a comradely hand over the doctor's shoulder, leading him down to the caravan waiting at the bottom of a nearby hill, and Worth, for his part, tucked a hunting knife with a worn white handle into the pocket of his jeans.

Could be worse. At least they'd feed him.

Nebraska

Seven months after the treaty (five months ago):

Conrad stared down at the crumbling pit, red eyes tracing curves of brown dirt and clods of green. They both knew he didn't have time for this, but for once, Worth didn't say anything. The pink and yellow panes of the sky stretched higher, and the vampire holstered his gun.

"I never want to do this again," he said, with a quiet strain that meant he was determined not to break down in front of the older man.

"Y' may hafta," Worth replied, reaching for a cigarette. Soon, he'd need to start rationing. "Y'never know what's comin' up. Ain't gonna lie to ya."

Conrad sucked in one of those useless breaths that reminded Worth of exactly how young he was—not in years living but in doing.

"God. There has to be an alternative," he muttered. Arms wrapped around chest, tight protection against the wrong kind of danger.

Somewhere in the emptied ruins of the town less than a mile away, between the jumbled graveyards and the putrefying gutters, Hanna and the zombie and their host of local muscle-headed heroes were facing down the terrifying powers of sheer human douchebaggery gone dangerously sour. It could have been a simple mission, but then, nothing Hanna walked into stayed simple for long. It was up in the air whether he changed the world by stepping through it, or if the most fucked up of messes simply reeled him in like a heaving fish.

It could have been simple, if Hanna had just dropped off the ambassador and left. It could have been simple if he'd just kept his nose out of the local whinging. It could have even been simpler if they had just stayed with the fucking car for once. Instead, they'd gotten on the wrong side of some chain-chewing gangsters who'd taken over the city, and all that because Hanna just couldn't keep his fucking mouth shut. Typical.

Worth looked into the distance, at the silhouette of a city skyline in shades of dusty purple. It seemed like his life was marked in a succession of sunsets and sunrises.

"You know they ain't gonna let us past the city limits, Princess. We're stuck out here till Hanna gets back, in a parade 'r a body bag, one."

The vampire followed his gaze, sweeping over the rolling, empty plains—hills far away, a blur of paint across the horizon line. Then he looked down.

"I can't do this," Conrad choked. "I can't… I can't go through with it."

"Does it look like ya got a choice?"

The undead man clutched at his pale forehead. "I don't care. I can't, okay? You don't get it. I physically can't. Just… just leave."

"Connie—"

"I can't! I've had nightmares about this since I was five years old! There is no fucking way we can do this, alright? Leave. Now. You don't... you don't want to see this."

The doctor drew back. Time slipped out from under them, like God yanking a rug out from under their feet. They were out of seconds for talking. He knew what was necessary.

"I'm not leavin' here without ya," he said, eyes narrowed. "Maybe y'll fergive me someday."

He pushed, square in the middle of Conrad's chest, and refused to look away as Conrad choked out a scream and went tumbling back, head first, into the pit they'd dug exactly his height and width. Gold seeped across the sky- he had no choice. Damned if he was going to let the faggot take the easy way out.

The first clod of dirt landed seconds later.

Florida

Eleven months after the Treaty:

Doc Worth made a point to keep his and John's mouths shut.

The soldier in charge of the caravan—Worth dubbed him General Conan—gave a stunningly monosyllabic presentation, and god only knew how he got to be in charge of this outfit short of punching the previous general to death. That certainly boded well for figuring out what the fuck he'd landed himself in.

They had tents, though.

There was one truck, a huge modern thing with its pickup full of lanterns and tarps and boxes. Aside from the driver, even the soldiers were on foot—either the bossman around here was hoarding gas supplies for something big, or area was flat fucking broke where it counted. A dozen other civilians trailed after the truck, and the lack of shackles left it up in the air whether they were going willingly or not.

After something likely less than an hour spent walking—and just when he'd thought he was done with that—all in dull silence, a girl with bright green eyes fell back to take up beside them. Evaluation: twenty something, dirty, recently healed ankle, and not much to look at.

"So what's your thing?" she said, to Worth, in a tone that made every attempt at friendliness and fell short a couple meters. Her southern accent twanged.

The doctor raised a brow.

"I mean," the girl clarified, "like I'm a history major. South Asian history. What's your thing?"

"I play doctor. Yer welcome ter play too, sweetheart."

On the other side of him, John groaned.

She gave him a squinty, awkward sort of look. "Uh. Okay." She pointed forward at the lumbering back of a middle aged man. "Mr. Wilson is a doctor too. Pathology. He's from Pensacola."

"I'm a sawbones," Worth clarified, nose wrinkling. "I ain't got the patience fer some conch who spent eight years starin' at the same text book."

The girl squinted even harder. "What the heck kind of accent is that, anyways?"

"Th' kind I don't feel like explainin' ter history majors."

"That's some way to treat your welcome committee!"

"Sure, an' that's some way ter welcome a man, sweetheart."

She scowled. "My name is Beth, sir."

"Whatever ya say, sweetheart."

At that moment, the Doc perceived that his fellow pedestrians were all tracking him out the corner of their eyes in bewilderment and irritation—he grinned and cracked his neck. Ah, it had been way too long.

"Look, if you don't want me to give you the run down, just say so and I'll leave you alone. We just figured you might want to know what's happening to you, that's all. Far be it from me to help where I'm not wanted."

The raised brow was as close to an apology as anybody was likely to get from Worth, although something only a handful of people living and dead could have identified. "Tell me somethin', then."

She did.

The caravan had been traveling in a loop over western Florida and Alabama, gathering vagabonds and raiding surviving settlements for people of skill. Aside from the doctors, for obvious reasons, no one could figure out just why some skills had been absorbed and others left behind—but among the current collection there were three other medical types, four history majors, two military men, and a scatter of road people. Beth pointed to one dark-skinned man in a cowboy hat, who caught the gesture and winked back.

"That's Jed Bondye. The general found him sleeping in the back of the pickup somewhere between Charlotte and Tampa, and you know you don't leave once they find you. He doesn't mind, I don't think. Says he's been all over the country, even after the fallout. He'll want to talk to you, I reckon—he collects stories, ya see."

Underneath the cowboy hat, Jed looked amused at the proceedings.

"Awright," the doctor said, looking back to the girl. "Tell me somethin' I actually wanna know, now. We're goin' ter Tallahassee, wherever that is, I got that. But th' real question is, why?"

Beth tucked her hands in worn pockets. "Well… it's hard to kick off an empire without a brain trust, isn't it?"

-A-

On foot, from Mariana to Tallahassee, it took about two days. The doctor decided that if he was ever faced with a choice between forced march in a caravan and death again, he'd take the bloody bullet to the head and be done with it. And he was never, ever sharing a tent with John again—the little bugger screamed in his sleep.

That first night, the kid had already retreated to their shared tent when Worth sat down at the edge of a scrawny campfire, with a psychological benefit that did not at all outweigh the detriment of ten more degrees on top of a night that was already hotter than Arabian hell.

He hadn't been paying much attention—he'd been watching the sky for tiny silhouettes, wondering if the campfire was bright or dark enough to keep bandits away—but from what he could remember tuning in and out, Jed had been recounting the story of a man in Illinois who had every sick man in the county shot and then declared himself President pro tempore, and how he'd been shot himself a couple months later. Sounded familiar. Somebody asked a question.

"There's four of them," the cowboy replied, "Always four. Sometimes they go it alone, sometimes they travel with a little army, sometimes they got a couple hotshots ridin' along with a pack of security guys. Don't matter. There's always four of 'em."

A cloud passed over the moon, and that was when Worth happened to look back at the circle. His gaze settled on the questioner, who frowned through the heat waves. "Why four?"

Jed leant back against the roll of blankets that passed for a bed, tilting his hat over his eyes. "Some folks say they knew each other before the Plague. I figure that sounds about right. Can't figure a bunch of strangers hangin' as tight as that."

Green Eyes, laid out on the dirt beside Worth, tossed a rock into the fire. "I heard their boss is a little kid."

The cowboy laughed underneath his hat. "Little red-headed thing. Looks sweet he does, Mr. Cross. They say he wiped out a whole clan of wraiths with one spell. A man in Chattahoochee told me he saw the kid call up a pillar 'a fire in a second flat and turn a whole city inta nothin' but ash in the wind."

"I've seen him," the old man, the pathology guy, murmured in a hoarse voice, "he can't be more than fifteen. Much too young to be living like that."

"I hear he's got a zombie for a bodyguard," Green Eyes offered, as if it might make the man feel better. "Really."

"That'd be the second one," the cowboy admitted, "the zombie. Real imposin' figure, I'll give 'im that. Doesn't say much. I hear tell he used to be a mafia man before some yankee shot him down. Completely devoted to the boy. Myself, I saw him rip off one of his own arms tryin' to knock the poor kid out of gunshot range."

"Did he get hit?" somebody demanded, sitting forward far enough to singe the swoop of yellow hair across his forehead.

"Grazed his arm, far as I could tell," the cowboy drawled. "Lucky thing the third man is a doctor."

On the other side of the campfire, Worth reached for one of the ugly brown things that passed for a cigarette these days. He decided that if he ever got the chance, he'd go and see his own funeral. It might be a little like this.

"A doctor?" the old man echoed, ancient wrinkles drawn dark by the firelight. "I don't remember a doctor."

"Well, they call him Doc," the cowboy replied, a hint of a grin in his voice, "so most folks reckon he's a doctor. Scarecrow of a man, always got one of those old cigarettes lit up, the skinny white kind. He don't do much talkin' either, though I hear tell he's got himself in a couple jams runnin' his mouth about the wrong people. He wears this grungy fur coat—rumor'll tell you he got it off the back of a doctor who near 'nough killed Mr. Cross once, before the Plague. I don't figure the poor bastard had much left in him to complain by that point."

Worth took a drag of his cigarette and spoke up, watching the words float away with the smoke.

"Y' ever meet 'im? The doc?"

"Why, yessir," the cowboy answered, tipping the brim of his hat up. The glitter of his eyes lit up the shadows underneath. "I reckon did. He was on the run at the time, tryin' to catch up with this one damn fool somewhere between an Arkansas prison and a New Klan lynchin' mob. He must near well be in love with the sorry son of a gun."

Worth blew a cloud of smoke in the cowboy's direction. Think you're clever, you hillbilly fucker?

"And who's that?" Green Eyes demanded, eyes turned back on Jed. "The one he was chasing?"

"That'd be the fourth one. Vampire. Not much of a vampire, I hear. Supposedly, and this is all rumor mind you, he ain't yet managed to drink somebody dry. Now, I've seen him take down his share of an army so I can't figure why that'd be—man in Kansas told me he kin kill a hundred men in a minute when he goes berserk—but that's how the story goes and I suppose he's got his reasons. A lotta folks tell you he used to love a human, an' a lot of folks think he gets his juice from the doctor, but I reckon that's all more guess than know."

"I hear a lot of vampires these days travel with a human, just in case," Green Eyes noted, settling back onto her pallet.

Around the fire, the old man crossed himself quickly. "Christ knows I never believed in the goddamned leeches till the plague hit," he muttered. "Still haven't seen one. If my son hadn't met one of the ambassadors last year, I think I still wouldn't."

"They sent an ambassador?" the blond kid asked, eyes wide. "The vampires?"

"The vampire coalition," Jed observed, "does things by the rules. Now I can't claim to tell you everythin' about the Accords, but I'm pretty sure Spooks have to negotiate with us 'fore they set up clan bases and suchlike. I was in Atlanta when the first ambassadors came 'round, oh, ten months ago? We'd never seen a Fey before, damn well blew us away. Of course at that point, we were still livin' in the outskirts, raidin' warehouses and tryin' to build some kinda base for the survivors. Imagine that. One day you're shovelin' up the latest mass grave, next thing you know there's a seven foot drunkard in the bar telling you he's a leprechaun."

Worth took another breath of cigarette—he remembered the leprechaun. Good company. Nearly drank Worth under the table before Conrad came and dragged him away.

"Wisconsin," the boy across the fire muttered. "It was fall and nobody had a clue what they were going ta eat until spring. Fucking Dagons come up out of the lake like hey, hi, how're ya doin'? Reverend Marsh made some kind of deal with them, and we ended up eating fish all winter long. It was better than starving, I guess. I don't think many people go swimming anymore, though."

"I never saw an ambassador," Green Eyes mused. "I didn't even hear about them till my family hooked up with one of the bigger settlements north of here. The leader of this werewolf pack petitioned the mayor… imagine that, a werewolf petitioning anybody… to set up his buddies in the national park land not too far from here. Well, you don't say no to a werewolf. They set up a silver fence, can you believe that, just to mark the property line. My mom donated her whole jewelry box for the lining. They used to bring us a deer or something, every couple weeks, that first winter."

The cowboy tipped his hat up again, glittering eyes fixed on the silent doctor across from him. Worth took another drag of his cigarette and felt the glowing tip scorch his fingers, and waited.

"How about you, stranger," Cowboy said, grinning, "you ever meet an ambassador?"

Flicking the last width of rolled tobacco into the fire, Worth shrugged as nonchalantly as he could with a broken, splinted arm. "Sure, why th' fuck not. Any of ya ever met a human 'bassador?"

Curious looks passed around the ring of firelight.

"Human's 'r my favorite," Worth went on, standing. "Murderous, stupid sons'a bitches."

And then he left them to their gossip, satisfied that his cover was still intact and the perimeter was secure. It's funny how people won't recognize you if you drop just one important feature. A jacket, for example.

The wind drifted sparks and a fading sentence to the netted door of his tent, and he closed his eyes for the first time in too many hours.

"—strange man, that Luce."

-A-

It was a couple hours before dawn, the second night, when the doctor found himself awake and pinned to the floor of his tent by the throat. Fuck, oxygen. He swung up at the assailant with his good arm, but they dodged almost before he had a chance to move. Shit. He went for a kick, but the body was seated across his hips and that was useless.

Well, back to the thrashing, then.

"Stop it, you bloody prick."

Worth paused, about a second from trying his luck with a headbutt.

"Connie?"

"Yes. Jesus Christ. And keep your voice down, I don't want anybody else in here."

"Damn, sugartits, I was about ta give ya a Glasgow kiss."

"A… Sugar… You were going to… headbutt me? Do you have some kind of slang dictionary chip planted in your brain?"

"Never leave home without it."

Spots of imaginary color crept across the Doc's vision, although "vision" was a bit of a laugh at this point. He could have closed his eyes and it would have looked about the same. The spots seemed to outline Conrad's face, lines of irritation and familiar twists of begrudging relief. Good to know the fag wasn't dead.

"So, y'know where we're headed, princess?"

There was a shift in the darkness, and Worth felt more weight settle on his stomach. "One of the guards said you were heading to the capital. Are we breaking out?"

"Nah. I got a hunch that's where the trouble is, an' where there's trouble there's Hanna. Might as well stick with these buggers—seem ter know where they're going, at least."

"So what am I supposed to do, then?"

Worth half-shrugged, and regretted it as his shoulder scraped over what felt like an acorn. "Keep flyin', cupcake. Y'found us once, no reason ya cain't do it again."

There was something along the lines of a muffled slap to the wall of the tent, the side where John's (new) equally tiny shelter was propped up. It muffled the night-screaming slightly. The familiar teenage voice muttered something to the point of "for the love of god shut up".

Worth snickered and reached forward, fingers landing on the rim of Conrad's shorts. "Not ta be picky, but 're ya gonna sit on me all night?"

The vampire cursed and skittered backwards, and half a silhouette said that he was now pressed awkwardly against the door flap. "It's not my fault this thing is dwarf sized!" he hissed.

"Hey, I ain't yer mum, ya ain't gotta tell me no stories."

There was a faint choking sound of bottled fury, and then a zipper being snatched at, and then there was nothing but a sliver of indigo sky and a flutter where the door flap caught in the wind. Worth contemplated it for a moment before scowling and rolling up onto his knees. Like it was his job to close the damn door.

Dumbass let all the goddamn bugs in, the vindictive little son of a bitch.

-A-

They hit the capital sometime the next morning. The first sign of civilization was the faint sound of human voices on a hill coming up off the highway, and on the other side of the fence there was a thin gleam of silver—sprinklers. Giant-ass farming sprinklers.

The houses at the bottom of the hill were somewhere between giant topiary and more-or-less livable domiciles, and there didn't seem to be an advantage in disguising your house as a bush but who knew, he'd seen weirder things in the last year. Green Eyes announced something about kudzu.

They walked on. The air was thick and hot, and Worth's shirt was sticking to his back, and black asphalt had a tendency to bake a man from his boots up like so much dough—the irritation seeping through every collar was almost tangible.

"Gonna rain," Jed remarked, a few feet ahead.

The doctor considered the pros and cons of strangling him.

They walked on.

The collapsed remains of a little Italian restaurant passed them on the left, and then a line of overturned cars on either side, filling the ditches. They looked like they'd been rolled off the road—you saw the stalled ones everywhere, where someone finally ran out of gas or jumped out to help with a fire, or just threw it into park in the middle of the road and waited to die. It wasn't often you saw them rolled off the pavement like this.

The highway led them in, past a gutted hardware store and a shopping center, the blackened remains of a Walmart, and the first swinging black-eyed streetlight of many. Worth waited for a flash of a person in his peripheral vision, but the streets seemed to be empty of everything but the sweltering procession.

A flyer fluttered across the street, and the headline "This Is Your Enemy" caught his eye as it tumbled away and disappeared into the grass.

It took them a long time to find people again. The first sunken-eyed, sunburnt face fell in beside them as they passed an auto-shop that seemed from the noise to be still working. The woman—it was a woman, although her hair was cut awkwardly short—didn't seem so much to avoid eye contact, but to be unaware that such a thing was even possible. She wore sneakers that were dirt brown with a hole in the toe. There was a cut in her hand, when Worth could see it, with a suspiciously puffy edge.

"Ma'am," the pathology guy started, obviously noticing the same thing, "Ma'am, that cut on your hand? Have you had it looked at?"

The woman turned her head, jerkily like the mechanism was rusted, and stared at the old man with eyes that were no longer accustomed to seeing much at all. She said nothing.

After a moment, the physician looked away and muttered "sorry to bother you," in a quick, nervous cadence, and took hurried steps forward to catch up with the caravan. He fell in step beside Doc Worth and the green eyed girl, unnerved.

"Do you suppose she's sick with something else?" he wondered, tugging the collar of his impractical, sweat stained dress shirt. "She doesn't have any symptoms I recognize, but things do mutate in these situations—in these climates—"

Doc Worth waved a hand. "There ain't nothin' wrong with that lady 'cept a bad case'a the end of the world, and a whole lotter hard livin' ever since. Hard livin'. Now, I don't know about you idiots, but whatever government made that—" he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, "—I'd keep an eye on."

The history majors all looked around uneasily.

-A-

In his year of post-civilization-collapse wandering, Doc Worth had seen a fair number of autocracies, theocracies, kleptocracies, and even one fully functioning democracy, but this was admittedly the first government he'd seen with a goddamn castle. The street signs all said university, but any fuckwit off the street could tell you it was a goddamn castle. It had goddamn towers.

Now that was foresight.

The truck parted ways somewhere in the middle of town, so when the volunteers and their armed guard arrived at the castleversity, it was a simple matter of point and march to get them all inside the looming red monstrosity. No moat, but the guards had that nasty look you tend to associate with prizefighters who bite off their opponents' ears, and the locals he'd spied didn't look like the assassinating types anyways.

They looked more like the breathing shallowly types.

There were the beginnings of a wall in the same orange brick, just outside of the gate, maybe six feet long and ten feet tall at the very end, where the top looked smoothed off. Ambitious.

The procession shuffled in through the front entrance with the fountain, between boards plastered with various logos. Worth's gaze lit on one particularly blue sheet, if only because the background seemed mostly to be a stylized ocean or a lake, with a little castleversity seated on the peak of a mountain rising up from the water at the top of the image. The image was bleary, like the copier had been worked by mooks on low power.

Propaganda, then. New.

Inside, it was clear that they'd stepped into a theater. The walls were lined with armed guards, and these a little different looking—more uniform, probably post-fallout production, grey with old-fashioned round caps. Worth eyed their shiny silver rifles. Christ he missed his gun. The seats of the auditorium were almost full, and their equally mud-splattered company looked hopefully up at the new entries. They wanted answers. What else is new?

The Doc's crew pushed into one of the rows at the front and then waited in painful, anxious silence as, in the space of nearly three hours, two more companies arrived and shuffled up to the last few rows, just ahead of Worth. The three hours were nice—Worth kicked his scum-covered boots up on the seat ahead of him, reached for the stub of a complementary cigarette he'd tucked away—but eventually the last crew came straggling in and disturbed the silence, smelling like death and old adrenaline.

Worth did not move his feet, and the young man who was supposed to sit in front of him scowled, fists balled, teeth gritted, and Worth thought for a minute that he was in for his first fight in nearly a week when the man suddenly deflated, crashed like a skyscraper in an earthquake. Quietly, the young man took his seat and hunched forward, away from the filth on the doctor's square-toed boots.

Well damn. There must have been one hell of a skirmish on the way if it had a twenty-something kid too thrown to pick a fight. Worth paused, mentally. Might not have been a skirmish. Might have been something worse.

Maybe another hour passed. Just as Doc Worth was really settling down—just like old times, in the office, waiting for Hanna to show up at four o'clock in the morning—the soldiers around the theater started shuffling, reshouldering their guns, and shooting quick looks at the stage. Worth followed their eyes. The curtain was inching open.

A breeze of whispers stirred up the room, scattering dust motes and crumpled pamphlets. Beside him, the pathology guy wiped his brow. It had been cool in the room hours before, now not so much.

The curtain rolled up, and situated behind it, some milk-white chair-like monstrosity with a golden stylized cross shooting up from its center. Worth's eyebrows went up.

"Damn," Worth started, "now if somebody ain't compensatin' fer somethin'… Ya think they skinned God ter make that thing?"

The physician to his left and John on his right both turned huge horrified eyes back on their neighbor.

The lights were going up too, a spotlight, and that explained where the air conditioning had gone, although not why they'd sprung for it in the first place unless it was to soften up the room, so to speak.

A handful of figures stepped onto the stage, unnaturally immaculate and dressed in white—with the exception of the one black woman, who was dressed in a flattering black dress. The room watched as they took up their places, in a semi-circle of dignity and minor shuffling, with one man folding himself gracefully into the center seat. The black woman disappeared behind it, head tipped downward.

There was a moment of dramatic stillness. Somebody in the audience coughed, and the rest of the audience tried not to think about chunks of lung and inglorious death. The stage took no notice.

"Gentlemen," one of the white-clad men on stage began, "ladies. On behalf of Chancellor Preston, welcome to Tallahassee, capital of Florida, and seat of rising civilization. It's good to have you here."

"Fuckin' college talk," Worth muttered. "See, thissus why I dropped out."

John looked horrified again. "You dropped out?"

A guard situated on the aisle shot them a look that very clearly outlined the fate awaiting anyone who talked over the illustrious council of abusing religious propaganda. They all carefully turned their eyes back to the stage.

One of the men in white had stepped into the middle of the circle, with a clipboard tucked under his arm. His voice rattled out over a hundred heads, like an old boat engine rumbling into throttle. The words blurred together, leaving the vague impression of a welcome and condolences for the travel, they were a bit short on transportation, you know how'd it's been the last year or so, they're not rich yet but yes maybe someday, pinched chuckle—

Worth turned his eyes to the man in the throne, who looked like one of the blockheaded, charismatic boys he'd once gone to school with. Contrary to popular belief, they often ended up fairly comfortably situated after spending four years sitting second or third string on their university teams, proving once again that just how much you hated someone in high school was not a deciding factor in how well they ended up. A hundred geeks were probably rolling in their graves the day this man took up the infant empire.

"—You, men and women, you were chosen to be part of something really incredible. Just like the monks of the Irish shores once safeguarded western knowledge after the collapse of the Roman empire, together we are going to rebuild this nucleus of culture and preserve it for future generations. God has granted us, the survivors, the blessing and responsibility of raising America from its ashes and righting the wrongs of generations before us."

There was a little muttering. The speaker smiled in the stiff way of an old professor cracking an unfunny joke.

"Some of you may still be atheists, even after the earth shaking events of last spring. That's alright. We're certain that you'll see the light sooner or later. For now, we're all working together for the same cause, and that's all that really matters. Some of you are historians, some of you are doctors, some of you are mechanics—some of you are just smart. We've got a job for everyone. You'll be the best of our best, the movers and shakers of our Byzantium. It'll be a lot of work, but it's good work. Good food, good protection, God's work."

Worth closed his eyes. A braintrust, huh?

Clipboard went on, talking about how the Church Universal and Triumphant had been born a couple months after the fallout in Perry, which was apparently a town and not a bloke. Not in the south, anyways. The church was some wild-eyed survivor's idea, and it hadn't been too popular until some jerk shot him in the face, and the next day the Nightwalkers came rolling in. That was the bottom line, although it sounded a hell of a lot lengthier and saintlier when Clipboard said it.

"Born from ashes, he said. Born from ruin! The Lord swore he'd never bring the rain against us again, but the sins of philistines—Sodom and Gomorrah, Washington and New York—begged down a wrath eons in the building—"

Bloke really got into it. Between the lines, the story seemed to be that the people in Perry were scared enough to take the whole thing as a case of karmic retribution, and the CUT exploded from there. Exactly two months after accidentally shooting John the Baptist come again, some mysterious joker came along and picked up the torch behind the scenes, and suddenly you have a dark messiah all polished and wrapped up for your marketing convenience.

"Now," the man said, at some point, "those of you who haven't yet had any contact with the CUT might be surprised to learn that the Prophet is a normal citizen, just like anyone one else in our territory. In fact, the identity of our prophet is unknown to anyone outside of the founders. Because power corrupts, it would be inadmissible to allow our prophet to step into the limelight. Chancellor Preston is authorized by God to lead in day to day affairs—"

Worth snorted. A multitude of eyes snapped towards him.

"There ain't no prophet," the doctor whispered, leaning towards his neighbor like a movie-goer whispering spoilers to a stranger. "Any fool could tell ya that."

A guard growled at him. He grinned back.

And Clipboard was still talking, although it was much harder to focus on him now that Worth had their big secret worked out. He attention fell, instead, on the other players across the stage—the woman, with a clipboard of her own, eyes downturned; the fat old man on the left of the throne, melting under the extra ten degrees of the spotlight; the one in glasses at the end, still as a statue. The chancellor, subtly bored , with his head twisting back every couple minutes as if looking behind him despite the hunk of white upholstery in his line of sight.

"Why's she wearin' black?" Worth asked his companion, quietly this time.

John stared ahead. "Black people can't wear white. It's the Church's color."

"Huh. Well, ain't that symbolically convenient."

On stage, there was a reshuffling as the young chancellor lifted himself from his seat and looked out over the congregation. He moved with a blocky grace, and his arms were folded.

"Ladies an' Gentlemen," he said, as if that hadn't been said before way back at the beginning, "as of today, ya'll can all consider yourselves citizens of Florida. What the Lord done, he done right. We'd like ya'll to stay in town until you finish one project whole way through, an' if you still wanna leave, or if you got family somewhere else, you pack y' things and go. In the meantime, we got your room an' board covered. The rules 'round here are simple: you do what y' boss tells you, you keep in y' place, and you don't harbor no enemies of the state. Stick with that, an' you kin make a real life for yourself here."

And then Clipboard was back center stage, asking all the mechanics to stand up and file out of the theater, and the muttering started up in a low, quiet rumble.

Worth turned and leaned close to John, his chin propped up on his right fist. "So. How's it feel t' be sittin' in Mecca? Y'wanna get down an' kneel a couple times? It's alrigh', I'll wait. Could do with a foot rest closer t' the ground."

John blinked at him, and then scowled. "That was an insult. Don't insult me."

"Kid, it's a stronger man than me who can lay offa you."

The younger man was red faced and ready to retort when Clipboard called out "Doctors now, please!", and the comeback withered on his tongue. In fact, his whole face sort of withered.

Doc Worth stood up, and shoved his way to the end of the row. When he looked back, John was still sitting there like an idiot.

"C'mon kid," the older man ordered, "if I lose ya after all this, Connie'll bitch my ear off."

And then they left.

The medical corps were met by an old man who gave them a bit of a tour as they went stumbling through the streets towards their new barracks. Unlike the historians, who apparently got to live in one of the buildings on campus, this group was situated in a business building, on a level that apparently used to house lawyers. Worth wondered if that was some kind of a snub. As the impromptu tour stepped around what looked like the year old remains of a localized explosion, the guide pointed up towards a cylinder-shaped sky-scraper.

"That's the new prison," he told them, deliberately neutral. "Before the fallout, we couldn't get anyone to stay there. Now, it's filling up like crazy. It's the only building in town that has full power, aside from the Chancellor's rooms, and personally I wouldn't like to be up there when the generator shorts out. I suppose prison never really changes, at least in terms of funding drains."

Someone in the middle of the group spoke up. "Who exactly goes to prison, these days?"

Their guide went stiff. "Criminals."

Another guy took up the thread. "But what kind of criminals?"

"Criminal criminals! Isn't that good enough for you?"

The mass of doctors looked doubtfully at him.

"Look, I'm not going to comment on the Chancellor's idea of justice and I'm certainly not going to tell you that he's a fan of corporal punishment and I am certainly certainly not going to talk about how careful you should all be with what you say in public, you hear me? Now, if you'll look this way, you'll see the first mass grave from after the plague…"

Doc Worth shoved his hands in his pockets. Seen one dictatorship, you've seen them all.

-A-

They didn't want to let him sit outside. It made the soldiers circling the building antsy and they kept telling him to move this way or that, and when he told them not to worry their sweet little heads, they didn't take it too well. So Worth ducked a punch, slipped back indoors, and made his way up to the roof. No elevators, obviously. He could deal.

It was about three hundred degrees in the top-most floor, he was pretty sure, and Worth gritted his teeth as he shook the emergency exit free from a year of sub-tropical rust. Unlocked, luckily—but then, who locks the highest door in the building? Cool, eighty-something degree air rushed in as he wrenched the thing open, and he considered putting out the candle he'd nicked from the lobby now that the waxing moon glimmered down at him. He didn't. Wasn't his candle, after all.

There was a suspicious blackened mess at the edge of the roof, and he eyed the glint of what might have been a button for a moment before tossing himself down on the other side of the concrete. It wasn't as if investigating would tell him anything he particularly wanted to know.

Settled, the Doc turned his attention to the streets below.

It was late at night, and the flocks that filled the street after sunset had dispersed a while before. There was nothing for a long time, but the Doc was patient. The moon inched downward, above the rolling impressionism of treetops far away, and Worth's candle fluttered. The shapes of guards circled. He was waiting, and he could wait all night.

Figures started to appear on the street, little by little, tugging carts and carrying baggage, and they went on without pausing to glance at each other, shifting to the far side of the road as they passed the circling guards. Worth watched them, each jerky motion, each missed step, each quick acceleration as they passed the perimeter of Worth's new lodgings. From six stories up, they all blended together in faceless, colorless motion.

Worth watched the parade of black on black, and something struck him—

There was a wump! on the concrete feet away from him, and he spun to face it with Mary Francis's hunting knife clenched in hand.

There was a groan.

"Can't land to save my bloody life…"

And then Worth realized he was looking at Conrad, in a hunched tangle of pale limbs. He pocketed the knife.

"Oi, decided to finally show up, then?"

The vampire shot him that familiar death glare, and straightened himself out to a more dignified hunch. Moonlight glinted off shoulders and calves.

"Why the fuck were you watching the street, Worth?"

The doctor pinched out his candle, shrugging. "Didn' think y'd actually land on a roof."

"Oh," the younger man bit out, gesturing towards his hunched, uncovered chest, "and you think I'd walk down the street in a hostile city in the middle of the night in bike shorts? You don't think that would look a little suspicious?"

"Well sure. Never said it was smart, did I?"

Conrad made a low, guttural, furious noise and threw himself at the doctor, long nailed fingers clamping around Worth's throat. Worth sort of laughed, although it's a bit hard to do that with someone's thumbs in your windpipe.

"Look here, asshole," Conrad said, voice hard strained, "you ditched me in the goddamn forest to wander off with a bunch of redneck Nazis and you didn't even take my clothes with you, so I've been next to fucking naked for three days and I've had to track you down like some kind of bloodhound which I'm not because I'm a fucking bat, alright? If you ever pull a dick move like that again, I'll castrate you with my motherfucking teeth."

"Kinky."

Conrad made another horrible noise and shook Worth until it seemed like his head might pop off.

"I. Have not. Had fun!"

Worth grabbed the hands (well, one of them) and managed to hold them sort of still. "A bit late ter complain about that one, ain't it?" he said. "Might have mentioned it when we were in camp."

The vampire snorted. "Yeah, that wouldn't get us both killed. Anyways, sitting on top of you is not a good place to point out my state of undress."

"Y'mean like right now, fer instance?"

Conrad looked down, looked up, and punched Worth in the face. By the time the doctor had finished blinking furiously and contemplating the interesting sensation seeping out from his temples, Conrad was stalking across the roof like the prima donna he was.

"Yanno there's a dead bloke over there—"

Conrad made his third noise of the night, a shrieking, absolutely perfect blend of frustration and horror. Worth started laughing and nearly couldn't stop.

-A-

The next day, Worth went on house calls. That was after he busted down the med-room doors and put some decent plaster on his arm. He had a soldier and a clerk with a clipboard and shuffling, sullen John, who was pissy because he had to follow an infidel around on his first real day in the de facto Holy City. A Holy City with a name like Tallahassee at that.

There were no black people.

The string of miniature parks a block or two away from their rooms were planted like chaotic jungle gardens, and as Worth passed he caught sight of odd little remodeling projects scattered all around: generators hooked up to jack hammers and wooden half-pavilions going up over cabbage patches. There were places like that all over the city—lawns repurposed, street medians plowed, so on and so forth—and the army of sweating, straining humanity that raced over them was just as chaotic and disheveled. Worth didn't see a whole lot of shoes.

Hollow eyes. Sharp cheek bones. Awkward-cut, tangled hair.

Out of the five calls he made that day, one was to a snappish man with a minor burn living just outside the grace zone of the campus. The other four were to people who'd sliced something open or off, and three of them were to people living in what had once been shops in places now close to the fields. Hollow eyes. Sharp cheek bones. Skinny children hiding behind doors. There was some screaming and some crying thanks to the drug shortage, and a few comments about various divinities that probably were as dangerous as the injuries he'd come to treat, but by the end of the day Worth did manage to get everyone on his list taken care of.

If he had to look at that goddamn list one more time, he was going to take every bureaucrat in the god-forsaken city outside and shoot them.

And at some point Worth chatted up a civil servant (Bright eyes. Pudgy cheeks.) with no sense of sarcasm while John begged a captain for permission to visit the reliquary after they turned in the godforsaken list, because apparently it was Wednesday afternoon now. Worth had forgotten that days came with names. The civil servant told him loads of uninteresting things about the weeks before the CUT came into town, starving and looting and the like, and Worth was about ready to do something incredibly unsubtle by the time he started talking about revolts in the countryside.

Oh.

"Now," Worth interrupted, fast-forwarding through the last five minutes of drivel, "you mean t' tell me you got rebels?"

His companion made a face that Worth once saw on the muzzle of a nervous rat. "Well, yes, there are always dissenters in any… ah… situation. It was always from the territories though—Monticello and Crawfordville and out by the interstate, you know. It wasn't—it wasn't in the city proper until this week, Doctor. But the Chancellor is dealing with the problem today, and I promise you've missed the peak of it."

Doc Worth narrowed his eyes. "Now, by dealin' with the problem, y'mean he's rootin' out the infidels, tha's whacha mean?"

The civil servant hesitated, for a moment, and started to reply when John came rushing out of the building crowing bloody victory and the nervous man took his luck and ran with it. Right back into the safety of the building.

Worth whirled on the teen.

"Y' bloody stupid sod, that was important!"

A spit second of what looked like hurt flashed across the kid's face, and then there was mean, seething anger, just like any other day.

"Why should I care?" John spat, pudgy cheeks turning red. "Whatever you want, it's nothing good for the church and I'm glad I messed you up!"

The doctor kept from strangling him by about a hair of remaining self-control. He was so close. So fucking close to something he could actually use. After a moment, the fury simmered down to a vague irritation and he released the bloodless knot that used to be his hand.

"Kid," he growled, "I know yer wettin' the bed with excitement here but try to keep in mind that I want out. One o' these days yer gonna figure out that this place ain't happy sunshine rainbow camp, an' I don' plan on stickin' around till y' do. I wan' out."

"To get to your stupid spook girlfriend!"

"Jesus kid, ya just don' let shit go."

They looked at each other, and then Worth caught him by the collar and dragged him off towards the Medical Building.

"You know," the kid muttered, "you could do a lot of good here, if you stayed. God's work. You could be somebody. Most people, they end up digging out roots for the rest of their lives. You've got something so much better."

The doctor snorted. Oh yeah, he was lucky enough to land on the braintrust pillows instead of the day-labor mud by about one cup of blood and a midnight escape.

"And all you'd have to do is ditch those other guys," John went on, more excited now. "The chancellor would probably give you a sainthood, if you told him about all the scum you used to hang out with and all the rabble rousing and, and about the spook woman—all you'd have to do is ditch her, really, she'd never find you here and we'd protect you, promise! Everybody knows how it is with girls—Sampson and Delilah, right? You could convert! You'd get a clean slate and—"

"Save yer breath. If y' think I'm stickin' with you loonies a day longer than I gotta, yer dummer than I thought."

John paused at the steps that lead up to their building, crossed his arms under the skinny tree that grew in the plot in middle of the stairs.

"Why?"

"'Cos real men keep their promises," the doctor answered, impatient. "Men look out fer whoever they gotta look out fer. Thought y' might understand that, since yer so inter that idiot church'a yers. Guess not."

The teen paused for a moment, eyes dulling slightly in something that might have been contemplation. There was a flicker, in the corners of his mouth, as if he grasped the concept for a moment—and then he changed tactics.

"But the church is bigger than all that! What's a promise to a spook woman compared to God? Look, think about it like this. Haven't you ever wondered why the spooks exist? Haven't you wondered why the plague came, why so many people died, why you lived when they didn't? Aren't there any questions, aren't there any that bother you late at night, when you're tryin' to sleep?"

Worth reached for a cigarette that wasn't there, looking vaguely up towards the second floor where their room was. Most of what bothered Worth late at night, in the darkness when his limbs ached and his mind raced, were flashes of blue eyes shot with blue, of a sooty Italian man lying on a cot in a dim room, and white skin splattered with black blood and grime in the starlight. No questions.

"It ain't my place to ask," Doc Worth replied, shrugging. "I got more important shit t' concern myself with."

And then he started up the stairs.

-A-

Dinner was at seven, just like the night before, and Worth slipped away to the roof before they pulled the lid off the second helping. He didn't used to eat real meals, when he had his own practice, but these days you ate when you could, hungry or not, because you didn't know when your next meal might be. Or if you'd get anything better than thin stew. So far, the doctors had been eating well.

He waited on the roof as the sun went down, watching the hazy gold at the rim of the world fade into night. The streets were full, at this time of evening, but the figures slunk away into the darkness one by one leaving quiet in their wake. It didn't take long before the stillness was assaulted by the thump of fur and flesh on concrete, and a thick rope of curses.

Conrad looked up at him, lips pressed tight.

"You'll never guess who's in town."

-A-

Nine o'clock, the sickle moon in the west, and Conrad tugged awkwardly at the shirt buttoned up to his chin, as if that would make up for his glaringly bare legs.

"This is so stupid," the vampire muttered, pulling the bottom hem as far down as it would go.

"Look, nobody was gonna believe me if I told 'im I got blood an' sick all over my trousers while I was still wearin' 'em, so ya better get used ter it an' man th' fuck up."

"I meant the plan," Conrad hissed, "but now that you mention it, I do look incredibly stupid. I can't believe I'm out in the streets like this."

"Y' got another option?"

"You could give me your trousers, on account of this all being your fault?"

Worth looked away from the door he'd been focused on, just long enough to cock one disbelieving brow. "So y'admit ya wanna get my pants, peaches?"

Conrad was half-way into the first syllable of his comeback when he stopped short. "You mean, get into your pants."

"Ooh, 's that a confession?"

"No! That wasn't what—You just—argggh."

It might have gone on like that for a long time, except that a soldier came out stomping of the door under scrutiny at exactly that moment and the conversation evaporated on the wind. Conrad gave his shirt one last nervous tug, and then he stepped out of the shadows and into the setting moonlight.

"Sir?" he called out, chagrined and hesitant. "Sir, do you have a second?"

The soldier squinted at him, pulling off his old-fashioned cap. "You're out way past curfew, mister..."

"Achenleck. I know." The vampire gestured down at himself, smiling sardonically, closed lips. "Got in a fight with my girlfriend. I live over that way."

The soldier made his way over, following the trajectory of Conrad's finger with a glance. "One hell of a girlfriend you've got, Mr. Achenleck, if she's willing to toss you out after curfew."

"I know. That's why I came over here—I figured I better hook up with somebody official before I got caught on the streets. I thought I could maybe stay here till dawn?"

"Well," the soldier said, wavering, "this isn't much of a place to spend the night. Don't you have any friends?"

Conrad stepped back, crossing his arms. "As a matter of fact," he replied, "I do."

And then Worth hit the soldier with something very heavy, and that was that.

A couple minutes later, Conrad had snagged himself a pair of pants and the unnamed young man was carefully stowed in a shrub where his chances of survival were fairly high and his chances of alerting authorities were fairly low. A strip of dim light lit on his forehead, and the Doc kicked it farther under the foliage.

"Coulda slit his throat," Worth remarked, pressing against the curved wall of the building. "Woulda been a fucka lot easier."

"Somebody around here has to have some humanity," the vampire hissed back, pressed against the wall on the other side of the door.

Above them, the huge cylinder of glass and steel loomed in the darkness. They said nothing, but by the time Worth had his hand around the door handle, Conrad was already crouched behind him, ready to move.

They slipped inside.

As Worth had remarked earlier that night, these guys were amateurs. The beauty of a set up like this was that it pitted the green against the green—the chancellor and his merry band of fanatics didn't have any more experience with anarchy than anyone else in America, but they had a vision and they had ruthlessness, and they had confidence that everyone else was just as functionally clueless as them. When you introduced someone with experience to the mix, however…

The prison was good for keeping things in. That's not bad for a prison, really, and it covers all your basic prison type business. It doesn't take much more than locks, either, which is convenient when the number of people on the continent has recently been taken down by four fifths. But on the matter of keeping things out, there was something to be desired.

They waited until the soldier stationed in the lobby was called away to another room. The ledger on the reception desk happened to be the room listings of the prisoners, and Conrad snagged that as they made their way towards the stairs—flickering candles hid the worst of their movements, and then they were through the lobby and up onto the first flight. Conrad read as they went, quietly, and Worth kept one eye on the staircase above them and one eye on Conrad, grabbing him by the collar a couple times when he missed the next step altogether.

"It's not under Hanna," the vampire whispered up at him, frustrated.

"Well then, look fer somethin' else, luv."

"You get even creepier when you're stressed, did you know that?"

They made it up to the fifth floor without incident when the younger man gave a little cry, and Worth turned on his heel with his blade out and already lunging. There was nothing.

"It's under rebel leader," Conrad whispered triumphantly, stabbing at a page. "You can tell because the cell next to it is listed as undead. God knows why I didn't just look for whathisname to begin with."

Worth let his knife hand drop. "Glad yer so pleased with yerself," he said, peering over the page. "Yer mum'd be right proud, she would, if she weren't rottin' on another continent."

Conrad glared. "Run that by me again, dickwad?"

Hanna's room was just a floor above where they were now, so it wasn't long at all before they were standing in front of door 312, with Conrad still bitching about how some people wouldn't know what to do with a proper thank you if it was an operable tumor on their bloody cheekbone. Worth remembered the first time they'd broken Hanna out of a jail cell, months ago, how quiet and drawn Conrad had been—constant shifting looks, shaking hands. These days it was nothing but snark.

It was definitely an improvement.

There had been a guard on the level, standing between the rooms, but he hadn't lasted long. Not with four inches of an inorganic compound introduced into his larynx. Conrad relieved him of his gun. Kid had been a poor shot anyways.

The cell door was deadbolted from the outside, with three awkwardly installed deadbolts that sort of tilted downwards. Somebody was short on locksmiths. Worth knocked them all back and pulled the door open.

"…Doc?"

The room was about what you'd expect from a hotel that hadn't seen a cleaning service in god knows how many years, and in the middle of the dimness, Hanna was sitting on the floor with manacled hands pressed against the wall. Drippy scribbles covered the aging plaster.

"Doc! Connie! Wow am I glad to see you guys, I was just about to do something you'd totally hate."

The doctor narrowed his eyes. "What, exactly, would that be?"

"Er. Blow up this wall?"

Conrad cut in before Worth could start into a lecture about energy conservation and general goddamn stupidity and/or wring Hanna's neck. There was no shortage of people lately who needed their necks wrung.

"Why are you still in chains?" the vampire demanded, pointing down at the handcuffs. "They brought you in, what, an hour ago? You've had plenty of time to get those things off."

Hanna grinned but didn't quite meet his eyes. "Well, it's kinda hard to make runes on an inch of steel without a permanent marker. The blood won't really, uh, stick."

Conrad and Worth both turned their gaze to the drippy scribbles on the wall.

"Speaking of which," Hanna said, "anybody got a bandaid?"

Worth grabbed the magician by the chain between his cuffs and dragged him to his feet. It was nearly midnight and they had places to be, and none of them had any bandaids so all that was left was to break out Tall Dark and Nameless and hit the road. Worth was thoroughly sick of kowtowing bureaucrats and white linen.

"So how'd you know I was here?" Hanna was asking, as Worth took a careful look down the hall.

"I was doing a fly over," Conrad answered, toeing the rough-cut flap in the door that was most likely for shoving meals through. "I saw them taking you out of the truck."

"You know that thing is made for horses? You can tell cos it totally still smells like it, on the inside. Hey, Conrad, what's… oh."

Worth turned to see Hanna regarding the door-guard's cooling body with a pained, thin look. The kid looked over at him, knowing well enough that any corpses in the area would be Worth's doing.

"You had to kill him?"

Worth shrugged and turned his attention to the next door, unfastening bolts haphazardly. "Th' guy was shootin' at us. You heard it. We ain't all Mother Teresa come again, kid."

"…Where do you bury the survivors," Hanna murmured, and Worth didn't turn around because he knew exactly what face the younger man would be making and he did not need to see that. It wasn't Worth's job to pass out handkerchiefs in the middle of prison breaks.

And then the door was open and the zombie stepped out, brushing off his worn-out suit, and Hanna was all smiles and questions and "hey, did you see if they caught so-and-so". Then he seemed to remember something important mid-sentence.

"Plato," he said, pushing his other companions out of the way, "did you get it out?"

"No. It's a bit of a tricky spot." The dead man tugged off his jacket, allowing it to flutter to the floor.

Hanna dashed around behind him, splaying his hands across the neon fabric of the zombie's shirt. "They were shooting at us," he explained, pushing his glasses into place. "Today. When they got the tipoff that we were uptown, staying with this family, they came in and they shot the hell out of the whole neighborhood. Some people got hurt. They woulda got me too, but Crosby here is totally secret service and they got him instead. The bullet oughta be… right about… here."

Conrad tapped his bare foot. "Demonstrate your geometry skills later, Hanna. In case you hadn't noticed, we're still in plenty of danger. We got lucky coming up here. It never lasts."

As if to punctuate that remark, there was a thump from the direction of the staircase and then a cry of "Jail break! They're making a break for it!"

"Jeeze, that guy watched a lot of movies."

Simultaneously, the zombie grabbed Hanna by the hand and Worth caught Conrad by the collar and they all went racing toward the stairs, while Conrad managed to get his stolen gun off safety in time to blast a hole through the watchman's leg. The vampire had actually turned out to be a pretty decent shot, wonder of wonders, even firing from the hip. Hanna would appreciate that maim-shot later.

They barreled down the staircase, deafening footsteps rattling off concrete walls, and another soldier came stumbling down after them just in time to find his aim spoiled by angles and white metal banisters. Bullets sparked off of concrete and iron.

Worth was the first one out the door to the lobby, and there was only one man in the room until that man sent up a call too, this one closer along the lines of "Jimmy, get the fuck in here!", and then two more of them were rushing in and there were probably more behind them and eventually the guys on the floor above them were going to come racing down and this! This was the kind of night he lived for when there wasn't a motherfucking redheaded dipshit stumbling around in handcuffs behind him.

They fell back behind a half-closed door.

Conrad was at his side, firing off round after round past the doorjamb and yelling about how completely blockheaded this plan was, and Hanna seemed to be drawing something in yet more blood down the zombie's arm, and Worth just stood there irritated to high heaven because he didn't have a long range weapon and this was such a completely wasted opportunity to wreak havoc.

Son of a bitch.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and then he was being squished up against something greenish and about as tall as he was.

"This ain't no time t' be playin' undead matchmaker!" Worth shouted, peeling himself off of the zombie just far enough to be shoved back in place.

"He's got a shield charm," the redhead insisted, pressing close too. "About two foot radius. This'll be awkward, but we can get out safe if we stay under that umbrella."

"All yer plans 're awkward, y' little dumfuck! Christ knows why I go anywhere with you idiots!"

Hanna grabbed Conrad by the tail of his shirt and yanked him close too. "Cos you love us, Worth! Now, on the count of three, we all run like the freakin' wind, stick close to Gallahad, and get the heck out of here, alright?"

"Why?" Conrad said, nervously, "What's going on? Where are going? What am I missing?"

"Three!"

They ran.

Bullets ricocheted off the air around them, leaving white hot sparks and ear-splitting clangs behind. The panes of glass on the door ahead of them shattered, and then they were out and the darkness folded up around them as the cracks of gunfire faded away. There were soldiers, somewhere behind them, searching the shadows for fugitives, but what did those guys know about tracking? They had at least five minutes before the alarm went up, and they were off to make one last stop.

-A-

Worth stood in the candlelight, tucking a box of matches into his pocket.

"I'm not going with you!" John insisted, gesturing wildly. "I'm not gonna run off with you freaks again, not after the shit you put me through the first time around!"

"Look, I ain't sayin' ya gotta, I just figured y'd like th' option to go home. We're ditchin' this madhouse as soon as we get our shit back, an' ya won't miss us a bit."

"Fuckin' right I won't!"

The doctor rolled his eyes and made for the door. Teenagers. He was halfway into the hall when the kid caught him by the hand. Worth blinked down at it.

"Wot?"

John let go immediately, like he'd been burned. "You… you don't have to go with them, you know. Like I said. You could stay here. You could stay with me. I don't have any family—the CUT preacher in Chattahoochee took me in after the plague, but it wasn't really—I mean, it's like… I know you don't like me, but I could show you how things work and I wasn't lying, you could do really well here. You could be on the council! You've got a chance to be somebody, Worth!"

The Doc looked at him. "Are ya deaf or just stupid? I told you, I ain't stayin'. Y'll do fine here, y'don' need a bloody babysitter. Flash them church blokes yer righteous indignation 'r sommat an' they'll eat it roit up."

"Why won't you stay?" the kid nearly screamed, reaching out and shaking him. "Why won't you stay with us?"

The doctor pried his once-patient's hands off of his shirt. "Cos unlike the rest'a this city, I like those guys down there, an' I mighta liked you too iff'n ya weren't such a pretentious little shit."

And then he slammed the door closed behind him.

-A-

The contraband storage was somewhere on the castleversity campus, and Hanna had a rune for these sorts of occasions which left them pretty well as invisible provided no one started jumping around or arguing the latest crusading scores. By the time he'd gotten the last rune drawn on, between those and the shield charm and popping off the handcuffs, the magician had been looking distinctly worn at the edges.

As they drew closer to the military side of the campus, Hanna insisted on giving them a sort of run-down of what he'd been doing for the last week, as if the rebel leader scribbled in the ledgers wasn't hint enough.

"—and then we tried to get a room with these people but they started waving crosses at us," he whispered, with as much restraint as you could expect from him. "That's what you get when you cross Spock and villagers, I guess. I was seriously having Frankenstein flashbacks—the book I mean, not the movies."

Tall Dark and Resurrected caught the kid by his shoulders just then, when it looked like he was about to go down with his ill-fitting boots catching on some dip in the lawn.

"Er, thanks. Anyways, we ended up staying with these rebel guys a little north of here, 'cause Spock caught them this rabbit, right? And they were telling us about the, uh, the church… the church… the church dudes. And the chancellor, can you believe an American guy with a title like that? We thought it was probably harmless, yanno, probably two parts desperation and another part PTSD, that kinda thing is pretty, I dunno, common. I guess. Lately."

The zombie held up a hand, and Hanna sucked in whatever he'd been about to say next. A tall figure in an old-fashioned cap marched by, eyes sliding over the magic glazing that encircled the four invaders. He disappeared around the corner.

"Hoo. So, yeah, we didn't think it was that bad until they came in witch hunting. That was… that was bad. I got free, but Martha…" Hanna trailed off, looking up at his undead best friend. "…I didn't know they still did bonfires."

"You're kidding," Conrad said, stopping completely. "Please tell me you're kidding."

"Wish I was," Hanna murmured. "Magic is the devil, right? It's not like they're the first people to think so. One day you're boycotting Harry Potter, the next you're burning witches. All it takes is a governmental collapse and some propaganda."

"…Was she a witch?"

"Not unless you count the ability to make stew out of grass as magic."

Conrad and Hanna had both stopped moving, and, since the zombie was at the front and Worth was bringing up the rear, they had no choice but to stop too. Worth kept his eyes fixed on the darkness, waiting for another patrol to come marching by.

"Why?" Conrad demanded, and it occurred to the doctor that he hadn't ever seen the city in the daylight. "Why would they do that?"

Hanna pursed his lips. "The government is… getting nervous. You know what every revolution has in common?"

Conrad squinted. "What?"

"Bread."

"Hanna," the doctor cut in, impatient, "can ya shut yer trap for a minute? I want my gun back, an' yer about to give away our goddamn position."

He cut off the apology too, with a hard shove, and then they were moving again. Watching a world die had brought out Hanna's morbid streak, and Worth was in no mood to indulge it right now. He knew where that was going.

Conrad handed the semi-automatic forward, apparently noticing that he'd ended up in the well protected but poorly situated middle. The darkness stretched out around them. Patrols grew thicker on the ground, lanterns hanging from doorways turned the ground dull orange—eyes held a little longer as they passed over the intruders. The undead man at their head turned back for a moment.

"Hanna, how long does this spell last?"

The redhead waved a hand. "Indefinitely. But it's not an invisibility spell, it's more like… these are not the drones you're looking for. Guys around here are probably more paranoid. If you know what you're looking for, you can see past it. So, uh, no more talking?"

The zombie nodded, and ducked under a walkway.

They tried two buildings before they found the contraband holder. They had to wait until the coast was clear to send someone inside each time, because a door creaking would draw every set of paranoia-wired eyes in the area and then they'd be too dead to know if it was the right building or not. One wrong. Two wrong.

And then jackpot. There were two guards at the door. Hanna grinned, winked, and picked up a stone. A sudden thump in the bushes across the way had them springing to their feet, eyes wide, chasing down imaginary interlopers with all the wild energy of a dog catching a fox's scent.

"Piece of cake."

Hanna rushed up the steps, the others close behind, and threw open the doors. In that second, the split tick of a second, Worth knew things were about to go completely to shit. Nothing good ever came of throwing doors open.

A familiar, half-shadowed figure was waiting on the other side, brushing wrinkles from his traveling soldier's camouflage.

"Hello again, Doctor," General Kurtz said. "You brought friends."

"Well shit," Worth replied, noticing the distinct feeling of steel now pressing against his spine, "what's a party without guest?"

Hanna turned quickly, and the sound of a dozen shotguns cocking filled the air. "Who is this, Worth?"

"This'd be the cocksucker who snapped my arm," the doctor replied, eyeing the troop scattered in front of them. "Fancy that coincidence, eh?"

"No coincidence," the general replied, brows raised. "The Lord provides. I got the invite from a mutual acquaintance, you might say. Your little friend, the pudgy blond one. What'd you say your name was, kid?"

A soldier at the back shifted, and then they were looking at a stiff shouldered fifteen-year old, sitting on a barrel of gunpowder.

"John," he said.

The general smiled. "Yeah. John. Imagine my surprise when John here comes busting into the barracks, yellin' about deserters. Oh, Doctor, you just keep the most interesting company. Spooks and rebels, I'm told, and… now, is that a zombie? Sir, the chancellor is gonna want to see you personal like."

Conrad pushed up to the front of the jumble, suddenly, ignoring the myriad glint of some dozen barrels training on his chest. "John, stand up and face us you stupid son of a bitch! How fucking dare you turn us in! You little dick! We took you in, we saved your fucking life! What kind of crapsack world do you live in where this is okay?"

Hanna looked like he was about to throw his two cent in too, but the zombie caught him by the arm and held him back.

"I wouldn't expect a godless freak like you to understand," John replied, icy cold. "My duties to the church are more important than anything I owe to infidels."

"What the fuck kind of God have you got?" Conrad shrieked, and Worth reached forward quickly to get a grip on his shirt before he did something stupid and got them all killed. "If it wasn't for me, you'd be a corpse on the side of the road just like the rest of your stupid fucking militia! Don't you get it? Worth would have let you die!"

The teen's eyes went wide. "Worth, you wouldn't have."

The doctor looked hard at him, tugging Conrad back away from the door. "Dunno, kid. You an' me are standin' on opposite ends of the same world. You got yerself all wrapped around this one idea, an' ya don't give a shit about nobody. All I'm concerned with is getting the four'a us out alive. The rest of the world kin burn for all I care."

The room was still for a beat, and then the general stepped back into the middle of the floor. "It's not that this isn't interesting," he said, gesturing to a soldier in the back of the room, "believe me, I've missed TV as much as anyone. But I do have other duties tonight, and I think it's time to get moving now."

Worth glanced sideways. Conrad, now breathing deeply and ineffectually, followed his eye. A moment of recognition, and then a tiny, imperceptible shake of the head.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, Gen'ral," the Doc started, "but you can go fuck yerself."

"Yankees," the general observed. "With yankee manners. Look, if you don't get moving in the next ten seconds I'm gonna have you all shot. I'm really only interested in you, Doctor, and I've got nothing to lose."

"I'm glad ya think so. Here's what we'll do, then, Kurtz. Indiana, here," Worth announced, catching the zombie's neon glance, "is gonna take Hanna an' they'll go. Me an' Conrad, we decline yer offer."

"I'll bite. How does that work, doctor?"

Worth grinned. "Ya know sommat about Zombies? Bein' a bit in the way of decomposition, y' don' clean 'em off too often. "

And that was when the dead man scooped up his redheaded charge and burst into flight, a blur of coattails and pale limbs and Hanna shouting put me down and bullets sparking off an invisible shield of crackling energy as the soldiers opened frenzied fire. In the space of a heartbeat, the room had exploded into ear-shattering cacophony, a dozen guns aiming over their heads as Worth and Conrad hit the ground. One soldier, an old soldier with hard eyes, broke off from the frenzy and aimed for the kneeling vampire with cold, calculating economy.

Too quick for thought. Too fast for reasoning.

In that same heartbeat flicker of a second, Worth caught up with himself half crouched over Conrad's shell-shocked form, jerking the younger man's head tight against his own collar, muffling bewildered exclamations as the gunfire thinned out and a half-dozen boots thundered past their heads into the night.

Worth kept his head tucked down over Conrad's.

"Nobody shoots this man!" the doctor shouted. "Ya hear me? First one 'a you puts a scratch on Achenleck, I'll kill 'im myself!"

The room seemed to waver. You could hear the privates turning to look at General Kurtz, fingers twitching over triggers. Finally, he came to some kind of decision.

"Alright," he said, slowly. "Okay. The spook lives. But if you pull anything like that again, he'll be the first one to regret it, got me?"

This thing is my insurance, got me?

The Doc chose not to dignify that with a response. Carefully, he lifted up off of the smaller man, scrutinizing the ring of soldiers for any second thoughts. His knee knocked into the threshold. Underneath him, Conrad stayed flat against the floor and staring at the wall.

Worth's attention lit at last on the boy at the far end of the room, rigid and thunderstruck.

The solders started shifting, filing out the doors, shoving their new captives off the ground, and John sat dumbfounded at the edge of it all, eyes locked on Worth as he turned away.

"A spook," he whispered, as they hauled away the two men who'd dragged him across the south and kept him alive for more than a week now. "But not a spook woman."

Virginia

Two months after the Treaty:

Doc Worth was standing under a door. The door had a balcony, or at least it should have, although the shattered remains of the guardrail left it looking more like the protruding lower jaw of a black-eyed giant. Somebody had shot this house to shit, which probably explained why it was currently abandoned. Although not empty.

"Oi, Juliet," the doctor called up, "yer fergettin' yer lines!"

"Piss off!"

A decorative vase catapulted over the splintered guardrail and smashed into the brickwork a couple feet from Worth.

"Ey, that coulda hit me! My understudy's a dead bloke, y' ain't gonna like a kiss scene wit' him!"

"Jesus Worth, shut up!"

"Y'know none'a thissud be a problem if ya'd just kept yer mouth shut about politics."

Conrad's head peaked out from behind the torn drapery, glasses catching a ray of lamplight. "How was I supposed to know that Republicans would still hate Democrats after Congress died of consumption?"

Worth shrugged. The house sighed in the night, hundred year old architecture protesting the prodding fingers of wind.

"Ya mighta taken a hint from the shotgun on the mantle. It ain't reasonable people livin' in this country lately."

"Hanna shouldn't have made us stay with them! I told him, I fucking told him not to get involved in local problems. If he's going to volunteer us to drive around a bunch of snotty, tunic wearing tree-people like we're the fucking supernatural Greyhound service, the least he can do is keep us out of normal human land wars!"

Worth shrugged again. "Hanna's Hanna. If y' didn't want trouble ya shoulda stayed in the car."

"Oh no!" Conrad shrieked, "Because last time I did that you people got yourselves challenged to a motherfucking duel! To the death!"

"Technically speakin'," the doctor noted, "tha' was only me."

"Yeah, and who saved your idiot ass?"

Worth reached for one of his cigarettes. "Seem to remember it was some faggot with a fire extinguisher."

"It was me, you certificate-forging dickbag!"

Wind whipped through the courtyard. There was silence for a minute or two, while the Doc lit himself a smoke and Conrad seethed behind the curtain of the second story balcony.

"Welp," Worth said, at last, "yer still th' one who's naked."

Death threats rained down like so much confetti.

"Yer gonna hafta get some practice with the fur," he pointed out, when the air cleared up a bit. His voice turned a little more serious. "If y' don' get any better at this bat business, one'a these days it'll land ya on a shishkabob, an' Christ only knows what you'll taste like, bein' dead an' all."

"You're saying I'm easy to kill, is that it?"

"Well it ain't hard to kill somethin' six inches tall an' thumbless, is it now?"

No reply.

"Y'know Hanna'll be fallin' over himself to help ya out. Might keep 'im outta trouble fer a while."

"You can't transform clothes," the vampire muttered, just loud enough to carry. "I'm not walking around naked. I know it's stupid, switching species every time somebody sneaks up on me, but I'm not walking around naked and I'm not practicing."

"Yer walkin' around naked now," Worth pointed out, "an' bein' a total chick about it too."

"I'm not walking around naked!" Conrad shouted, sticking his head back out the door. "Just try and tell me you wouldn't be cracking dick jokes the second I stepped out there. I dare you."

The sound of a gate slamming closed distracted Worth before he could formulate an appropriate response. On the other side of the house, Hanna was yelling something indistinguishable and the dead guy was calling after him, and when Worth looked back up, Conrad had snapped back into his hiding place behind the wall.

"Conrad!" Hanna was yelling, "Conrad! I had this great idea!"

The vampire's muffled voice called back, dubiously, "What?"

The redhead skidded to a stop beside Worth, hands full of jumbled cloth. "So I was looking through some closets in some of these abandoned houses and I found you some pants and stuff like you wanted only this one house was, like, full of pictures of bicycles and the closet had all these bike shorts and I was like, hey, what if you can morph tight clothes?"

Hanna dropped the pile on the bricks and dug out a pair of black and white biking shorts.

"I got the idea 'cause I used to read these alien books like way back in middle school, and I figured yanno, it couldn't hurt to try, right?"

Slowly, the edge of Conrad's face peaked out from over the balcony. "Those are hideous."

"Really?" Hanna asked, looking back at the dichromatic cloth. "You think? I thought they were kind of cool."

Worth let out a hacking laugh and took another drag of his cigarette. "Well, Juliet, 's yer choice. Fashion disaster or an eternity of dick jokes. Take yer pick."

The artist looked down, doubtful.

"Oh," Hanna said, "I get it! Because he's on a balcony!"

Florida

Eleven Months and a bit after the Treaty:

Jail is a bit different when you're sitting inside the cell.

Specifically, jail is a bit different when you're sitting inside the cell, staring at the wall, waiting for a soldier to come by and drop off something vaguely edible so you can try to grill him for information about why exactly you're in jail rather than one half a pair of corpses cooling in a ditch.

Worth turned his attention to the shuffling behind him, the slight sliding sound of hands searching out soft spots in the walls. They'd been in here maybe three hours now, and in that time Conrad had worked his way carefully, stubbornly around the room twice.

Somewhere out there, Hanna was probably already plotting to break them out, pleading with his undead guardian to let him come back while they stowed away, maybe in an abandoned house a little north of town. Maybe he'd already won. Maybe the zombie was holding out. Worth wasn't counting on either option—he'd done what he could to get the kid out, and that would have to buy enough time for something else. You can spring a prison once, but you can't spring it twice.

Personal experience.

So, somewhere hopefully far away, Hanna pleaded with a dead man while here, in this cell, Conrad searched the walls for secret tunnels and Worth sat alone, in the middle of the floor, eyes open.

Wouldn't do anyone any bloody good either way.

Four hours.

Worth was listening to the creaks in the beams of the floor as the building shifted, considering sending Conrad to trace out their trajectory across the floor. But Conrad was sprawled out across their mattress like a corpse on a dissection table as of thirty minutes ago, and Worth couldn't decide whether it was too soon to be looking into digging-up-the-floorboards kinds of plans. The level of desperation necessary to pull one of those off was at least a week away, at a generous estimate. No point in jumping the gun.

He glanced out the chicken-wire window. Wherever the hell John was, Worth hoped he was getting his legs snapped off like bottle caps. Not that he particularly blamed the kid. Doc Worth figured it was his own fault—dumb fucking idea, going back for the kid. He should have known better. He got distracted, he got sentimental. He was getting old. Forgot everything he knew about the world.

Some people change. Some people don't.

He looked back at Conrad again.

"Why'd ya stay?" Worth asked, the first thing he'd said in nearly four hours. "Coulda gone with Hanna. Shield charm had ta been big enough, if it got all four'a us out the first time. Why'd ya stay?"

Conrad didn't move, hardly a muscle more than necessary. That economy of motion was the most unsettling thing about the vampire. He said, "I know better than to let you wander off alone." His voice was vague and thin. "Not after Colorado."

"Jesus H Christ, you people ain't gonna let that one go, are ya? Y' compliment one feudal lord's daughter, an' suddenly ya can't take a piss by yerself without Hanna screamin' the world's blowin' up."

Conrad—who had his own opinions about what constituted a compliment—snorted, and turned his head towards the window, with its glassless, chicken-wire panes. The fact that they had this set up, with no glass for shanks, no empty places to fly away through, made a man wonder what exactly they had prepared it for. There was no moon beyond that, but on a hilltop not so far away there were yellow lights burning between the treetops.

"Do you wish I'd left with them?" the vampire asked, maybe carefully dull, maybe just bone exhausted.

"What," the doctor shot back, "y'mean, do I wish I had this cell to myself? Sure, yeah, wouldn't be no quibbling over the color'a the curtains that way."

"I'm serious," Conrad insisted, sitting up now. "Give me a serious answer."

Worth cocked a brow. He stood, stiff from sitting in the same spot for hours, and made his meandering way over to the mattress where Conrad was sitting. After a moment, he leaned down till he could look the younger man in the eye. Conrad looked back, stoic.

"Y'wanna know if I'm pleased ta have ya here? Four hours you ain't said a thing. Been chewin' on that th' whole time? Pickin' at the wording?"

The doctor pressed a little closer, the air between them still with lack of breath.

"So," he said, "fill me in, director. 'S this the part where I confess my undyin' love, or are we skippin' a scene?"

"ARG!" The undead man screamed, falling backwards and clutching at his head. "What is it with you?"

"Whatzit wit' you?" Worth retorted, examining the cracked ends of his nails. "Ya need a date ter the debutante ball, juss say so. No need ter go sashayin' around the bit like a beaten dog in heat."

"You want me to punch you," Conrad growled, eyes narrowing.

"Aw, now yer just spoilin' the sport, darlin'. Gonna go sulk?"

"On the contrary," Conrad replied, icily. "Happy to oblige."

They went down in a tumble of sharp joints and wheezy curses at four o'clock in the morning. Peeling wallpaper fluttered as they hit the sides of their cell. It Worth's first real fight in a week, and it was a little piece of home to make the place a bit more comfortable, like throwing an old familiar doormat across the entrance. That was Worth's estimate anyways. Maybe Connie was really just that stretched-thin.

They both had the unspoken decency not to break anything tonight, as they had managed to do on a few other notable occasions, because it would make breaking out that much more difficult when it happened. Worth was pleased to note as much, and replied by sinking his uneven teeth into the vampire's shoulder. Conrad was in the middle of retaliating with a solid strangling when the door behind them creaked open.

"Well," a deep, smooth voice noted, "it seems that it really is impossible to keep you two apart."

Worth froze mid-ear-pull. He knew that oily, almost-reptilian voice too well.

"Fell?" he called out, disentangling himself from his companion's chokehold. "Fell, y'rotten bastard, I'd know yer two-timin' sleaze through a foot o' concrete."

Conrad sat up. "Mr. Fell? Here? I don't—"

"Save yer breath, dollface," Worth advised. He looked towards the doorway, where the looming shadow cut a swath in the hallway light. "Looks like he's a double-crossin' slippery bastard after all," Worth observed. "Figured as much when y' ditched us in Georgia."

The pinstriped giant strolled into the room, one elegant snakeskin boot in front of the other. He grinned, and the feeble florescent light turned him into a bizarre collection of shadows.

"Double-crossing is inaccurate, but yes, I am currently taking orders from the Prophet, if that's what you're insinuating." He flicked bits of prison dust off his Armani sleeve.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Conrad groaned, "is there anybody in the south who isn't a traitor?"

Worth spared him a second of interest. "Well, when y' consider why there's a south ter begin with…"

"I'm not a traitor," the looming figure informed them, with the distinct sting of someone who does not appreciate being on the outside of a conversation. "My loyalty goes to the most powerful. I have never betrayed that loyalty."

"Lawyer talk an' loopholes," the doctor grunted. He gave some thought to the idea of simply standing up and punching the dirtbag in his pointy, smirking face, but that wasn't likely to land them anywhere besides the looped end of a rope. Even if the feeling of knuckles cracking across the bastard's jaw would be incredibly satisfying, he probably wasn't tall enough to do it with any grace. But, on the other hand…

The three of them regarded each other. Worth watched Fell, with his black sunglasses and his snakeskin boots and his slight, smirking look of awareness. Fell watched Conrad, pale and covered in new bruises fading into old bruises. Conrad watched Worth, and whatever he saw, Worth didn't even fucking know.

"Awright, Benedict," the doctor started, staggering to his treacherously wobbly feet, "whadaya want with us alluva sudden? Come to give us a convenient villain's monologue? Threats? Torture? Spray us wit' seltzer?"

A foot above Worth's head, Fell rolled his eyes. "An offer, if you'll shut up long enough to hear it."

"Why should we listen to anything you have to say?" Conrad spoke up, with all the narrowness of an oncoming storm over the horizon. Doc Worth knew better than to bother being intimidated by Princess Achendick, but if you didn't know any better, you might almost imagine ice frosting up the chicken-wire in the early-summer room.

Fell tapped one pointed toe. "Because you haven't got a choice?"

"I can put my hands over my ears," Conrad shot back, eyes slitting nearly shut.

"Watch out," the doctor drawled, "he'll do it. 'E's a dangerous one, Conniekins is."

The vampire pointed a finger at the blond man. "Piss off, Worth. I was trying to make a point."

"Well," Worth replied, swinging his attention back towards the entrance, "me fer one, I ain't got anythin' better to do. 'S not like we been writin' the great American novel in here or nothin'. Go on, Fell, proposition us. What'll it be this time? Riches? Women? Power? Th' power'a God?"

"Take your pick," Fell replied with a shrug. "To start, the Church Universal and Triumphant owns every stockpile of gasoline between Pensacola and Valdosta, and every mechanic too. Money, as a figurative indicator of price, is no object. They even have real money, if you're delusionally nostalgic. The chancellor has a fondness for lighting his fires with hundred dollar bills."

"Women?" Worth asked, grinning at their guest. "None fer Connie though, he's on an after-life-long diet."

"One word from the chancellor could make you the most eligible bachelor in the state," the turn-coat answered. "And another word could put you conveniently out of the curfew-enforcer's reach."

"Power," Worth replied, no hesitation.

"A position on the council," Fell told him, "naturally. A post in the church, if you like. Titles, rings, all the trappings that make men so loud and prideful and dull."

"Power'a God."

The giant lifted a brow. "I'm sure there are documents for that sort of thing, although I didn't think your type usually put much stock in theological incentives."

"Well, y'got me there," Doc Worth admitted. He took a couple steps backwards and dropped like a stone onto the bed. "Cause, see, all I want is outta here. I've had just about enough of you bastards offerin' me shit I don't want."

"Ah, but think of what you could get out of it," Fell insisted, striding past them to the chicken-wire window. He clasped his hands behind his back. "So much in return for so little. I, for example, have received near unimaginable wealth and all encompassing pardons for the breadth of my crimes in return for a simple name, and more still for a paltry few weeks of advising a college drop-out in the ways of running a kingdom. This prison was my doing, you know, and the revised rationing system, and the pool of doctors you came in with."

"How could you be doing all that when we picked you up in South Carolina two weeks ago?" Conrad cut in, in that particular sputtering mixture of anger and bewilderment that he had mastered a long time before Worth met him.

"You know," Fell remarked, without turning, "for being a supernatural creature yourself, Mr. Achenleck, you ask some truly stupid questions."

The youngest man's nostrils flared, and Worth decided that he didn't particularly want to see Conrad beaten to a pulp by the man—the humanoid—who had betrayed them for what amounted to a fancy hat, in Worth's opinion.

"So whadaya want me so bad fer, anyways?" he cut in, grabbing Conrad by the near-luminescent arm. "Not that I ain't flattered, but it's usually Hanna people go after, an' I ain't exactly brimmin' with world-conquerin' skills."

Conrad glared down at him.

"Oh, we couldn't do anything with Hanna," Fell replied, making a vague shooing gesture behind his back. "Idealists. Once they're minted you can't make them do a thing. You're a mercenary, Doctor, you're much more useful for a quick fix."

"Which would be?"

"Simple," the turn-coat said. "We need a face. We need a man who can stand up in debate halls and say, 'I knew nightwalkers, and I support any measures necessary to keep them down.' That one's been on the recruiting roster for months now. Your stocky friend from Chattahoochee probably told you as much. It's all politics when you get down to it."

"Right, sure, but we both that ain't a good enough reason ter keep me alive after all the shit I pulled."

The yellow lights on the horizon flickered, and the giant turned his head just enough for the twist of a smile to be visible.

"Think of it as a gift from God, if you want. Regardless of our reasons, our promises stand firm—they always do. Take me for example," Fell went on, grandly, "I've been given everything I asked for, down to the last blasphemous bite." He pointed at the yellow spot on the horizon. "At sunrise, the city will be there, right there, for the sunrise service—thirty thousand people, the entire population, gathered on that hilltop to see me ordained into the heart of the CUT. Oh, they don't know that's what they're gathering for, but it is."

"Why would you ask for that?" Conrad muttered.

"As your indolent friend here might say, for the hell of it," Fell replied with another shrug. "I wondered if they would really do it. Of course, being what I am, they'll probably have me killed when my usefulness wears thin, but I'm not particularly concerned with that."

The doctor's hand was still in a vice-grip around Conrad's wrist, and they both seemed to realize it at the same time. Worth let go. The younger man tucked it against his chest. They both looked up at Fell again, who was watching them over the curve of his shoulder.

"Consider your futures," the looming figure advised them, cool as October wind. "Hanna and his rebel friends won't be breaking you out any time soon. A day is a long time, locked in a room. Or a week. Or months. Watching the wallpaper peel… a guard at the door, just waiting for a reason to dock your meals… sunrise after sunrise… Think of your partner, Doctor. Who's going to feed him? Where will he sleep? How long do you think you can protect him?"

"I should be so flattered," Conrad muttered, tucking in against himself a little tighter.

"Oh, you can kill yourselves," Fell continued, "there's sheets on the bed and they're probably long enough. But I know you, Doctor, and I know you're not the type. You're a patient man, but how patient? Patient enough to wither at the seams while Achenleck siphons you off over the graying stretches of weeks? Patient enough to return to this room, failed escape after failed escape, adding injury after injury to your growing collection?"

"Pretty picture," Worth remarked. "Ever thinka takin' up motivational speakin'?"

"Just consider it," the giant insisted, turning back to them. "I know it must be tempting to have the prison for an excuse, finally, but there's only so many times you can oh-so-platonically sleep on a cellblock mattress before the charm wears off."

"Oh for the love of motherfucking shit!" Conrad screeched, jumping to his feet, "That's it, I've had it with both of you!"

The blur of white hit Fell in the torso, and it must have caught him off guard because he went crashing back into the wire twists of the window, all seven something feet of him, with a rusty rattle of metal and a hard oof of percussive force. The vampire managed to land one square fist in the hollow under Fell's angled cheekbone before Worth had him by the chest and dragged him away to the farthest corner of the room.

"Couldn'ta won that if God 'imself had a bet on yer side," Worth whispered, a little impressed. "Didn't know y'had it in ya."

"Yeah, well," Conrad said, sights still fixed on Fell, "I seem to be having some temper problems the last year or so."

At the other end of the room, the thing that may or may not have been a man uncurled from his place pressed back against the window, and smiled at them.

"I'm patient also," he informed them, striding past the bed and onward to the door. "There's always plan B, as they say. I wonder if the chancellor is familiar with Orwell." He paused for a moment, hand on the knob. "It won't be too long. I'll be back after I have my church documents framed."

And then he was gone.

The ceiling creaked overhead, and Doc Worth nearly fancied he could hear the mind-numbing taptap of Fell's snakeskin boots as he headed out the door and off to his ineffable rewards. The ghost of a noise went on for a long time after any actual sound would have faded into silence.

"Well," the paler man snorted, after the last imagined footstep had rung still. "We're going to have a hell of a time holding him off."

"Dun think so, sugar."

Glaring, the vampire rounded on him. "Don't blow this off, Worth, because we are now officially in serious shit."

The doctor waved him off. "I ain't concerned with Mr. Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. He kin keep his Orwell an' his chess matches ta himself, 'cause I ain't bitin'. Don't you worry yer pretty li'l head over it neither."

Conrad grabbed their unpleasantly discolored pillow and slung it at the nearest wall. "Why? Because he's wearing a suit? 'Cos he talks like he finished school, unlike you? I think it's about time you faced up to the fact that you can't take down an army with a gutter accent and a couple of goddamn bullets!"

Something creaked.

"Nah," Worth replied, pushing away from the mattress and toward the place where Fell had been standing. "I'd say I got it all pinned pretty tight. Cerebral types're all scheme an' no brains."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"And after all that, what makes you think so?"

The doctor crouched down and lifted something up that reflected slightly in the dim light.

"Cause he dropped 'is goddamn key, tha's why."

-A-

When the sun rose, it rose on the glittering curved windows of a prison with one of its many inner doors swinging open and one of its many guards clutching at the purpling skin over his throat. Of course, most of its many guards were away, watching a snake in a thousand dollar suit join a church whose primary purpose seemed to be snake-hunting. And Worth had gambled a lot on that.

The doctor pressed himself into the dents and bumps of the ground underneath a withering, feral decorative shrub. Orange sunlight filled the gaps between the leaves. There was a weight tied tightly around his neck, and the knot was already starting to chafe against the hollow of his throat.

"Fuckin' hate daylight escapes," he murmured to himself, creeping a few inches farther. "Fuckin' hate 'em."

There was a heavily muffled sort of noise behind him, but he ignored it.

Worth had made it as far as the chain of parks before he realized that creeping along would probably only make him more suspicious to anybody who hadn't been present for his arrest and/or escape, at which point he straightened up, made a cursory show of dusting himself off, and with his good arm picked up a shovel that someone had left by the plot of snap peas near the east-running street. Pretty good heft. Might make a decent weapon. There was a heaviness in his steps that was irritatingly familiar—stale adrenaline in his veins, muscles whining in protest, a soreness behind his eyes demanding sleep…

Fell's key was still in his pocket, although why he wasn't sure.

From a medical standpoint, he knew that he pushed himself too hard. He'd only been smoking maybe ten years, five years chain smoking properly, but the effect on his lungs was notable. Five years, again, he'd spent getting little to no exercise outside of fistfights and the occasional mosh. Five years of starving off sleep and food, wearing his fibers thin with chemicals and magic. A bit less than a year of fighting down the plague, running nearly nonstop, and pulling off escape after escape after assault while ticking away a pint of blood every week or so to shore up their stocks for the unfriendly neighborhood failpire. And it was starting to add up.

He could feel it like the straining gears of a car that hasn't been tuned in too long.

The local high school—what used to be the local high school—was up ahead up him, and he stepped across the deserted street on a whim. The Church Universal and Triumphant had taken over the buildings themselves, hanging logos drawn in varying degrees of skill off the black faux-iron gates. The blue detailing of the Noah's ark painting caught his eye, with its little white spots of sheep floating on the waves and its little university propped up above the surface. Someone had scrawled across the width of it in black sharpie.

Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.

The handwriting was about as familiar as a sock to the jaw, and hit him with as much force. Rebel leader, Jesus Christ. Scribbling on posters.

And as he contemplated the loops of writing, with the sun rising steadily to his right, Worth realized that he didn't have even the smallest fucking hint as to where Hanna had been dragged back. A local's house? An abandoned building? He was pretty sure that it wasn't another jail cell, because if the bastards had gotten their hands on him some time during the night then Worth definitely would have heard about it. Fell didn't seem like the sort to miss out on a prime opportunity to rub someone's nose in it.

But then, where was Hanna? He didn't have the time to go poking around in every house in the city, and he definitely didn't have time to get caught in full daylight like this. He could try for the place where Hanna had stayed the last week, although that could be any house in a mile radius of the interstate-highway intersection, and even then he would need directions. He didn't have time.

Down at the bottom of the hill, where the tennis courts fluttered with a brown mass of chickens, there was a thin whinny echoing through the air.

Worth looked at the poster covered in Hanna's handwriting. It looked back.

"Can't ride no fuckin' horse," he told it, irritated.

The poster did not reply.

"Don't even have a saddle," he added.

Once again, the poster neglected to reply.

Worth ran a hand through the blond mess that passed for his hair. "Christ," he muttered, "gonna look like a damn fool."

Ten minutes later, he had convinced his newly stolen horse to hit something a little slower than a run, and more importantly, not buck him off onto the asphalt. The ugly bugger seemed to know that Worth had no idea what he was doing, and was probably just mean spirited enough to also know exactly what his uneven gait was doing to Worth's tailbone. Horses. Bloody hell.

The horse snorted and the snort was like a laugh, and Doc Worth grit his teeth as he tried to keep in mind that he was not the kind of man who could win a fight against a seven foot high, iron-shoed mammal. Not with a broken arm. He was having enough trouble just holding the reins like this.

"We get outa here alive," he grunted, "I'm squeezin' ya fer all the glue yer worth."

Streets passed by, back the way he'd come, back past the rounded monolith prison and onward. A street of red brick buildings told him that he was passing through the campus of what was now effectively a castle. There was a faint sound to his left, like wind passing between mountains. Human voices. Rhythmic. He wondered how lucky he could possibly get today—maybe real fucking lucky, if somebody upstairs hated this town as much as he did.

He kicked the horse's left flank, and they were off.

-A-

The stadium thrummed.

God only knew where they got the juice to run that kind of sound system, but the air rattled with a man's voice, deep and young, spewing from speakers all around the field.

"We are God's chosen people!" he cried.

"And our God is a Jealous God!" the people called back.

Worth strode through the shadows at the back of the stands, head down, glancing once or twice away at clouds as pink as week-old cuts drifting above the rim of the stadium.

"The man on the streets warned us!" the young man's voice announced, like fire racing across a field. "Darkness falls on those who turn away from the Lord! Their shadows grow, and swallow the paths in front of them! Hear the words of the man on the streets, and heed them, and spare yourselves the wrath of a Jealous God!"

Doc Worth looked ahead, at the man walking in front of him. The fraying edges of a yellow cowboy hat returned his glare.

"Why here?" the doctor growled, under the roar of a chanting multitude.

"'Cause I've been working here two days," Jed Bondye replied, softly, "an' it's the only place I've seen where you can keep something safe till dark."

"Mebbe I'm more concerned with gettin' myself t' safety," Worth shot back, wrapping thin fingers around the knot at his throat. "Mebbe I don't give a shit about storin' nothin' till night."

The cowboy tsked in his strange voice that carried perfectly, no matter what other sound beat against it. "That's a scenario ain't worth the time it'd take to consider, Doctor."

"Yeah?" the blond sneered, "an' how would you know?"

Something was digging its way up through his gut, this nagging sense that there was something he didn't know, something that set his teeth a little more on edge with every word out of the man's mouth. Bondye irritated him like something invisible constantly digging into his back. Besides, he'd already had a git of a horse reading his mind and a riddling cowboy now didn't strike him as any better.

"Oh, I know you, Luce Worth," Bondye replied, offhand, tugging open an aluminum door. Stairs peered up at them. "Trust me."

Doc Worth grunted. "So. Was it Montana? I don't remember mosta Montana."

"Concussions can do that to you."

"Fuckin' hated Montana," the doctor seethed, starting down the stairs. This morning was turning out to be an absolute moodkiller. He had no idea where he was going, he was taking shit from a goddamn pony, and the bundle tied around his neck was irritating to the point where he was reconsidering ripping it off and throwing it at a wall every couple seconds.

Behind them, the crowd chanted "The Messiah Returns!"

"Don' see what the hell they need a messiah fer," Worth grumbled, perfectly willing to share his irritation with any and all subjects. "Got 'emselves an imaginary prophet, fuck d'they need an imaginary messiah fer too?"

"The sick are healed," the young man with the microphone said, "the illnesses of the earth melt away from his sight! The lord is your physician!"

"They're still a Christian sect," Bondye replied. "The Man on the Streets… the homeless man who started everything? He promised them a prophet, and that's great, but everyone knows Jesus has to come back sometime. Seems to some folks that he's a bit late for his headliner at the apocalypse."

The crowd cried, "He heals the sick! He makes the blind to see!"

"Shoulda just called the prophet Jesus an' left it at that," Worth remarked, tugging at the knot over his collar bone again. "Two birds an' all that clever shite."

"The tamed Devil walks at his side!"

The last step dropped them off at another door, this one painted what might have been beige, although it was hard to tell with the only light source being quite a ways above their heads. The cowboy pulled out a key.

"Do you really think the people would settle for a faceless Messiah? A prophet they can handle, but a messiah... Well, the whole point of a messiah is that he has a face."

The door creaked open, and Bondye lit a match—in the dim flicker, Worth gauged the room to be a storage closet. The light wavered, and then flared to life. Behind him, Bondye closed the sooty door of a lantern with brown, singed fingers.

"Now, you take him out and leave him here," the darker man instructed, "and I'll come back for him tonight. In the meantime, I'll take you to Hanna, who'll be mighty glad to see you, might I add."

"Dunno whatcher talkin' about."

"Mr. Achenleck," Bondye replied, infinitely patient. "In that sack around your neck?"

"Who says I got Connie in here?"

Bondye crossed his arms. "When I found you outside the stadium, messin' with that employee's entrance?"

"Yeah?"

"Your back squeaked."

The doctor eyed him, still wary. The crowd above them rumbled on, but the words were lost in layers of concrete just like the growing daylight.

"How come you gotta let him out?" Worth asked, hand tapping at the empty holster still hanging from his side.

"'Cause I work here, as of yesterday," Bondye replied, "and 'cause you cain't risk coming back into town. I mean you really cain't risk it."

Well, back to that reliable old staple. "An' why should I trust you, Cowboy?"

Bondye gave him a look of such infinite compassion and pity that it could basically be translated as "I am very impressed you remember how to feed yourself in the morning." It gave Worth an unnerving sense of vertigo. Jed raised one hand, palm out, and wiggled the fingers.

"In case you ain't noticed, I'm not exactly what you call white, doctor. These folk aren't winning themselves any points from me, nor are they particularly concerned with it."

The doctor considered that for a moment, and grudgingly undid the knot over his collarbone. That was a fairly good argument, and if things went wrong he could always knock the man out and use him as a hostage—disfavored minority or not, turncoats were usually worth something. Not to mention it's hard to rat a bloke out when your mouth's stuffed with handkerchief.

"Why'd ya let 'em take ya here?" Worth asked, some of the bite seeping out of his voice. He'd been awake for a long time. "Yer a local, you know all'a this CUT shit better'n I do. Coulda run while we were comin' here."

"This's where things were happening," Jed answered with a shrug. "What's the point of havin' feet if ya cain't go where the action is? Put him down on this bench here."

The doctor's scarred hands went to work unrolling the prison bed sheet, tugging free the shirt and the pants that Conrad had snatched hours before. The lump of red fur in the middle of it all looked up, gave him a blood-freezing glare, and promptly became a biped.

"We are never doing that again," he announced, teeth gritted. "I am never getting that close to the sun again, are we clear on that? I've got a headache like an army was using my head for target practice. Another half hour and I'd be fried. Deep fried bat, you hear me? And who's this guy?"

The cowboy wasted no time pushing forward, extending a rough, brown hand. "Jed Bondye, pleased to make your acquaintance properly."

"Uh." Hesitantly, Conrad returned the gesture. "Are you… one of Hanna's, um, rebels?"

"Looks like it, don't it? Anyhow, we don't have a whole lotta time to get on the road, so I propose ya'll—"

Worth stepped back while Bondye went about hanging details on the outline of a plan, mostly concerning where Conrad should hide and who would be likely to find him and under what circumstances he should make a break for it, little details like stars hanging sometimes too thickly from a mobile. Mostly, Worth watched Conrad. There was a red tint across his back like a sunburn, stretching from shoulder to uncovered shoulder, slightly raised, textured minutely in a way that would probably resemble weaving on closer examination. There was a purple bruise above the left pectoral, Worth-inflicted, and a myriad of more faded contusions, which wouldn't fully heal until—

"Doctor," Jed repeated.

The doctor looked up. "Yeah?"

"Come on," the cowboy said, and started for the door. "Time to get this show on the road. I hope you don't mind ridin' backseat, 'cause that horse of yours'll go a whole lot faster with me holdin' the reins. Not quite sure how ya managed that, by the way."

Jed held out his battered yellow hat, and after a second's hesitation Worth took it. Better to look like a hick than a wanted man.

Worth glanced back at Conrad, who was stuffing his stolen shirt into one of the cluttered shelves at the edge of the room. Maybe feeling his stare, the younger man pretended that he hadn't shot a sideways look back at the doctor and went on shifting dusty screwdrivers. Red stretched from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.

There was a still moment, and the roar of the crowd above their heads rumbled through the wall. Deep in his bones, Worth wished that Bondye would just get the hell out of here for a minute.

"Don' talk ter strangers, princess," the Doc said at last, pushing his borrowed hat down over his eyes.

Conrad snorted. "Try not to get anybody killed, asshole."

Worth shrugged. "Can't make no promises."

And then Worth turned, and followed a near stranger out of the basement where his partner would spend the next twelve hours hiding in the dust and darkness. He did not look back.

Above him, the crowd shouted, "He makes the blind to see!"

And Worth muttered back, "Halle-fuckin'-lujah."

-A-

The reunion passed him by in a blur. He remembers Hanna throwing himself off the railing of an old plantation house, a blur of red hair and bandages. He remembers cool green hands gently extending his broken arm as he explained what kind of break it was. He remembers too many faces to count, passing in and out of his periphery, watching him with huge eyes as he recounted the last week to Hanna. He remembers the scent of meat and a wild hunger that slammed into him like a fist in the gut.

He remembers that the windows had gauzy curtains, and he remembers wondering how they expected him to sleep with the goddamn sun in his goddamn eyes like that.

And he remembers waking up.

-A-

He woke to the sounds of porcelain sliding across polished wood—a soft sound with a rough edge. He opened one eye, and the greenish blur of the bedroom sharpened into focus. There was a deep orange glow around the rim of the ceiling, a white porcelain pitcher on the dresser, and a nervous-eyed woman with her fist frozen around the handle of it. Worth blinked at her.

"Din' realize I was that tired," he mumbled, mouth gummy with sleep. Fuck, he needed water. "Fuck, I need water."

The nervous-eyed woman stared at him for a few seconds longer, and then nearly tripped over herself trying to get the pitcher over to him. He wriggled up into a vaguely sitting position in an entirely undignified manner and took the pitcher, sparing a suspicious look at the woman.

"Innint poison, is it?" he asked, with the distinctly unpleasant sensation that he was speaking around slime.

"Oh," she said, "no sir—doctor, I mean. Doctor. It, it sure isn't poisoned."

"Sleepin' pills?" he guessed again, sniffing the water. "Crushed up an' mixed in? I don' trust that stutter'a yers."

"No," she replied, "no, no, it's just water."

Worth shrugged and downed half the pitcher in one go. At this point, he didn't even care.

The woman stood there, staring at him, watching as water spilled down his face and his wrinkled wife-beater and onto the sheets. Like a really fucking intense statue or something. When he set the thing down, he turned back to her and cocked a silent brow.

Now, would Hanna let a crazy woman bring him water?

Judging by the evidence, most likely yeah.

"Did you really kill a skinwalker with your bare hands?" she demanded, spilling out words like a glass knocked off a table.

Now both eyebrows went up.

"Uh," Worth replied, accurately. "Whatsit t'you?"

The woman twisted her hands together in somewhat-painful looking shapes. "Mr. Cross told us about you," she said. "He told us about how you saved that girl in Oregon, and about when you killed that mob boss, and about how you broke him out of prison—"

"Four times," Doc Worth muttered, belatedly wiping his mouth.

"—And, I just—is it true?"

The doctor looked at her. The skirt she was wearing looked like it might have been her grandmother's back in the day, and her hair looked like it had been hacked off with a machete.

"You one'a the CUT douche-fags?"

She looked affronted. "I—I never sold my soul to anybody," she answered, the wording a little odd.

"Souls, yeah," Worth said, waving her off. "But ya took their food an' ya chanted with 'em an' licked their boots when th' opportunity presented isself. Din'ya?"

The woman frowned. "What does that have to do with my question?"

"Nothin'," the doc replied, "'cept me wonderin' why ya asked it. See, if yer askin' because y'think I kin save this bloody town from the forces'a Christ knows what—if yer askin' because ya think it'll give ya some kinda readin' on yer chances fer a revolution or sommat, then I ain't answerin' on the grounds that you may'er may not go skippin' back to the CUT an' tell 'em everythin' you know at the first sign'a tides turning."

"I wouldn't!" she shouted.

"Uhuh," Worth grunted. "Lady, I don't trust nobody. Getcher head around it an' ya might just fergive the rudeness someday. Some people do. Maybe." He stopped. "Or mebbe they don't. I dunno, never thought ter ask."

"You have a sad life," the woman told him, and it sounded like an insult.

He shrugged. "Don't get laid much anymore, so I guess I can't argue with that."

Not that he'd gotten laid much before America collapsed in an implosion of pestilence and shotgun fire, in all fairness. Too busy stitching up Hanna. Too broke for hookers.

The woman snatched the pitcher from his hands and slammed it down on the dresser hard enough to chip the bottom.

"Hanna said, Hanna said you were gonna help us," she informed him, lips thin, "but you don't look like any kind of hero to me. Let me tell you something, Doc: if my life is really in the hands of a… of a flea-bitten bastard like you, I might as well… shoot myself in the head!"

Worth considered that for a moment.

"Ya got a cigarette?" he asked.

Wordless, the woman tugged a pack from between her breasts and tossed it at him. It was almost empty.

The doctor shook out one for himself and tossed it back, rummaging with one hand through the bedside dresser for a lighter. A click, and grey healing was seeping through his lungs again. Shit, he'd missed this. One a day was killing him. He took a couple deep drags and then looked up at the woman with the hard, angry eyes.

"Look," he started, "I ain't yer savior come ridin' in on a goddamn white horse. It's brown, look out the window. Hanna's got this bad habit'a tellin' flatterin' stories when he's worried about somebody, so don't believe a word of it. I ain'tcher hero, lady. Hanna now, Hanna's regular hero breedin' stock. An' Hanna's gonna do somethin' stupid real soon, iff'n I know Hanna an' believe me I do, an' if he does…"

Worth took another drag.

"…well, I ain't likely ter let him go at it without proper medical backup. So you give me that pitcher back, lady, an' you bring me up some breakfast if y'got the food ter spare, an' then you go see if Hanna needs anythin' because whatever it is y'really want, he's the man to get it fer ya."

After a stony moment, the woman handed him back the pitcher and looked away.

"We just get so wrapped up in waiting," she murmured. "It rubs off on us. The CUT is waiting for the Messiah, all the time, waiting and waiting and getting antsier by the day, and we're left here waiting for somebody to come… help us. Somehow."

"They ain't exactly mellow blokes, I'll give ya that."

The woman shoved her packet of smokes back into the line of her cleavage. Excellent choice.

"I'm sorry," she said, apparently deciding that eye-contact was overrated. "I'll leave you alone. I just wanted to… I just hoped…"

Worth blew a cloud of smoke and didn't bother to reply.

"Your nightwalker… your vampire friend will be here in about an hour," she added, backing away. "Bondye is getting him now."

The doctor watched her shuffle closer to the door, and just before she reached the threshold, he asked her, "Whatcha got against th' church anyhow?"

"Me?" she said, looking up again for a split second. "Nothing, personally. I just… don't want us to forget the way it used to be." There was a flash of something in her eyes that Worth recognized, because he saw it everywhere if he looked long enough. Electric blue. Dark red.

"I don't think America's as dead as people say."

Worth nodded, slightly. "Well, I got it on good account that dead itself ain't as dead as people're prone ter say."

-A-

Worth was waiting at the highway gate when Conrad came stumbling onto the plantation, despite what everyone else in the big house had insisted he should be doing instead. Bugger on sleeping. He could sleep when he was dead, which wouldn't be too many years away if probability had its pushy way.

The lantern sitting on the gatepost beside Worth flashed green in Conrad's pupils.

"Still dead, princess?"

The younger man made a face. "No more than I was this morning."

Bondye was walking in Conrad's shadow, hat pushed low on his forehead, and Worth spared him a look.

"Anybody follow ya?"

The cowboy smiled at him. "Not that I know of, no. But considering that our rebel base is a plantation house full of a couple dozen runaways, I think that followin' us would be the least of their interests."

"Wow," Conrad muttered, "that makes me feel really confident about whatever Hanna's planning."

Like it was natural, Bondye fell into step a few feet ahead of them, talking over his shoulder, the sharp tips of his boots kicking up clouds of white dust on the dirt path. The moon flickered between branches overhead.

"The real rebellion, if y'can call it that," he informed them, "is spread out over the city, watchin' the chancellor up in his castle eatin' three square meals a day and makin' up rules like it's going out of style. That's who Hanna's been stirring up, not a bunch of sign-wavin', brick-throwin' zealots. Not yet, anyways."

Worth watched the figure in front of him waver in and out of focus as he stepped through patches of moonlight. There were a lot of things about the world that had come clearer in the last year, and although it was never smart to underestimate what a human being would do in a moment of crisis, Worth was generally unconvinced that Bondye was giving him anything in the way of good news.

"Awright," the doctor said, fingers twitching towards his pocket for the ghost of a pack of cigarettes, "so tell me what good an army'a housewives cowerin' on their kitchen floors is gonna do ya? An' I say you 'cause I'd like to delude m'self a little bit longer if it's alright wit' you."

Jed made a weird little gesture with one hand. "You ever got between a woman an' her kid with a shotgun before?"

"It was a rifle," Conrad replied for him, darkly.

"Then you know what kinda strength the Lord gave that woman cowerin' on her kitchen floor."

"You know what kinda strength th' lord gave that woman," Worth mimicked, scowling. "You sure you ain't one o' those CUT bastards?"

"Fairly certain," the cowboy answered. "And ya'll might try to remember who's just saved both your asses today."

"Don't look at me," Conrad muttered, "he's the dickwad, not me."

But Worth was thinking. Bondye was a citizen now, probably, if his claim of having a job at the stadium was to be believed, which meant that he was operating within the guidelines of CUT territory, which meant that in order to get Conrad out of his janitorial closet under the stands at this time of day—

"How come yer leadin' Connie outta the city, anyhow? What happened to the curfew?"

The vampire beside him blinked. "There's a curfew? What is this, an Orwell nov… oh, bloody hell."

"Connie," the doctor responded, wrapping a sociable arm around his companion's shoulder, "y'really need ter stop sleepin' through all the important shit."

"Oh, fuck. You."

"Love you too, sweetcheeks."

Bondye made a noise. They both looked up.

"Oh," he said, without turning, "don't mind me. Carry on. Had a bit of platonic stuck in my throat."

Conrad got all narrow and prickly. "Are you implying something—"

"Anyhow," the cowboy went on, "in answer to your question, curfew's only enforced on white citizens. I'm free to come an' go, as long as I'm wearin' black and I don't start chattin' up those in stations above my own. Above my own, sure. It's separation, not slavery."

The doctor and the vampire looked at each other.

"That dun make sense," Worth muttered. His eyes flicked upwards through the canopy over them. "Why ground yer favorite kid?"

"Maybe they do work at night?" Conrad suggested, brows furrowed. His glasses were dusty, and it occurred to Worth that he probably couldn't see for shit like that.

He plucked them off the vampire's nose.

"Hey, give those back!"

The doctor turned his attention back to their guide. "How come they got it set up like that?" he asked, twirling Conrad's glasses by one plastic leg.

"The curfew's for the citizen's safety," Jed told him, "We kin assume they aren't particularly concerned with the blacks an' the odd Asian."

Conrad snatched his glasses back and shot Worth a withering look. "Is it really that bad?" he asked, apparently directing the question towards Bondye and not towards Worth, who was snatching at the reclaimed spectacles. "I mean, Worth had a point, I've been sleeping through pretty much everything except the rescue missions. Is it really that bad?"

The cowboy took a look over his shoulder, and odd, pensive expression across his face. "Bad? Depends on your definition. Compared to Nazi Germany, Rwanda? We're livin' the dream. Haiti? Not so bad. Fifty, sixty years ago in this country? Not much difference. A year ago, in this city? Yes sir, it is bad."

"Then, how…"

"How'd it happen? Had the misfortune of startin' a religion in a little town called Perry," Bondye answered, catching on immediately. "Add a little local tension to the KKK trickledown from Kentucky, not to mention the election… well, you know. There's always been one or two screamin' about racewars from their front porches all across the country. It's an interestin' coincidence that most of them're smokers."

"If I was one'a you," Worth informed him, "wouldn'ta let some bible-wavin' nutcase kick me back to the goddamn colored fountain."

"First couple cities felt the same, I reckon," Bondye admitted. "Either of ya'll seen people around the city, walkin' around with neck burns? Big ugly cuts? Hollow-lookin' eyes?"

"No."

"Yeah."

"That's what happened to the first couple cities," he told them. "Ya'll didn't think they came in here peaceful-like, did you?"

Conrad stumbled on a rock, but Worth kept his sights set on the man in front of them, whom Hanna apparently trusted, and who set the Doctor's skin to itching in a way not entirely unlike Mr. Fell once had. There was just something that made his instincts hiss, something that made him wary. It wasn't a malevolent feeling, like a man with a chainsaw standing in your doorway—it was more like the night in Arizona when he'd found himself face to face with a half-sleeping cougar, holding his breath and waiting to see what kind of move it would make.

"How come y'know so much about this?" he questioned, fingertips tapping the empty hollow of his holster. "Y'were in Montana last Fall, you said. So how d'you know?"

"Well," the darker man replied, "I make it my business to know, don't I now?"

-A-

Hanna had them all sitting down around the dining room table in matter of minutes, after a few seconds of awkward-enthusiastic hugs. The zombie had pulled Worth aside for a moment during the reunion, but said nothing. He was waiting for something, for Worth to say something, but hell if Worth knew what. After a minute, the dead man backed away and let him go.

As of now, they had maps strewn across the table and shot glasses of whisky holding down the edges, at Doc Worth's insistence, and Hanna was explaining to them where the humanoid variants of the local Moonlight Races were hiding out, where they'd been driven or trapped after reappearing on the scene last summer. There were sparkly smiley-face stickers over haven spots, human and inhuman alike, and a silver star over their current location, labeled in hasty pen "Horseshoe Plantation". When they first came into the room, Hanna had hastily tucked a stack of what looked like post-it notes into the antique-looking drawer under the window.

Every couple minutes a new pair of shoes would come shuffling in and Hanna would grill them for some piece of information he'd apparently missed, jumping from question to question like an excitable lemur leaping between branches, and it was all the rest of the room could do to try and follow the line of inquiry.

It was the dead of night when the zombie settled a hand over Hanna's shoulder and glanced meaningfully at the clock, and suddenly the contents of the room found themselves milling around the hallway.

"I don't get that kid," one of the locals said, with a touch of exhaustion. "I really don't."

Although there was a faint dullness of lingering fatigue down the length of Doc Worth's body, he headed outside into the darkness instead of upstairs to his irritatingly green room which he was going to have to share with someone tonight. He passed a stocky weed as he headed down the stairs, waist high, and snatched it up by the roots with a spare tug. There was a hammock at the edge of the yard, and that was where he headed, watching his shadow rush off ahead of him.

The plant was easy to peel apart, strip by strip, and soon enough there was nothing to do with his hands. He would have killed for a second cigarette. Literally. He had somebody in mind, too, with a pack to spare and a face that was just begging for a bullet in it.

The stars were out, like paintbrush splatter across the dome of the sky, and the night smelled like cooling heat and smoke, and he remembered a night a little more than a year ago, when the real change had only just begun. His broken arm rested over his stomach, and he wondered how many more times they could do this before the world caught up with them.

"Nice out," a voice said.

He looked up, and found Conrad standing over him with hands pushed limply into pockets.

"Huh," the Doc grunted. "How come yer th'only one who comes after me when I wanna be alone?"

Conrad pursed his lips. "You're practically Hanna's dad," he said, apparently not beating around the bush tonight. "He won't follow you if you wander off by yourself."

"Yeah?" Worth shot back, maybe a little quicker than he intended. "Well what's yer excuse?"

The hammock creaked, and there was no answer. A strand of wind twisted through the clearing, over Worth's body and around the pillar of cool tiredness that was Conrad. Weeks like this wrung you dry, like a dishtowel in a five-year-old's hands, and they were both achingly aware of it right now.

"Do you miss it?" Conrad asked him, after a while. His chin was pointed upwards, and he was looking at the stars. "Not the little things like lights and consistent plumbing and supermarket food. Do you miss… it, the whole… world. Being a part of it."

"Oh Christ, yer tryin' to have a touchy-feely bondin' moment with me." The doctor scowled. "Did Hanna put ya up to it, or are y'really that sad?"

The vampire shot him an irritated glare. "Let me try this again. I, Conrad, would like to know if you, a dick, would like to tell me anything, in accordance with our admittedly unwise agreement which you confirmed a year and a week ago tonight."

"Thinkin'a that too, were ya?" the doctor murmured. "Anniversaries'll do that t'ya, or so I hear. Aw, wait. This ain't yer way'a tellin' me you want flowers is it? 'Cause I ain't bought flowers fer a girl since prom in ninety-one."

"You're such a dick," the younger man said, and if Worth didn't know better he would have thought it sounded almost a little fond. "You know Hanna's going to have us doing something insane in a matter of days, right?"

"Yeah," Worth replied, "unless we tie 'im up an' lock him in the attic."

"I don't think we could stand the whining."

"Gag?"

"He'd never talk to us again."

"And a roit shame, that would be."

Conrad looked back at him, with his faded bruises and his dusty glasses, and there was a buzz in the air like words waiting to be said. Worth looked back. The whisper of a melody floated through the clearing, someone in the kitchens singing something soft and high, and it brushed over the tips of the grass grown wild on its way to them.

And the moon set somewhere behind them.

TBC

California

Eight months after the Treaty:

(Disputed territory)

Hanna was the first one across the room, of course. He took off like a spring-loaded spear in a goddamn Indiana Jones movie, the black-and-dirt checkers on his shoes an instant blur. The green guy followed after, half a second later, with that effortless stride that made a man suspect he'd never learned the proper definition of 'dead'. Conrad's mouth just hung open.

Worth shrugged and got to inspecting the entrances, since everyone else had apparently forgotten they were in the middle of a raid.

Hanna started rambling immediately, lifting his victim's arms, circling, generally invading personal space.

"This is so cool, oh jeeze, I don't even know how you managed this, I mean, wow good for you, but it doesn't matter right now because you're alive, see Conrad I told you, I so told you, there was no way—"

Worth kicked open the rear door, rifle buried in his shoulder. Nothing. He considered leaving it open, but the people most likely to find them weren't experienced enough to know that an open door meant either a room full of dead people or a trap, so the bluff would be disappointingly wasted on them. Instead, he yanked it closed and started pushing a file cabinet over the threshold. Weighed a fuckin' ton.

"I don't believe this," Conrad muttered, on the other side of the room. "When we heard about the leader, I mean, when the pack told us there was a prisoner, we assumed—"

Worth turned his head to call out, "Y' assumed Toni was a boy's name, that's what y'ssumed, dickhead. There's a word fer people like you, don't learn nothin', an' I think it's moron."

On the other side of the room, smiling beatifically with a face full of dried blood, Toni Ipress winked. Behind her, Hanna's Undead Bodyguard caught Conrad by the arm before he could go off on his partner.

"Sooo, you guys are doing well for yourselves, these days," Toni offered. "You're definitely covered as far as guns go."

"How did they manage to capture you?" the resident zombie inquired, taking the opportunity to reload his empty pistol. To the point, that bloke. "We assumed that the unnamed male pack leader must not have had a Moon-Cheater, but you certainly did last time we saw you. Have you lost it?"

The werewolf absently touched the place at the hollow of her throat where the charm should have hung. "I loaned it to Bethany, a couple hours before they got me. She needed it for raiding the silver-holding compound last night. We needed all our shifters, and she broke her charm during the territory dispute two weeks ago, and since I couldn't go... Hey. Did you guys see her? Is she okay? Um, she's got a bite-mark scar, on her left cheek?"

The undead man blinked, still as unnerving as ever, and tapped his side with one gloved finger. "I'm sorry, Miss Ipress, but I believe it was Bethany who put a bullet through my ribcage a few minutes ago."

Toni pursed her lips. "Oh."

Meanwhile, Hanna was inspecting his long-lost friend's wild, knotted hair. "Wow," he said, "they sure haven't been treating you nice."

"I've hardly been here for a day," she replied, nonplussed. "Hanna, are you looking at my hair?"

The magician drew back and looked sheepish. "Nooo, it's just, yanno, there's dried blood all over your face and stuff? They didn't, like… torture you or anything, did they?" His voice went dark at the edges.

"Aw, Christ Hanna," Worth grumbled, giving the cabinet one last push. "Y'don' torture hostages. Don't ya know nothin 'bout politics?"

"Actually," Conrad spoke up, still hanging back, "there was that time, in Illinois?"

The doctor waved him off. "Those bastards wanted info, not negotiations. Don't count."

In the dim light of Hanna's lantern, Toni let out a little huh and crossed her tattered arms. "Guys, if I could interject? I got this about ten minutes ago, breaking out of my cell when all my guards started flipping their shit and grabbing at their walkietalkies. ...Annnd I'm guessing you guys showed up here about ten minutes ago."

"It was more like fifteen," the zombie answered for them, being the best time-keeper their group had on hand. "But we did shoot the sheriff about ten minutes ago."

A noise uncannily like a door banging open on the other side of a wall startled them all. Conrad and Worth snatched at their guns, and the zombie reached for his holster, and Hanna grabbed Toni's wrist with both hands.

"Come one," he hissed, practically vibrating. "We gotta get you out of here. We can come back for their deputies some other time—I don't even really know what's going on right now, there wasn't much time for anyone to explain."

Conrad was at the other door, faster than he should have been—he sped up like his whole body had shifted gears, sometimes, when whatever passed for adrenaline in his technically dead body got pumping—and he had it pulled wide open as Doc Worth shoved out past him, searching for something to aim at. The room on the other side appeared empty. So far.

Behind them, Toni was saying, "Wait, then how did you know which side was the good guys?"

And Hanna was replying, "I didn't, I just sort of went with my gut!"

"Look, guys," Conrad shouted, "can we talk about this later? You know, if we're all still mostly alive?"

"Nice to see you too, Conrad!" Toni retorted. "It's been great catching up!"

"Oh, look, I'm sorry, okay! I wasn't sure if you'd forgiven me for saying your boyfriend was a scum-sucking punk yet!"

"Boyfriend's dead," Toni called back. "Bygones!"

The sound of a dozen people banging on a filing cabinet filled the air behind them, and Worth peered out into the alley way on the other side of the outer exit, searching for something in the darkness that would make a decision for him.

"Okay, there's more'n one way in ter that room," he announced, sparing Conrad a glance. Conrad nodded. "So we gotta get out. Dunno who's on the outside, but I damn well know who's behind us right now, an' I don't much feel like seein' 'em again. So, ladies an' gentlemen an' Connie, strap yerselves in."

He grinned, fingers tightening under his trigger.

"If we're lucky, 's gonna be a helluva ride."

Florida

Eleven Months and a bit after the Treaty:

Rule number one of living anywhere, anytime, no exceptions: no matter how hot-shot or bloody or paranoid your life is, mundane business always manages to grab you by the ankles and drags itself along, eventually. Laundry, paperwork, whatever. Even a sheik's got to eat.

Hanna went hunting. The local guys in the house were all gee thanks Mr. Cross, shaking his hand and running around looking for shotgun shells while he stood there looking at his feet, although with the way they eyed the now-useless refrigerator you'd have to have been blind not to have seen it coming.

Doc Worth shouldered his rifle, complements of some guy with a hooknose, and elbowed Hanna in the ribs.

"Want me ter tell 'em how ya cried like a baby first time we went huntin'?"

Hanna made a face. "Nobody needs to hear that."

"An' ya named the goddamn rabbit waffles an' ya wouldn't let us eat it?"

"It's a good name for a rabbit," Hanna muttered.

Last May, the supermarkets were completely cleaned out. Even those disgusting canned sausages with the pretentious name were gone. There was no food. Across the country, people were realizing what it meant when the farmers who grew your food were dead and the truck drivers that brought it to you were dead, and the man who ran the grocery store too. That had been their first experience with hunting.

They got better.

Hanna curled a length of rope around his forearm, adjusted his backpack, and then they were off. A plantation was built for hunting on, someone had informed him—a modern plantation at least. Ten minutes into the woods they stopped to kill (guess who did that) and then work loose the fresh corpse from one of Hanna's snares, this one apparently put out as something Hanna had done during the bout of hair-tearing frustration at being physically barred from running back into town to die with glory in a splatter of Heroic Sacrifice all across the prison walls.

He would have found a way, too, if they'd been gone much longer.

Hanna bent and tugged at the knot secured to the tree. "Seems kinda… unfair, doesn't it?"

"Hanna…" Worth warned, crossing his arms.

"What?" the kid whined, holding up his furry reward. "It does. I put spells on this thing that would completely overload anything with a frontal cortex smaller than a human's. Look at this rune, here. I feel like I'm cheating or something and it's not a nice feeling at all. It's itchy."

Worth rolled his eyes. "Y'can't eat fair fer dinner, Hanna. Man's gotta eat." He looked down at the fuzzy thing in the younger man's hands. "Even if raccoon does taste like ass."

Hanna hmmphed. They walked on. The forest echoed with that particular brand of not-silence that Worth had once associated with taxis speeding by in the night, and the doctor was content to enjoy it for as long as it would last. It was only a matter of time until his companion started—

"I hate hunting," Hanna announced, like a dam exploding into the woods.

Worth grunted. So much for that.

"It's all a bunch of sitting still and when you're not sitting still you're killing things, and then you have to pick them up and shove them in your backpack so you can eat them later and they look like gored stuffed animals and it's terrible."

"Mother'a God, Hanna, we go through this every time I take ya huntin'."

Their destination was up ahead, a tree-stand mounted two stories up a towering oak tree. It looked out over a field grown wild with high grass and that useless pink stuff the locals called rabbit tobacco—no relation to the real stuff, much to Worth's annoyance—and with scraggily corn left over from baiting deer back in days when people had easily afforded that sort of thing.

"You should stop taking me with you, then," Hanna said, about as transparent as Worth's moth-eaten socks. "Y'know, since I just complain all the time."

Worth kicked him in the ankle, prompting an injured yowl.

"An' who's gonna work the magic if I leave ya back at camp to frolick with the rainbows an' the goddamn sparrows?"

"Oh, come on," Hanna protested, hopping on one foot to rub at his ankle. "I send runes with you all the time. You don't need me here. You go hunting with Henrico plenty, and you come back with lots of food."

Worth snorted and slung his borrowed rifle over his shoulder. Wasn't as comfortable as his, but a gun was a gun when you got down to it and this one did have a strap for just these sorts of occasions, which was bloody useful for Doc Worth the temporarily one-handed wonder.

"Think of it like therapy or summat. Y'gotta get used to death, Hanna, cause we don't live in Bambi-land. You gotta deal instead'a runnin' the other way every time somethin' kicks the bucket. Raccoons die. Deers die. People die. Get used ter it, 'cause that's what's keepin' ya alive five nights outta seven."

"Sadist," Hanna muttered, starting up the tree. The fingers that grabbed hold of plywood rungs were scraped pink and red with tiny scabs.

"Oi," Doc Worth called up after him, "whadaya been doin' to yer hands, kid?"

"Er. Uh. Sharpening swords!" he called back down. "Well, okay, not swords exactly, but we found a whetting stone and it works like awesome and then there were a couple swords although one of them was up on a plaque and we had to get it off before we could do anything and—"

"Jesus I wish ya came with a pause button," Worth grumbled, "er subtitles er summat." And maybe the titles would tell him the goddamn truth for once, because he didn't buy hardly half of that.

He climbed up after, cinching long, battered fingers around the same handholds. This was decidedly more difficult minus the use of one arm, but fuck if he was going to let a little thing like that maroon him at the house. He sort of cheated with his elbow anyways, which was painful but nowhere close to something he couldn't handle. The sun was low and white behind the treetops, and as Worth climbed the sun climbed with him.

"Swords," Hanna summarized, above him. "One day we're gonna run out of bullets, yanno? I mean, we can't start hording them now 'cos we need them but pretty soon we're gonna run low. I'm gonna see how Connie is with a bow 'n arrow, sometime. You too, actually, but Connie's a better shot so I'll try him first."

Worth glared at him as he crawled up through the trapdoor on the stand. "Is not," he insisted doggedly, not for the first time. "I'm fuckin' insulted, ya dim little twit. Faggot's half-blind an' his goddamn nose blocks out half the target."

Hanna muffled a laugh, ducking behind scraped, pinkish hands. "You're still pissed because that girl in Virginia liked him better, aren't you? Admit it. She was all, oooh Conrad, you're such an amazing sniper, oooh."

Worth kicked him again, scowling. "I ain't. Fuck d' I want with some bitch who thinks the motherfuckin' sun rose 'n set over Conrad's huge fuckin' nose? God awful taste. Woman who wants ter bang Captain Do-the-Curtains-Match-the-Countertops ain't worth my time."

"Fine, jeeze," Hanna muttered, now clutching at his other ankle. With one hand on the railing of the stand, he glanced down at the field and the white sun blazing at the edge of the world. He sighed. "Now comes the boring part."

-A-

The third day at the big house was dull as hell. There was nobody to shoot, nothing to plan, and since Worth woke up distinctly before sunset, aching bones be damned, nobody to bother. None of the locals would talk to him—maybe Molly Moodswing warned them all off. He caught a glimpse of her here and there, but she was avoiding him like the south pole of a magnet and he couldn't get a clear shot at her.

After an hour of being effectively cock-blocked off any decent amusement, he retired to the front porch in a foul mood. Whatever Hanna was planning, he wasn't letting anybody in on it yet—except Deadman McNameless, maybe, but trying to wring an answer out of him was as helpful as interrogating a shotgun—and so Worth was in the dark and just generally irritated, a state of affairs not helped by the man who was already sitting out on the porch when he got there.

"Bet you know exactly what that fuckhead is plannin'," Worth muttered, shooting a nasty look towards Bondye, who was sprawled down the steps with his hat shoved down over his eyes.

"Don't quite follow," the cowboy replied. There was a deck of card in his hands, visible now, and he was shuffling them lazily. People at this house treated those cards like they were the finger bones of St. Peter or something. Wasn't much else to do but play cards, he guessed, but it was still ridiculous.

"Hanna," Worth spat, like it was a crawling thing that had scuttled into his mouth. "He's got himself a truck full'a cartridges an' guns and fuck knows what else, an' he won't tell me a goddamn thing, like I ain't sewn up every motherfuckin' stitch on his motherfuckin' body fer seven years now. Little twit thinks he kin keep secrets from me alluva sudden. Me."

"He is twenty-six," a new voice pointed out.

Worth looked around to find the dead man standing at the far end of the porch, gloved hand on the peeling white railing.

"Aw Christ," the Doc groaned, "now I gotta deal with you playin' goddamn Watson fer the rest'a the afternoon."

"And by that you mean what?"

It was hard to tell if the zombie was irritated or not. Worth still hadn't really learned to read his face, even after all these months, at least not the way Hanna did. There wasn't much face to read, in all seriousness. Smile here, narrow eyes there, but by and large Worth had no idea how Hanna told the difference between a joke and a threat when it came out of the dead man's green-blue mouth.

"You," Worth groused, further irritated by the doubt. "Standin' there pretendin' like the kid ain't gettin' crazier by the month. Tellin' me it ain't logical ter this'r that. Yer his babysitter, not his goddamn lawyer."

"I'm his friend," the zombie corrected, almost gently. "But I don't know what makes you think he has a plan."

Once again, Worth reached for a cigarette that wasn't there. God, fucking domestic settings. Always sent him searching for a smoke.

"He's buildin' a bloody army. Maps, pushpins? Vehicle requisition? Dumb li'l bugger's thowin' up an army. Th' hell does he need with an army? Y'know Hanna as well me—he don't kill people, an' he definitely don't go ter war."

Bondye looked up at both of them from his spot at the bottom step. "Well there's war, now," he mused, "an' then there's war."

-A-

Hanna had the map out again. It was the map of the northern Florida area, and he was pinning silver thumbtacks down over intersections of blue and red lines, muttering to himself and anyone with a fast enough ear to follow along. Worth had snatched up a stack of papers on the sly (blank) and had spent the last ten minutes of incomprehensible yakking trying to figure out what it was that Hanna was trying to keep him out of—he didn't trust zombie-man's reassurances for as far as he could throw his unblinking, fedora-wearing corpse.

Worth glanced aside at one of the locals, who happened to be seated right next to the dead bloke and was looking none-too-pleased about it. The freckled wreck had nearly chewed a hole in his rather valuable pencil, and he seemed to be discretely checking his pulse every few minutes. All in all, taking it better than the last guy to sit next to Alehandromedresquez during the last big council Hanna held. Worth reckoned there were still people in Northern California talking about that one.

Funny thing, in all his medical practising years Worth had never actually seen someone foam at the mouth until that guy got carted out of the room. That's what you get for staring at zombies instead of paying attention to what you're drinking.

He was losing count of the number of times he'd sat at a table like this, looking down the length at Hanna stringing incomprehensible sentences together from a handful of nouns and interjections, surrounded by natives nervously tapping their fingers on the tabletop and wondering if this was all a horrible idea and the ginger maniac a few seats down was going to get every one of them promptly killed. Eyes flickered. Tension crackled.

Worth turned to his neighbor, a snub-nosed woman with a farmer's tan and said, "so, if they getcha inter one of them torture cells, which one ya want 'em to take first—fingernails or eyeballs?"

The woman went so pale the skin cells in her face started to asphyxiate.

"Doctor," the zombie called over, "terrifying the people who are going to be watching your back is highly counterproductive. If you're not careful, you might just find yourself with a conspicuous hole at your back at an inopportune moment, and who knows where that would leave you?"

Worth lifted a brow. "Oi, you threatenin' me, dead man?"

"Who, I?"

Hanna looked up from the intersection of Gaines Street and Railroad Square. "Huwha? Vasquez, did you say something?"

"I was just reminding Worth about the dangers of going into combat without backup, Hanna."

"Oh." Hanna blinked. Then he grinned absently. "Right, you remember that one time I went into that Shadow People camp back before the treaty without you and I totally got my ass handed to me like a kindergartener in a boxing match?"

"All too well."

There was a rustling around the table from a dozen people shifting uncomfortably. Hanna didn't seem to notice, because he just stabbed the last thumbtack into the unfolded map and sat back triumphantly like he'd won a particularly challenging round of checkers.

"So," he started, tapping the last thumbtack with one pink finger, "I've got a plan, and we're going to try and pull it off in five days, four if possible. If this goes off the way I want it too, the real problem's going to be the cleanup. Comparatively, I mean. Obviously shooting at people is never, like, easy."

The table shifted again, this time more conspicuously.

"So we're mountin' some kinda offensive?" Worth demanded, sitting forward. "Big showdown type stuff? Blowin' blokes' brains out?"

Hanna made a face. "Don't sound so excited, jeeze."

"What kind of scale are we talking?" Conrad cut in, arms crossed in his mismatching red leather chair at the corner of the room. "Army sized? Skirmish? Be practical Hanna, they've got a castle."

"Yeah yeah," Worth muttered, "practical says the dick with three hundred dollar loafers."

"They were on sale!"

At the other end of the table, the freckled man from before raised a shaky hand, like a kid in the tyrant math teacher's dungeon of sadism. Four war veterans turned and stared at him.

"Uh," he said, "would it be… you know, okay if we sort of got to the plan? I mean, I know ya'll don't exactly… sleep… or whatever, but some of us need to go back to town tomorrow."

The rest of the table looked slightly dazed, but that was pretty standard for anyone spectating their brand of verbal tennis. You spend a year in the same exact company, buckling and welding under the same pressure and sleeping in the same rooms and eating the same food and escaping the same jails, eventually you start to sound like you're speaking a complete different goddamn language than the rest of the world.

There was a general sheepish shrug, and then Worth snorted.

"Yeah, tell us the plan, Hanna. Can't keep the kiddies up past bedtime."

"Doctor," the zombie warned.

Hanna clapped his hands awkwardly. "Well! Okay. Then. How about parts? Vasquez, hand me the notebook please? Thanks. So we've got a lot of assembling to do in the next couple days if we want this to go off right and not, yanno, get killed or anything. Minimum damage. If we're gonna fix things, we have to really fix them. I mean. Really. None of that half-ass stuff. I'm going to write down instructions for everyone, and we're gonna break down into teams to get everything covered, and I don't want anybody to worry about anything but their part, okay?"

Absolutely everyone else in the room replied with an unimpressed stare.

"Great!" the redhead shouted, oblivious. He started to scribbling, bent over the table with his knees planted in the battered rolling chair. Every couple seconds he glanced at the maps. "Anyways," he went on, multitasking casual as you please, "everyone who's going back to town tomorrow should try to work out an excuse for missing roll call or—Venus, you're a clerk right?—the next couple days, if they can. If not, don't sweat it, just stay in touch. Maria and Darwin? You're on my team. Johnny, Carol, Liz? You're with Worth and Conrad. Dave, Dave, and Ariana? You guys are with Bondye. The others—"

Doc Worth smacked the table. "Hey, hold yer horses, kid. Yer not just gonna let the cowboy waltz in here an' lead up a mission. Ya known him, what, a couple days? Somebody whack ya over the head when I wasn't lookin'?"

"Don't be such a Debbie Downer, Worth," the magician retorted, ripping off half a sheet of paper. "You're just jealous 'cos he's got an awesome hat."

"I am th' fuck not," Doc Worth shot back. "Yer doin' that thing again, Hanna. That thing where ya go an' trust somebody sketchy lookin' an' they turn out ter be just as fuckin' sketchy as they looked. I've already put up wit' one bloody Mr. Fell this month, I ain't puttin' up with two."

"Bondye's a bro," Hanna assured him, still not looking up. "You're being pissy again, and no, sorry Doc, it won't get you out of going tomorrow. I know what I'm doing, okay? Trust me. I've got this plan one hundred percent figured. Okay. Well. Ninety nine percent."

"What's the one percent?" Conrad asked, lips a thin white line.

"The ending," Hanna replied, offhand.

A clock ticked. Hanna kept writing. A dozen sets of eyes went wide and dry and Worth grit his teeth.

"Ya don't think that's kinda important?"

For half a second, the redhead did glance up, and there was a tightness in the half-visible lines around his eyes and a hardness in the widened pupils.

"Relax," he answered, looking down again. "We improv all the time. We're like improv kings. With crowns and scepters and stuff. This'll get us in and then we work some freelance freedom fighter magic, and all's well that ends well."

"What exactly is this last part that you're unsure of?" the zombie man inquired, a sort of soft sternness in his voice. "Let us help. We could at least have a backup plan, don't you think?"

Hanna hummed doubtfully, and Worth knew he wasn't the only one who wanted to throttle the kid. Hanna's stinginess with plans had nearly gotten them killed at least once, and they all remembered the last time too clearly.

Apparently Hanna remembered too, because after a couple tense seconds he relented.

"Okay, then here's the big question," he started. "There's a religious dictator out there squeezing the life out of everybody in a sixty mile radius. There's a metaphorical army of people who wanna see him lynched, and there's also a literal army of people who think he's John the Baptist come again or whatever the heck they think. Anybody else remember what happened last time somebody cut off John the Baptist's head?"

Nobody said anything, possibly because nobody actually did remember what happened. Worth certainly didn't. Hadn't been to church since he was old enough to masturbate, and before that he'd mostly slept through it.

"We've got to get him out of power," Hanna went on, pencil pausing. "But there's a state full of people who converted willingly just north of here, and if we kill this guy, we make him a martyr. Or we start a civil war. Or we do both. Oh, and on a personal level, I also just don't like killing people. So. Suggestions, anybody?"

The riddle posed thusly, a couple people propped their head up on their fists and stared at the wall, and the rest of them busied themselves bending paperclips into vaguely canine shapes and avoiding eye contact.

Snub-nose spoke up. "We could cut out the power base out, somehow. Destroy the church. Discredit the leader, discredit the religion. We could… start rumors? I'm partial to pedophilia. Everyone hates a pedophile."

"No guarantee they'd take," someone else responded. "They might just make the church crazier."

"Sow dissent in the ranks?"

"No guarantee of that either. You need a guy on the inside."

"Besides, it could take years to pay off!"

The room burst into chatter, people pounding on the table and waving their arms and breaking into shouting matches about the merits of removing the figurehead versus removing the powerbase and whether it was better to move in secret or by daylight. The woman next to Worth was building a case for blatant assassination that made up for whatever it lacked in logic with sheer decibels.

A screeching noise like nails on chalkboard imploded the steadily mounting chaos, leaving sudden, wincing silence. To the man, they all ducked and covered their ears.

Worth lifted his key from the glass tabletop, the old silver key he'd been keeping in his pocket since his unusually lucky escape, and grinned.

"Yer all overlookin' the obvious," he announced, tapping the silver instrument of torture once. "We take it all down in one blow like it's a fat dick in a cheap brothel. CUT's Christian, ain't it? C'mon, now. What's that one unforgivable sin, th' last philosophical fuck you in the book, eh?"

Hanna was the first to figure it out. "Oh, no no no."

"Suicide," Worth told them, ignoring the horrified redhead.

"No, Worth, okay, we're not doing this—"

"We mount some kinda attack, like Hanna wants," Worth went on, "we get ourselves in, we plant some evidence, we string 'im up like a good old fashioned puppet show an' watch him dance. We get—"

"Worth, this is not happening, look we all know how you are but this is pushing it too far and—"

"—Two birds fer the price'a one, an' the Chancellor comes off lookin' like a coward an' a hypocrite ter boot. Church crumbles, preachers cry, countryside goes free, an' everybody has a bloody tequila on me. Easy fuckin' peasy."

"—we're not killing him!"

The room crackled. The two men glared at each other, and the space between them went cold like ice and lightening. Lines in the dirt stretched across the table.

Eventually, somebody cleared their throat. "Uh," she said. A couple other people repeated the sentiment.

"We could kidnap him," the snub-nosed woman tried again, hesitant, after a moment. "Take him hostage?"

"I'm not certain that would solve the problem," Greenman McNameless pointed out, in a tone that was possibly apologetic. "There's more than one kind of Martyr, ma'am. Think of a king in exile, any one you like. It always ends the same."

"No hostage then," someone else offered. "Just kidnap. We can make him disappear, hide him anywhere from Miami to New York… er, well, any place still inhabited."

"New York is still inhabited," Conrad noted, dully. "But it's not a great place to hide anyone important, these days. Not with the neo-medievalism they've got going. The real problem isn't finding a place to hide the chancellor, even if you did somehow get him out of the city without getting us all killed. The real problem is getting him to stay there. We'll never manage it."

"Why not?"

Conrad pursed his lips and looked at Worth, who tossed the old silver key onto the table. "Fell," the doctor said. "Fuck knows what kinda deals the cocksuckin' snake worked up. There's a helluva lot he ain't told us, but I got it on good authority he's made a couple shady trades already. We don' got the first fuckin' clue what he can 'r can't do, but poppin' in and outta places don't seem ter trouble him much."

The room shifted anxiously, and Worth grinned again.

"One word. Suicide."

Hanna glared at the doctor. The promise of violence draped itself across the space between them like a shroud.

"Mr. Cross," the freckled man started, steeling himself a little. Worth watched him out the corner of his eye but held his focus on Hanna. "Mr. Cross, please, consider. Things are very bad here. We need a course of action. This would make things much simpler—much more permanent. We need this done fast, before things get worse. Before anyone else dies."

"It's not going to come to that," Hanna replied, stare unbroken. "Besides, we can't just waltz in there and execute the guy. It's not right. It's not fair."

"How is it not fair?" Freckles demanded, going stiff. "He's a monster, a tyrant and a murderer. This would be for the good of ten thousand people! Starving people and missing parents! Think of Martha. Think about what he's responsible for!"

Hanna turned to him, forgetting all about Worth for a second, horrified. "You think I haven't? But the chancellor is just one man! There's a whole council running this city, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the Preston's responsible for all of this on his own! You can't just kill a guy and then throw your hands up like 'oh, he had it coming' because it's convenient!"

"Why not?"

A table full of eyes turned to Conrad's corner. The vampire had his glasses in hand, polishing the battered glass on the corner of his shirt.

"Why not?" he repeated, with a stiffness in his shoulders and jaw like he'd steeled himself to eat something with wings and feelers. "Look, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right? If killing one man is what it takes to save thousands of people, then isn't killing him the only moral option?"

"I can't believe you're siding with him!" Hanna shouted, stabbing a finger towards Worth with more violence than any weapon he'd ever held. "You of all people, Conrad!"

"I'm not siding with him," the undead man retorted, looking inordinately offended. "I'm just saying. We've… we've, yanno, we've killed people before. We can do it, if that's what it takes."

Hanna sat back down, collapsing like he'd been hamstrung. "Not when we didn't have to," the younger man replied, a bit softer.

Had a point. They'd never properly assassinated anybody, at least, and Hanna had killed exactly three humans in the long year since they'd started off on their bloody minded quest to re-stitch the unraveling edges of the world. Worth hadn't bothered to count non-humans, though he'd bet his rifle Hanna had.

"If it'd make y'feel better," Worth said, "I could do it for ya. Keep yer clammy li'l hands clean an' all that. Could be fun. Ain't ever hung a bloke before."

"Ugh," the magician groaned. "Guys, we're better than this. There's got to be a better way—and no, Dave, just because Worth thinks it's smart it's not necessarily actually smart. If we do this, we're no better than the Chancellor!"

"I dunno 'bout you," Worth muttered, chin in palm, "but I'm pretty sure I ain't never slaughtered a city 'r ordered a bunch'a soccer moms inter slavery."

"Hanna," Conrad cut in, frowning, "as much as it pains me to agree with Worth—and you know, it really does—this is our best option. I don't like it any more than you do, but let's be real. It's not like we've got a chance in Hell for getting Preston out in one piece. What else is fast enough and permanent enough?"

The redhead sunk his hands into his hair and looked down, and his sigh bounced down the glass tabletop. "There's got to be something else. We're just not seeing it."

A green hand settled over Hanna's slumped shoulder.

"Maybe a compromise," the zombie suggested, giving the rest of room a stern look, particularly Worth. "Hanna had a point at the beginning, most of our plans do fall apart at the half-way mark. Could we perhaps arrange to proceed as if we were following Doctor Worth's plan while searching for alternatives?"

And that was that. Hanna sulked and Conrad looked disgusted with himself and the locals looked relieved, and Worth sat there chewing on the unlit stub of a cigarette while the hour ticked away in near silence.

Assassination.

Another one to check off the bucket list, eh?

-A-

It was that deep moment at the very end of night when morning is waiting in the wings, and Worth was squinting at a browning page of notebook paper with his instructions scribbled on it. There was a light on in the window of the living room, and that was good enough that he could make out most of the words. If he was smart he'd go back inside and spare his eyes the strain, but there were more bodies squeezed into that room than roaches in his old office and he was considerably less enthusiastic about the former than the latter.

Monticello is thirty miles away, take the interstate going east.

He hated diplomatic missions, hated them with every ounce of hemoglobin sludge at the bottom of his shriveled heart. Hours of driving in a car full of sweating, bullet-point repeating bundles of anxiety followed by hours of talking like chessmasters playing games across glass tables, and he was expected to stand there and look intimidating the whole time. Put him in a foul mood.

There should be somebody from the CUT in the courthouse at the center of the city, so take the side streets…

The door to the porch squealed open, and Worth looked up.

"Princess," he said, shoving the sheet of notebook paper into a pocket, "must be midnight, yer dress seems ta turned back into rags."

Conrad huffed and closed the door behind him. "If I'd known you were out here, I would have stayed inside."

"Ooh, I'm roit hurt I am."

Conrad kicked him on his way to the rocking chair at the end of the porch. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Conrad sighed irritably.

"I don't understand what all the celebration is for," he muttered, tapping the arm of his chair with typist's fingers, fingers that somehow managed to stay clean no matter how many wells he dug or trees he planted or wounds he held closed, hungry and horrified. "There's no reason to break out the beer like that. We could easily lose everything doing this, we should be sleeping while we still can."

Worth grinned at him. "Topplin' civilizations and freein' countrysides, all in a day's work fer Conniekins the destroyer. Clock it in nine ter five."

"It's not like that," Conrad retorted, giving the ground an angry kick that sent him reeling backwards in his rocker. "I just don't see how deciding to kill somebody necessitates drinking and Rolling Stones records."

"Takes us one step closer, Achenleck," Doc Worth replied, fishing in his crumpled pocket for that unlit stub of cigarette. Lately he'd found it made waiting easier, when he couldn't find a gun to clean. "Marchin' one step closer ta the shot."

Conrad shot him a look that was all familiarity and narrow-eyed trepidation. "What are you so happy about?"

Shrugging, Worth wedged the stub between his teeth. "I spent a week on the run and a night in jail, and now three goddamn days in the goddamn Rainbow Rebels Summer Camp. I wanna move. I wanna shoot shit."

And he did. The fallout after the plague had given him a taste for adrenaline—for wild rushing charges and insane odds and shaking, snap decisions on the spin of a bullet—and it wasn't in his nature to run from a fight any more than it was to deny himself an addiction. He'd be better off dead than twiddling his thumbs.

"You're crazy." Conrad sighed. "And I'm crazy too, following you twits around. They really think we're insane, you know. Stark raving. Have you seen how they look at us? It's like they think we're this unstable chemical bomb liable to explode any second. When it was just Hanna and whatshisname, I guess he probably came off as eccentric or something, but now we're here and we sounds like… we sound like we've lived our entire lives here! In, in… this!"

His hand gestured wildly at the rest of reality, and Worth thought it was probably the single gayest motion of anger he'd ever witnessed.

"Y' sure got yer panties in a twist," Worth remarked. "Can't be good fer yer circulation, leavin' 'em like that fer hours. Maybe I oughta take a lookit that. Me bein' a doctor n' all. Promise I seen it all before in bigger sizes."

Conrad growled, although it came off as decidedly more kittenish than lionish, weighed down as it was with fresh pessimism. "If anyone knows how to strangle the snot out of a metaphor, it's you."

"Good practice," Worth asserted, very seriously. "We got ourselves a diplomatic mission comin' on. If anybody needs a good stranglin', it's a diplomat."

-A-

Conrad was in the passenger's seat.

This was not something Conrad had agreed to easily. Or, more accurately, if Worth hadn't been half-deafened by twelve months of gunshots lovingly gifted to his unprotected eardrums, his head would probably still be ringing with the vampire's enraged shouting. His ribs were still feeling the punch, anyways.

Even more accurately, in all likelihood there would have been no trouble at all if Worth just had kept that one comment before they loaded up about girls being shitty drivers to himself, because the whole thing devolved into a name-calling, mother-insulting, remember-that-one-time-you-drove-into-a-barn screaming match of herculean proportions. The locals now sitting on the left side of the car hadn't met his eye since Conrad had stormed off, despite his best attempts at dragging them into the truncated argument, and he was reminded of the chemical bomb comparison from the night before.

Their driver was fiddling with the radio now. It was pointless and it made them swerve slightly, but Conrad was still sulking in the front seat and the woman next to Worth was fidgeting and trying to avoid touching him, for some reason, so no one seemed to be particularly interested in calling the guy out on it. Worth considered saying something himself, if only to be sure they made it to Hanna's glorious revolution in one piece.

He glanced at the back of Conrad's head again. Eh. If the driving queen wasn't going to say anything, who was he to get involved? They'd live. Simple car crash couldn't kill them, after all the dog-fuckingly crazy shit they'd survived.

"So," he started, slinging an arm over the woman next to him, "y'know what this trip needs?"

She tucked her chin back into her neck and looked at him nervously. "Er. No, Doctor. What does it need?"

"Blow jobs. I volunteer Connie first, seein' as he's got all the experience."

Aside from the renewed screaming, the car carried on as before, and so did Worth.

When they reached the edge of Monticello, the driver cut their headlights and they coasted along the canopied road into the town in darkness, as silent as they had been for the last ten minutes after the woman next to him had broken down crying and Worth had sort of blinked and muttered pussy and stared out the window uncomfortably for the rest of the drive.

He had this eerie feeling he was steadily and cheerily climbing onto the first spot in the latest list of expendable people.

Now, cruising down the skinny old street that was the southbound entrance to the town, Conrad had the side of his face pressed against the window. "Nice neighborhood," he muttered. "Surprised it's still standing. Looks old."

Worth snorted. "Couldn't get a bucket'a tar ter burn around here. Houses got nothin' to worry abou'."

"It's actually much more humid than usual this spring," the driver informed him, idly. "It's been raining more often too. Very unusual. It's more like late summer weather, actually, although it's been a godsend with the planting."

Worth glared at the back of his head. "Ya fuckin' Floridians. Always somethin' about the motherfuckin' weather with you people."

They took side streets to avoid the courthouse, which was maybe a block away when they emerged from under the canopied section of road. Closer than they'd expected. Worth caught sight of movement in the road circling the anti-bellum building, and tapped his fingers on the window as they waited, frozen, for an alarm to sound. Something to tell them they'd been spotted by the tiny figures circling the domed and collumned building at the cross-section of the city.

Silence.

Warily, they started off again.

Twists and turns of intersecting roads brought them down into a poorer part of town. A massive branch blocked their first attempt to reach it, downed last summer by the look of it, but their driver had a pretty passable sense of space and they were quickly driving down Martin Luther King Street, watching empty-eyed houses pass by.

"Four twenty-two…" the driver muttered, "four twenty-four…"

They pulled into the empty space beside a little brick house whose screen porch appeared to be held together with duct tape and prayers. Worth allowed himself to perk up by maybe a vertebra. Maybe these weren't going to be the usual diplomat stock. Duct tape usually meant efficiency.

"You'd think they'd have guards," Conrad murmured, the last of them to push his door open. "You know, to keep an eye on them. It seems like it would go hand in hand with the curfew."

The darkness at the corner of the house shifted, and a figure in clothes as dark as her skin shuffled out of the shadow. "This Rooster Town, boy. Ain't no guards here."

Worth noticed in a back-of-the-head way that his hand was hovering over his empty holster. The woman in front of them, close enough now that you could see the loose way her skin hung, noticed too.

"Lord almighty, they send us a buncha dumbasses. Whachu wanna shoot at me for, boy?"

Worth blinked at her. "Lady, I'm thirty six years old an' I've killed sixty people in the last twelve months, some of 'em snippy broads like yerself, too. Who're ya callin' boy?"

The woman crossed her arms. "You. I'm sixty-seven years old an' I spent the last year buryin' my grandbabies, an' I'll call anyone boy I damn well please."

Conrad jabbed an elbow into the pit of Worth's stomach, and that was the end of that.

"Look, uh, ma'am," Conrad started off, glancing around to make sure he'd picked the right form of address, "why are there no guards?"

"This is the black side of town," the woman replied, enunciating as if Conrad were an idiot. Worth couldn't blame her for that, at least. "Don't nobody leave guards in this neighborhood."

"They put you in a ghetto?" the girl who had been sitting next to Worth asked, sounding appalled. "They didn't have a ghetto in Tallahassee!"

The old woman snorted. "I can see this meetin's gonna be about as much fun as slammin' my head in the door. Girl, what you named?"

"…Liz," the girl replied. "Liz Goldstein."

"Well, Miss Liz, Rooster Town always been black. Long as there been black folks, anyway. And the Chancellor, devil take him, don't wanna waste no men on Rooster Town. As long as we stay here, we do what we like. Come on, we goin' inside."

The crew from Hanna's rebel base shared a look of apprehension. Hesitating, they made their way towards the screen door. Conrad caught Worth's arm, and the older man looked down in surprise.

"Scared, Peaches? Neighborhood gotcha worried about yer lady-like virtue?"

"No, you irritating son of a bitch. Look, this is a warning for you—this is not the time for your crap, alright? We've got plans to make and I'm not going to have you pissing off anyone else tonight. Not me, not that girl, and not Mabel. Now go inside and be pleasant and keep your mouth shut, and for the love of god don't embarrass me!"

The vampire yanked the sheet of notebook paper with their directions out of Worth's pocket. Worth looked down at the empty pocket for a second, and then looked up again.

"Maybe I don't feel like it, eh?"

Conrad scowled, tapping his foot faintly in the sand. "Go inside. Now."

Worth squinted and leaned in closer. "Who died n' made you Queen, eh?"

"I'm in charge of this outfit," Conrad snarled, "and I'm telling you to go the fuck inside and play nice with the local resistance, have you got that?"

"Yeah? And how ya gonna make me?"

"Go. Inside. You can't just stay on the goddamn porch after we drove all the way the fuck out here."

"Oh yeah? Watch me."

Then Worth kicked him in the shin and made his way over to the half-rotted rocking chair beside the door, where he sat down and fished out his stub of cigarette. Fucking hated diplomacy anyways.

"Well. See you in an hour, then," Conrad announced, briskly, all traces of snarl evaporated into the moonlight.

And before Worth could blink, he had disappeared into the house and left Worth alone on the porch. Or nearly alone. There was another shadow underneath the oak tree at the roadside, and now that some light was escaping through the window at his shoulder, Worth was fairly certain it was a person. Kept an eye on that.

See you in an hour? The fuck?

Crickets buzzed and the wind picked up, pushing at the screen and slipping through the tears. The two inches of concrete between Worth's shoes and the netted screen whistled with it. There were no other lights down either side of the street, and Worth wondered if it was because the houses were all dead or if it was just too late for day-laborers to be awake. Most places he'd been, black survival rate was less than white, and well below Indian, but it was a bit of a stretch for him to imagine the entire street relocated to the cemetery. Maybe it was all crammed in the building at his back. Wasn't like he'd be going inside to find out.

"Hey," the shadow called out, after a while. "You one of the Tallahassee people?"

"Depends on who's askin'."

The figure broke away from the black cover of the tree and made his way up to the house, shuffling between the two unruly hedges with chunky glinting tennis shoes. He pulled open the battered door and stepped over Worth to reach the other rocking chair, which was sort of impressive seeing as there were only those two inches of empty space to move through.

"Nice accent," the kid said, kicking off with one worn heel. "You one'a Hanna's boys?"

"You one'a the chancellor's boys?" Worth shot back, eyes narrowing. Didn't seem like the best way to start an ambush, but he'd seen weirder.

"Fuck no," the kid said. "My family was about to move outta Rooster Town when the sickness got us. Then the Chancellor come in while we sleepin' and all of a sudden I can't stay to the house my momma bought with her own goddamn tip jar. Chancellor can suck a spiked dildo for all I care."

"Thought this wasn't a forced ghetto?" Doc Worth retorted. Pretty nice imagery though.

The faint sound of something shattering found its way out of the house, and Worth hoped that it was something valuable. That would show the Queen of Fucking Britain who's useless to who.

"It ain't and it is," the kid replied, unfazed by the shattered whatever-it-was. "Enforced, I mean. Cain't nobody afford to move out. Couldn't. Half the houses west of here's empty these days, but you got to choose between your grandma's house or some stranger's house full of corpses and shit, and far as I know I'm the only one round here still wanted to move out. Most places in the neighborhood belonged to a family for… fuck knows how long. Keep gettin' passed down."

"Too chicken ter move out, eh? Fine bunch'a rebels you lot're gonna make."

The kid's eyebrows went up. "You lookin' for a fight?"

"Depends. Which answer's gonna get me one?"

For a couple of seconds, the stranger just stared at him. Eventually, he let out an exhausted laugh and settled back into the creaking chair, with a noise that was half sigh and half grunt. "I ain't here to fight you. Just wanna see ya for myself."

"…Why the fuck would ya wanna do that?"

The kid gestured at Worth's uncasted forearm, crisscrossed with pearly white scars that cut through the thick tan he'd managed to develop somewhere, despite being nearly as nocturnal as his undead counterpart. Worth remembered idly the old days when he'd had to bandage those up to avoid stupid questions. These days, people just assumed.

"You are one of Hanna's boys, right?"

Worth shrugged, and then, because he was fairly certain that if he was going to be ambushed it would have happened by now, he answered, "Yeah."

"That'd make you the Doc, then," the kid said. "I'm Dontall. You know a kid named John, little white boy, priestly type?"

Worth got wary again. "How the shit do you know about him?"

Dontall rolled his eyes. "Who don't know about him? Got himself a goddamn sainthood for rattin' on his friends. Saint Judas, my sister call him. Church gone crazy for him, every soldier come in here last couple days was John this 'n John that, I sure hope I kin do the Lord right like John done. Oh, he's big stuff the last couple days now. 'Bout made me sick, listenin' to 'em carry on like that."

"Sainthood?" Worth echoed, skeptical. "Since when does the CUT hand out sainthoods?" Especially to sniveling, double-crossing teenagers.

"Not exactly a sainthood. Servant of the Lord technically, but a name's just a name. You put a boy up on a stage and tell everybody the Lord's hand is workin' through him so ya better shape up an' do right like he done, you made a saint. Here them tell, boy got snatched up by the devil and a sinner man somewhere in Georgia, and he fought 'em off like Jesus in the goddamn desert. Nice story."

Worth snorted. That little snot. "So what's that got ter do with me?"

The faint creak of the rocking chair stilled. "Well, there's a devil in my grandmama's house and I'm talkin' with a sinner man on this here porch, and I happened to notice meanwhile Saint Judas was hangin' around town with Spooks, this Hanna guy shows up pullin' rabbits outta hats and flippin' off the church, askin' if we seen his doctor buddy. I just wondered if they was all connected, somehow."

The older man made a noise in the pit of his throat. "I hate smart guys. Yer all too much damn trouble."

The street was silent for a while after that, the crickets retiring one by one like union workers hanging up their hard hats and heading home. The muffled sounds of voices escaped through the window at Worth's shoulder.

"So Johnny Boy got himself a fanclub," Worth muttered, at last. "Next time I see him, I'm gonna break his nose. And Fell. Gonna break his nose too. Whole bloody thing has Fell written all over it."

Dontall didn't ask who Fell was, which either meant he wasn't particularly interested in Worth's grudges, or Fell was now a public figure as much as John.

"You willin' to take advice from a black kid?"Dontall asked, a nasty edge in his voice. It had the distinct sound of a spark in the grass, and Doc Worth knew it like a wolf knew the sound of a sickly deer's footsteps. Now there was a spot to start a fight.

He considered a few replies, in varying shades of dick, but eventually settled on a simple grunt. He could pick fights some other time, when the stakes were lower.

"Tell folks who you are," Dontall suggested, the edge fading. "Ain't nobody round here who'd piss in the Chancellor's bed if they thought it might keep him warm. Tell 'em, an' if they're as sick of hearin' about John the Godfearin' Cocksucker as me, you gonna have as much help as you can handle."

Worth cocked a brow. "Well," he mused, "at least the twat'll good fer somethin'."

His old friend silence came and sat between them after that, beams of moonlight like smoke from its invisible cigarette, and kept them company for a long time until the door creaked open again, and Conrad stuck his head out to inform them that they'd ironed out the worst of it and Worth could come in now if he wanted, since there wasn't all that much left for him to fuck with.

So he went in, suspicious now, and listened to a house stuffed with people argue about whether they would unify with the rest of the countryside after the Church Universal and Triumphant fell, and whether they could trust a bunch of scared white guys again, after what happened the last time.

-A-

When they arrived at the plantation again, Hanna was still away, and Bondye's people had only gotten back half an hour before. The humans shuffled away to their shared bedrooms, their couches, their repurposed reclining chairs, and Worth made his way to the kitchen for a shot of that whiskey that no one was supposed to touch. He listened to the sound of Conrad writing Hanna a note in the dining room, and made himself a mental memo to bully someone into feeding the vampire, if he could, because the last time anyone had opened a vein for the little bitch was the night they arrived here, and that had been Worth again, and Conrad had since reverted to his natural state of insufferable prissiness and probably wouldn't settle for a fresh donation a third time.

Worth shut his eyes and downed his shot. Always something.

And he hoped John was enjoying the celebrity, wherever he was, because Worth was about to tear his world apart.

-A-

On the fifth day, they went prospecting for gas. Worth watched as the people they passed gave their group secret smiles.

On the sixth day, Hanna disappeared.

Irritated and unable to find anyone interested in a good punch, the doctor had gone through the book shelves like a madman, leaving the floor in the living room scattered with a thin layer of splayed hardbacks. He missed the days when he could walk down from his office to Conrad's apartment and break something ceramic in his kitchen. That had always been good for a laugh.

Eventually, he succeeded in making enough noise that the faggot himself came storming through the doorway, demanding to know what the hell he was doing to their hosts' house. Everyone else must have delegated the task, cowards. Worth grabbed something off the floor at random and sank down into an armchair while Conrad ranted at him, shoving each book violently back into its original place. Worth snickered. He might have actually been doing them more damage than Worth.

It took a while, but one blatant page-flip too many finally earned the older man a one way ticket to the floor, complements of Conrad's fist. Looked like that was all he was getting, though. The novella he'd been flipping through landed next to his head as he watched the pair of muddy black loafers stomp out of the room, and eventually his wandering attention landed on the nearest page.

Prophecies of the Return

He reached out, turned it over. Post-plague production. The Church Universal and Triumphant. God, this shit was everywhere. To kill time, which he had much too fucking much of, he turned it over again and skimmed a passage—might be good for a laugh, at least.

"The Messiah arrives with the tamed devil at his side. He shoots first and never regrets, he heals and breaks so that he can mend. He is the doctor who treats the sick. The Lord is your Physician."

Worth tossed the booklet out the open window behind him. Should have known better.

-A-

It was the seventh day when things started happening.

It was maybe six in the evening when the first of them showed up, and Doc Worth had been smoking on the porch, still in the shirt that he'd slept in, as they pulled into the winding driveway. The car itself was as black and dustless as the inside of Worth's rifle, and the woman who stepped out of it had the best leg's he'd seen in months.

Jillian, she'd introduced herself as, and without pause demanded to know where Mister Cross was. Worth had barely managed to finish his fuck if I know before she was stalking away in battered brown tennis shoes, leaving him with an unused litany of come-ons. Christ, the people around here were giving his brain the worst case of witticism blue-balls he'd had since Conrad had physically locked him out of negotiations in Sacramento.

The next car to pull up was packed with people who eagerly introduced themselves to Worth, dragging guns out of the spaces under their seats to show him, telling him about where they'd salvaged each one and where the bullets had come from and who they'd killed with them. He was interested despite himself when they offered him the pick of the litter.

Cigarette clenched in his teeth, he lifted one of the rifles up and peered down the sights.

"Y'said ya got thissun off a CUT man?"

The bloke who'd been showcasing nodded eagerly. "Marcy got him in the head when he was taking a leak on our property line. You gotta watch your borders."

Worth grunted in what he expected was an approving way. That rifle went to sit on the ground to his left, and he reached for another one.

"At least Hanna ain't total shit at pickin' allies," Worth noted, examining the barrels on this one. "Can't count how many times he's gone an' turned down an offer 'cos the guys on the other side ended up bein' too trigger happy fer his taste. Either he's sharpenin' up or you lot talk a good game."

The showcase man shrugged. "We offered to help with the rebuilding after the CUT crashes. It's in our best interest, really. The church is bad, but total anarchy is worse—we don't have enough ammo to blow the brains out of every starving raider who comes running up to our field. A little centralization does wonders for keeping the idiots off our land."

Worth spared him a glance as he switched guns.

"How come ya want th' CUT out, then? Better business sense to let 'em go."

The showcase man frowned, faintly. "I know Preston's game. He's not the first man with an emperor's ambitions to call himself a chancellor, believe me. One of these days, when the food's stockpiled and the cities are all tamped down, he'll come down over the hill with an army ready to pop every last bubble of resistance on his land. Maybe a year, maybe ten years, but I don't doubt it's gonna happen. Besides, I really hate that religion of theirs."

"Who don't?" Worth muttered.

"I mean, that prophet garbage? I'd like to show him the blessed end of my boot," the showcase man went on, in the satisfied way of a man who relishes a chance to properly complain. "And the way they go on about spooks? What is this, the middles ages? I had a friend who lost a cousin to the goddamn inquisition in January. Can you believe that? You survive the plague and the riots and the starving just so you can get shot in the head by the Chancellor's army of witch-hunting trigger happy nutcases."

Worth tuned him out after that, more interested in the scope mounted on the semi-automatic with the built in clip than a stranger's checklist of irritants. This one didn't adjust very well, but the weight was excellent. Whole thing looked like it would get good distance, with the right ammo. He rummaged around for a box of coppers.

"—and if I have to hear one more goddamn The Lord is my Physician, I'll rip my own ears off. Hey, you're Hanna's doctor, aren't you?"

Worth looked up, irritated. "Yeah? Ya need somethin' cut off?"

The stranger laughed. "No, no, nothing like that. But judging from that arm of yours, you know your way around a broken bone. My daughter took a spill on the stairs a couple days ago, during an alarm. Would you take a look at it?"

The blond man broke open a shotgun and squinted down the barrels. "Sure, but trade's fair trade. Ya gotta do somethin' fer me."

The showcase man looked a little surprised, but not too much. Such was the way of the world, these days. "What's that?"

"Any'a yer folks donated blood before?"

More trucks and vans arrived as the daylight faded, but Worth wasn't there to see them. He made a pretty shit welcoming committee anyways. Around him, the night seemed to sweep into a slowly building fury of movement, unloading and reloading and people racing around after other people, lamps and lanterns bobbing though the forest. The acre of field behind the big house filled up with automobiles, and eventually he settled on the hood of a truck as tall as he was. The kitchen looked like it was drifting out on a sea of people, all holding cups and bowls full of stew. A vague longing for carrots washed over the Doc, and he wondered when he'd started being interested in vegetables. Bloody boring thing to be interested in.

The property echoed with human voices.

His body knew what was coming in a few short hours, smelled it on the wind, and his nervous fingers drummed abstract tattoos onto the colorless fiberglass hood. He'd stuffed a new pistol into his hip holster, and the weight unbalanced him perfectly. Wood smoke and a tumult of voices, and he remembered festivals from when he was a kid, arriving early so his mother could stalk around the concourse in stilettos and tell the pie-makers to move their tents to the left four paces, him sitting on the hill with Lamont watching the booths go up, people trickling in, waiting for the sun to go down and the boxing matches to start.

When the land had gotten so crowded with people that it seemed like they'd spill over the edges of the forest and dissipate into the plantation, Hanna stepped up onto the edge of the wide white porch and whistled. A hush settled.

"I've kind of gotten a reputation for making speeches," Hanna called out, the words faint and thin by the time they reached Worth. "But I promise this won't take long! I just want you guys to take a second and think about what you're doing here tonight. Not just the brave part, 'cos you guys are totally some of the bravest people I've met, not gonna lie, but also the bad part. You're gonna kill people tonight, not too many hopefully but still. People with mothers. Some of you might get killed too. I'm doing my best to make sure that doesn't happen, but, again, still. And I want you to know that you don't have to do this, this is your choice. I won't—I can't make you, and neither can your family or your bossman or your friends."

Doc Worth sighed at the edge of the field, annoyed. Trust Hanna to whittle down the forces before they even started marching. Christ.

Hanna's voice went on, but the wind shifted and it was harder for him to hear. His heartbeat was cranking up, little by little, and he wanted to go. He searched the crowd for Conrad, as well as he could, but the masses of bodies blurred together between patches of lantern light. Daylight escapes and nighttime assaults, they were both a pain in the ass.

A cheer went up, and Worth jumped down off the truck. That was his cue to get moving.

The rush of motion returned in double speed, and there was a lot of ducking involved in getting up to Hanna. Lieutenant Dead Guy nodded to him on his way down the steps.

"Still think we shoulda done this in the day," Worth announced, by way of hello.

Hanna waved him off. "I told you we can't. Oh, oh, here, let me introduce you to the reason. Ma'am?"

Worth turned to the door of the big house, where the hinges had creaked open at Hanna's words. The redhead nodded encouragingly to the Doctor, which was off-putting, and he took a few steps toward the door just to show Hanna how completely unworried he was. A woman stepped out.

Well, womanoid.

Her skin seemed to glow faintly, and he had the impression that her hair was actually glinting rolls of black ooze rather than actual hair. She smiled at him, and her teeth were laid out along her gums like a collection of silvery knife-points.

"Doc," Hanna said, "this is Al Basti. Or, one Al Basti. I'm not really sure, it might be a title. She won't tell me. So I've just been calling her Al."

"Good evenings," she offered, in an accent so thick you could choke on it.

"This is what I was doing yesterday," the magician went on, gesturing at the unblinking woman. "Me and Ronaldo were down at St. George island day before yesterday, yanno, brokering alliances and all that jazz, and someone mentioned Al had passed through the area and we've been trying to find her for days and I was like totally stoked but we had to finish doing important stuff so yeah. We went searching yesterday, and man that was a lot of driving. Fortune in gas. Did you say you were in Louisiana last week, Al?"

The creature nodded.

"We talked to a lot of the havens around here, but none of them would help us. Rules of engagement and all that stuff. I swear, I'll never get used to the way they see the world. But they suggested Al, if we could find her. Said she was in the area, heading this way. And it's totally within the bounds of the treaty too!"

"What is?" Worth asked, although he could guess.

"Al's our secret weapon!" Hanna told him, fairly bouncing. "She's a middle eastern emotivore, from the meta-human class of the daimonion branch of the Moonlight Races and oh you don't care. The point is, she eats guilt! Man, do you know how many guilty peeps are running around that city? We seriously like cannot lose."

Worth gave the thing a second look. Well shit, he might have had a point. She flashed her iron teeth again, and he had to admit that if he saw that coming at him, he might just take the night off and have a goddamn brandy.

Still, Worth was unimpressed. "Yer gonna let that lady loose on the city, but ya don't wanna let me fake the Chancellor's suicide?"

"That's the best part," Hanna grinned, though the motion might have been forced. "Al's whole shtick? It's totally not fatal! Just, yanno, completely un-fun."

A flicker of something cold passed through Hanna's eyes, like he was imagining an alternative and it had its fingers hovering over his throat. Doc Worth realized he should have known better than to expect Hanna to play war like a normal person. His idea of an atom bomb up the sleeve would have to be non-lethal, or all the killing would kill him as dead as any of their casualties.

And then it was gone and Hanna was grinning again and shaking his head and taking his first skip down the steps and into battle.

Worth rolled his eyes and turned back to the creature in the door way.

"Well," he said, "ain't the two'a you just the perfect couple?"

-A-

The truck had a tape-player.

What they really needed was a tank's tower or a grenade launcher, but Hanna got them a goddamn tape player. Doc Worth stuck a finger in the slot and found it otherwise occupied.

"Hanna," he growled, turning back to look over the shoulder on his seat. "Hanna, th'fuck is this?"

The redhead sort of ducked behind his rifle as he climbed in to the back. "It's a tape?"

"I know it's a tape," Worth shot back. "What the hell is it doin' in our truck, tha's what I wanna know."

"Guys," Conrad hissed, from the driver's seat.

"Cool yer jets, Ace. I'm just doin' a friendly last minute interrogation."

Conrad slapped the wheel. "This is not the time!"

Worth looked out through the back window, considering the torches glittering off the army of trucks behind them. Somewhere outside, somebody cocked a shotgun. The tail end of his glance met the pupil-less eyes of Hanna's new best buddy, currently seated with her cloaked shoulders resting against their tailgate. Glad she wasn't in the cabin. Those teeth of hers made distracting noises.

"Aw, cheer up," Worth said. "We might be dead in a coupl'a hours."

One by one, every car in the field cranked to life, and the clearing fairly glowed with headlights bouncing off of headlights. Conrad had taken the wheel of their borrowed vehicle without question—automatically, efficiently, sliding into the driver's seat seconds before Worth slid into the passenger's—and now he hardly glanced backward to make sure Hanna and his undead shadow were safely inside before gunning it for the highway.

A tail of glinting machinery revved behind them, and they were off.

Worth gave the man beside him a sideways glance. One thing he'd never been able to decide—in moments like these, was the former artist jittering and buzzing with fear, dull human run of the mill fear, or something else, like the electrical high racing through his own skin. Was he skimming over the crests of passing moments in a desperate lunge for the next fix, trying to remember the sound of his own heartbeat?

Worth fumbled with a cigarette, feeling each twitch in his fingertips individually. Every detail of the cabin unfolded itself for him.

The road fell away behind them.

The Chancellor—or the council, or maybe just some overworked clerk on the dictator's administrative staff—had seen fit to set up the first thin border patrol about ten minutes into the city. In the silence of the night, windless and looming, the sound of thirty engines and thirty sets of wheels raced on ahead of them, so that by the time the first soldier was in their sights, a score of guns were already pointed at the road in front of them.

Well, tonight was going to be a bad night for their paint job.

Shots sparked and flew off shield charms, and that was the fleet's cue to go digging through their gloveboxes and bags for the paper bombs that Hanna had made over the space of the last two weeks and hidden under tables and beds throughout the plantation house.

"Can't make more than ten of these a day," he'd admitted, hours ago, spreading the stack of runes across the table like the world's biggest deck of cards, "or you end up with this really killer case of the flu except it's not germy and it totally knocks you out, but I started using blood for the ink last week and yanno it like doubles the production—" at that point he had held up his scraped and scabbed hands sheepishly, "—cause of that whole blood-energy thing I know you hate."

While Worth scrabbled for a bomb of his own, now, elbow banging into the glove compartment in the darkness, he spared a moment to promise himself that he'd break Hanna's hands when they got through with this, just to see if it would slow him down some. They were all lucky that Hanna had been making these things since nearly the day he arrived in the city, or he probably would have worked himself right through pneumonia and straight into a coma in the last couple nights, trying to build up an armory.

The air behind them fluttered with white paper, each sheet attached to some useless thing—rocks and paperweights and baseballs and one or two cellphones. Wherever they landed, soldiers paused mid-step and picked them up, and fell like jointless dolls across the asphalt.

Atalanta bombs, Hanna called them.

Conrad wove through the collapsing soldiers with pin-turns that would have suited a stunt-driver, the twitch of a grin on his tight-pressed lips.

"Makes ya right miss the RV, eh?" Worth called out, fighting the slipstream that tried to carry his voice away.

"Shut up and throw!" the vampire barked back, ever the spoilsport.

From that point on, the soldiers came in fits and bursts. They were set down in their rings around the city, although the closer to the heart of it they came, the fewer soldiers were waiting for them, and the message was clear: the walkie-talkies were still working, and news of their invasion was making its way down the line.

As they passed the ruins of a sign reading [ ]Sus Christ of Latterday[ ], Worth spied shadows hidden under the edges of the highway where the hillside melted away into forest. Jackers. Maybe good old-fashioned highwaymen. For a second, in his pre-battle high, he imagined that he could see them nodding to him and disappearing back into the Chancellor's forests.

When he turned his eyes back to the road, a horizon of tiny silver glints was waiting for him. Scores of guns grabbing at the moonlight. Too far out of range. For a while.

"Shoot us ter pieces 'fore we can lob anythin' useful at 'em," he noted, allowing the statement to hang like smoke over their heads.

There was no reply, but he knew Hanna would be staring hard at the glass to his right, watching the specters of burning cities and starving children thrown up behind his reflection.

There was no argument, and the doctor took that for what it was worth.

He leaned out his window and started shooting, aiming half blindly for the soldiers and resigning himself to a lot of wasted ammo until they got closer. Return fire blazed toward them within the second, two lucky shots bounding off their shield charm—as the first unit into battle, Hanna had grudgingly spared more energy on theirs than the ones behind them, after a lot of arguing—and bounding off the car that was steadily coming up even with them, a slinky black thing with a woman driver. The front line of Hanna's assault opened fire too, especially careful—or at least they had better have been—not to catch their flagship in the shots.

The air all around Worth exploded with bullets.

A handful of the CUT boys scattered and the rest held their ground, no doubt already tasting their seventy-two virgins or whatever the hell they'd been promised. The Doc wasn't sure if he was begrudgingly impressed or sneeringly annoyed by the show. Either way, it was nothing a shot or two wouldn't render moot.

There was a shift, and the truck rocked on its spinning wheels, and Worth swore as he fired off half his current clip into the hillside despite the line being a stone's throw away now.

"The fuck was that?" he demanded, doggedly resisting the urge to take his eyes off his targets a second time.

"That was Al!" Hanna called forward. "Jumped out of the back. Probably smelled guilt or something."

"We're going sixty miles an hour," Conrad shouted, "is she suicidal?"

Hanna laughed, a weird mixture of genuine levity and gallows humor. "That's why we love you, Con-man. You never stop being human."

The conversation dissipated into blasts and dings and creaks as they passed directly through the heart of the defensive line. One man refused to move, and the shot that he fired nearly snapped Doc Worth's neck when it bounced off his personal shield charm right above his forehead. Private Gutsy-ass Motherfucker met the last of Worth's bullets face-first.

His brains were still in the air when they flashed past him.

The rest of the ride was more of the same, all headlights on street signs and sparks and uniforms and faces too far away to make out, which he knew Hanna was grateful and guilty for. The doctor and his zombie friend—because they were all friends, damn good friends, the best of fucking friends that night in that gunfire and moonlight—shot in tandem , and starlight glittered on puddles of black blood as they swept on by, across overpasses and down highways and around meridians where soldiers huddled and fired like rats clinging to chunks of a shipwreck in the storm.

"Downtown," Conrad announced, like a tour guide, swerving around the farmer's detritus left scattered across the road hours earlier by citizens now either riding behind them or cowering in their makeshift homes.

"Bombs back again!" Hanna cried, and Worth reluctantly recoiled from the window. "No guns! The citizens are too thick around here and the roads aren't wide enough for open fire anyways. Napoleon, tell them to scatter now, okay?"

Obediently, the dead man made a swift motion like a turn signal above their roof, and Worth followed a moment later with the same motion. Behind them and beside them, cars turned off onto side streets to make their winding way down the grid of downtown. This wasn't the part where people would die. That would come next, when their people's shields gave out, and then the enemy as well when the Atalanta bombs ran too thin. But for now, there was nothing but children's war games.

Hanna leaned forward, before anyone knew what he was doing, and mashed a button on the tape player. The sound of a steady drumbeat exploded through the cabin.

"Another one bites the dust!"

Freddy Mercury's cry jolted Worth out of his bomb-lobbing zone and the random details of reality smashed through his high to smack him in the face. He swore again.

Conrad swore this time too, more a string of vaguely curse-ish syllables strung together on a thread of disbelief than actual swearing, and shouted, "If we're alive tomorrow, Hanna, I'm gonna kill you!"

And then the haze of adrenaline reasserted itself.

Doc Worth reclaimed his body at the top of the hill that lead up to the façade of the Castleversity, when Conrad spun them into a stop that was more of a donut than an actual stop, and the portion of the fleet that had followed them all the way—a small portion, maybe three trucks—did similarly, one grazing their tailgate and dislodging the female creature that had, at some point, taken up residence there again. Either she had been moving too fast to make out, or she was operating under different stipulations of reality, but he hadn't seen so much as a flicker of her for the last ten minutes.

Worth snatched up his handgun and put a hole through the stomach of the lone soldier who had resisted the call of the Atalanta bombs, and with the end of the street now cleared for the moment, the four of them went spilling out of their truck and onto the sidewalk, staggering and glaring at the shadows.

The faint sound of boots told them that more men were on their way.

"I thought you said they'd all be out chasing the rest of the cars!" Conrad growled, reaching for his borrowed pistol. Twelve shots. Just like his old one.

Al Basti slipped into their midst like fog blowing across the asphalt. "You have underestimated their Lord's cowardice. His guards remain." She sniffed. "I smell her from here."

They all exchanged looks. Hanna shrugged.

"Well," Doc Worth remarked, slamming a new clip into his pistol, "looks like we gotta do this the hard way, eh, team?"

"It does look like that," their green companion agreed. His eyes lit up the circle around him, and their hands all glowed faintly orange. "Hanna, how are we on bombs?"

"Oh we're great," the younger man replied, grinning. He pulled a thin stack of post-it-notes out of his pocket and waved them. "I was making more on the way here and—"

His eyes went wide.

"Uh," he said, faintly, "might have made too many."

In the same breath, Conrad and Worth let out a groan, and the zombie caught Hanna under the shoulders as their illustrious leader lost his balance and crumpled towards the floor.

"In the middle of a fucking battle," Conrad moaned, clutching at his forehead with the hand that wasn't holding a loaded gun. "Bloody buggering fuck, Hanna."

"Christ. Conrad, yer gonna have ta wait in line 'cause tomorrow I got first dibs on that scrawny chicken neck of his."

"You know what? We can share."

Worth was about to make a comment about sharing when the bodies attached to the incoming boots made themselves known with a couple unfortunately accurate shots, and Worth felt his shield charm cracking over his chest. Oh, fantastic timing, that was.

"Connie," he shouted, taking aim, "You 'n me 're goin' in alone! Dead guy, you watch Hanna, try ter get these bombs passed around—c'mon now, go!"

And the two of them left Hanna and his undead bodyguard to the sound of their own weak protests, hoping that the shield charms would last long enough for zombie-man to get the runes stuck to some uniforms and hopefully invoke some good old fashioned friendly fire in the process. He was banking on the three cars who followed them pitching in. No time to consider the alternative.

For a moment, despite everything, Worth found himself put out at all the runes going to waste today. Those things were basically the same spell he'd taken as payment from Hanna for all those years, bar a modification or two, and the effects were downright wasted on these bastards.

Conrad and the Doc raced through the empty auditorium, searching for the exit that Worth remembered from his first day in the city. They burst out into the night. Arms pumped and lungs shook and Worth made them stop twice so he could hack up a lung and remember for a chest-searing minute where all the insanity had begun. And then they were off again.

There was no question of where to turn and who would follow who, just the clear line from A to C and the minute twitches and leans of a body about to turn.

Al Basti had been right, but in a double-edged sort of way, that was perfect. Because the sight of a dozen soldiers grouped around the outside of a towering brick dorm was the perfect signal that they'd reached their destination at last. Panting, Worth flung himself behind the first pillar of a shadowy colonnade.

"Gotta get in," he gasped, throat searing and mouth pooling with spit. "Got any bombs?"

"No," Conrad replied, pupils dilated. All the shuffling awkwardness of his day-to-day exterior had melted away and left something that was very nearly predator in its wake. "Try to incapacitate?"

"Can't risk it," the doctor replied. "We kill."

There was a twist of pain in the vampire's face, and he muttered, "I hate it when you say that."

There was no time for argument, and the tide was rushing in around them, so Worth simply said, "Keep tellin' yerself that."

And then they were out. Swooping, sliding, racing across the already damp grass and hardly aware of the motions of single fingers for all the shades of life and death in carried them. The soldiers toppled. Worth took a bullet in the cast and barely noticed.

The door swung closed behind them. He couldn't remember it swinging open. The common room was silent and they were through it and it was nothing but a fading spark of a neuron drowning in the rhythm of an erratic heartbeat.

Corridors rattled with the sounds of their shoes, Worth's breathing, the snap of Conrad yanking his empty clip free in mid-stride. They turned a corner and shot down two guards, stationed outside an unassuming dormitory room. The length of their strides faded, and the last step towards the door was just that—a step. Worth paused and shot his man again, in the head when he was a foot away, because he didn't look particularly dead yet.

"Don't do that," Conrad hissed, glaring over at his partner.

"Yer right," Worth replied, kicking the now-corpse. "Wastes ammo, don't it?"

"Not what I meant," the younger man scowled. "You and your fucking doubletap. Okay. So. We're going in?"

The older man nodded, once, and Conrad's white hand settled over the worn brass doorknob.

"Tell me ya don't love this, sweetheart," Doc Worth said, dared, breathed out into the vacuum.

"Hate it," Conrad replied, pupils wild and nearly glowing in the half-blown florescent light.

"Ya hate a lotta things," Worth muttered. "I'm startin' ter wonder if ya know what the word means."

And then he threw the door open.

There was a soldier inside, young and trembling and quick, but he made the mistake of shooting at Conrad first, who was living in the twilight world of instinct and euphoria—Worth knew this, because Conrad did not know this—and Conrad easily slipped past the bullet that hardly grazed his hip and in milliseconds had his hands around the wrist that was holding a 44 magnum.

Worth heard a snap.

"There," the vampire growled, throwing the kid down in a heap, "that makes up for your stunt at… the… door?"

The trailing phrase made Doc Worth turn, firearm firmly in hand, to follow his gasping companion's gaze. A chill of something that was definitely not temperature raced down the wire of his spine.

He was looking at the bed, the expensive fucking canopied bed with the carved headboard and the white sheets, and splatter of brains and blood across the blankets where the not-quite headless body of a man who had been wearing a very nice suit lay.

"Oh my god," Conrad breathed. "I… I have the sudden urge to puke up all my organs."

"Ya seen worse," Worth replied, absently, as he flicked the safety onto his pistol and lowered it, trusting that Conrad would have his back for now. He stepped closer, leaning over the white suit, and snatched up the pin sparkling on its breast. Flipped it over.

"Well I'll be damned," he remarked. The little gold cross and crown winked up at him. "If I ain't mistaken, thissus the man himself."

Conrad's eyes were still glued to the Rorschach of skull painted across the bedspread, and he didn't seem particularly interested in the half of a face still intact. "Who?"

"Chancellor fuckin' Preston," Worth answered, ducking down to dig through the dead man's pockets. "Some bastard beat us to 'im."

The minute creaks and shifts of the building flared up, each sound magnified by the unfailing microphone of paranoia. Worth turned back to Conrad whose attention was shifted now to the unconscious kid at his feet, maybe eighteen and with the thin, whipped look of a private.

"Did he do it?" Conrad wondered, poking the kid with one new boot.

"Nah," Worth said, "lookit that blood on Preston. 'S been at least five minutes. Mebbe ten. This point he'da either blown his own brain out or made a run fer it."

The vampire was still looking thoughtfully at the soldier. "He was facing the door. He was definitely guarding something, you could see it in his posture, you know?"

"Higher orders," his partner supplied. "Council maybe. Can't see why ye'd want ter take out yer own man at a time like this, but it had ta been somebody at the top. Mebbe we weren't the only ones thinkin' about makin' martyrs."

"Et tu, Brute?" Conrad muttered, low and quiet. "But we can't possibly make this look like a suicide, Worth. Look at this, it's a shotgun blast by someone with terrible aim, and unless there's a sawn-off somewhere in the vicinity, no one is going to believe it was him."

The first syllable of a reply died on Worth's lips.

The sound of people outside the dorm—footsteps and hoarse whispers and the clinking clacking crescendo of untimely interruption—shattered the quiet horror of the chancellor's bedroom. The connection was instantaneous: the gunshots. There were more guards and they had heard the pair's earlier gunshots.

The two men looked at each other.

"You didn't think about this?"

"Was laborin' under the assumption that Hanna's plan would actually work this time."

"Oh of all the times to trust Hanna."

"I'd love ta debate this, peaches, but right now I'm too damn pissed off to die. Time ter run."

Conrad sighed and picked up the unconscious soldier's weapon. "Well, we've clearly got nothing better to do."

He stalked out through the adjoined bedroom and Worth came strolling after, leaving the half-headless corpse to finish cooling in its oh-so expensive bed. They waited till the sounds of gasping and screaming and retching started to filter through the shared wall before making a break for the hallway, dashing down to the stairs and escaping—up. The only way to go was up. And they were both thinking that Conrad, at least, could fly.

One flight up, for reasons neither of them could have articulated, they turned onto the new corridor and went searching for a room to hide in. Halfway to the corner of the building, Conrad stumbled to a halt and stared at the wall. There was a sound, on the other side of the it, that could only be called yelling. Not screaming. Worth knew the difference.

The voice faded out, but luckily they had Conrad, human satellite dish, to track it back to its source and quickly too, which was good because the Doc's high was starting to falter. Nothing kills a good high like being beaten to the punch. Conrad gestured at one door, a little further down the way, and proceeded to press his ear up against it like one of those four-word-sentence tracker Indians from nineteen-sixties cowboy movies. Worth rolled his eyes.

"Try gettin' to the point fer once in yer life," he muttered, and grabbed the handle. It turned quietly and a sliver of the room beyond unfolded for them.

"—Mr. Vurms, I'm going to have to insist—"

A woman stepped into view, with dark skin and long dress that followed every single curve a man could have wished for. Well, damn. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the same woman who had stood behind the late Chancellor during that introductory sermon a week before. There couldn't be many women left with figures like that.

"If he's really safe 'n all, why can't I talk to the chancellor for five minutes?"

Worth's eyes snapped open a fraction more, without his consent. He looked at Conrad, who was looking at him with a mirror of stunned surprise. Conrad knew that nasally voice as well as Worth did.

"The Chancellor is indisposed," the woman replied, in the voice of someone repeating the same inane line for the tenth time. Worth wondered if she'd worked in customer service. "He's speaking with the Lord, and I can't let you interrupt him."

"Speakin' wit' the lord is right," Worth whispered, sliding the door open by another centimeter.

The sound of static poured out of the gap, and faint voices like tinsel. There was a pause, and then a new voice, and Worth reached up to rub his eyes because this was starting to give him a headache. He knew that voice too.

"Ma'am," the third voice began, pointed and low, "I'm not getting a response from the boys downstairs, and in the city they've taken out the better part of my force and we still haven't managed a single prisoner. I've got my boys on full ammo access but they're only—"

"You have them on what?"

"Ammo access. Ma'am. It's the agreed on procedure for invasion."

The good looking woman spun and stalked out of the frame. "I told you to let them through!"

"With all due…" there was a pause, "respect. Ma'am. You don't know the first thing about combat, and I object to taking orders from a… A secretary."

"Secretary?" she shouted, and there was the sound of something breaking. "You think I'm a—"

Silence. Worth's own breathing echoed off the wooden doorframe.

"—Fine. Well. Whatever you think of me, I'm empowered to make all decisions for the Chancellor while he's indisposed. Now. You just got here, so you might as well take a seat while you radio in orders to take prisoners only until I say otherwise. Got me?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And you, Mr. Vurms," the woman's voice went on, "you're gonna sit down and shut up and when the fighting dies down I will personally make sure you're the very first to see Chancellor Preston, alright?"

"But I've got serious spiritual grievances!" the young voice whined. "I was looking through the bible earlier and, it was something he said, and I couldn't—but I kept flipping pages and it always landed on the same passages and—I need to talk to the highest religious authority I can find!"

The woman snorted. Well it was probably the woman. All snorts have a tendency to sound alike.

"Mr. Vurms, you're useful and I'd rather keep you on, but I've got enough on my plate right now with the invasion showing up downstairs and the General here breathing down my neck. I'm getting a headache. If you can't be quiet, I'm going to have to be the bad guy."

A few inches from the doctor's face, Conrad's thin fingers tightened over the door frame.

"What do we do?" Conrad demanded, under the sound of whining grievances in ever increasing volume. "She kicks him out and they find us."

Another breaking sound, this one thicker and less glassy.

"That's it!" the woman shouted, enraged by whatever inane comment she'd just cut off. "Christ , I'll teach you to watch your goddamn language! General! May I see your gun?"

"…No way," Conrad murmured, aghast.

"Thank you. I'm sure you'll thank me for this. Now, if anybody asks…"

"Ya gotta be kiddin' me."

"…The rebels did it."

The next thing Worth knew, the door was bouncing off the wall with a smack that probably took a chunk of plaster out of it, and Conrad had his hands around the gun that was still clutched in the lady's hands, now pointed at the ceiling. Drywall rained down from a new hole above their heads.

There was no sound for what seemed like years, stretched out in the single moment of that tableau, and then Worth raised his gun and fired off a shot into the still-seated general's right hand. Insurance. The second crack of gunfire unfroze them, and Conrad leapt back with the woman's revolver in hand while the swearing general reached for something in his jacket and the woman recoiled and the dumb little bastard at the far end of the room stumbled backwards and tripped over a chair in his haste to escape.

Worth moved quickly, his sights on the general's head, and caught the flicker of motion as Conrad did the same for Ma'am, whoever she was. The motion around them stilled again like a flurry of paper settling on the ground.

"Well if it ain't all my favorite people in one convenient little group," Worth remarked, cocking an eyebrow at Conrad for a split second, which was all he could spare. "Johnny boy, I told ya that mouth'a yers was gonna get ya well fucked, I did."

The fifteen-year-old gaped at him like a particularly dim goldfish.

"That's twice now Xena's gone n' saved yer miserable hide," Worth added. "Dunno why he went n' did that, but it's done now, I s'pose."

John made a couple unintelligible noises.

"Doctor," the general interrupted, focus deadlocked on the man with the gun pointed at his head. "If you don't mind me asking, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Aw, I gotta have a reason ter visit an old friend?"

The general just looked at him. "I believe you made it abundantly clear that we're no such thing, the last time I saw you."

Worth put on a look of surprise. "Well, if I ain't visitin' a friend I guess I must be visitin' an enemy, eh?"

No response.

"An' if I'm visitin' an enemy," he went on, "I guess I must be lookin' fer payback, wouldn't ya say?"

Still no response. Well, that must mean he was right.

He shot twice—once into each of the general's arms, where they rested across his legs. He didn't particularly give a fuck what else the bullet might or might not have passed through. A few steps brought him neatly across the room where he bent down and reached down into the general's front pocket, slipping out a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He batted away bloody, shattered hands.

"Do not," Worth growled, "steal my fuckin' smokes."

Over the general's howls of pain—three bullets will do that to you, no matter how tough you are—Conrad winced and gestured towards the woman, who was seated now on the very nice couch with her hands neatly settled in her black-sheathed lap.

"Wot," Worth called over, "the sofa? You already stole her gun. Ya wanna take her sofa too? We gotta do somethin' about this stealin' impulse ya got, Connie. Granted, it's a nice sofa, I can understand how the urge fer Victorian velour might overpower yer cultured sensibilities."

"It's regency," Conrad replied automatically, and then scowled. "Oh, yes, way to make me look bad in front of the hostages. I meant what are we going to do about her?"

"Well, she clearly ain't right in the head," Worth mused. "Any sane person woulda shot this li'l bugger the first time he opened his mouth."

The patented "you're not taking this seriously enough" look made another grand entrance.

"Ma'am," Conrad called across, as if he didn't have a pistol aimed at her head, "why were you about to murder John?"

The woman smiled at him—a slow, deep-purple smile. "He called me a bad word little white boys aren't supposed to use. Is that your business?"

Conrad twisted up his face like he wasn't sure what the right answer was. "Well, uh, on principle it's a… not a good thing to call someone, but I mean, everyone knows John is a little monster and it might be slightly disproportionate?"

Laughter rattled the indigo windows. "I can afford it. What's one more body in a ransacked castle?"

Conrad blinked, aim wavering a hair. "What?"

"Oh, don't play dumb. You and your friend both smell like blood and we all heard those gunshots. You know. I know you know."

Conrad's eyes went narrow. "But how do you know?"

The woman smiled wider, and her teeth were perfectly straight and perfectly white. "Easy. It was me who shot him."

Johnny opened his idiot mouth again, most likely to ask who 'him' was, but Worth shot him a glance that seethed with the memory of seven nights ago, and the quite promise of karma in a little copper-tipped package. The kid gulped, regressing back to his goldfish heritage again.

"And you are?" Worth asked, turning back to the woman, who crossed her long legs with a smooth kick.

"Zillah. Zillah White. Chancellor's personal aid."

"You the lady who gets him coffee 'n shit?"

She smiled a smile that was in every way a sneer. "Hardly."

"Are you his mistress?" Conrad tried, obviously and unabashedly puzzled.

Zillah made a scoffing noise. "No. You do know it's only a matter of time before the general's boys get up here, and then it'll be us pointing guns at you."

"Yeah?" Worth shot back, cocking one eyebrow. "Joke's on you, honey. Connie and me can fly. Real convenient it is, ya oughtta give it a try. Maybe tonight. Make my job a lot easier."

The smile spread, like oil across pavement. "Don't bluff me, doctor. I'm not the sort of person you want to push."

"I'm sure the Chancellor would've agreed with that," Conrad muttered, but obligingly halted when Worth made a quick motion in his direction. The room seemed to breathe in.

"How do you know my title?" Doc Worth asked, tilting his head. "Ain't like I'm wearin' my lab-coat today."

"I know all about you," Zillah replied, leaning forward. "And Conrad. But it's just you that I'm interested in today."

The vampire turned a swift look of muted panic towards his partner, who shrugged slightly.

"Yer another nightwalker struttin' 'round the CUT like ya own the damn place, then," Worth said, taking a step closer. "Just like motherfuckin' Fell. All the bloody devils thumpin' bibles an' sendin' fools like Johnny boy here off to die fer yer devil buddies."

"Oh no," the woman countered, "I'm as human as you are. That's the funny thing, doctor—the devil is human. Very, very human."

And then John, the little twit, was pushing past the doctor and stalking up to the woman and pointing a finger in her face and saying, "When the Chancellor comes down, I'm going to tell him his secretary is a blasphemer and a witch."

With the casual grace of a cat, she leaned forward and smacked him across the cheek. "Not an attempted murderer, though?"

Clutching at his face, screwed up in fury, John spat, "My life is incidental to your… betrayal."

Zillah looked up at Conrad, who was twice as bemused as before. "Isn't he just precious?" she asked, a slight hiss in her voice. She reached out and took the boy's hand, like she was his long dead mum, and grinned at him. "You won't be telling the chancellor anything, Mr. Vurms, because I blew his head off fifteen minutes ago. And I'm going to do the same to you, before the night is out."

John jerked away, recoiling like he'd been struck again. "I don't believe you."

Zillah glanced up at the doctor, who shrugged again and noted, "More like half'a his head. Yer a shitty shot, lady."

John suddenly blinked like he was holding back tears, and Worth nearly gave up and walked away right then. Christ, this wasn't even worth it. Hanna could come up with some other goddamn master plan, preferably one that didn't involve bat-shit crazy fifteen-year-olds and secretaries that wanted to blow off children's heads. Maybe they could just go back to waging good old fashioned war. That would be fuckin' relaxing at this point.

"Why?" the kid whispered. "How could you? He was a man of God."

The smile froze, uncomfortably, spreading Zillah's features and digging in the lines around her mouth. And then there was a laugh. Another laugh. Full-blown, wild, tooth-flashing laughter.

"Oh," she gasped, "a man of headlines and cue cards, maybe, but God? Jimmy wouldn't know God if it…" Then she paused, and there was a flash of intrigue in the slant of her eyes. "Unless I've been God too. Because he was certainly my man."

Worth took another step forward and grabbed John by the back of his collar, dragged him back. Crazy dumbass looked like he was going to rip her throat out with his own two pudgy little hands.

"Your man?" Conrad asked, lowering his gun as his arm started to shake slightly. "You were his mistress?"

Zillah lifted one black brow. "You keep jumping to that, mister Achenleck. Why not his boss?"

A myriad of aside glances bounced around the room, and finally Conrad replied hesitantly, "Because…" he looked around nervously, "you're black, I guess? I mean, not that it would mean anything in another setting, and I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that and I probably should have said African American—"

Worth snorted. "Relax, Captain Political Correctness. She just shot a guy's face off. We're all past niceties. At least as long as ya got her gun, anyhow."

Long silver nails tapped her dark brown cheek. "Let me tell you a little story, Doctor, Achenleck. Vurms. Once upon a time there was a little black girl. Her parents were well educated and happily middle class, and she grew up with a college fund and a real incentive to get straight A's. Little white kids didn't know what to say to her. Little black kids thought she was condescending. She grew up, went to school, majored in anthropology and met a football player who was dumb as a brick. But he was nice to her, invited her to parties, made her feel at home in a new state. She wrote all his term papers for him. Eventually they graduated, and she got a job as a manager and he got a job as a coach. They kept in touch."

"Didn't know I was gettin' goddamn story time," Worth griped. His good arm, bearing the weight of his gun, was starting to tremble just like Conrad's had, but he resisted the urge to lower it. Whatever this chick thought she was going to pull, he was ready for it.

"The girl spent a few years living in quiet desperation," Zillah went on, after the room had been silent for maybe half a minute. "Dull, grinding middle class life paying back student loans and getting passed over for promotions. She watched day after day pass by in the same dribbling pattern of minutes and hours. She ate carry-out for fun. She went to the gym to work it off. She put up with people walking through the door and demanding to see her manager when she could have told them anything they wanted to know, because deep down they didn't trust the black girl to get the job done. It all ran together like a car ride on nitrousoxide. She took up smoking. And then the red got us. Where were you when you heard the report, Doctor? The riot in New York?"

The roof top in another city flitted through his head, orange horizons and charcoal skies.

Doc Worth tapped his trigger idly. "I ferget the little details."

"I'm sure," the woman replied, uncrossing her legs. "Personally, I was standing behind the counter in a hotel, and my boss threw the keys at me on her way out the door. They hit me in the face. I stood there at my post and I watched the street shut down and I watched my coworkers slip out the back one by one, and I kept standing there. I kept my post. I had no family to get home to, no boyfriend to phone, nothing to do, no valuables to hide—nothing. There were thousands of people like me in this country. Millions. I had a degree in anthropology and a job at a hotel and I paid for my cable, and what good did any of it do me? Was it going to save me? Of course not. And that's when I knew."

In the corner the general let out a faint moan. There was a pause, and then she leaned forward. "Aren't you going to ask what I knew?"

Worth snorted. "Like you ain't gonna tell us anyway?"

She sat back. "You're a real killjoy, doctor, has anyone ever told you that?"

That one made Worth pause. Him? A killjoy? He was the fucking life of the party, he was.

"I knew," Zillah went on, "that I was wasting my life, and it was time to forget all the nitrousoxide BS. Imminent death gives you that. So I packed up my bag and cleaned out the cash register, and I went home and I smoked and I waited until the sun came up, and then I got in my car and I drove home. To Monticello. Where all the little kids who had hated me were living, nurses and pencil pushers and crack addicts. And I made plans. I bought half a plantation from a man whose wife was up to her ears in red. I hired farm hands. I broke into houses and stole credit cards and ripped of ATM machines. Twice a week I went into town to buy supplies, and every week the city was quieter, until it was just us. Just the survivors. Eventually the stores closed, and they stopped taking money. And then…"

She got this look that Worth had seen a hundred times—this slipping crash from hazy memories of happiness to the blunt, crushing pain of a well-smashed nose. It was a familiar thing, something that did not at all remind him of fists through drywall and static and moonlight and asphalt, and did not faze him. The weird thing about it, now, was that it seemed to be moving backwards, and now the woman was smiling again, but this time with teeth.

"And then I found religion. I went to Perry, looking for workers, supplies, you know, everything they'd run out of at home—and I found them all walking around with charcoal crosses on their foreheads like it was Palm Wednesday every day. Preston was there, and he remembered me. And I looked at them all on their stupid little street corners with their stupid little prayers and I had this vision, doctor, this vision of reaching down to them from my middle class cogs and wheels like a god from the machine. And I did."

Worth looked down and realized that he'd let his gun hand sink down to hip level. Conrad noticed too, and with a flick, brought his back up to fill the defensive gap. But the vampire seemed to be moving mostly on automatic.

"What do you mean, you did?" he asked, suspicious tint coloring his voice.

Zillah gestured towards John, who was blinking his dim goldfish eyes at her. "I mean, I did. Mr. Vurms, who is the prophet?"

"The Prophet is the secret servant of God," John replied, like a machine. "The Prophet is the vessel of the Holy Spirit who came to us in the months after the death of the Man on the Street. The Prophet gathered the scattered legions of the church and formed the Council in the early days from the most worthy of the survivors. The Prophet will be the instrument who announces the Messiah."

Zillah sat back, satisfied. "Naturally, we've cleaned it up some, changed the tense; it sounded a little different when old man Smith was shouting it on a street corner. More word salad, not to mention the run-on sentences. I prefer the liberal use of punctuation myself."

"You," Conrad said, doubtful. "You're the prophet."

"What?" she replied, examining her silver nails, "You didn't think Preston could have pulled this off on his own, did you? Oh, but you never met him properly. You weren't missing much. His company soured after a while."

The general was unconscious now, slumped in his chair. He was bleeding a bit more than Worth had expected—possibly this was going to be the best sleep of his life. That was alright. Bloke had earned it. Closer to Worth, Conrad was holding his aim steady, and between them John had his face twisted up like someone had started removing his fingernails with pliers while insulting his mother.

"Why're ya tellin' us all this, lady?" Worth demanded. "Ya got a bomb tickin' down somewhere nearby? Ya stallin' us?"

If he didn't know better—which he did—he'd say she looked hurt.

"After all the trouble I've gone through to get you here?" Zillah replied, shaking her head. "No, I need you very much alive. This story is… let's call it a teaching tool. What I've done, you can do too. I'm very interested in your choices here tonight, doctor, because I'm going to offer you something that you'll never find anywhere else."

"I dunno," Worth mused, "sorry ter blow yer special night, but I ain't really ready ter settle down, y'know—not the marryin' type. Not that ya ain't got some damn fine legs, but considerin' what happened ta yer last boyfriend… Anyway, my heart belongs ter the princess here. Got my quota of neurotic broads all full up."

"Not in front of the hostages," Conrad ordered him, teeth gritted so tightly you could hear the enamel squeaking. "Embarrass me some other time, will you?"

"Well awright, but remember it was yer idea," Worth retorted, with his most obnoxious wink. It occurred to him belatedly that he probably should be careful about antagonizing Conrad while he had a pistol cocked in a room full of enemies, but old habits die hard and it was a bit late to rethink the comment now. "I'll bite though," he went on, turning back to the psycho chick on the very nice couch. "Whatcha so interested in me fer?"

"Could you send your nightwalker outside for a minute?" she asked, expression souring.

"Sorry, lady," Worth replied, "me 'n Connie got one of them marriages based on openness an' honesty an' shit. 'Fraid yer gonna hafta tell him too."

The scowl deepened, but she didn't insist. "Fine. As it happened, I sent Fell out a month and a half ago to search for candidates. I knew firsthand that he was good at finding exactly what you need, for the right price. I needed a name. He brought me yours."

"Candidate for what?" Conrad snorted, "Designated public nuisance?"

"Messiah," Zillah growled.

"Messiah?" Conrad echoed, mouth popping open like a fanged pez dispenser. Worth reached over and tapped his jaw shut.

"That's what I said," Zillah replied, irritated.

"But… but Worth?"

Zillah sighed, "Well it has to be someone. The church is not patient—I need a messiah, now, before these idiots start tearing themselves apart trying to find one. I can't expand my borders with a civil war going on. And you, doctor, you're our first string pick for the new Jesus."

"Uh-huh," Worth replied, eloquently.

"When you think about it," Zillah pointed out, "Fell couldn't have brought me a better candidate. You know the federation inside and out, you've seen every last corner of the new America—you have so much knowledge I'm just killing to get my hands on. And you've got all the criteria. The Lord is my physician, isn't that right, Mr. Vurms?"

John took a step backward.

Worth was remembering the chanting crowd in the stadium, and the booklet on the shelf at the plantation. Should have paid more attention. "Lemme get this straight," he said, holding up one finger. "Y'all told Fell ya needed some dumb bugger with a medical degree to play Jesus Puppets with ya, and Fell brought me?"

"Of course," she said. "He told us he knew just the man—a doctor, friends with vampires, easy to buy off… no real ties… You're a mercenary, doctor. I can smell it on you. Religion, country, family? Bullshit. You know. You know how pointless it all is—no real objective point in any of it, just layers and layers of happenstance that grew like cancer and eventually we started calling it acceptable. You're like me, and that's what I'm looking for."

"And that's why a black lady invented a religion that hates black guys," Worth finished, regarding her with a newfound interest. "Ya really just don't give a shit."

"It actually wasn't my idea," she said. "Old mister Smith, I don't think he ever really moved past the sixties. But you make lemonade, don't you? What do I owe black folks? For that matter, what do I owe white folks? They were never going to accept me. It's irrelevant. It's all a coincidence of birth, that I look like one and not the other. All that matters is that I can come and go as I please. And I've made sure that I can." She paused. "Every regime needs enemies. It doesn't matter to me, who the enemy is. I'm pleased with how the rebellion is coming along—you know we'd still be making due with heretics and witches if the general there hadn't fucked up your entry into the territory. I suppose I ought to have thanked him for that. You were supposed to be escorted directly to me so I could make the proposition in some modicum of style."

"Well ya picked the wrong guy," Worth informed her, stepping back. "Cause I ain't interested in any'a that political chess shit yer pedalin'."

Zillah pointed one lazy finger towards Conrad. "Now, he might have something to say about that."

The vampire gave her a bewildered frown. "No, I'm pretty much behind him on this one. Besides the whole evil shadow dictator thing, you're the last person I'd want to deal with on a regular basis, and believe me, I'm familiar with the other options. At this point I'm fairly certain you're a sociopath."

"Really?" Zillah mused, a dangerous tilt to her lip. "Well, this sociopath happens to know that when the soldiers downstairs find their way into this room, which they will, they'll see the general there leaking all over my favorite rug and you two well armed, and they're not going to bother asking questions. They won't worry if a couple bystanders catch a stray bullet or two. They're efficient like that. Maybe Conrad could escape, but he won't leave you, not really, not after last time. Isn't that right, Achenleck? So you're trapped, and as soon as they have you pinned, I'll give the order for every single solder on the street level left standing to open fire until their clips run out and it's just possible that one of them might manage to hit a certain redheaded revolutionary."

"Lotta chances yer taking there," Worth observed, low in his throat.

"Yes," Zillah admitted, "but are they chances you're willing to take?"

"Fuck yeah I am."

"You'll just let me kill your friends, like that, to save your pride."

Worth picked at the bullet hole in his cast. "Sure. You already said I'm a mercenary."

The room was silent. Conrad was looking at him, regarding him with this suspicious sort of scrutiny that said, even after all this time, he was still unsure of whether he should trust Worth. Whether, when it came down to this - when pride or pragmatism was on the line - Worth could be trusted.

Suddenly, Worth really wanted a smoke.

Then Zillah smiled. "Nice try," she said. "Remember, doctor, I know you. I know that you won't leave Achenleck to save your own skin, and I know he won't leave you, and you can bluff me all you like but we've only got maybe five minutes before the boys decide to check in on me and I'd rather you not waste it on empty lies. Your patterns are predictable."

Worth said nothing.

She went on. "What do you care about who wins this fight, really? What's in it for you either way? If you win, Mister Cross will drag you off to some new suicide mission within a week, and you'll have nothing to show for any of this. If you lose, everyone dies. Cross in particular is still alive only because his revolt has been useful, thus far."

Worth still said nothing.

Emboldened by the silence, Zillah stood, folds of black cloth slipping around her hips. "Doctor Worth," she started, a formal lilt in her voice now, "in exchange for your lives, I'm offering you what is effectively Godhood. Is that such a bad deal?"

"Don't do it," Conrad hissed, taking his lack of response for its face value. "You can't trust her any more than you can trust a snake not to bite you."

"Oh, he knows he can trust me. I'll need long term cooperation, which means I'll need long term insurance."

"Don't listen to her," Conrad insisted, gesturing vaguely towards the crazy bitch offering him canonization. "Hanna would kill you."

Zillah examined her nails. "It's this or I kill Hanna," she pointed out. "Besides, the good doctor would do anything to keep you safe. I bet I could ask him to cut off his own leg and he'd do it, for you. That stunt he pulled at the prison? First point of evidence. He and I," she glanced up at the doctor through long lashes, "we both know what he's going to say. He hasn't got a choice, not really. How does it feel to be so highly valued, Achenleck? Above a whole city? Above thousands of people? Three idiots for a state, and two of them are technically dead."

Conrad grit his teeth. "Worth doesn't care about anyone," he informed her. "You and Fell made one hell of a miscalculation. He'd stab his own mother to save face, and he definitely wouldn't pass up a chance to screw you over for me."

"And the prison?" she countered, one brow cocked.

"Buying time for Hanna," Conrad replied, with the slick ease of real honesty. "And his stupid pride wasn't at stake then."

Zillah looked back and forth between them, amusement curling up around her. "Well," she said, "it looks like you'll have to be our tie-breaker, Doctor. What will it be? Your pride, or your charming friends?"

She offered her hand. Doc Worth looked down at it, at the glittering nails and the pink calluses that no one was probably supposed to notice. He did not look at Conrad, because he was trying to pretend like he was alone in this room. It was him. All him. Finally, after all these months of shirking responsibility and ducking under the radar of karma, now it was his turn. The hand waited.

He could feel the weight of his partner's stare.

"No," he said, crossing his arms.

"No?" Zillah repeated, blinking.

"No?" Conrad echoed, startled, as if he hadn't just been arguing for the same thing.

"No," Worth insisted.

The space between the three of them snapped tight. Boots thudded far away—they were out of the stairwell now.

"They'll kill you," she pointed out.

"They can try."

"This is suicide."

"That's what we came here for," Worth shrugged.

Boots closer. The sound of a door slamming shut.

"Well," the lady prophet sighed, at last, dropping back onto her couch, "you've messed it all up now. If only we'd met under the intended circumstances, this would have gone so much more smoothly. Can't I make you reconsider?"

"Not bloody likely."

For a second she looked like she was going to try again, but then she laughed instead and sprawled over the cushions. "You really are a mercenary, doctor. Hardly a blink for your friends' lives. It's a shame I don't know what your price is."

He considered, for the flash of a second, that there was really only one thing he wanted and only one person who could give it him and it sure as shit wasn't Lady Death here.

"I would have made you God on Earth," she mused, wriggling deeper into the antique. "I'm God and the Devil all in one and I have the power. I have more power than you can imagine, you with your idiot stubbornness and your snappy comebacks. I can find someone else. There's always someone else. I've gotten a few small consolation prizes from events as they stand, I suppose, and they'll be useful enough. Yes, I'll make do. Now, say goodbye, won't you?"

Doc Worth opened his mouth to retort, ask her what the hell she'd been smoking and where she kept her stash because it must have been serious shit, when the air in the room cracked open and his eardrums screamed and Zillah's eyes flew open and—

And Conrad's left hand was empty so where was Zillah's revolver?

Slowly, Worth turned on his heel, pistol out. Behind him, John was slumped trembling against the wall with dark steel clenched in pale fingers, blue eyes fixed unblinking on the gasping figure across the room. Worth didn't have to turn around again to know that blood was pouring out of the Prophet's chest and soaking through her tight black dress. Oh, fuck it. He threw himself at the heaviest piece of furniture he could find and pushed it towards the door, blocking the entrance. Unfortunately, that was the exit too. Gunshot might as well have tacked a target to all their foreheads, and the CUT bastards would be at their door in less time than it took to blink.

"The fuck was that?" he demanded, his own voice dull in his sound-shocked ears.

"Beware of the false prophets," the kid murmured, hollow, "who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

Worth glanced back at Conrad, who was stooping down over the dull-eyed figure of the woman who had just offered him a kingdom.

"What?" he demanded, again. Soldiers would bust through the door any minute and they'd find two corpses, a vampire, and one poorly armed shmuck and he couldn't believe what the fuck had just happened.

"Beware of the false prophets," the teenager started to repeat, in the same hollow voice, but Worth cut him off.

"Right, I fuckin' got that part. I mean why the hell'd ya shoot the crazy bitch? She was gonna be my bargainin' chip!"

"I kept flipping to that page," John said, voice quavering. "I kept flipping to that page. And Deuteronomy thirteen. I thought it was a sign but I…"

"Hey," Conrad called out, sharply, "Worth, you're not gonna believe this, but she's got a gun. She was pulling a gun on us. I guess it was in the cushions or something, but she's definitely got it in hand now."

Silver glinted in the folds of her long black dress.

"Didn't trust the guards ter get us after all," Worth mused, glancing towards the door. "Guess I'll take that as a compliment. Oi, John, dickhead. Still with us?"

The kid blinked at nothing. "That prophet and dreamer of dreams will be put to death," he muttered, "because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God…"

"Roit, well." Worth took a step back and looked over his shoulder again. "Looks like we're facin' down the goon squad by ourselves. With the extra gun we might have a shot."

"No," Conrad replied, firm, snapping up from the corpse. "I'm not risking it. If we die here then nobody ever hears any of this, and that's exactly what she wanted."

"Well, you got any bright ideas, Xena?"

Conrad considered it for a moment, as pounding started up in earnest against the far side of the door. Not long before they started trying to shoot through it.

"Window," the vampire suggested, at last. "Second floor, you'll survive. I'll go first."

Doc Worth scowled and holstered his gun. In a way he'd been sort of looking forward to facing down a squad, the two of them with nothing but stolen and borrowed guns and the wall at their backs. But window, yeah, they might even make that. Hanna would be pleased.

Conrad threw the thing open and, with a look of resignation, tore off his shirt and pants. "I'd rather not break a bone in the middle of an escape," he mumbled, tossing the bundle of clothes out into the night. A poof, and then a flutter of red, and he was gone.

Well peachy keen for him, then. Worth would just settle for adding another cast to his collection. Halfway to the window, he turned back to John again for god only knew what reason. The little dickhead had been nothing but trouble and a pain in the ass since Worth had failed to kill him weeks ago, and now he was shattered and slumped against the wall like he fucking deserved and Worth found himself pausing.

"Window," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "Don't wanna get caught with the body, do ya?"

The kid just looked at him.

After a minute, Worth shrugged and carried on, throwing a leg over the window sill. Gonna be tricky. If he lowered himself by his good arm, the fall would go easier on him.

"Doc?" John whispered, so low that it slipped through the sounds of shoulders slamming against doors. "Was she lying?"

Worth tapped long fingers against the wooden frame around him. "No," he replied, "don't figure she was."

John took a deep breath, shaky, and that same thing that Worth had seen when they first met—that same flash of familiar blue and thin white lips, the thing that had made him pause in the living room of the Bed and Breakfast and order him to come along with them, wherever the hell they were going to go—it flickered in his face again. And maybe it could have been different, if events had been different.

"I'll tell them," John said. "What she did. What she said. I'll tell them you shot her."

"Don't be thick, kid. They won't believe a word of it."

John looked at him, snotty and tear-stained and pale, and that same familiar thing hardened the premature lines in his face and he stood up straighter, and for a second Worth actually believed that he might have a chance. He'd seen crazier things pulled off by people with that same expression.

The doctor sighed. "This is her room, yeah? Go dig through her dresser, crazy bitch like that probably keeps every letter she ever wrote. Nixon did. Braggin' types usually do."

And then he jumped out of the window.

He was already bent for a sort of shock-absorbing roll when he slammed into a chest and a pair of arms and the momentum of his fall swung sideways and oof. He squinted up at a pair of pained looking eyes, which was all relative because technically he had come to a stop parallel to the ground and up was empty air.

"Oh," Conrad wheezed, ever the drama queen, "god fuck you're heavy. And your cast nearly broke my shoulder."

"Yer fault fer standin' under me. Watch where yer walkin'."

"I was trying to catch you," Conrad muttered, pushing ineffectually at the weight on his undead chest.

Worth dug the boney tip of his shoulder into Conrad's sternum. "Whadda I look like, the Princess fuckin' Bride?"

They disentangled and Conrad strung together sentences under his breath like he was making himself a rope to hang Worth with. He caught "ungrateful" and "bastard" and that was about the sum of it really. After pulling his own gun free and handing over the stolen revolver to the guy with the two working hands, the doctor started to make his way back to the front entrance. No running this time round. It didn't matter who sent up an alarm now, if there was anyone left to do it. Plan was well fucked and he was at a loss as to how it could get worse.

"What about John?" Conrad called out, wavering from his position under the window.

"Little fucker decided to stay," Worth called back. "So we can get movin' now. Dunno why ya got such a hardon fer that kid."

There was the sound of feet and a deep scowl in Conrad's voice as he replied, "Okay, I object to that phrasing. On so many levels."

"Ya can bloody well deal with it, yer Highness, 'cause I'm done up with this whole damn night. We're goin' back ter the big house and I'm gonna smoke this here pack'a fags an' try not ter think about all the pussy I just turned down with Jonette the Baptist there."

The air was still, empty of the echoes of firefights or shouts—just the faint whisper of shadows across grass and their heavy boots scraping down concrete walkways.

"I knew you wouldn't say yes," Conrad told him, at last, when the entrance was only a building or two away.

Worth grunted. "That supposed ter be a compliment or an insult?"

There was no reply.

If Worth were the poetic sort, he would have likened walking out from under the high brick arches and into the gunsmoke moonlight to the Grim Reaper slipping along a field and finding that the wheat of his choice had already been bent by some bounding, shadowy trickster just under the reach of his scythe's swing. Luckily, he wasn't that sort.

Soldiers lay dazed and haphazardly strewn across the concrete—one with his head lolling just over the edge of the decorative fountain—efficiently wrapped up in cuts of rope and in a few cases official-looking handcuffs. He bent over one of them and noticed a post-it note tacked to his forehead, reading 'notice how we didn't kill you?'

Worth snorted.

The city was quiet. Nameless McGreenguy and a few of the reserves had Hanna propped up against the back window of a truck, where he was shivering and generally looking like death warmed over. The zombie caught his eye and nodded.

"I don't think he's likely to try this again," the dead bloke remarked, running one slow green hand over Hanna's frizzing hairline. "He always has to learn the hard way, doesn't he?"

Conrad nudged the doctor, hard, and gave him a look that said you explain now. Worth raised his eyebrows in a way intended to reply if you're so anxious about it, you do it.

Sigh. "Uh, Androcles," Conrad started, selecting a name at random from the last twenty four hours. "We have… I think it's really bad news. Someone else got the chancellor first. It… it doesn't look much like we wanted it to."

"Who?"

"Long story," Worth cut in, "tell ya later. Fer now, suffice ter say we got a man on the inside."

The zombie nodded slightly and climbed out of the truck bed, landing lightly with a crackle of broken glass. "Can your man be trusted?"

The doctor and the vampire shared a glance.

"Some people change," Conrad muttered.

"Some people don't," Worth replied, jumping up into the truck bed. That was his patient up there after all. "But if he don't, believe me, I'll finish what I goddamn started. Now get the flares, we gotta do some mass improv."

-A-

Twenty minutes later, every surviving member of the invasion was parked on the slope of the hill leading up to the looming brick façade of the emptied castleversity. From the moment the first truck rolled up, Worth had been stalking through the arrivals, cinching down bandages and once or twice doling out the painkillers they'd been hoarding for just such a clusterfuck. Hanna was the only person Worth had ever heard of who could mount an armed attack on an occupied city and get off with ten casualties. Immediate casualties anyways. Plenty of injuries in varying degrees of severe.

Suddenly he was relieved to know that Hanna was effectively bedridden for the night. The last time there had been this many injuries in a half-mile radius, the little twat had put himself in a coma trying to fix everything short of a paper cut and Worth didn't have the patience to find out if he'd learned his lesson tonight.

Rule of thumb for this go round: if they're not loaded up in somebody's car, they probably don't have anything worth his time. He carried on with that in mind and generally tried to avoid going back up to the front of the gathering for as long as possible. It was getting nerve-gratingly sappy up there.

At the end of recounting the last hour, Hanna had given Conrad this momentary dark blue look that said he was glad to know the artist hadn't had to kill anyone in cold blood today. It zinged uncomfortably between them, like a string accidentally pulled on a for show only guitar, and then it was gone. That was when Worth had given up and grabbed his bag out of the truck and disappeared into the anonymity of the bloody, sighing crowd.

Someone bumped his shoulder as he was stitching up a cut from what had, if he understood the gibbering correctly, actually been a broken bottle.

"Oi, watch where th' fuck yer going!"

The pair of peeling converses paused with one foot not quite on the ground, and the whole person wavered dangerously. "I—Oh, I'm sorry, Doc. I didn't meant to—I'm in a hurry, I didn't—"

The doctor glared up at him. "Hurry fer what? Ya got the entire city stoned for a good two hours."

The guy shuffled awkwardly like he really had to piss. "We're supposed to, ggh, get the civilians out here for Hanna. I don't know why."

"Oh, fer chrissakes…"

When he got back up to the front, Hanna was sitting with his legs swung over the tailgate and had a buzzing walkie-talkie in his hands. He didn't look like he was about to pass out, so the rune sickness must have been wearing off. Mixed blessing.

"So what's th' plan, oh useless sack'a walkin' garbage?"

Hanna looked hurt. "Wow, missed you too, Doc. Don't mind me here trying to be helpful."

"Nah," Worth said, pointing one skinny finger at the kid. "You ain't been a sight near helpful. Compared ta you tonight, Count Fagula here was goddamn Julius Caesar."

The radio blasted static, and then the redhead looked up with this half smile that the doc was at a loss to explain. "Well," Hanna replied, "I guess it's time for me to contribute something new, huh?"

The road filled up. Hunched, fidgeting people settled into the gaps between cars, dark smudges under their eyes from hard work and lack of sleep, and they seemed unsure of what to do with the rebels scattered around them—whether they should say anything, whether they should offer to help the injured ones, whether they should drop to the ground and take refuge in a fetal position until the whole thing blew over. A few bit their nails. A few stared at the bound soldiers piled on the ground behind Hanna.

A few of the soldiers were coming to.

When the road was fairly packed with bodies, Hanna stood up on the bed of their truck with a slight wobble and said something into the walkie-talkie. A voice crackled back to him, and he smiled. The moon was low, over the tips of the trees, and a day past full, and Worth could almost see the electric blue in his eyes.

"Good, uh, morning, ladies and gentlemen of Downtown Tallahassee!" he called out, addressing the wide-eyed crowd. "I have good news and bad news for you! The good news is that we've completely pwned the CUT army. The bad news is that somebody killed the Chancellor earlier tonight, so there doesn't seem to be anybody to negotiate with."

Worth expected a ripple of hushed whispers—he'd seen Hanna's speeches before, and they always brought whispers like waves breaking over the sand and rushing out again—but instead there was silence. Complete silence. Worth could only see the front row of faces so it was hard to tell what kind of silence.

"So," Hanna went on, "since there's no one to negotiate with in the government, we'll just have to talk to the people, right? After all, a government derives its power from the consent of the governed, doesn't it? So here it is, folks. The Chancellor is dead. The Prophet is dead. Yes, yes, we're not supposed to know who the prophet is, but in our defense she told us who she was so it's not cheating. And as soon as we leave here, we're going to track down as many members of the council as we can find and offer them a choice: surrender or death. We're giving every member of the CUT the same choice. Surrender or die. Death, well, that speaks for itself. Surrender is a better option. We're gonna accept surrender on two conditions."

Hanna held up two fingers, white in the moonlight.

"One. Agreement to release absolutely everyone from their rule—all debts absolved, all hierarchy dissolved. Two. Every single member of the CUT, everyone who stays a member, will retreat physically to the only city they actually have a right to and stay there. That would be Perry. They can take their personal belongings, but they have to leave within the week. They have no rights to the crops planted in this city, or any other forcibly occupied city. Those belong to the people who planted them. These are the choices! Surrender or die! We're not going to do anything to them if they surrender, we promise. We're not here for revenge or subjugation or making big examples. We just want them out. For good. One way or another, this city is going to be free, and then you can decide amongst yourselves what kind of government you want. Does everyone understand me?"

There was no reply, but it was pretty clear that they did. Hanna turned around, leaned over the side of the truck bed and looked at the one or two drowsy captives.

"I hope you guys caught that too! Alright, citizens, I'm taking questions now. Raise your hands please! Don't be shy, c'mon, presentation's over!"

Worth rolled his eyes. For a guy who couldn't say two sentences to a pretty girl without accidentally implying she was a fat whore, Hanna had an unnervingly confident stage presence.

"Alright, question! You, near the front!"

Awkwardly, a woman pushed her way up to the edge of the crowd and sort of half waved. "Hi, er, hi. Did you, uh, say that you were going to find the council members?"

"Yep!"

"How are you… going to do that?"

Hanna grinned. "Oh, don't worry about that. We have a little help on this front."

"But how?"

Now the murmuring started, people looking askance up at the figure perched on the back of a truck. Hanna grinned, a little sharp, twirling the walkie-talkie by its string.

"Oh… you know. Those guys have a lot of innocent blood on their hands," Hanna remarked. "Lucky for us, I happen to have a friend with a nose for that sort of thing."

-A-

The first four council members had gone down much easier.

This one had decided that having what appeared to be a skinny, redheaded eighteen-year old point a gun at him and tell him to abandon his position of power or else at two o'clock in the morning was the final straw in what had already been a terrible day.

Worth had never seen anyone that old move that fast.

At the moment, Conrad was threatening the man and Hanna was trying to talk to him like a trainer with a spooked horse and the Zombie was looking on with actual visible rage and shit, that was something else. The councilman tightened his arm around Hanna's skinny neck.

"I will not be bullied by a bunch of freaks like you! I did not come all this way from managing a fucking logging business to running fourteen city states by letting sniveling punks like you push me around!"

They'd left a good chunk of their backup with the first four councilmen, to keep an eye on things. They'd forgotten to leave allies outside the room. They'd gotten careless. They'd gotten tired. They'd gotten overconfident.

They'd gotten a guy with protection and no sense of guilt, actually.

The first councilman had screamed when he saw Al Basti. He was still screaming when she locked her copper lips on his and sank nails into the skin over his heart and didn't stop screaming until she pulled away and left him collapsed on the floor with his mouth still open. There was a faint wheezing noise like he was still screaming but someone had pressed the mute button on his voice box. Worth did not look him in the eye, because the beginning of an aborted glance had already told him what he was going to see there, and he wasn't interested.

Five minutes later, Hanna had explained to the shaking heap that he was deposed and had better get his affairs in order. There had been no protest. Worth had nicked a few things off the counters while Hanna was at it. Al Basti had smiled at him as he went, iron teeth glinting in the lamplight.

"It is good that I feed on blood crimes," she had told him, "or you would be in great danger."

Worth snorted. "Ya try any of that mindfuck mumbo jumbo on me an' I'll show ya just how much I don' mind hittin' women."

The creature had tapped the tabletop with rust-tinted nails. "You are protected," she noted, "this is good too, else I might take that as a challenge."

Now, in the room of the fifth councilman, Al Basti was huddled in a corner and smoking faintly. A gold chain shimmered just under the shadow of the man's robe, and now Worth had a pretty damn good idea what was on the end of it.

The room rattled with the cacophony of Conrad's threats and Hanna's nervous pleading and the councilman's tirade and the air was getting thicker and thicker with cannoning energy and pretty soon someone was going to pop and blow a gasket. Considering there was a glock pressed to Hanna's head, it was clear who had the most to lose in this situation.

"Awright!" Worth yelled, kicking over a table with an expensive looking lamp in the hopes of making enough noise to distract the idiots. "Look over here, buddy. Yeah, you. Ya know a lady named Zillah White? Crazy eyes, god complex?"

After a suspicious pause, the councilman nodded.

"Right. Well. She killed Preston and I killed her. So whoever ya think is comin' ter save ya, it ain't gonna happen. Got it?"

"Then I'll take this bastard down with me!"

Worth cocked a brow. "Ya could do that, yeah. But the second you pull that trigger I'll have yer brains across the back wall, and ya won't have much time ter be smug about it. Let the kid go, n' I'll restrain myself."

"I'll shoot you too!"

"If you do that," the zombie interjected, in a voice like gunmetal, "you'll find yourself with far worse than a hole in your brain. And you cannot killme too."

The councilman took a step back, dragging Hanna with him, scared for the first time in the entire venture. Maybe he'd seen one too many zombie movies in the old days.

"Feel like surrenderin' now?"

The man wavered, his gun lowering slightly. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he demanded, although the gun sunk another couple inches.

"Me?" Worth answered, "I'm Jesus fuckin' Christ."

The councilman started to gesture with his armed hand, a pointed motion that would have ended with sights temporarily reset on the doctor's head—which he knew because he'd seen a hundred times before on a hundred other idiots who'd watched too many gangster movies and thought gesturing with a gun was a good way to intimidate people. He never got to finish the movement.

He never got to finish whatever he was saying, either, because a bullet blew through his open mouth and straight through the other side of his medulla.

Worth put away his pistol and ignored the rainbow of stares he was getting from the rest of the room. Particularly Hanna's. It had been a good shot, and that was all he cared about.

"Surrender or die, douchebag," he muttered, and headed for the door.

They had places to go before sunrise, and his hands were starting to shake.

-A-

When the sun came up, it came up on a city full of whispers, on streets milling and directionless in the early purplish light. It came up on the smell of coming rain that held thick in the lungs. Doc Worth was only vaguely aware of this, because he was hanging in the half-sleeping place that the equally stubborn and dead-tired frequent. In the front seat, green hands rested lightly on the steering wheel. Outside, a blur of faces broke apart for them.

Three inches from his hip, Conrad lay curled under a thin black sheet. The milling whispering world outside the cabin was unreal, like meaningless snipits of television caught in the wake of channel surfing. The black sheet was real.

Sleep did not win; Doc Worth just allowed himself to throw one fight.

TBC

The central territory of the Confederacy of Northern Florida

Twelve months after the Treaty

The sun rose over the dead man's shoulder. He stood at the side of a bizarrely shaped building—just past the curving brick front, and not as far back as the square columns that doubled in size as they reached the bottom of the hill like a set of mute panpipes. He stood, waiting for his partner to finish up a signature or something, alone on the street, eyes glowing the same faint shade of orange as the sky behind him.

Not really alone, though, not if you counted Worth. Worth sometimes forgot to count himself.

Conrad had retreated to the hotel, about ten minutes ago, when he realized that they probably wouldn't be leaving until after the sun was dangerously high and he had better break it off on the safe end of things. Business was pretty much done anyways, Worth had gathered, from the slope of the vampire's shoulders and the fact that he'd actually greeted Worth on his way out.

Good, if it meant they could get out of here. He'd had enough of lurking in streets while people battled paper wars behind closed doors. He had considered heading back himself a couple times, as the minutes dragged by, but he'd waited this long already.

"Oi," Worth called across, "Dead guy! What the hell's takin' Hanna so long?"

The dead man shrugged.

"What was he doin' when ya left?"

Jefferson, which had been the zombie's name for most of the night, shrugged again. "I believe he was attempting to explain the nuances of the third section of the Treaty to someone."

Worth grunted, mostly for his own sake. He had about as much idea what that meant as he had interest in finding out. Which was none.

Eventually, Hanna came jogging out with the last local dumbass trailing after him like a whipped math student, and god only knew where he got the energy to jog.

"Hey, doc! I didn't think you'd still be here!"

Worth stuffed his free hand in his pocket, indulging in a flash of loathing for the sling holding his other arm immobile. Just one more week, and he could rip it all off. "Wanted ter talk to ya."

"About what?" Hanna asked, idly, shoving papers into the outside pocket of his briefcase. Would have looked professional if it wasn't for the holographic autobots sticker the kid had slapped in a skewed sort of way over the front flap of it. Worth caught a flash of war crimes scribbled at the top of the last one, and he wondered how many councilmen they'd gotten through today. The trials were in less than a week, which he only knew because Hanna had roped him into playing bailiff.

Apparently, people around here had a healthy respect for his itchy trigger finger.

"About you wanderin 'round without so much as a goddamn bodyguard, thass what," Worth replied, stifling the urge to cross his arms. "If Thomas fuckin' Jefferson here has ta play Jackie Kennedy at yer funeral, we're all gonna be sorry. He'll look a roit nightmare in a dress."

"The sixties are not my preferred decade," the zombie admitted.

Hanna gave him a look. "Dude, don't encourage him. Look, Worth, I know you think there's some insidious unseen force lurking behind every tree, and that's what makes you really great with the shooting and the sneaking and all, but seriously. Calm down. Nobody's going to assassinate me. People around here really like us, and this city is like the safest place in north Florida right now."

Worth pointed a skinny finger at Hanna's ridiculously red head. "Thass what Lincoln said 'fore they blew his brains all over the balcony, innit? You just wait. Somebody's gonna come gunnin' fer ya, an' I ain't gonna have the chance ter say 'I told ya so' an' I bloody well won't stand fer that."

"Who wants me dead that badly?" Hanna replied, worn, setting off for the temporary home base. "Nobody's gonna go to the trouble of hiring ninjas or whatever just to kill me, I mean, that's a lot of trouble for some lousy vengeance. That would be spending some pointless effort, man."

Worth narrowed his eyes. "Yer givin' the world too much credit," he informed the younger man. "Some people, they just wanna see ya bleed. An' they don't need much reason ter do it. If killin' a king an' shootin' a pope ain't good enough reason ter want somebody dead, wouldn't be no such thing as war."

"Technically," the zombie offered, "it was John who shot Ms. White."

"An' the crazy bitch shot Preston, yeah, I know. Trust me, folks don' give a shit abou' technicalities."

They walked in silence, boots scuffing on cracked pavement and white flowers growing in spindly stubborn patches over every inch of broken ground. No matter how many he kicked, Worth always found more of them twisting up from the sooty black road.

"Alright," Hanna said, at last. "I'm not doing much magic these days. Just a lot of normal kinda scribbling and by a lot I mean I think I'm developing carpal tunnel syndrome or something and you'd think somebody in this city would have a typewriter in their attic but no, apparently not. Nu-uh. Anyways, what with all the easy work, I think I can spare the energy to put up a bullet shield in the mornings. If it means that much to you."

"Don't mean shit ta me," Worth retorted, outpacing his companions by a few long strides. "'S all yer business if ya wanna add yerself to the list'a martyrs this town's churnin' out."

"Right," Hanna replied, a hint of indulgence in his tone that Worth staunchly ignored. "That's nice. Have you seen John lately?"

Worth snorted. "Whadda I want ter do with the little dickwad?"

"He keeps asking about you."

"Good fer him."

"He keeps asking if you've turned away from the road of sin," Hanna added, as they approached the building currently functioning as a home. For convenience's sake, they'd ended up staying in the place that Worth had been garrisoned in weeks before.

"Well I ain't, so he kin shut up already."

"And," the magician pressed on, "for some reason he keeps mentioning Conrad in conjunction."

Oh, that little fucking rat.

"You know," Hanna remarked, as they trudged up the stone steps to the building, "I think he's grateful in his own kinda warped way. You gotta admit, he put a lot of effort into convincing people that Connie… what was it… resisted the powers of Satan. Probably good for them to see a vampire acting in humanity's best interest. Who knows, it might give them some, I dunno, perspective I guess."

Worth made a noncommittal noise. He'd believe it when he saw it.

They were on the second floor, and Worth had taken over the same room he'd had last time for really no reason at all. There was still a copper nameplate lodged in the wall beside the door, and he had to admit sometimes he wondered about who the hell Mary-English Thomas had been, and why she'd felt the necessity to have so many motherfucking decorpitated animal heads mounted around her office. Worth was currently using the deer as a coat rack.

The light was out in the glass-walled conference room on the inner side of the corridor, so Worth knocked around on his way to bed in the hopes of rousing Sleeping Beauty while the morning was still young enough for that sort of thing.

Conrad threw open the door just as the older man was getting ready to take off his boots and slam them against the wall in the pretense of "cleaning" them. The vampire was mussed to hell and back and his boxers were slipping slightly around his uncocked hip.

"Can a guy get ten minutes of peace around here?" he demanded, glaring through slightly crooked glasses.

"Sure don't look like it, Buttercup."

"You know I'm trying to sleep, asshole."

"Eh," Worth replied, eloquently. "Sleep when yer dead."

"I am dead," Conrad shot back, teeth gritted and dripping impatience.

"Good ter see yer comin' to terms with that." Worth spared a glance downward. "Nice undies," he added. "Th' lil bats are kinda redundant though, doncha think?"

Conrad turned—well, not red, but he made the twisted, pained sort of face that usually associates itself with turning deep angry red. He brushed his hands over the cut of fabric.

"Look, I don't make fun of your underwear, do I? You walk around in it often enough."

"That's different, now. I'm doin' a favor for ya."

"You wandering around in ratty boxers is not doing anyone favors, least of all me."

"Aw, don' be like that. I seen ya ogglin' the goods. Thought ya were makin' a breakthrough, I did."

Conrad clutched at the curved bridge of his nose, his weight shifting perceptibly onto the doorway. "Look, did you want something?"

Worth examined his torn and gritty nails. "Hanna says we're goin' down ta some river this afternoon, so yer gonna wake up all on yer lonesome."

"And you couldn't have left me a note or something?"

Down the hall, one of the doctors who had stayed on after the collapse of the CUT made the mistake of pushing his door slightly too far open, and a faint creak tumbled down the hallway. Worth grinned.

"Coulda," he admitted, "but then I wouldn'ta got ter see those oh-so-fashionable underpanties of yers. By the way, definite improvement over the lacey ones. Hanna din' wanna be the one ter tell ya this, but they came off kinda slutty."

Conrad gave him a long, hard stare, and said, "Remind me to rip you a new one when you get back. It's too early for this."

And then the door slammed shut before Worth could make a snide comment about how that would be convenient for him, wouldn't it. The frosted glass rattled. Worth stared at the door for a moment and finally turned on his heel to stalk back off to his bedroom.

"Cockblocker," he muttered, slamming his own door behind him.

-A-

Worth dreamed.

He dreamed the same dream as the night before, and the night before that, and every night since the night of the revolt and the chancellor's assassination.

He dreamed that he was back underneath the sky-scraping branches of the world tree, digging through the fleshy layers of his arm to reach the bone so he could squeeze the broken ends together and force them to heal.

He dreamed that Lamont was sitting across from him, scratching at the whorls of bark underneath them.

And we're back yet again, are we?

Fuck off. I'm workin' here.

Lamont snorted and crossed his thick arms over his knees. Luce, you know it takes time to heal things. You can't just make it happen cause you want it to.

Th' fuck would you know 'bout it.

...I bet you'd be surprised.

Worth ignored him and reached in further, past the blood and skin and pain and muscle and found the seam in the bone, clutched at it, and the universe split down the middle in agony like light so white it could bleach your soul to nothing. It ripped apart the roots and leaves and the stars hanging on their strings from the branches of the world tree, and then there was nothing but Worth and the dust and the white.

Little gray smudges like tiny ashes of burnt newspaper floated around him.

I knew you wouldn't say yes.

And that was Conrad's voice, and Worth whirled to face him with mute dread racing along his veins.

I knew you wouldn't.

Ya told me not to, Doc Worth replied, low and thin like his throat was closing around the words and twisting into knots. He knew, no clarification needed. He knew what he was being accused of.

Hanna would have said yes. He would have done it to save me.

It wouldn'ta saved ya! They'da just thrown ya in a cell an' let ya rot, an' what kinda life is that?

Hanna wouldn't have risked it.

And the look on Conrad's face seared through him and the rest of the words dried up in his throat. Flickers of gray curled past his nose.

I know, Worth replied, at last.

A weight settled on Worth's shoulder, the heavy disk of a palm and the sharp dig of fingertips, and Lamont was there, again, standing behind him. The gray dust was beginning to settle around their feet, spreading out from the three of them, building pits and ridges in a twisting mass.

It wouldn't kill you to talk to him about it, if you're so worried, Lamont pointed out. Dust settled, Worth glared. Or, uh, maybe it would.

Keep yer ghostly nose outta my business, Toucey. Fuck, can't even dream in peace without you yappin' in my ear.

His friend snorted, gave him a half-hearted push. Maybe if you'd be reasonable for once, I wouldn't have so much to complain about. I swear, it's like watching the most infuriating soap opera ever written, broadcasting nonstop twentyfour-seven.

Confusion radiated out from Worth's feet, cracking the silvery masses into a spider web of fractures. What did that...

…wot?

And then Doc Worth woke.

Alone, in his room on the second floor, in his awkward pile of blankets, he dug his knuckles into his eye socket as hard as he could without busting something. Well that dream had ended differently. He looked up. Between the gaps in the blackout curtains, glimmers of stormy gray tattooed themselves into his retina.

Jesus Christ. He was going to have to ask Hanna for dreamless-sleeping runes again, wasn't he?

-A-

The car sat there, black and somehow slick despite the coating of pollen and dirt, a predator in a mud disguise. Worth whistled. Had to hand it to the kid, he had a knack for finding nice wheels on a second's notice. Late afternoon sunlight glinted yellow off the curved windows, bright and hot and thin.

Hanna opened the passenger door. "I told Montgomery we'd have this baby back before midnight, so I guess we can't exactly go sightseeing on the way. It's not too far. Hour or two." He yawned, wide enough that you could hear the crack in his jaw.

"How late did ya stay up?" Worth asked, suspicious. He slid into the backseat without argument, because he'd learned not to put Hanna too far away from his undead hubby during car rides or risk having an eardrum blown out.

"Uhh, maybe… twelvish?"

"Goddamn it kid, y'need more'n four hours an' I don' care who ya hafta shaft to get it. Have 'em take a number. Have 'em leave a number with yer bloody secretary."

"Are you volunteering for the position, Doctor?" the zombie inquired, from the driver's seat. Worth suddenly remembered to buckle himself in.

"Nah, but I hear there's a little lady round here who ain't good fer much else."

"Look," Hanna offered, in a sleepy sort of way, "I couldn't just put them off. I was super lucky just to get to talk with them at all."

"Uhuh. Deadguy, keep an eye out fer gardenin' tools, will ya? I still ain't big on yer depth perception skills." Worth turned his attention back to Hanna. "What's such a big motherfuckin' deal y'can't just wait a couple hours?"

"Ambassadors," the magician replied, looking back over his shoulder. The smile was worn but bright. "I've got a couple Fey from the haven in Tate's Hell who don't mind breaking the cultural taboo on discussing their society—progressive ones, yanno, can't be more than a hundred years old. We're gonna do a seminar type thingy. So, yeah, also? We gotta get back up to Tallahassee tonight so I can make sure nobody says anything that could ruin the talks or start a blood feud or anything like that because whoa have I been there."

Worth crossed his arms and settled in, as the streets started to roll by. "If yer the only thing standin' between humanity and a nuclear level'a culture shock, I'm puttin' my money in bunkers and barbed wire."

Hanna protested.

The drive from there slipped by in a hazy stretch of Queen and Hanna drifting in and out with a mumbled "are we there yet" every time he came to. The bur of trees outside the car grew thicker and the roads ran to muddy red dirt and white lime and the sun settled orange and liquid in the empty placed above the road behind them.

The Wassisa River was nothing interesting. The water was colder than Conrad's feet and clearer than one of Hanna's lies, but there was no pillar of fire or snot-nosed baby in the bulrushes waiting for them. Hanna stepped out of the car at the muddy yellow shore with a distinct look of disappointment. He tapped the top of the car door and muttered to himself about omens.

"I know it was probably just an excuse," he said, after a while of contemplating the scenery, "but I can't shake the feeling that he ought to have just told us Tallahassee and been done with it. Why some random river?"

The doctor in the back seat rolled his eyes and extricated himself from the car—a bit tricky, sports car were not really built for a man of his size—and muttered, "Not everythin's got a big ta-do of symbolism behind it, yanno."

There was a crude sort of diving platform a ways away, at the other end of the landing, and Worth stalked over there and made himself a seat underneath it and yelled over at Hanna that he was definitely not going to be dragged off into exploring the bloody river of bloody prophesy this evening and if somebody needed him for something relevant he'd be right here under this big concrete whatever-it-was and they could damn well come to him. And that was that.

The sun drifted lower, and the world turned dark at the edges. A fish jumped, motherfucking fish, jumping around when he hadn't had anything to eat for at least a day. He kept missing the dining hall hours, whenever they'd been moved to, because nobody wanted to stick around and explain it to him. Trying to get somebody in that city to look you in the eye was like trying to get two south poles to stick together.

A lot of the newly-freed ones still wouldn't talk to anyone.

"Never thought I'd miss therapists," he muttered, shredding a blade of grass for lack of anything useful to do with his hands. Should have brought his gun-cleaning cloth.

"I doubt that most therapists were trained for the sort of work you're contemplating."

Worth already had his pistol out and cocked and aimed in a swish and flick of movement before it occurred to him that he knew that voice, and he knew the sleazy mug now peering vaguely downward at him from the cypress trunk a few feet away.

"Fell," he growled, dangerously aware of the slightest pulse of blood in his trigger finger. "Oughta blow yer goddamn head off right now."

"It's so good to see you too," the giant replied, brows sliding up. "I can see you're doing well. Victory appears to make you even more cantankerous than defeat. Speaking of victory, how did that escape route work for you, by the by?"

Worth blinked. "Escape route? Th'fuck 're you talkin' about?"

"In the prison," Fell answered, with the nerve to look disappointed. "You still have my key? I'd like it back, actually, if it's all the same to you."

Key? What… huh. The minute weight of the little silver key buzzed freezing cold in Worth's pocket, and he hadn't realized he still had it along after all this time. Never did get down with cleaning out his pockets.

"Y'gotta be kidding me. Tell me ya ain't serious."

"What's so troubling about that? I gave you my key, and I'd like it back now."

Worth regarded his unpleasant company over the silver tip of his handgun. The yellow eyes were bright and half-amused, and the sharp shoulders padded in pinstriped Armani hung loose, and although Worth would feel safer trusting one of the alligators he could see floating on the other side of the river, his instincts told him that the danger here was not of an immediate sort. He did not lower his gun.

"So what, I'm just s'posed ter believe it was all some kinda double agent ploy and ya did us a big ol' favor outta the goodness of yer slimy li'l heart?"

"I set up that ceremony," the giant pointed out, lips quirking upward, "the same hour that the Chancellor's men took Hanna into custody. Hundreds of soldiers deployed on a fool's errand to round up seventy thousand people, out riding through the city for nine hours instead of guarding a prison, or tracking down an escapee, or following you after you beat your warden to unconsciousness and made a break for the exit. A bit convenient, you have to admit."

"Uhuh."

"And," the snaky bastard added, "I brought you here, the four of you, out of all the people left alive on the continent who wouldn't be able to topple a dictatorial theocracy. I'm either on your side or the most astounding imbecile in the history of empires."

"Or yer a real pro at spinning a story."

"Maybe. The evidence is on my side, though."

Worth's aim waivered a fraction. "You musta had one helluva good reason fer playin' turncoat speed chess with Zillah. One helluva good reason."

"My loyalty is to the most powerful," Fell shrugged, leaning back against his twisted cypress. "The which Preston and Zillah certainly were not."

Alright, sitting on the ground was definitely not working for this impromptu powerplay tug-o-war. Worth stood, carefully, holding his aim the entire time. "Who is, then?"

A knowing, skin-itching grin. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Besides, which, it's irrelevant—an ally is an ally, regardless of trivial details."

"Okay," Worth said, stepping closer, "so ya were on our side this time. Handy. But what abou' next time, 'r the time after that? How d'I know one'a these days we ain't gonna meet up on opposite sides'a the field, wavin' pistols at each other?"

"I don't have a pistol," the giant pointed out, one half of his mouth curling upward in the slightest way. "Do you imagine that your loyalties will ever come into conflict with mine?"

"Hell, I dunno," Worth replied. In one smooth motion, he had the sights lined up over Fell's cold-blooded heart. "But I ain't takin' the chance."

Crack.

The force of the shot pushed Fell backwards, just a step, and a pockmark appeared in the fabric over the right side of his chest. There was stillness for the pulse of a second, and then the giant raised one elegant brow. He ran a hand over the rip in his jacket, and when it pulled away the suit was as spotless as the day it left the factory.

"I'll let that one slide," he said, "since I like you."

He fingered the unripped fabric, while Worth's brain whirled with calculations. He lowered the gun.

"You know," Fell mused, "the management is very fond of Hanna. But myself, I think you would have made quite the Messiah, in your own way. It's almost a shame you said no."

"Woulda been a shit messiah," Worth snapped, deeply irritated. Maybe if he aimed for the head…

"You give yourself too little credit, if you ask me," the yellow-eyed man remarked, ignoring the fact that no one actually had asked him. "Although, if we're going to be honest, Achenleck's lack of faith in you is a poor recommendation. All that business about your pride? It's a shame you've never give him reason to think otherwise."

Worth dug in his pocket for the key and hurled it at Fell's head. "Christ, take the damn key and leave me alone. I got no patience fer this shit."

Fell caught the glint of sliver with a wrist-flick so delicate it reminded Worth of a butterfly, or something equally absurd. A ray of dark gold fell over the ground between them, like a fine layer of dust, and some part of Worth's mind was drifting back to where he'd come from, to the frosted glass doors inside the Pennington building, and the fistfight that was waiting for him, if he was lucky, although they had neighbors and it was always harder to coax those out when strangers were nearby. Public displays of anger had a rareness that made them well worth the trouble.

"My money's on six months," Fell said, randomly, watching with eyes too sharp and too focused. "A …friend of mine has his money on a year, so try to speed it up, will you?"

Worth scowled. "If I had the slightest fuckin' clue what that meant, promise ya I'd take as goddamn long as I could manage."

A brow went up, and the shadows shifted again, and the unsettling sense that he was missing something crept up around Worth's ankles.

"I'll tell Bondye you said so," the darker man replied at last, lips slipping upward in a slick grin. "I hope this doesn't mean I've accidentally put the safety of my bet in Achenleck's hands. Go- Sa- something knows that's as good as forfeiting right now."

And then, whatever the hell sort of infuriating thing he was, he flipped open a pair of sunglasses, slid them over his nose, and was gone like a passing breeze.

END