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Caz couldn’t remember how long they’ve been walking, weaving through alleyways, sneaking through front doors and quietly leaving out the back to avoid being spotted in the streets.
He could still hear the scavengers’ vehicle, maybe two vehicles, it was hard to tell. Occasionally, they’d drive down the street they were on, and he’d have to drag Billy into hiding.
By now, Caz has concluded that Billy was feeling hazy from the pain in his shoulder, rather than suffering a concussion. He was able to walk in a straight line, but he struggled to walk with any sort of speed without being pulled along. He didn’t have any obvious injuries to his head, but he rarely stopped holding his shoulder, as though he were trying to keep in attached to his body.
At some point, Caz paused behind a dumpster, overflowing with trash and smelling like something rotten was stuck inside, and pulled a bottle of pills from his pack.
“Wha… what are you doing?” Billy muttered, thankfully having the mind to stay quiet as Caz fished for a capsule through the cotton stuffed inside the bottle.
Instead of answering right away, Caz grabbed Billy’s hand from his shoulder and dropped the pill onto his palm. He must be in more pain than he’d thought, with the way the small bit of jostling made him tense up like he’d touched a live wire. Caz refused to feel guilt. “Take it.”
Billy opened and closed his mouth a couple times, while Caz sat against the dumpster and propped his boot on his knee. He set to work pulling a rusted nail from his sole, glad that it hadn’t punctured his foot. Still, it’d been annoying him for at least a block and if he had to take another step with it, he’d pull his hair out.
“What is it, exactly?”
“It’s for the pain,” Caz looked up briefly to nod at the man’s bad shoulder. He couldn’t see the scars with his jacket covering them, but he could imagine how inflamed they were. Still, he didn’t feel a lick of sympathy. The bastard had probably brought it upon himself. He still hadn’t told him how it happened, how he got bitten. “You’re slowing us down. Just take it already.”
Caz could see Billy gawking down at him, before he finally popped the capsule in his mouth and dry-swallowed, wincing at the taste. The nail came out easy enough (and man was Caz lucky that it hadn’t pierced his foot) and soon they were back on their way to Divers Crossing bridge. He didn’t know how far away it was, but he knew it was in this general direction.
It’s been at least an hour or two since they got away from the scavs. Through the buildings towering above them, he could see a pillar of smoke rising into the air. The fire in the truck must’ve spread to the store, maybe even the surrounding area. Hopefully it thinned the scavengers’ numbers, but Caz wasn’t holding his breath.
“How close are we?” Billy mumbled over Caz’s shoulder, moving easier now that his old injury wasn’t dragging him down. “To the bridge?”
“No clue.”
Best case scenario, the scavs hadn’t set up base in the defunct QZ. Unfortunately, it being the best case scenario didn’t make it the most likely scenario.
The sounds of screeching wheels crashing through old benches and bumping curbs suddenly grew much louder as the scavs turned onto a nearby street, and Caz pulled Billy into the closest open door, which happened to be an old cafe. A minute later, the armored truck (was it that heavily outfitted when it was in CADAL’s hands?) passed, none the wiser.
They seemed to be growing more and more desperate to find them, so they must be coming closer to the bridge. Or maybe they were approaching a vulnerable side of their outpost. Either way, they were still getting where they needed to be, at least.
A very familiar click sounded right behind his head, and Caz abruptly remembered that the vehicle down the block wasn’t the only threat to their lives at the moment.
“Uh, Caz?”
Slowly, raising his hands to show that he was unarmed, Caz turned around. The first thing he saw was the darkness inside the barrel of the gun pointing at his head. The second was the man behind it, the left half his face scarred to hell, his eye covered by an orange eyepatch. He was silent, but the man’s one eye got the mistrust across just fine.
And off to the side, Billy was being held at gunpoint by another man, younger than the first but no less of a threat. Billy looked at Caz with a terrified expression.
The first man shifted, stepping back a little as his hands flexed around the pistol.
“Look,” Caz decided to go the reasoning route, in hopes that he’d get a chance to turn the tables if he lowered their defenses enough. As though he had any other choice. “We’re just passing through. We don’t want any trouble.”
To his surprise, the man (now dubbed Eyepatch) seemed to lighten up just a smidge, lowering the pistol a bit. The younger man read Eyepatch’s body language and also relaxed some.
“You’re not scavs?” Eyepatch asked, eye flickering between Caz and Billy. “You’re not with Addair?”
At that, Caz’s surprise turned into confusion. “No, we’re not… and, Addair?”
Eyepatch finally stepped away, dropping his arms to his sides and holstering his gun as he nodded to his friend. Billy let out a comical sigh of relief as soon as he was in the clear, coming to stand by Caz’s side.
“Their leader,” Eyepatch explained. “Crazy fuck… this is Raffs,” the younger man, Raffs, waved. “And I’m Brodie. We’re trying to get out of the city, too. That is what you’re doing, right?”
Both Caz and Billy nodded. Caz still didn’t let down his guard, and neither did Billy, but he didn’t think they were in immediate danger anymore.
Until the scavs in their truck drove back down the street, much slower than before. They all ducked out of view from the window as a spotlight was shone into the room, scanning the dilapidated interior. It was then that Caz realized how dark it had gotten, the sun beginning to lower and causing shadows to fall between the buildings.
“We should get out of here.” Brodie muttered once they drove off, and Caz couldn’t help but agree.
He was hesitant to follow the two back to their hideout, but it’s not like Caz had a better, safer option. It was that or wandering the darkened city hoping they didn’t get spotted or eaten. At least Brodie and Raffs seemed to share their goal of escaping this place.
Turns out, the hideout was a semi-intact office, with its walls still standing but its furniture knocked around as though a tornado had whipped through it. The desk was on its side next to the door, and Caz could imagine some poor bastard trying to barricade themselves inside. From the age-old blood splatters on the stained walls and the cluttered carpet, they weren’t very successful.
Brodie and Raffs dropped their packs, and Raffs crouched down to riffle through his. Caz and Billy kept their belongings close, lingering by the door. A minute later, Brodie came up to them, holding a map of the city and surrounding area.
“We’re here-“ he pointed out their general location on some random block “-and Divers Crossing is here.” Next, he pointed to the bridge. It was a good thirty minute’s walk away.
A large circle drawn on the paper indicated the QZ, which they were just inside of, and a few other looping lines seemed to show patrol routes. When Caz mentioned it, Brodie shrugged.
“Took it off some scavs a couple days ago,” he huffed out a humorless laugh. “Bastards won’t be needing it anymore. Put up one hell of a fight though.”
Caz looked at Raffs’ beaten face and Brodie’s bruised knuckles. Yeah, it certainly seemed like they had.
“Anyways, Addair’s set up camp here,” Brodie showed them an X just a block away from the bridge. “That’s why we haven’t just left already. There’s infection all around the outer parts of the city, so we can’t just go back either. Addair, the prick, he knows we can’t go anywhere. He’s waiting for us to walk right into his hands.”
“So, wait…” Billy stepped closer to Caz, and he couldn’t be bothered to snap at him to give him some space. “Why is he trying to kill people? Or capture them? What is he doing, actually?”
“He’s trying to build an army,” Brodie sighed, handing the map to Caz and walking back to his backpack. “I don’t know his motive, but I do know that he wants nothing more than to make CADAL burn.”
He sat down with a groan, pulling a bottle of water from his bag. “Might be why they’re chasing you two like this,” as if to prove his point, the scavengers in their truck drove near the building. Caz wasn’t worried about them being spotted, what with the office being four stories up. “Addair thinks you’ll be good assets. Tried the same shit with us, didn’t go as well as he hoped.”
Caz looked at Billy in his peripheral, holding his shoulder as the pain medication began to wear off, halfway hidden behind him. Oh, if only Addair knew.
The next few minutes turned into a mission debrief of sorts. Brodie and Raffs were planning on sneaking through the scavs territory in a few hours, when patrols are more thinned out and the infected started wandering farther into the city. It wasn’t a fool-proof plan, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t like Caz had a better one.
At least they had a few hours to rest. The last dredges of sunlight were fading, the scavengers scrambling attempts to find them echoed through the streets, Billy was wincing at nearly every action that made his shoulder move even the slightest bit, and Caz was practically dead on his feet. Billy might not have hit his head (too hard) in the crash, but Caz had, and the stillness made the lingering pain and fatigue all the more prominent.
He still wasn’t one hundred percent certain about trusting the two men sitting across from him, already asleep. But, until they were home free, he’d give them the benefit of the doubt.
“Do you think it’s safe to stick with them?” As if he read his mind, Billy muttered under his breath as he slid down the wall to sit beside him. He had his stupid bird pendant in his hand, flipping it over in his palm again and again. Caz had half the mind to toss it out the broken window but, knowing the fucker, he’d jump out after it.
“I dunno,” he whispered back. “But they haven’t killed us yet, have they? What other choice do we really have?”
Billy didn’t answer, and a quick glance told Caz that he was already half asleep, head tilted back as he watched the motes of dust float around in the moonlight. As sleep crept up on him as well, Caz watched along with him.