S4, E9 | Souvenirs

Filling the settled air with the sound of shattering glass behind the weight of a strike with her elbow, Jenn reaches through the empty pane and unlocks the door to a rundown shack with ease. “Like I said, no one’s coming back to open up the place and get back to work” the woman remarks, shining her flashlight around the walls of an abandoned souvenir shop as the sun begins to fall on yet another day.

“I know that, it just feels out of place” Sebastian replies, following the woman’s lead as the majority of their group settles in for the night, “I’m still not completely used to all of this.” With her lips puckered in the corner of her mouth, Jenn shrugs her shoulders as she turns her light to a rack of stuffed plushies, giving them a brief pat with her hand as the man she’s joined by continues to look around.

“That’ll change, don’t worry” the woman replies, continuing to pan her light around whichever corner she prepares to next descend upon, “when you don’t have a place to settle in and call home, the days start going by a lot faster than what you’re used to.” Gently sliding a greeting card from a plastic display case filled with a variety of others, Sebastian lets the woman’s word settle with him as he reads the cheerful remarks plastered in black text atop the flimsy pasteboard’s face.

“What makes you so sure of that?” the man soon asks aloud, stepping away from the shop’s counter before wandering down one of the many accessory-laden aisles. “Toss me one of those cards” Jenn replies from across the room, keeping the man from progressing further down the knick knack tunnel he’d prepared to step through. “Seriously” the woman replies, watching the man look at her for a moment before turning back to follow through with her request, “and a pen too.”

Laughing quietly, Sebastian casually strolls around a counter he has no authority to stand behind and takes a card he has no intention of paying for, throwing it like a boomerang in his younger friend’s direction. Reaching for the first writing stick he can find, the man watches the woman across from him catch it and open the cardboard postal-piece, thinking quietly to herself for a moment before writing atop its white background, having to draw a few circles first to get the ink to run.

“Should I go out looking for a carrier pigeon too?” Sebastian jokes, watching the woman’s face present him an amused smirk as the pen is literally put to paper. “What day is it?” Jenn responds, pulling her face away from the note she’d written atop before tossing the pen into a random corner of the store. “Hm?” the man replies, jutting his chin forward as the woman repeats her question, “today’s date- as in the day that’s just about to end- what is it?”

“Uh, well let’s see-” Sebastian replies, pulling his head back as his eyes trail off toward an unimportant corner of the ceiling, “-it was a Saturday when Theo dragged us out of the cabin, and I’ve slept in a different bed for the last eight nights so today would be a Sunday. That would make today the 16th of December 2018.”

Closing the two sides of the card and tossing it back to the counter her fellow survivor sits at, Jenn wanders back the way she’d initially begun to walk, “I lost count and so will you” she responds with a shrug. Reaching the short distance between himself and where the card landed, Sebastian looks onto the white card face and squints, “you thought it was February 15th?” the man wonders aloud, almost unable to comprehend such a drastic difference.

“I didn’t think it was, I guessed that it was” Jenn replies, picking a pink hat with blue letters off the nearest rack and casually throwing it upon her head, “after a while, you start realising they’re not worth keeping track of anymore.” Shaking his head, Sebastian returns to the side of the counter that truly makes him feel at home, a non-paying patron simply looking around a store filled with things he has no interest in as opposed to the register attendant behind its checkout station.

“Well what about birthdays and anniversaries?” Sebastian wonders back, redirecting his stroll from the aisle he’d attempted to walk down at first before opting to follow the woman’s trail, “what about Christmas or New Year’s?” Continuing to casually walk down the backside of the merchandise shack, Jenn steps past a shelf of tacky jewellery and a display stand set up with plastic chairs and long-since deflated rubber palm trees.

“What about them?” Jenn responds over her shoulder just as she hears the man’s footsteps close in on her aisle’s entrance, “do you think throwing parties or having little sing-alongs are gonna be a priority when we’re hunting for food or running away from the dead?” Still carrying a smile on his face, Sebastian snatches a hat of his own off the same rack his fellow survivor had lifted hers off of, following her slow-moving saunter onward.

“Maybe they’re not a priority, but they’re still nice to know” Sebastian replies, holding the red cap by his side as he kicks over a plastic beach chair with his foot, “do we really have to let go of everything we had before things went south?” As if the question had triggered the deepest recess of her mind to recall what she’d long-since subdued, Jenn stops in her tracks and turns around to meet the man’s eyes with her own, a much more serious posture than the one she’d since carried.

In momentary silence, the woman’s face turns away as the air grows stiff, the man that stands before her not wishing to speak out in favour of hearing whatever words he knows await their chance to be spoken. “The old world is gone, and it’s not coming back” Jenn responds, carrying the same light tone she’d spoken to him with since entering the building in spite of her posture implying something harsher was to be expected, “if you want to hold onto souvenirs, be my guest.”

Carrying on, Jenn walks to the end of the aisle and rounds the nearest corner as Sebastian watches on, remaining stood in place for a moment before lowering his head. Listening to the woman’s feet trek across the floor just as they had since their arrival, the man sits with his thoughts before turning back and retrieving a second red hat from the shelf.

= RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and the entity of Pacer1 =

“Urgh!” Sonya exclaims, throwing her arms forward with a metal pipe held tightly within her hands, driving the cylindrical edge through the skull of a corpse that presses against a fence. “Not bad at all” Jules remarks, leaning against a wall half his height with his arms crossed as he watches the woman pry her weapon from the corpse’s skull, “but if I were you, I’d try to keep myself from grunting like a tennis player every time I try to put down one of ‘em.”

“I’ll keep that in mind” the woman replies, tapping her weapon against the chain link fence to draw the dead closer, watching a few isolated corpses take interest in her sights. With his eyes squinted, Jules watches the woman step back and prepare herself to put down the one feral heathen drawing closer than the rest before looking around his immediate surroundings.

Puckering his lips, the intrigued survivor steps up to a long-abandoned ticket booth and retrieves a brick sat just beside its base, inspecting it for a moment as he listens to a much more subdued grunt precede yet another swing of the pipe. “Hey, Sonya- toss your weapon real quick” Jules calls back, turning around to face the confused woman, who questions the request for a moment before doing as told, tossing it into his possession as he rests its head against the ground.

“Here’s a little tip I’ve figured out along the way- have you ever noticed how Lou sharpened the end of that metal stick he’s got?” Jules inquires, met with a silent nod from the woman he now kneels to the ground beside. “Look for ways to make your weapons better when you get the chance. Always remember to think outside the box” the man continues, crushing one end of the pipe repeatedly with his faded red brick, grunting as he gently rolls the weapon as if it were a dough roller.

“He made his stick pointy, other people can add things around something to make it easier to handle-” Jules proceeds, gradually narrowing the pipe’s tip into a more pointed, almost spear-like pillar, “and sometimes- all you need for it is something like a rock and a roll of tape.” With her hands on her hips, Sonya watches the man continue to mash the head of her plain, stripped tube before glancing back at the dead that accumulate at the park’s closed off entrance.

“So you’re saying it’s bad to use the pipe?” Sonya inquires, trying to fully comprehend the advice being given to her. “No. If it was working, it’ll do. The point is- if you sharpen one side of it- you’ll be able to clean up more of them than you would be otherwise” Jules responds, throwing down a few additional shots with his flattened stone before reaching for the roll of tape in his pocket, “if you can make a weapon better, it could prove to be the difference between life and death.”

Pulling her head back and nodding, the woman waits for the man to conclude his efforts for another few seconds before being presented with the result of his work. Whilst not perfect, the pipe’s open end is mashed into a mostly-shut tip, much deadlier than what it had been before. Whilst its other end still sits open-ended, the black tape that wraps around its base proves much easier to grip for the woman that now reclaims it into her possession.

“So, now it’s less of a pipe and more of a spear, and that makes it easier to kill zombies?” Sonya begins to wonder, the silence she’s met with mid-pause granting her the confidence in knowing she’s on the right track, “and when I kill zombies easier, it buys me time to get out of a jam?” Offering the woman a purposefully-condescending applause, Jules reacts to the woman as if she’d accomplished the impossible, playfully picking on her in the way his group is more than accustomed to.

“She’s finally learning!” the man exclaims, laughing at the woman as she reacts with a playfully-unamused face, proclaiming his work to be done for the meantime as he walks off. “And here I thought I was in the clear of sarcastic jackasses when Silvano bit it” Sonya calls out as the man having helped her turns back, smiling as he does a shimmy, walking backward as he responds.

“I don’t know who that is, but he sounds like he was a fun dude!” Jules chirps back, letting the comedic banter die off as the woman shakes her head with a smirk, sights settling back upon the seven corpses that line up by each other’s side, waiting to be knocked off one at a time. With puckered lips and a squint in one eye, Sonya looks to her weapon for a moment before rushing forward, piercing the skulls of each zombie in quick succession without a grunt to be heard.

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Sat beside the fire alone with his arms draped across his arched knees, Rudy listens to a pair of footsteps approach as he stares into the rising flames. “I know you sort of stick out like a sore thumb, but I didn’t take you for the loner type” Terry remarks, patting the man on the shoulder as he passes him, setting a few sets of canned soup beside the open firepit before taking a seat on the ground.

Stepping out to a pile of cookware collected over the past few hours of the group’s stay, Terry reaches for a large metal pot and casually sits it in the centre of the burning flames, prying open the lid to one of their dinner’s cans as he keeps the conversation moving. “So what is it?” the man wonders back, carefully removing the lid and setting the can down, preparing to do the same with the rest of his findings, “are you purposefully stubborn or is it something else?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me” Rudy replies, looking up at the man whose eyes remain fixated on each can he opens, setting one down after another. “I saw you back at that camp. I could see you at the front when your group was moving out” Terry replies, wincing at a stray ember flies from the flames and burns his arm, not keeping him from finishing the thought, “it seemed like you knew how to aim that rifle, so- what’s got you so opposed to change?”

Staying quiet for a second, Rudy’s eyes look into the flames that increase in size, growing used to the pot that sits atop their levelled-out centre as he remains without a word. “Your oldest one’s been used to this stuff since the start from what it sounds like. Maybe the other one took some time, but she seems to be getting the hang of things” Terry continues to speak, using the man’s silence as an opportunity to continue prodding at his stoic exterior, “so what’s holding you up?”

“Nothing’s holding me up” Rudy quickly retorts, prompting the man interrogating him to look over his shoulder with a pair of raised eyebrows, the puckered lip shake of the head he reacts with only indicative of a lack of belief. “Then it’s a choice thing. If there’s nothing preventing you from learning how to survive, it’s something you’re choosing for yourself” Terry responds, carefully taking each open can off the ground and pouring its contents into the pot.

“I’m not choosing anything” Rudy once more responds, sitting back a short amount as yet another can is emptied into the literal melting pot, one aluminium can after another mixed into the container. “Well there’s gotta be something” Terry chirps back, quickly running low on cans to empty as he’s again forced to wince at the ember that singes his skin, “if my father saw the rest of us fighting to make it while he sat on his ass, he’d have never forgiven himself.”

“I’m not the kind of person that just jumps into your kind of world feet first, alright?” Rudy calmly snaps back, watching the younger man turn around as the final container empties into the firepit-topping cauldron. “Maybe you, and your friends, and the rest of them can all look at what’s going on and just go with the flow, okay? I’m not” the older man continues, his eyes veering off toward one of the inoperable pools in the near distance, “this isn’t where I thought my life would be.”

“And what, you think it’s where the rest of us thought we’d be?” Terry hastefully inquires, “you think any of us thought we’d have gone from L.A to Canada in a few months killing zombies all day and night? Having to scavenge for cans of Chef Boyardee in a theme park ‘cause some dude with a grudge forced us to run away from our last place?”

Staying silent as he looks away, Rudy’s sight is soon reclaimed by the man raising the question for him to answer, the younger survivor’s persistence keeping the air from going quiet. “I’ll have you know I wasn’t expecting any of this. I’m supposed to be waiting for acceptance letters in the mail right now- not this” Terry continues, his eyes squinting as he turns the rest of the way from the pot, “I was supposed to go out east. I was supposed to go to college and move out in the summer.”

“I shouldn’t have said-” Rudy begins to reply, apologetic in the wake of the man’s voiced strife though refused the chance to finish his thought, the man that speaks to him not offering the older father a chance to absolve himself of criticism. “It doesn’t matter what you shouldn’t have said. You shouldn’t be sitting here on your ass while everyone else pulls their fucking weight- that’s what you shouldn’t be doing” Terry continues, his undivided attention given to the man he now scolds.

“While you were up in that cabin, I was back home. I was watching my friends die, and get eaten, and burn alive trying to make sure that the rest of us could make it out alive. People just like me going down with the ship so I could live” Terry explains, kneeling down so his eyes become level with Rudy’s own, “and while your friends are making themselves useful, you’re sitting on your ass and pouting. They’re jumping feet first and you’re here, sitting it out like a fucking pussy.”

“I’m sorry that your-” Rudy again attempts to speak, only to fall silent the moment Terry’s voice calmly halts him once more. “Shut up. Do me a favour. Get your ass off the ground, leave this place, walk into the woods and wait to die like a dog” the younger man orders, refusing to pull punches with whom he views as being below him, “all you’re gonna do is hold us back and get yourself killed. I’m just asking that you do it now instead of later so you don’t hold us back when it happens.”

His voice as calm as if he were asking for the time of day, Terry lifts himself away from the ground and turns back to the dinner he begins to prepare as Rudy watches on, the older man’s face wrought with shock at what had just been asked of him as he falls still. Trying to process what had just happened, the older man looks around the makeshift camp for a few moments before climbing off the ground and wandering off into the darkness, not a shred of remorse held within the firepit cook.

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“Oh, there you are!” Courtney remarks, watching Sebastian follow Jenn out of the oddly lifeless gift shop as she makes her way toward the firepit. “I don’t know why but I thought you’d be with the others” the woman explains, watching the man approach her as the woman that he’d followed walks off in search of others.

“Yeah, well I figured that I’d try to get to know Jenn a little more with how close she is to Lou” Sebastian explains, tucking his left hand into the pocket at his side whilst his right holds a pair of red caps. “I see. Did you find out anything you didn’t know before?” Courtney requires with a smile, both hands tucked into her back pockets as she watches the woman walk off.

“She doesn’t know what day it is, she thinks birthdays and holidays aren’t important and it doesn’t sound like she’s too fond of how things used to be” Sebastian replies, squinting his eyes as he too watches the woman walk off, “if I were to ask what Lou would be like if he had a vagina, I’d imagine Jenn would be the answer.”

“Oh god, I don’t want to think about that” Courtney replies, shaking her head with a playful look of disgust on her face, “not that there’s anything abhorrent about it, but I just don’t really wanna picture Lou as the bearded lady from those old freak shows. It’s just a bit too much.” Sharing her amusement with a breathy laugh, Sebastian nods his head in agreement before turning the conversation around, a curious look in his eyes as he smiles at the woman.

“Why were you looking for me?” the man with hair slowly becoming increasingly grey wonders aloud, poking fun in a friendly way at the woman’s search. “Oh, um-” Courtney begins to reply, staring off into the distance for a moment as she falls silent, thinking about the answer whilst appearing to grow hesitant, “-it’s nothing. I just wanted to check in on you, y’know? Make sure you were alright.”

Pulling his head back, Sebastian looks at the woman with an obviously doubtful look on his face. “Yeah, I don’t believe that for even a second” the man replies, watching the woman’s reluctant expression appear to strengthen, “I’ve known you for a long time, and as pretty as you may be, you have quite the ugly poker face.”

Rolling her eyes as she hangs her head, Courtney listens to a gentle breeze roll through the air as the conversation is left for her to continue. “We never finished our conversation this morning” the woman responds, staring off into the cloudy night as the man before her waits, not wanting to interrupt the train of thought that rolls into the metaphorical station within her head, “maybe we didn’t need to, but I didn’t like that we left it off where we did.”

Staying quiet, Sebastian reaches out to take Courtney’s arm and gently pulls her to the side, protected by the awning to a food stand as he begins to feel droplets of water fall from the heavens. “I don’t really know what I was thinking earlier. When you said you thought it was alright that we wanted different things, I just felt this urge to agree with it” the woman explains, clearly not pleased with the same conclusion they’d once come to agreement on.

“Ever since then, and especially since everything went to hell, I’ve had my doubts about what I wanted” Courtney explains, something that seems to be more difficult to not expect from people as the days continue to pass, “that future that I wanted back then- even before everything went south- it hasn’t been as important to me since before I met you.”

“What are you saying?” Sebastian inquires, trying to subdue the charming smile that comes over his face in times of awkwardness to keep from derailing the conversation. “I’m saying I did want those things. I wanted the family, and the marriage and to see the world- I wanted it before” Courtney replies, “I kept thinking I wanted it while we were together ‘cause I told you I did. But at some point, I started to really doubt whether or not I still wanted those things when we were together.”

Beginning to turn into a light drizzle, the rain clouds overhead begin pouring down on the camp just as they had spent the last few days doing, their arrival this time unable to keep the discussion from taking place. “I think at some point, I told you that I wanted all those things because it’d become a habit” Courtney confesses, “it’s like when someone asks you what your favourite colour is. You’ve had one since you were a kid, but is it still what it was then or is it just the default answer?”

“Are you saying you didn’t want those things by the end?” Sebastian proceeds to ask, met with a similar reply to what Courtney is trying to explain. “Well, no- I think what I’m trying to say is that what I wanted just- I don’t know, changed?” the woman replies, almost as if she’s trying to work out the point on the fly, still not totally certain herself, “like I wanted that when we started dating, but after some time the only thing I wanted was- well- was just to keep being with you.”

Looking into each other’s eyes in complete silence, Sebastian and Courtney listen to the rain begin to come down harder, crashing into the asphalt their theme park camp is built upon without any care over the world and what happens around them, their only attention paid to each other.

Leaning forward with his hand held out, Sebastian presses his lips against Courtney’s and lays his hand against the side of her face, the gesture immediately reciprocated by the woman whose hands soon sit upon his sides. With a few seconds passing, the rain begins to stabilise as one heavy downpour, the hurrying voices that shout in the distance prompting their passionate moment to cease.

“Everyone into the cafe!” Terry exclaims, hunching over the heavy pot that he dashes across the waterpark with to keep it from filling with rainwater, the fire he’d cooked over quickly beginning to die out. Watching from afar, Sebastian and Courtney pop a smile as they watch their closest friends race in the same direction their dinner is taken, forced to laugh at the scurry they all partake in before their eyes meet each other once more.

Now lowering his hands to the woman’s shoulders, Sebastian loses himself in the woman’s eyes as she looks up at him with a smile, unable to keep herself from feeling like a piece she’d operated just fine without has now been fit back into place. “This is what I wanted” Courtney proclaims with a rapid nod, her smile only continuing to grow wider as she places her hands against each side of the man’s face, assured in her declaration, “-I’m sure of it now.”

Leaning into yet another kiss, the newly-reunited pair soon part their lips to set their attention on the camp’s nearby entrance, hearing a loud set of footsteps dash through the soaked grounds just beyond the front gates as they reach their intended destination.

Sprinting through the front doors of the cafe the group had huddled into, Sebastian and Courtney stand on opposite sides of the entrance as their other halves finally return as promised. “Seriously, if mother nature is an actual person, would she please just make up her fucking mind!?” Marta exclaims, ripping off her gore-stained, but not-covered sweatshirt as Lou casually follows suit, shaking his head like a dog as his overgrown hair throws water in every direction.

“Just in time for dinner” Terry calls out with a chuckle, dipping a ladle into the still-hot metal container, portioning their dinner into twelve different ceramic bowls. “Where the hell did you guys go!?” Josie calls out, assisting Terry by taking each bowl and delivering them to those tasked with disregarding the flavours that aren’t promised to work together and keeping down the only food they can manage to find.

“To get rid of our ‘enclave issue’ Lou replies nonchalantly, turning his eyes toward the woman that stands on the side of the door opposite Marta, her attention fully set upon him, “Randal and his folks shouldn’t be an issue anymore.”

“Should we even ask how you managed to kill his entire enclave or should we just explain it with the typical ‘don’t doubt Lou’ reason we usually make?” Jules inquires, watching the one-armed man’s face lighten with a smile as his protege takes over. “We led a horde into the hotel, Randal got bit, the place went up in flames and he jumped off the roof” Marta responds in quick succession, shrugging as she tosses the soaked sweatshirt on the floor, “just another Tuesday I guess.”

“Oh not you too!” Sebastian proclaims with humour, earning a laugh out of Courtney and Jenn whilst the rest of the group look on in confusion, his dismissive wave clearing the room of any obligation to ask. With the room beginning to settle as the rain continues to beat the ground just beyond their building’s entrance, the survivors settle in for the night with a warm meal to hold them over, most of the faces wearing a look of disgust from the abhorrent flavours worn by people just happy to eat.

Leaning against the counter that stands at the front of the room the rest of his group occupies the tables of, Lou dips his fork into the bowl prepared by his friend as the seconds turn into minutes, nothing but a welcomed silence coming over the exhausted survivors. “Alright, who’s gonna be the one to make a plan?” Elsie wonders aloud, calling out to any set of lips to part with an answer, “we clearly aren’t staying here long term, so when are we getting on the road and where are we going?”

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning” Marta replies, sat in the seat closest to the man she pulls away from her dinner to look at, his eyes meeting hers as the rest of the room goes quiet. “We’re going east” Lou replies, looking out at the assortment of faces that all share varying reactions, some holding looks of confusion whilst others appear to patiently wait for him to continue, “there’s a gas station a few blocks from here. We’ll syphon what we can and head as far as it’ll take us.”

“As far as it’ll-?” Elsie asks aloud, the only voice to spring up from the collective audience, an obvious confusion held within the tone of her retort, “-exactly how far east are we going and why?” Not missing a beat, Lou looks in the woman’s direction and replies with one name, the city he intends on venturing out to prompting Sebastian and his group to nearly spit out whatever spoonful they’d yet to swallow.

“Calgary.”

With a few collective sounds of profound shock, the native Canadians look around with widened eyes as most of their American-born friends glance back and forth in confusion. “What the fuck!? Calgary!?” Adrian exclaims from the back of the room, Rudy nearly choking on his dinner whilst his daughters lean back, almost as if waiting for the man to brush off the response as a joke, “that’s nearly twelve hours away!”

“That’s what I’ve been told, yes” Lou replies with as serious a tone as he’d make the proclamation with, looking to read the expression on Sebastian’s face to find an uncertain look the likes of which he hadn’t received from the man in quite some time. “Woah, woah- let’s slow down for a second here!” Courtney exclaims from beside her father, a few looks passed around by those brought to the area through the Euronam’s sinking, the simple mention of the trip’s duration provoking doubt.

“Lou, that’s not just going east- that’s a whole different province!” Courtney remarks, her father quickly adding to the outrageous proposal, “forget province- it’s a whole different time zone!” Nodding to himself, Lou sets down the spoon to his dinner and lays his rebar staff upon the counter and braces for the opposition he assumed would be coming.

“Lou, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way or anything, but we’re not going to Calgary” Adrian explains, his voice presented with much more reasonability than the Golden family’s had, “even if we tried, there’s no way we’re getting all the way there in one piece.”

“Lou, we don’t have the food to make it there and the roads will probably be littered with junk” Sonya continues, met with the same silence the rest of her group is as the man she speaks to welcomes the resistance. “And like Adrian said, it’s just too far. We barely made it off the island and still lost two people doing that” Rudy’s youngest daughter continues, “I’m sure you have your reasons, but trying to make it to Calgary just isn’t possible.”

“Well, not necessarily” Sebastian replies, still in opposition to the suggestion laid out, though trying to remain open to both sides, “it could be when the weather changes and it gets warmer outside. However, we’re still in no shape to make that run for at least the next four months.” Finding it hard to disagree with the conclusion her group’s leader draws, Marta sways her head from one shoulder to the other as her name is called out from afar.

“Marta, I know you’re infatuated with him, but please tell Lou this is nuts” Sonya calls out, coming to the same conclusion she knows most of her group would eventually meet at, “Lou, it’s nothing against you, but we all know there’s one person you’ll hear out before anyone else, and right now- she needs to be the one that tells you.”

Closing her eyes and having her head, Marta’s chin falls toward the table as Lou’s eyes turn toward hers, waiting for her response just as the rest of the group does. In full belief that common sense will prevail, the three relatives with the last name of ‘Golden’ reclaim their seats as the tension boils, the father of the woman presented with the dilemma occupying a similarly unconcerned demeanour.

Sat at the table just beside the young woman in question, Sebastian’s face wears a tense visage, fully expecting the woman to surprise her peers with the conclusion that she slowly warms herself up to voicing. Though not fully aware of just how far the distance between themselves and the proposed destination truly is, Terry and his group sit with various levels of uncertainty, not wanting to stray from their blind trust in Lou, though not confident in their ability to travel.

Sat on her own one table over from Sebastian and Marta’s, Jenn leans back in her seat and uses a towel to wipe her mouth, pulling her face away from the meal before her as she prepares for whatever response is bound to be given. Letting out a sigh, Adrian’s only daughter turns her sights toward the man at the front of the room, Lou’s head lowering the moment his eyes set upon the visage his protege wears.

“It is nuts, Lou” Marta finally answers, pausing for a moment as the group’s few bated breaths release themselves in belief that reason had won out, looking to the woman as her face pans in their direction, “it is nuts, and we’re going to Calgary.”

“No, we’re not!” Rudy exclaims as those in agreement with him present an audible groan, Sebastian’s slow nod proving that he indeed knew what was coming. Tilting her head in surprise at the turn the woman’s response had taken, Jenn’s expression takes a different direction from that of her fellow American visitors, Terry’s group sinking into their seats as they struggle to figure out how to feel.

Looking up in surprise, Lou looks at Marta as she turns back to face him, offering him a smile and a nod as she throws her full support behind him. “Lou, this isn’t happening!” Rudy calls out, more than aware that the man’s protege doesn’t have the authority to make the final call, “we can’t make this trip!”

Pulling his face away from Marta, Lou watches Rudy throw his hands up with a loss for words as Sonya’s head falls into her hands, Courtney walking away from the table with her hands at her waist. Tilting his head back, Adrian stares off at the ceiling as the Americans that sit at the table ahead of him remain silent, not responding with nearly the passion as the newest members of their group.

“Everyone calm down!” Sebastian calls out, putting a stop to the various declarations of relief or bewilderment that fill the room with an audible chaos. “We’re not making this call tonight, and we’re not brushing off anything!” the man proclaims, his words immediately thinning the room of various declining voices as it falls silent, letting the conversation fall to his control, “we’ve had a long day, we’ve barely eaten anything palatable- no offence, Terry- and we’re all in need of some sleep.”

The subject of a glance from the conversation’s leader, Lou holds his hand up in surrender, accepting the suspension of a definitive call until a later date. “What’s gonna happen is this- we’re gonna take the truck to a hotel or a truckstop and we’re gonna get a good night’s sleep” Sebastian explains, pushing in his chair as he walks to the middle of the room, “when we wake up, the people that want to present a plan can do so. After that, we’ll all vote and go wherever the winning plan is.”

Pushing his lips into a crown in the corner of his mouth, Lou hangs his head for a moment as Sebastian calls out for any opposition to the plan, the few hushed mumbles of acceptance he’s met with giving the group a clear view of what’s to come. Visibly dissatisfied in the reaction his proposal had received, the man reclaims possession of his rebar staff as his leader’s familiar voice captures his focus.

“Walk with me” Sebastian proclaims, wrapping his arm around Lou’s back and directing him to the corner of the room those opposed to his plan venture in the opposite direction of. Giving into this gesture as Marta follows by his side, the survivor responsible behind the two groups’ merger meets with the rest of his original group to tend to the task ahead.

“Are you gonna tell us why you’ve got this sudden fascination over Calgary, or are we gonna have to pull teeth here?” Sebastian inquires, joining every American-born survivor curious in hearing the answer near the cafe’s back-most wall. Parting his lips with a composed look on his face, Lou attempts to speak before finding himself falling silent, those that wait for a reply watching his expression fall as he hands the staff to his protege to take for herself.

“Hold this for me, please?” Lou inquires, placing his weapon into Marta’s hands as he slides his fingers into the pocket of his pants, retrieving a folded note that he hands over to the man across from him. “What’s this?” Terry inquires, taking possession of the paper before reading what’s scrawled upon it, the one-armed survivor silently watching on as his friend’s eyes widen.

“Where did you find this?” Terry wonders aloud, looking away to stare back at the man who’d seemingly uncovered what he was convinced was impossible to find. “It was in the pillowcase next to hers” Lou replies, watching the intrigued faces of those that read the note from over his friend’s shoulder change into ones of surprise, “I knew her family stayed out in Canada during Christmas vacations, but her family didn’t like me so I never asked about anything in specific.”

“Why didn’t you say anything back at the hotel!?” Jenn exclaims with as loud of a voice as she can whisper, met with the same answer she’d anticipated. “I only found it a few minutes before Randal and his enclave got there” Lou replies, passing a few glances toward any face that occupies the small huddle, “but that’s her handwriting. The way she writes her “t’s”, the way she dots her “i’s”, the way she signs her name, this is from her- no question about it.”

“Wait, what makes you think she would’ve even made it?” Josie replies, putting her hands up to soften the blow her suggestion raises, “I don’t wanna put bad thoughts in your head, but she left right when the snow started to get bad and it’s not like we had much food at the hotel to begin with. That’s a long journey for twelve people to make to begin with, let alone just one person.”

“Well if it won’t be at that house in Calgary, it’ll be somewhere on the road” Lou replies, shrugging his shoulders as he politely reclaims possession of his weapon, “one way or another, that’s where she was going. We’ll either find her alive out there, dead along the road somewhere, or we’re not gonna find her at all. Those are the only three outcomes here.”

“Why do we need to go now?” Terry inquires, keeping the group’s hopes at bay as best he can, “Sebastian has a point. If she’s going to be there, what would delaying that trip by a few months change?” Rolling his head from one side to the next, Lou considers the man’s proposition before Sebastian ends the discussion in its place, not wanting to let the conversation he’d purposefully delayed start taking on a life of its own.

“We have plenty of time to figure that out, until then- let’s get what we can from this place and get our heads right, okay?” the man inquires, prompting the group to disperse in agreement, gathering their bearings and preparing to leave. “Hey” Marta calls out, watching Lou begin to traipse off before turning back, beckoning to her call as she keeps her voice low, not wanting to put her bias on display for anyone else to hear.

“Whatever call you make tomorrow, I just want you to know that I’m not changing my mind” Marta explains, “if you tell the others you want to go to Calgary, I’ll vote with you.” With an appreciative smile, Lou rolls his eyes and voices his appreciation. “Marta, listen I really appreciate you saying that, but-” the man begins to reply, cut off as the woman prepares to rejoin her group.

“Whether you appreciate it or not doesn’t matter, what matters is that you’re the one suggesting it” Marta explains, “I trust you to make the right call. It doesn’t matter if it’s where we go next, or if it’s a solution to a problem- whatever it is doesn’t matter. I trust you. You’ve always pulled through, and until that changes I’ve got no reason to doubt that you won't again.”

Falling silent, Lou looks to the woman with a softer look, her blind faith in his call one that, whilst he truly appreciates it, strikes him to the very core. “If you think we’re able to make the trip to Calgary, I believe you” Marta explains, patting the man on the shoulder and departing with that claim of devotion, one that leaves the man feeling the true weight of his reputation in a way he never had before.

Left in awestruck, Lou watches the woman return to the side of her group as they brace to endure the onslaught of rain once more, unable to fully put into words what that realisation leaves him with. Pressing his back into the counter as he stares off at an empty cafe, Marta’s departure leaves him as the only one in the building, the isolation and pure silence one that he’s felt before, but one that he’s never shared with such an unwavering pride as what he experiences now.

== RISE and REVOLT ==