The moment her fingers touched upon mine it sent a jolt through me that felt like my soul was being torn in half…the dark rage that had consumed me, the intense hate that filled me as I watched them bear down on her was now flooded by something deeper… something that ached at me and almost threatened to consume the delicate balance that was held in place… I felt a thin wetness in my eyes as we locked together… the silence between us immutable but seemed more powerful for it. As she rose my hand lingered against hers, my senses swaying at her touch… confusion over exactly why she was so important to me… though deep within I knew I held that truth.
Behind me Trey’s gun spluttered as the clip spent its final blow knocking the attackers of their feet, quickly replaced by another as Trey shouted across… “Get a fucking move on Ladies, this aint no shopping trip!”…
My eyes narrowed and I hissed.. “One more thing…!” I let the words hang in the air, their meaning clear as I tried to keep a control over the raging storm of emotions that buffeted me. I pulled her towards me then pushed her forwards as I made my way across to Trey, my mind was in turmoil… I hadn’t expected this to be anything more than the usual hunting mission, I felt so torn from the person that I thought I was… for so long I had kept my past buried deep inside but now it had been unleashed and had broken through those barriers my mind had constructed… I felt exhausted in mind and body… I glanced at her as I passed by, feeling that pang within me as I did so and knowing she was every bit as spent as I.
Something in Trey’s expression caught my eye as I walked towards him… he glanced nervously around, for a moment his gaze fell upon the young woman, but showed none of the usual lasciviousness that I had come to expect… rather a brief flash of fear. Trey turned his back on her as I approached.
“What’s up Trey?” my voice shimmered with exhaustion and the vestiges of the dark that had taken me.
Trey said nothing… but merely presented his forearm to me. The material torn and a thin pulse of blood oozed from the wound… “Fuck Celine… I think one of those mangy bastards got me..”
I took a look as the rain mixed with the thin trickle of blood that seeped from him sending a thin red wash splattering to the sodden ground… there was little I could do out here and I was filled with my own concerns that I too had encountered the infection…
“Don’t staunch the bleeding… we will get it looked at, we’re not far from the complex.” Instinctively my finger reached for my own wound… the cut I had inflicted upon myself in the midst of the dark grip glistened in the rain… I allowed myself a weak sigh before we set off once more, the rain beating across us.
Finally we reached more open streets and I quickly led through the detritus of a forgotten world… the rain came down hard… tearing at the ground… I glanced across and watched as she padded alongside us, my mind reaching out to those memories of what we shared…
The storm passed into a greater darkness as we finally spied the anaemic yellow glow of the spotlights that ringed the entrance to the complex… a shout went up as we were spotted through the raging tempest, and the air was filled with the deep rumble of the compound doors as they slowly opened bathing the three of us in its mechanical radiance…