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“Who’d you draw?” Lou wonders aloud, continuing to carry his rebar staff as paths cross with Elsie, whose hair has been removed from their braids and thoroughly washed, wearing the water that begins to freeze into ice within her individual strands. “Darnell and Christina, whoever the fuck they are” the blonde replies, crumbling up the slip of paper in her hand before tossing it into a nearby barrel fire, “what about you?”
“No one. Sebastian said I was gone long enough yesterday and Terry said he wasn’t letting me leave again” Lou replies, watching the woman in plaid roll her eyes and pat him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you around, bud” Elsie concludes, the brief and friendly interaction ending as quickly as their paths had crossed, similar well wishes afforded to the woman who prepares to enter the forest with her intentions set on returning home with a feast. Carrying on with his morning, Lou travels another few metres in the direction of his tent before stopping in the middle of the snow-covered path of dirt, his eyes falling upon a woman with her arms hanging by each side, her face taking toward his own. Without uttering a word to the man she hadn’t seen since he stormed off nearly a day and a half prior, Ally stares at the man who reciprocates the same, attention-stolen reaction as she does, their minds fighting to put that evening behind them. “We’ve clearly seen a lot while we were apart. I know you don’t really trust Val yet and I should’ve respected that” Ally explains, dipping into the man’s tent as he holds the vestibule open for her just moments after their paths had crossed. “I didn’t walk off because you told Val, I walked off ‘cause it took me by surprise” Lou confesses, the curveball throwing his girlfriend’s assumptions for a loop. “I don’t really care what he knows or how much you trust him, I just didn’t expect you to be so open with him” the man continues, trying his best to clarify what he’d meant, “I don’t share the same comfort with your people that you do, and that’s not something I’m used to.” Standing for a moment without much of a reply to make, Ally keeps her eyes stowed upon those of her boyfriend before suddenly hanging her head, forced to shift the tendril of hair that falls over her face. “I’m not used to it either” she admits, a conclusion that the man had already come to, though can’t fully understand in the same way that his own discomfort is felt. “We’ve spent more time apart over the last few months than we have since we started high school” the woman continues, her breath clouding the air that stands between them, “the two of us might have changed a lot more since we got split up than we have anytime before.” “Well, it’s not like we had much of a choice. We both did up getting stuck on an island in an entirely different country with no way to know where the fuck we were” Lou comforts, not wanting his girlfriend to feel as though she’s alone in this belief. “I don’t know what you’ve been through since then anymore than you know what I have been” he doubles down, speaking to a truth they both understand, “but we’ve never let anything get between us before. That’s something that doesn’t need to change.” Instantly gratified, Ally wears a smile that leads her into the reach of her boyfriend’s arm, his hand coming to a rest on the woman’s hip. “Is that so?” she whispers seductively, resting her palms on the shoulder at either side of the man’s neck, leaning in to press her lips against his own before their bivouac’s nylon exterior is tapped against as audibly as the fabric will manage by an unknown set of cock-blocking knuckles. “We’re kind of in the middle of something. What do you want?” Lou wonders back, passing the question to the still-unknown figure on the vestibule’s opposite side. “Val says he wants to talk to you as soon as you get the chance” Bruno responds, addressing the man whilst looking in the direction of the leader’s tent across the camp, “he’s feeling under the weather and you’ve been gone for quite a while. I wouldn’t make him wait very long if I were you.” Eyes falling, Lou shakes his head with disappointment before being gestured to lift his chin, sights taking themselves toward the woman who guides them upward. “We can continue this, and a whole lot more, when you get back” Ally remarks, her warm breath colliding with the survivor’s face in a way satisfying enough to urge a smile across his visage, the man’s hand giving his girlfriend’s side a gentle squeeze before pulling away with the rest of his body. “Fucking hell, this sucks” Val murmurs as his tent’s entrance is opened, stepped through by the man who he’d requested to see. “Thanks for the blue balls, trigger fingers. What do you want?” Lou greets, still armed with the weapon the sickly gentleman had mistaken for a simple walking stick. “Do you really still need that thing?” the community’s leader queries with a squint, extending his arm toward the staff in his visitor’s hand. “I’m willing to trust that you won’t stab me with, or use in any way against me, this thing if I hand it to you” Lou proceeds, extending his sharpened-edge, taped-handle, balanced extension of building material to the defiantly-healthy shot caller opposite himself. “What is this thing?” Val wonders curiously, gently tapping the tip of his finger against the pointed edge before gradually lifting and lowering the weapon he’s been temporarily offered. “It’s a piece of rebar. I wrapped tape around it every few inches and sharpened the edge to a point. I like to think of it more as a bo staff than anything else” Lou replies, running his newly-freed fingers through the lengthy hair he wears. “It’s balanced and versatile. I can stabilise myself with it, hit things with it, stab things with it, tuck it under my arm, the whole nine yards” he continues, earning an impressed nod of approval from the figure who returns it to him. “It’s advantageous... nice” Val remarks, freeing his possession to take toward the bottle of liquid, daytime medicine for assistance in persevering past the bug he fights. “Well, you kinda need something you can work with when you don’t have both arms anymore” Lou shrugs, giving the weapon a brief spin before tucking it beneath his arm once more, “it serves its purpose and serves it well. Give me a rock and I’ll keep this thing in use for as long as I’m on the move.” “You pick it up along the way or have you had that thing since you were in the ‘States?” Val wonders, pouring himself a cap full of medicine as he presents the inquiry, trying to solidify ground worth building upon with the man he hadn’t had an easy introduction to. “I had one on the boat, but I lost it when we were trying to escape. I picked this thing up not long after I beached on Vancouver Island” the man answers, “I’ve been touching it up along the way, why?” “I’m just asking. If you and your friends are going to be around for a while, I might as well start trying to get to know you all” Val answers, downing the medication with a sour frown, “I don’t know if there’s anyone better to start with than you.” “So that’s why you called me here? To try and socialise?” Lou queries, only for the opposite man’s head to shake, refusing the conclusion as being that plain and simple. “Not necessarily. I don’t mind getting to know you and your friends, but there’s still more serious shit we need to all take into consideration” Val corrects, watching as his new contemporary leans his head to one side, quietly awaiting the man’s continued speech, “I’m tired of worrying about those artists finding us up here.” “Like I’ve said before, we can all leave” Lou responds, unwavering in the stance he’s decided to firmly set his feet within, “this place probably won’t even be very sustainable by the time the weather gets better.” “I’d like to hear what you’d suggest we do” Val reassures, allowing the man to present his point before explaining himself, not wishing to interrupt, “from what Sebastian, Terry, and Jules have told me, you were the one that presented them with the Calgary option when no one else would.” “I was trying to find Ally. Calgary was a shot in the dark that got very lucky” Lou retorts, his claim immediately falling upon dismissive ears uninterested in devotions of luck. “What’s important isn’t the place you suggested or the reason, it’s that you made the suggestions. Others couldn’t when you could” Val responds, extending his arm in the direction of what remains of his community, “most of the people in our group would be lost without Bruno or I calling the shots.” “What’s your point?” Lou responds, clearly remaining just as uninterested in unnecessary back-and-forth as he was nights prior, crossing his arm-and-a-half. “My point is that your friends trust you, kid. They went along with what you proposed even if it was just out of the hope that you would find Ally. You made a call when it was needed, and that’s got to count for something” Val quickly restates, placing credit where it’s due. “I don’t know why a bunch of grown adults and high school teenagers put so much faith in you, but I’m willing to try and figure that out” the community’s ill-health leader doubles down, leaning against a table stocked with ammunition, “I’m asking what you’d suggest we do. Lay it on me.” Becoming the centre of Val’s attention, Lou stands in the open for a brief moment without reacting, his eyes eventually taking to the sides of the camp as he processes what’s been asked of him. “First thing’s first, I wouldn’t stay out here much longer. The weather’s getting too rough, and it’s snowed more times over the past two days or so than I’ve seen for weeks” the young man replies, running down the bullet list he’s formed internally. “This camp’s already on bad terrain, and it just gets worse the more snow that piles on top of it” he continues, speaking to a leader who remains quiet, “aside from making game difficult to hunt, it fucks us if those savages come looking for us.” “Where would we go and when would we leave?” Val quickly asks, keeping the experienced traveller on his toes in an effort to challenge his reaction time. “I saw an old block of buildings up that mountain while I was in the woods. It looks like a ski resort and I’m not sure anyone’s gone up there for shelter yet” Lou responds, not needing more than a pair of seconds to formulate the solution, “if you don’t wanna go through artist territory, we can hike up there until it gets warmer.” “What if that’s not an option? What if the artists come looking for us, or a fire starts while we’re up there?” Val again queries quickly, keeping the conversation rolling and on-point. “The resort’s easier to defend than this camp is. The terrain’s easier, we’ll be more familiar with our surroundings than they’ll be, and we can push the treeline back a few dozen yards” Lou again replies with ease, “if that’s still not a good enough option, our only choice is to go back the way we came.” “Into artist territory? Alright, what do we do when we get down there?” Val hurriedly questions, raising the wonder aloud as the tent’s vestibule parts without Lou taking notice, the figure that enters allowed to do so by the community’s leader without disruption. “Try to find a ride. If you don’t want to go down there all at once, we can send a team out to see if they can commandeer a ride for all of us” the lone wanderer responds, “it may not have worked for you before, but luck can change.” “And where do we go if luck falls in our favour?” Val proceeds to snap with, not waiting any noteworthy amount of time for his answer just as the rest of their discourse had run. “We can make for the border, head into Washington and start looking for empty land if you want to head south” Lou responds, watched on by the third party who just now enters the camp, “if you’d rather stick to the guns my friends and I decided on, we head east as far as we can manage for Calgary.” “Alright, kid. What do we do for food and defence in the meantime?” Val carries on, watching as Ally steps past her boyfriend to approach the man, her eyes looking into the face of her boyfriend, who’s not surprised to see the woman he’d already noticed the reflection of in a chrome toaster beside the community’s leader. “The easy answer would be to attack the artists and take what we can get off of them. Other than that, we scavenge what we can whenever possible” Lou responds, tucking his rebar weapon under his arm as he continues. “It’s very likely some people would starve if we didn’t stop every few dozen miles to see if we can pick off a moose or a deer along the way” the man proceeds, shrugging with a slightly disappointed look in his eye, “the same would be true for the border plan too, though.” “Making the call of who goes hungry and who doesn’t is tough. Who’s going to wear that responsibility if we follow through with that plan, kid?” Val queries, taking two steps to the side so as to keep distance between himself and Ally. “I’ve made the choice to kill people before. I’m sure I’ll have to make that choice again so long as I’m breathing, and I don’t see why this would be any different” Lou confesses, finally uttering something that surprised the sickly leader, “I’ll wear it.” Finally meeting the survivor with silence, Val inspects the man’s demeanour for the uncompromising certainty that it wears, shaking his head with refusal after a few moments without a reply. “You won’t have to” the man concludes, puckering his lips before looking to the ground, staring at it as he wanders, wanting to follow up on his remarks before finding it impossible to do so. “Val, can you hear them!?” Bruno proclaims, hurrying through the flaps in the tent’s vestibule to the surprise of those who occupy the area, unsure of what’s meant by the question. “What’s going on, Bruno?” Ally questions back, as out of the loop as both her boyfriend and leader are, their confusion mimicked through her. “There’s something going on back in town and I don’t know what it is...” the large man replies, cluing those he visits abruptly, “...but there’s a ton of gunshots going off.” = RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 = “So, that’s our story. Not much more to it than that” Elsie replies, wrapping the thumb of her left finger around the strap that holds a knapsack against her chest whilst looking at the black man and pale white lady she and Josie travel alongside, “what about you?” “I’m from Penticton. I joined up with the others a few miles north of the border” Christina responds, her red hair tied into a bun that sits halfway between the top and back of her head. “What about you, big guy? You Canadian too?” Josie queries, watching their lone male acquaintance look to the ground in a semi-sheepish manner, a smile worn on his face as he refuses. “I’m from Seattle. My brother and I were heading up to the border to visit our mom when everything started going bad” Darnell replies, pressing the base of a prolonged piece of steel into the rocky terrain they climb, preventing his balance from giving out. “How far did you make it?” Elsie calls back, continuing the small talk they’d been encouraged to participate in throughout the journey, yet to reach steady enough land worthy of hunting upon. “Farther than I would’ve expected. She moved to Edmonton when we moved out, so we hopped on the first train that’d take us there” Darnell responds, offering more of a story than his fellow resident of the compound has. “I wanna say it was a couple hours into the ride before we had to make a stop. The track that would’ve actually gotten us into Canada had issues, so we got off at the station in Bellingham” the man continues, remembering the events vividly. “I’m gonna take it your brother didn’t fare too well?” Josie queries, following behind the man recollecting his story whilst he follows Elsie, who in turn follows Christina at the lead of their adventure. “No. It turns out the issue with the track was that the train ahead of us had hit someone they didn’t realise was a zombie” Darnell confesses, taking shame in the way their travel had found itself falling futile. “But they’d already reported the issue when they went out to check on him. The conductor got bit and no one warned the people that went out to help” he continues, a depressing end to the travel having been found. “The train never started up again and we went out to look for a new way into the country” Darnell concludes, their collective defeat leading to one event after another, “my brother got bit, we got split up and I found Val and the others not too long after.” Nodding, the girls unfamiliar with him and his pale-skinned comrade accept the honesty of his story as they carry on, little choice other than to take the man at face value afforded to them. “Are you ever gonna follow through with going to Edmonton?” Christina questions back, looking over her shoulder as she prepares to scale the next boulder the foursome stumbles across, its flat and smooth surface appearing all too intriguing to not journey toward. “Probably not” Darnell replies, his tone taking on a much less hopeful reflection than the one that had been presented throughout the retelling he’d voiced, even its less-pleasant moments. “Oh, don’t convince yourself of that, champ” Josie replies, offering her newly-antiquated fellow survivor with a greater shred of hope than she genuinely believes in, “we were setting our sights on Calgary before we ran into you guys. If we can convince ourselves we’d make it there, you can too.” Humoured, Darnell follows the lead of the ponytail-wearing blonde woman ahead of him as they climb around the stone Christina now ascends, finally reaching a less-elevated stretch of mountain. “It’s not that I don’t think I’ll make it there. I’m sure I could as long as I kept my eyes out for the dead or the artists along the way” the man confesses, leaving his newest acquaintances unsure of why he’d take on such an otherwise conquered intonation. “For a start, I know nothing about Canada. I know we’re in some place called British Columbia, but not much more than that. My mom only moved back here ‘cause it’s where she grew up” Darnell replies, shaking his head at a loss for words as he reaches level ground once more, “I don’t know where Edmonton is. More than that, though, I don’t know what’s going on there now.” “It’s probably overrun. Just like everywhere else” Christina grumbles, shaking her head with the same dissatisfaction that the rest of her travelling bunch do, taking a seat upon the stone’s seat and gazing toward the southern side of the mountain they climb. “Exactly. I don’t want to get my hopes up to the point I’d trek across a country I know nothing about to just get disappointed like that” Darnell quips, a conclusion none of his peers can fault him for taking. “I never saw my brother die, but I know what happens after you get bit. We’ve had a few get really sick until their hearts just gave out” he confesses, shaking his head as they come to a break in the trees, looking out at the scenic view of a pretty world thrown into such ugly chaos, “I never had to see my mom die either. I don’t need to go all the way up to Edmonton just to see what I’m sure has already happened.” “You can’t know for sure that she’s dead. She might’ve gotten lucky” Elsie replies, apparently taking up the unfamiliar mantle alongside Josie of the group’s optimists, “we’ve all gotten luckier than others. Maybe she’s not still in Edmonton, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still alive.” With a smile in the corner of his face, Darnell takes appreciation in, whilst still refusing to buy into, the reassurance that he’s provided, the ending he devotes himself to not being capable of budging. “Even if she managed to roll with some good people, I’m never gonna find her. Your boy back at camp got lucky, but that doesn’t mean we all will” the man confesses, a point that is just as difficult to argue with from the perspective of his accompanying hikers as the others he’s made. “Besides, at this rate, I’m not so sure I’d want her to be suffering in the kind of world this is” Darnell continues, dropping to a knee at the edge of the stone Christina occupies for a quick breather. “Even if she were still going through it, or if she were still in Edmonton, and we met up somewhere along the way... What am I supposed to say to her, y’know?” Darnell questions, staring into the distance whilst Josie and Elsie quietly watch on, Christina’s eyes taking toward the man from just over her shoulder. “Hey, mom. I’m still alive. Steve, well uh... He died, mom. I’m still going, but my brother... he didn’t make it” the man recites, speaking as if he were looking his mother right in the eyes, a soft and remorseful undertone carried through his voice as it begins to crack, leaving those within his company to find themselves returned to the reality of a bleak world they’d otherwise opt to march through with blinders on. “He didn’t die quick, either. He got really sick and probably dropped dead off in the woods somewhere if he hadn’t already gotten shot by a bunch of psychos with shotguns and rifles losing their minds” Darnell carries on, his comments bringing a heart-dropping discomfort over the already bone-chilling winter air. “If mom’s still alive, I hope we never meet. I’d never...” the man concludes, hanging his head as not even the Canadian forest can bring his mind peace, “...I could never handle that.” Hanging her head, Elsie looks toward her right with a frown, expecting to lock eyes with her well-acquainted friend, only to find the woman’s eyes directing themselves off into the distance. “You good, Josie?” the woman wonders aloud, prompting the members from the community to turn back curiously, watching the woman in question try to quickly regain her composure, wiping the tears that had come to form in her eyes. “Wh-? Oh, fuck... Yeah, I’m good. Um...” Josie stammers, shaking her head quickly so as to dismiss the emotion that had welled within her, hastily looking to carry on with anything capable of dragging her mind from the gutter it’d stumbled into. “We should get moving again. There’s not, uh... Let’s not get caught in the dark” she proclaims, leading the charge that the seated Christina surrenders to her by default, continuing the march west from the community they represent in their voyage. | “What the hell do you think is happening down there?” Sebastian wonders aloud, standing with his arms crossed as he stares into the distance of the downtown they’d run into their fellow members of the community in, still hearing the distant gunshots scramble through the air as the day turns to night. “Not something I want to be a part of, I’ll tell you that much” Adrian answers, remaining interested in the flurry of disaster beyond their view whilst others have returned to other matters. “It’s been hours. What the hell could they still be shooting at?” Sonya questions back, taking the blade of a knife toward the end of a stick she’s fitted with some string and carved into a pointed tip. “What else would still be coming after them after this long?” Courtney calls into question, raising the concern that she answers with absolute ease, “the only thing they could still be firing at would be the dead.” “Not necessarily” Adrian replies, standing behind his daughter for the time that he watches on, pulling away in favour of following suit with others, offering a solution as he prepares to depart, “they could be turning on each other.” Looking at the way in which the Simard father retreats, Courtney takes the claim into consideration before locking eyes with her boyfriend, his stare meeting that of her own. “They are savages according to what Val and the others say” Sebastian replies, not finding the possibility beyond the point of reason, “they could’ve found the people Lou killed and assume their own had something to do with it.” “Maybe we should tell Lou and the others?” Sonya proposes, the conclusion not one worth striking out inherently, “if Val and the others are hesitant to leave, this might be enough to convince them to move out.” Nodding, Marta allows the suggestion to find its way into her attention, surrounding it with the potential outcomes that may arise from it. “I’d rather be back on the road for Calgary than in this place, that’s for sure” she concludes aloud, turning away much like her father had, a hand tucked into her pocket as she ventures off. “I’ll be back” she proclaims, wandering off into the night just as so many others had throughout the day, given a salute from Sonya’s knife whilst the others she’d stood beside take a dismissive note of her retreat. Leaving her footprints in the loose, fluffy snow between herself and the camp’s depths, Marta travels the minimal distance between herself and the tent that her mentor occupies, closing in on the distance that separates them before suddenly coming to a stop. Ceasing her journey, the young woman watches as the vestibule parts, her eyes having locked into place upon her destination in time to watch Ally step through, redoing the buttons of the pants she just now puts on. With messy hair, the woman of relatively equal age walks off without noticing her boyfriend’s protege, her eyes taking toward the side of the compound that her tent resides in without looking elsewhere. Unable to move at first, Marta watches Ally’s journey lead her elsewhere before remaining put for a few moments, quickly trying to subside the dissatisfaction that builds within her, naturally taking a hold of her motor functions before her time to react draws to an end. His long strands of hair moistened with sweat, Lou adjusts a white t-shirt that he’d just thrown on as he follows his girlfriend’s lead, stepping out of his own tent before coming to a stop just beyond its entrance. Not intending to follow after the woman he’d only reunited with days earlier, the one-armed stalwart instead begins to step in the direction he knows his peers to be, reserving his focus for a few seconds to properly fit his clothing into place before looking up. Unable to wipe the taken aback expression from her face in time, Marta looks toward her mentor with a surprised visage, not one of pleasure or easily-discernible dismay, but instead, one that doesn’t appear comfortable in nature. Finding his friend standing between himself and those who continue to watch over the distant sound of gunfire, Lou silently stares whilst remaining frozen, not moving from the place his journey had come to a temporary stop in. Not close enough within the woman’s range to speak cordially even if he were able to, Lou instead remains looking toward his protege without being able to mutter a reply. Aware of the feelings that his friend has for him that not even Ally is privy to from what he’s aware of, the thick beard-wearing survivor simply remains standing without a reply to offer, watching as Marta’s face gradually returns to the state in which it normally rests in as the sky turns a bright orange. “Holy shit!” a woman screams a short distance away, reacting to the same ball of fire that leaps into the heavens, its appearance earning Lou’s undivided attention and prompting Marta to spin around. Having nearly made it to her bivouac, Ally’s feet cement themselves into the snow as her eyes are stolen by the same centre of awe that those belonging to residents in all directions of her are. With the slightest edge of high ground afforded to them from the treeline they’d pushed back, the compound’s remaining inhabitants watch an explosion take shape in the direction they know the artists to be, a seemingly catastrophic end to the gun battle they’d hoped for a preferable resolution to making itself undeniable and unavoidable. In sheer shock and awe, the residents watch on with collective fascination and captivation as the destruction turns from an all-engulfing ball of orange to a barely-visible and demonically dark cloud of smoke. Frozen in time for just a few seconds, the camp and all of its present members stare in horror as the bullets that had just flown mere seconds prior come to a sudden and horribly placid end, sentencing the ordinary, British Columbia town to a grim and grizzly silence. == RISE and REVOLT ==
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Having spent the last hour and a half falling in and out of a slumber impossible to consider anything close to comfortable, Marta awakens with parted eyes and cheeks flushed a rosy red shade to the sight of a ceramic mug being placed beside her sleeping bag. “Good morning, sweetie” Adrian remarks, pulling his hands away from the steaming hot beverage as he watches his daughter’s eyes take toward him, his face easily made out from the cloudy daylight beyond their tent.
“It sounded like a burlap sack was being dragged through the dirt all night long. You wouldn’t stay still in that bag for longer than ten minutes at a time” the man remarks, watching as his daughter sits up, tossing the blanket covering off of her sweater-covered torso. “I couldn’t sleep and it was cold” the young woman answers calmly, gently taking the cup by its handle and lifting it toward her face, feeling the cold skin that covers her facial muscles be warmed by the steam within her drink. “The heavy sweater and two pairs of sweatpants that you wore to bed didn’t help?” Adrian jokes back, watching his daughter’s eyes take toward his direction, her barely-present smirk presenting the man with a reply of silence. Amused, the father kicks the winter boots that his feet had called home for just the time it took to retrieve the hot drink off, allowing his sock-covered feet to slide comfortably underneath the cover of his own sleeping bag. “Did Lou come back yet?” Marta wonders aloud, pressing her lips together and blowing on the steaming cup’s rim, trying to cool the plain tea down just enough for a reasonable sip to be taken. “No, he’s still out catching squirrels or something. I’m not really sure what he gets up to when he’s not around” Adrian explains, only able to work off of the information he’d been fed by his fellow survivors and the absence of the one-armed stalwart in the camp, “he’ll be back soon enough.” Managing to take just enough of a sip from her tea to suffice, Marta shrugs in agreement before extending her elbows outward, rubbing her face with the palms of her hands while stretching the muscles in her back. “He seemed pretty mad when he left. I’m sure he’s just taking as much time as he needs to clear his mind” Adrian remarks, offering his daughter whatever reassurance he’s capable enough to provide, “according to Jenn, he got into an argument with Ally and stormed off.” “Yeah, that’s what Terry told me. He said it had something to do with the Calgary plan, but he didn’t know much more than that” Marta replies, shielding her mouth with the inner elbow of her arm as she pauses to yawn. “They’ll figure something out when he gets back. I’m not going to worry myself over it” the young woman concedes, rolling her head to ease the tension in her neck before falling back into the comfort of her puffy slumber pad, letting her head fall back into her pillow. From across the tent they share, Adrian watches his daughter’s eyes close and her head strike the cushioned support she’d rested upon the night prior, curious as to the dismissal she takes toward the situation spoken of. “Why didn’t you go after him last night?” the man wonders aloud, watching as the young woman keeps her eyelids together, her mouth barely moving as she attempts to catch up on whatever sleep from the night prior that she’d been unable to get. “Lou’s a grown man. He can take care of himself” Marta replies, her rebuttal one that only serves to further puzzle the man who’d already looked to her curiously. “Oh, is that so?” Adrian questions back, not doubting the woman’s answer, but distrusting the reason she gives him, “you two have been stuck to the hip ever since you met. What’s brought about this change?” Covering her body with the blanket she’d just recently freed herself from the coverage of, Marta remains intent on falling asleep, but continues the conversation with her father for as long as he’s willing to have it. “I don’t know that Ally would take kindly to another woman following her boyfriend into the woods for hours” the young woman responds, unable to see the smirk and nod that her father takes toward the reply, “and it doesn’t seem like a very friendly thing to do to her.” “So, this ‘Lou will be Lou’ thing you’ve got going on is because of Ally, eh?” Adrian questions back, noticing the shrug that his offspring returns him with despite the heavy blanket that shields her. Nodding to himself, the father continues to wear his half-smile, accepting the rationale that his daughter provides him with before thinking to himself for a moment, remaining seated upright in his sleeping bag as he processes the claim. “Lou’s a good kid, Marta. He’s trust-worthy, he’s dependable, and he’s got a good head on his shoulders” Adrian proclaims, all points that his daughter wouldn’t argue against even if she were in the mood to. “I’m glad you’ve found someone that’ll care about you as much as you care about them, even if I’m not pleased that it’s taken everything that’s happened over the last few months to make that happen” the man continues, beginning to make his own attempt at catching up on sleep. “I just hope that the two of you keep fighting for each other as much as you have since you met...” he concludes, throwing the cover over himself as he turns away from the young woman, his head laying into the pillow, “...I’m sure he will.” For a few seconds, the claim is allowed to sit without a reaction before Marta parts her eyelids, staring up at the tent’s ceiling as the comment hits home, prompting her every intention of falling asleep once more to fall as quickly as it had come on. = RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 = “I don’t know, man. I’m not gonna drive myself crazy over it” Terry responds, leaning against the scrunched up blanket of his sleeping bag as if it were a lounge chair, his arms crossed around the back of his head. “We had a plan to go to Calgary before we got here. Whether that’s where we go if we’ve got to leave here or not probably doesn’t matter” the man doubles down, watched on by the group’s other shot-caller, who crosses his arms whilst standing in the opposite corner. “Lou’s not gonna want to leave Ally” Elsie interjects, staring at the ground as she sits in the corner between Terry and Sebastian, her friend with the second tomahawk seated just a pair of metres to the side. “I don’t know what Ally’s association is with these people, but any move we plan has to take them into consideration” the blonde woman with braided hair assures, “we have to be prepared for Lou refusing to cut us off and Ally refusing to cut the others off.” “It doesn’t really matter how many people tail along if we don’t know where we’re going” Sonya proceeds, sitting beside her sister with her legs stretching across the floor. “It does if we want to keep track of what we’ll need to be bringing along with us” Courtney replies, looking toward her left at the sibling she corrects, “there’s a difference between a trip with us and a trip with the others too. The latter leaves a lot of people starving.” “I don’t like these jerks, I’ll be honest. My cards are on the table” Josie proceeds, making her own opinion heard, “they’re hostile and they’re jumpy. I can’t trust them to keep their shit together when shit goes south.” Pointing in the woman’s direction, Sonya throws her support in the column that the mechanically-gifted survivor presents. “I agree with Josie. There’s just something off about them” the younger Golden sister quips, “I’m not going hungry so people I don’t trust can tag along.” “We’ve only known them for a day and a half. I’m sure they’re easier to get along with than they’re letting on at the moment” Courtney reassures, looking toward the blonde woman beside Josie, “we’re gonna have to get used to them.” Nodding along with the woman’s claim, Elsie accepts the support the elder Golden sibling presents to her case, doubling down on her stance. “We’re not leaving without Lou, and that means we’re not leaving without Ally” the blonde survivor concludes, looking toward her group’s leader as the opposite team’s shot-caller bows his head, “if we’re not leaving without Ally, then we’re likely not leaving without the hot heads. End of story.” “What’s on your mind, Sebastian?” Terry wonders aloud, having redirected his sights toward the man before Elsie had finished stating her case to him. “I think wherever we go can’t be here. I’m sure there’s gonna be violent people no matter where we go, but that doesn’t mean there’s gonna be a swarm of different teams of them” the man in question replies, lifting his head toward the man across from him, “Calgary doesn’t have to be ‘the plan’ anymore now that Lou’s found Ally.” “I’m starting to like the idea you guys came up with a few days ago. Heading south where the weather is warmer” Sonya quips, looking to those seated across from her with a nod, “I don’t know what the border situation is looking like, but it seems like Val and Bruno got across alright.” “I don’t even know what the government was doing back home when this all started. We were quartered up in the school while everything was unfolding” Terry carries on, shaking his head at a loss, “my home was empty when we got there. Aside from some helicopters, I’ve got no idea what kind of army shit is still standing.” “Trudeau said he was setting up some RCMP outposts around the prairies last I heard, but we were already up in the cabin by then” Sebastian responds, their insight on higher-level matters proving limited. “Ally said Val and some others purposefully came up from Idaho because of the outposts but the border was packed” Terry explains, reciting whatever information he was forwarded by the woman, “she said he left and came back a few days later and the border was straight-up unprotected.” “Did she say where?” Courtney wonders aloud, a slightly new leash on life afforded to her as the lifeline is thrown metaphorically, “if the protection fell after the few first days, we can use that station to cross into the ‘States.” Quietly shaking his head in refusal and uncertainty, Terry leaves the floor open for Sebastian to again take control over the conversation, his voice the only one projected amongst all others. “We should consult the others before we make any plans. Terry and I just wanted to hash some things out in the meantime” Sebastian responds, letting his arms fall from their gathering together as the discourse appears to reach its end. Dispersing, the group begins to fan out in favour of what they had been intended to do prior to the gathering’s formation, allowing the Canadian side’s leader to depart the tent alongside the Golden sisters. “Do either of you know where I can get a stick of metal?” Sonya wonders aloud, turning back to face the couple that follow in her path, their quiet shake of the heads implying the answer. “You looking to build a house out here or something?” Sebastian jokes, watching the slight smirk in the woman’s face react to him. “No, I lost the pipe I was using back at the arcade. I don’t wanna get caught with my pants down metaphorically” the younger sibling remarks, “I’ll see you two later.” “Don’t wander too far” Courtney proclaims, watching as the young woman returns a thumb’s up to her before continuing on the stroll that she and her boyfriend take to their tent. “I’m glad she’s starting to warm up to all of this. I’m sure it’s not easy to just move on from what happened to your dad” Sebastian remarks, turning to watch his girlfriend’s head nod as he finishes her thought, the older sister watching as her younger sibling wanders off, “speaking of which, how’ve you been?” Pressing her lips together to form neither a frown, nor a smile, Courtney continues to follow her only remaining family member’s figure as it grows farther away, letting out an exhale through her nose. “Better than if you weren’t here” the older sibling answers honestly, the only sound heard through their cold-bitten ears being the crunches of their footsteps in the snow and the contained fires crackling in the near distance. “I’m just trying to be the strong big sister. I don’t want Sonya feeling like she can’t hurt just ‘cause I am” Courtney confesses, finally pulling her line of sight away from the direction of the woman in question. “Do you think that’s helping anything?” Sebastian queries, their strolling pace affording them more than enough time to have the conversation at large. At first answering with a shrug, Courtney looks to the ground and follows the muddy shoe prints that she and her boyfriend follow, trying to fit her feet into the slightly-larger assortment of tracks that line the path ahead. “Maybe it’s just ‘cause dad was there too, but I feel like it worked a lot better after mom died” the woman finally emphasises, not sure what more to make of the results to this new trial of grief, “Sonya’s just holding it together a lot better than I thought she would.” Taking Courtney’s hand into her own, Sebastian locks his fingers along with his girlfriend’s own as they continue their travels onward. “Little Sonya’s growing up, I suppose” the man mutters, putting a smile on the grounded pilot’s face that doesn’t take long to fade away, the amusement she takes in the remark finding itself replaced with a suddenly compelling inquiry of self-wonder. “I wonder if she’ll need me around to keep herself going for much longer” Courtney murmurs, a gesture that provokes her companion to quietly look at her, opting not to speak against the claim out of uncertainty what is meant by it. “At least, I hope she won’t need me for much longer. It’d probably be best she didn’t in case we got separated for whatever reason” the paramotorist confesses, looking off into the distance of the wilderness they reside within, comfort taken in her own conclusion. | “Can I borrow this?” Marta wonders aloud, picking a piece of fabric wire off the top of a drum barrel before holding it toward the direction of a woman who occupies the tent beside it. “It’s not mine, I found it on the ground. Go ahead” the community member replies, watching as the Canadian girl smiles and nods. “Thanks. I’m Marta, by the way” the outgoing young adult greets, watching a pleasant expression take shape on the face of the camp’s resident. “I’m Dawn” the friendly-appearing survivor responds, watched on by a well-known brunette just a short distance away. “It’s nice to meet you, Dawn. I’ll see you around” Marta replies, taking off just as quickly as she’d introduced herself, making acquaintances with the residents the situation calls for her to familiarise with, preparing to enter the woodlands before being called for. “Marta! Wait up!” Ally’s voice calls out, her hand stretching into the air to gather the young woman’s attention before her feet follow suit, shortening the distance between herself and the member of her boyfriend’s group as the sky darkens even further than the clouds overhead had let on. “You, uh... You going out for something?” the girlfriend of the survivor’s mentor questions aloud, only raising the inquiry when close enough to the woman in question, watching as the subject of her intrigue begins tying the slightly-frayed wire into a loop. “Yeah, I’m gonna see if I can find a squirrel around” Marta answers, pulling the cord into a tighter knot than what she’d initially fastened, “or maybe I’ll catch a rabbit. I’ll settle for anything Courtney can skin and toss on a fire.” Slowing her approach down as the distance between them turns into centimetres, Ally leans her head toward her side with a friendly smile, appearing more welcoming than her contemporary setting out for a hunt presents. “Wow. I see Lou found some pretty capable company, huh?” the woman questions aloud, trying to extend pleasantries to the young woman who’d taken up such vast amounts of time with her boyfriend, only to find them unreciprocated in lieu of other ventures. “I wasn’t until he taught me. My dad and the others would’ve preferred if I just sat around with a phone in my hands all day” Marta confesses, paying the woman opposite her less mind than the knots she attempts to undo from within the cord she sets out with. “Yeah, I heard he’s been helping you get acclimated with how things work out here” Ally responds, watching her Canadian pal squint with a harder focus on the rope she carries than the conversation at hand. “Yeah, he’s my mentor. Taught me how to take care of the dead and where to look for shit” Marta replies, grunting as she finally frees the cord from the tie that had perturbed her, “now I’m gonna put those skills to the test. Hopefully I won’t have to come back a mooch off of you and your friends like last night.” “Feel free to mooch if you need. We’re all better off working together than separately” Ally responds, watching as her eyes collide with those of the Simard child’s own. “Maybe, or maybe not. I don’t know anymore about you and your friends than you know about us” Marta responds, resuming the process of fixing the wire into a rope she can wear over her shoulder, “I could be wrong, but it’d probably take us getting to know each other before we can really work together.” Flashing a smile that, at first, comes without an accompanying reply, Ally watches her boyfriend’s protege continue on with her tying of the wire before her amusement settles aside. “Well, you must at least know me better than the others, right?” the one-time resident of Los Angeles questions back, watching as the other half of her friendly chat shrugs the inquiry aside. “He must not have told me enough about you over the last few weeks then” Marta confesses, finally fixing the cord into a suitable enough loop to throw it over her shoulder, “I haven’t heard enough about you to know why, after all that he’s gone through to find you, he’d be so mad that he’d walk off into the woods without saying why.” Frowning as she looks away, Ally parts her lips to reply before finding herself having fallen silent, afforded another second or two to redirect her mind away from an outright dismissal. “I told Val about the plan you guys had made to go to Calgary. That was all” the member of the aforementioned man’s community confesses, watching as the girl across from her looks off to the side. “Why would you do that?” Marta says in an unaffected tone, simply curious as to know the reasoning behind the camp member’s actions. “Because it’s not a big deal. I get that Lou doesn’t trust Val that much, but like you said, it doesn’t look like any of us have much of a choice in the matter” Ally responds, defending her actions without much of a belief that it’s necessary, “if we’re gonna leave this place eventually, we’ll have to have somewhere in mind, don’t you think?” “That’s none of my business. I’m not the person who makes the calls for your friends or for mine. Wherever we go is wherever we go” Marta answers, seeing little reason in arguing one way or another. “Either way, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever business the two of you have has nothing to do with me. If you two have problems, they’re yours to deal with” she doubles down, pulling away to set her attention upon the hunt she’s bound for. “That’s it? It’s just a ‘deal with it yourselves’ kind of thing?” Ally questions back, surprised by the dismissive and quick retreat that her new contemporary presents her with. “What else do you want me to say? He’s your boyfriend and you’re his girlfriend. I’m just someone he’s helping out” Marta replies, her own opinion on the subjects of her questioning being well-hidden and put aside. “Sure, but everyone else says the two of you are closer than just ‘mentor’ and ‘protege’” Ally responds, the initial comment putting a slight concern in Marta’s demeanour, the young woman not certain over what’s meant by the implication. “They say you’re better friends with Lou than anyone else he’s met since we all got broken apart. I figure that’s got to count for something” the one-armed stalwart’s girlfriend explains, her follow-through easing the tension that had built in the protege. “I don’t know. I guess I just figured you might be able to help me out a little bit more than ‘work on it yourselves’” Ally concludes, looking on defeatedly as she begins to lower her head, apologetic in her approach. Looking away, Marta battles with herself to put her feelings toward the woman away in favour of finding common ground, not wanting to create a permanent existence alongside the girlfriend of someone she holds rather close. “He’s a different person from the last time you saw him. That’s what I’ve been picking up on, at least. I’m sure the two of you are going to need to get used to that over some time” the only Simard child explains, looking the battle-tested survivor in the eyes. “Just don’t start making problems with each other. If the two of you have a problem, then you’ll have a problem with my friends” Marta warns, holding out hope that no issue reaches the point she speaks of. “If you have a problem with my friends, then you’re gonna have a problem with me...” she concludes, turning her body toward the woodlands she prepares her journey into, “...and I’d really rather not have a problem with you, Ally.” Making herself clear, Marta leaves the conversation off by stepping onward, carrying herself through the treeline and wandering into the unknown that lies ahead, watched on by Ally as she does so, leaving the woman little to read into. | “You have a problem we should know about?” Jules wonders aloud, dipping into the tent of the community’s general without being afforded an invitation, watching as the man tilts his head back to down a gulp of water. Caught by surprise as he downs a tiny pill, Val turns to face his unexpected visitor just as the man bows through the vestibule, licking his lips as the sip is finished off. “It’s for a fever. I’ve been feeling off for the last few hours” the bearded commander retorts, setting the plastic water bottle down with a pair of squinted eyebrows, “I don’t remember hearing someone ask to be let in.” Hanging his head before seeing himself into a chair in the corner of the bivouac, Jules nods to himself with a smile, humoured by the man’s comment. “That’s ‘cause I didn’t ask” the uninvited guest responds, watching in real time as the amusement he takes fails to find itself matched in the man he now sits across. Flaring his nostrils, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead and planting his hands upon his hips, Val looks to the floor whilst trying to keep his composure intact, not wanting to stoke tensions between himself and the camp’s other half while they’re still running high. “I don’t appreciate you and your buddies feeling entitled to just walk around doing whatever you want” he confesses, taking notice of Jules’ visage for the lack of interest in his feelings that it carries. “I admit my fault for putting a gun on your friend, but that doesn’t mean I’m alright with him just wandering off whenever he pleases” Val explains, remaining as well-spoken as his irritation will allow him, “I’ve got a responsibility to this camp. I don’t want you putting them in danger.” “And my friends and I have a responsibility to keep each other safe” Jules rejoinders, matching the calm and collected tone that he’s spoken to with. “Ally may trust you, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us do. She came by and told Terry what the two of you suggested to Lou last night, so don’t think we’re not clear on what you and the others are hoping for” the travelled survivor doubles down, “if you want us sticking around, you’ve got to work with us just as much as we work with you.” “And what exactly do you have in mind?” Val responds, continuing to speak as his visitor shakes his head quietly, “you want us setting some ground rules or something? What is it that you want?” “First of all, I want you to consider yourself lucky that I’m the one coming to talk to you about this first instead of Terry and Sebastian” Jules answers, starting with the warning simple enough to offer without issue. “If they were the ones coming over here to lay the groundwork here, Sebastian would be cooperating in ways that Terry just would not allow” the young leftover of a bygone era explains, “if that were the case, there’d be no solution that you’d be too pleased with.” “I’m sick and tired, what’s your point?” Val hurries, displeased to be taking part in these discussions in general let alone at this hour of the day, where the light begins to set in favour of night. “That you rock with Ally and Lou rocks with us” Jules responds, keeping his assertions simple and to the point, “as long as that stays the case, there’s not much either of us is gonna be able to do without the others. You might as well consider this a marriage we’re the inlaws of.” “That might be the only thing about any of this that has already been made clear, so I’ll ask again. What’s your point?” Val retorts, wearing bags beneath his eyes from the exhaustion that leaves him sore and in need of sleep. “That we should start trying to get along and get used to each other while we can” Jules answers, taking the initiative he feels he’s far more ready to provide than the rest of his group is. “If those animals back in town are as dangerous as you say they are and we’ve got issues with them, who knows how long we’ll have the kind of peace this camp gives us?” he reiterates, a conclusion that proves to finally be common enough ground to share with the community’s leader. “Where we go or what comes out of this camp can be decided later. Let’s first get on the same page” Jules declares, “no more guns in each other’s faces or running off without telling each other first.” With a straight face, Val looks into his younger contemporary in the same stance that he’d assumed for the majority of their conversation, a subtle nod initially presented to the acquaintance across from him. “I can get behind that” the light-skinned, bearded and short-haired leader assures, watching as the man seated opposite him reacts accordingly, lifting himself out of the chair and extending his hand to the ill commander. “We’ll start tomorrow. Have a party of four, two from your side of the camp and two from ours, go out on a hunt for whatever they can bring back” Jules proclaims, presenting a case that the leader can get behind. “Any other issues that need to be resolved can take the same shape, two per each side. No one does any of it unless they choose to so nobody feels forced into this” he finalises, “we’ll all have dinner when night falls, together, and get to know each other.” Disregarding a handshake in the name of continued good health, Val gestures the younger man toward a closed fist he presses his own knuckles again, taking the place of a deal-closer. “You’ve got yourself a deal, kid” the hispanic man responds, watching as Jules turns away without saying another word, nodding appreciatively before going to leave. “Can I ask you one question, though?” the community’s leadership inquires at the last second, watching as the subject of his interest turns back, waiting for the question. “The kid without the second arm seems to know a thing or two more than I thought he would. His girl- Ally- handles herself well, and then there’s you” Val leads in, lending up to his question with credit offered where it’s due, “what’s up with you young ones? I’ve never seen kids pick up their slack like the group of you do.” Flattered, Jules looks to the side for a second whilst shrugging, unsure in what way he wishes to answer. Eventually sprouting a cheerful grin, the young man follows through with his departure amidst offering an open-ended reply, “I guess you’ll have to wait until dinner to find out, won’t you?” Taking the non-answer as a fair enough reason to look forward to the following night, the community’s leader pulls his hand away from his side and gives Jules a wave. “Goodnight” Val concludes, dismissing the man with friendliness before their paths divert from each other, returning them to their individual journeys with a more peaceful co-existence forged, leaving the night off in a better way than the one prior had went and opening a more hopeful door for the sides to take toward. == RISE and REVOLT == “Bullshit!” Val bellows, firing his finger toward the young man with anger, his community’s gradual return from the makeshift obstructions that they’d hidden behind following suit. “That’s just some creeper’s face that you painted up! You’re a fucking liar!” the vigour-fueled leader proclaims, his spouted rage doing nothing to change the pleased, one-armed survivor, who continues to stand pridefully with his trophy.
“I have whatever I picked off from them in the back of the truck” Lou responds, easily sliding his weapon free from the soft ground before gently swinging the staff as if it were a baseball bat, freeing the undead skull from its top, allowing it to roll to a stop near the edge of the campfire. “The only stuff they grabbed off of us are the coolers. Those are ours, and you can have the rest” the silver slayer commands, wiping off the rebar’s tip in the soft, white snow. “How did you manage out there?” Sebastian calmly inquiries, the reaction to this ordeal from his group and himself wildly juxtaposed to those across the compound from them. “I followed some roads in the direction they drove away from the arcade in, saw a bunch of streets splattered with red paint, and then I went wherever there weren’t any of those markings” Lou replies, shrugging his shoulders as if the recollection were of no big deal whilst Josie and Jules make for the vehicle’s bed. “I found a warehouse with an open garage, drove up to it, went in, and saw around fourteen of them huddled around a grill” the man continues, staring into the sky as he searches through his mind for whatever details feel important to provide. “They left a rifle at the door, so I picked it up, shot them, and waited a few minutes for anyone else to show up” Lou concludes, looking back to Sebastian he speaks to as if the work had been easy, “when no one did, I loaded our shit up and drove off.” “He’s not lying! The coolers are here!” Jules proclaims, helping his fellow survivor into the truck’s bed as the collective community stares toward him, “there’s a bunch of other shit too, but these are definitely our coolers!” With widened eyes, Val stares into the depths of the forest without offering so much as a huff, this reaction watched on by both Bruno and Ally, who hesitate to react in lieu of their leader’s loss for words. “This doesn’t add up” Val soon mutters under his breath, watched on by the majority of Sebastian and Terry’s combined groups whilst Elsie approaches her friends in the vehicle, attempting to assist them in recovering their cooler-filling supplies. “Unless there are more than fourteen of them, those ‘artists’ aren’t going to be a problem anymore” Lou declares, his voice’s continuation only further irritating the compound’s leader, “if there’s anything else you need, feel free to-” “Shut your fuckin’ mouth!” Val howls, interrupting the young man’s comments by extending the barrel of a rifle toward him, his unwillingness to hear the handicapped survivor out drawing an immediate cause for concern amongst the collective woodlanders. “Woah! Easy, Val! Easy!” Bruno shouts, leaping toward his leader with a hand reaching out, Ally’s instinct to step back with a look of shock at the threat looking her boyfriend in the face allowing just the two men to interact undisturbed. “Something’s not adding up, Bruno. Something’s not adding up!” the rifle-wielding leader barks, looking the unphased, yet much more alert and aware young man in the eyes, able to see the serious shift in his visage take place. “There’s no fuckin; way this kid went out there and did that!” Val doubles down, staring Lou in the face without receiving any reply otherwise from the handicapped killer, whose eyes simply hold firmly upon his own, “he’s gotta be one of them or something!” “You just saw us bury one of our own last night!” Marta proclaims, earning the undivided attention of the leader as she steps between himself and the gun, refusing to allow him a clear shot at his target, “Lou is one of us! We buried someone last night and so did he!” Pressing his teeth together, Val shakes his head with the intent to respond, unsure of what to say. “I don’t know any of you! I don’t know where any of you come from! You could be lying to me for all I know!” Val proclaims, splitting his view off from the subject of his ire and toward the group he’d entered the camp with. “I didn’t take out an entire army, I caught a group of thieves by surprise and emptied a magazine into them. If that’s so hard to believe, that’s fine...” Lou rebukes, gently brushing Marta to the side in order to step in front of her once more, “...we’ll leave.” “We’re not interested in causing you people any trouble” Sebastian doubles down, carefully approaching Marta’s side along with the young woman’s father, their hands raised in a show of good faith. “You’ve certainly caused a ton of trouble as it is, so pardon me if I’m not so willing to believe that” Val interjects, gestured to lower the gun by the much larger gentleman to his side. “Val, let me just go see what the kid brought back in the truck” Bruno explains, sharing the disbelief in the vagrant-looking survivor’s ability to discard their enemies with the ease that is suggested, but less willing to do the young man harm. “If we find something from this camp, we’ll at least know that he actually found them” the brute of a man explains, only to be refused the chance by Val, who shakes his head immediately. “Like I said. We don’t know these people. For all we can be sure of, they may be these artists themselves” the accommodating leader remarks, watching as Adrian steps in front of his daughter whilst Sebastian is refused to fully overtake Lou by the young man himself. “We’ve got just as much of an issue with these people as you do” the one-armed man reassures, stepping forward to take the lead of his group, dropping the rebar staff in the ground as he holds out his palm. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again. If you don’t trust us, that’s fine. We won’t take it personally, and we’ll be on our way” he concludes, displaying nothing in the way of hostility toward the on-edge leader, “no one has to get hurt here. Enough people haven’t made it this far.” “I can’t trust that you won’t come back if you leave” Val replies, making it clear to the young man and those that had accompanied him to the campgrounds that such a proposition is not welcomed, “we don’t have enough room to take risks like-” “Ally!” Bruno proclaims, his voice firing through the air just as that of the community’s leader fades, falling silent at the sensation of a pistol’s barrel being pressed against the side of his head. “Lower the gun, Val” Ally demands, nipping the escalating situation in the bud before any rounds can be fired off, the tightly-pressed eyelids of the man at the mercy of her trigger finger making it clear that her presentation is undesired. “You should not be doing this, Ally” Val softly murmurs, a command that she knows to be true, but disregards in the name of keeping the peace. “And you shouldn’t be aiming guns at people who can help us” Ally retorts, taking a stand for those she trusts enough to be as clean of red painted-responsibility as they claim to be, “those fiends have been running around down there for months. The last thing we need to do with how many of our friends have been killed is to run even more people off.” “You’re not thinking straight, Ally. You’ve got allegiances to these people, that is your boy” Val rejoinders, directing his chin just slightly in the young woman’s direction, his claim being refuted and reversed. “Neither are you, Val. No one can blame you for it, but you’ve been getting more paranoid the longer you send people out that don’t come back” Ally argues, the conversation watched from the view of a front row seat by the group of new arrivals, “let’s not make rash decisions here.” “If there are more savages than just the people that I killed, I can’t promise the scene will be as empty as it was when I got there” Lou interrupts, trying to alleviate concerns as best as he can offer, “but I’d be happy to take any number of you out to where I went.” “I’ll lower my gun if you drop yours. Then, we can talk about this without making stupid accusations” Ally explains, letting the community’s leader know what her intentions are, allowing him to consider them for himself. Clicking from the suction that pulls the skin toward his tongue, Val licks the chapped flesh of his bottom lip as he looks away from the much younger member of his group, his eyes taking back to the man whose return had left him beyond perplexed. Without saying a word, the community’s leader tosses his rifle into the snow and lifts his hands in surrender, allowing for Ally to pull away and gradually redirect the barrel of her weapon toward the same direction. Convincing himself not to utter another word, Val angrily turns away from the dissenting survivor within his community and marches off toward the tent his refuge is normally taken in, leaving the scene for those that remain part of it to handle for themselves. = RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 = “Come in” Lou remarks casually, overhearing the sound of knuckles dragging along the outside of his cloth sanctuary’s entrance, the person calling for his answer making as polite of an attempt at knocking as they can manage. Sliding his prosthetic limb into the holder that he’d worn over his neck, the man who’d once occupied his time as a lone wanderer gently tucks the artificial send arm in the corner of his tent, stowing it away for later use before turning to address who awaits him. With a slight widening of his eyes, Lou takes his full attention toward the woman who steps through the temporary home’s vestibule, aware that she’d been in the camp since his arrival, but still taken aback by her presence being as close as it is. “I hope I’m not barging in on anything important” Ally mutters, politely returning the velcro strips that had held the covering’s entry shut to their prior places, not wanting to expose her boyfriend to the winter’s elements. Shaking his head, the scruffy bearded survivor attempts to tell her that she’s not to worry of her intrusion, but the words that he wishes to use fail to find themselves strong enough to leave his tongue. “We never really got a chance to talk before. You seemed like you might have needed some space last night, so I figured that I wouldn’t intrude on you” Ally explains, her confession being met with the continued shake of the man’s head. Whilst her boyfriend resides upon one knee, Ally finds herself resting upon two, her face held toward the man’s own as the following moments between them are spent in silence. Flashing a smile, the woman redirects her eyes from those of the man across from her to the full arsenal of facial hair that he adorns, gently reaching out and guiding her fingers down the man’s beard with a light in her eyes that the man had not seen since their last interaction, “you pull off the beard really well.” Uttering not one word, Lou disregards the reply he’d wanted to offer seconds prior as his face fills with enough emotion to bring him toward the verge of tears, his body throwing itself forward just as his hand does without warning. Pulling the woman into him, the reunited survivor holds his lover close as she reciprocates the embrace, immediately shedding tears upon the touch of a man she wasn’t sure she’d ever see again, her lips pressing a kiss into his cheek. “I can’t believe this is real” Ally mumbles in a whisper, holding the man even tighter than the force that he pulls her in with, tears streaming down the not-so-lone wanderer’s own face just as they do his girlfriend’s. “It’s real” Lou whispers back, resting his shortened arm on the woman’s upper back as their interaction proceeds in silence, their reunited bodies continuing to remain in the unabashed welcoming of each other. | “It’s all checking out, boss!” Bruno proclaims, calling out to the community’s leader, who stands by idly with his arms crossed and a dissatisfied look cemented upon his face. Glancing at the vehicle’s exterior before setting his sights upon the still-biting corpse skull in the middle of the ground, Val thinks quietly to himself whilst the rest of his group watches on, the people he’d accused of being wolves in sheep’s clothing staring at him much the same way. “What about my revolver? You see that anywhere in there?” the leader soon queries, prompting the large fellow that serves him without question to look back into the clutter that fills the truck’s bed. “If he finds it, will that be enough to get you off our case?” Jenn wonders from across the dirt-covered and paint-scratched cab of the vehicle, standing by with the same investment as those she stands side-by-side with. “No, he’ll accuse Lou of 3D printing the stuff instead” Jules quips, earning a collective chuckle amongst his peers, their amusement immediately drawing both the ire and bewilderment of the man who organises this inspection. “What is wrong with all of you? Have you not actually seen what the world is like out there?” Val questions aloud, not yet clear in the inquiry that he’s trying to bestow upon his humoured contemporaries to answer. “You just had one of your own killed because of those bastards out there, and here you all are... Sitting around and joking with each other” the man bemuses, a judgemental stare held in his eye. “Are we supposed to not try and find something to be positive about? Is that it?” Sebastian retorts, calling the man’s claim into question whilst leaning against the truck’s hood, “do you want us to just walk around without something to live for, pointing guns at whoever our paranoia tells us to?” “If you’d actually seen what the world is like out there... I mean truly seen it... you wouldn’t be criticising my paranoia” Val responds, defending his stance without success in convincing those across from him. “There aren’t laws in this world anymore, don’t you get that? People can just come across you and shoot you ‘cause they want your shit” the light-skinned survivor proclaims, a truth that those he stands opposite of had been grateful to not fall victim to. “People have broken up into groups like you and I. Some of them created new sanctuary cities to settle down in, others got together and started picking off whoever stood in their way” the man carries on, “some other people haven’t gotten lucky like that. They went off on their own and died that way or stayed like that.” “It’s here, boss!” Bruno exclaims, again interposes, hoisting a silver firearm into the sky, its polished shell reflecting the light of flames closeby. Falling silent from the pessimistic claims he’d made, Val’s eyes part further than they had through rest or rage, the cold and hostile visage that he’d worn beginning to fall as if he’d just been presented with a gift on Christmas morning. Climbing down from the vehicle’s rear, the hefty gentleman carefully extends the weapon toward the man whose name is delicately carved onto its side, his likeness beared upon the glossy and mirror-like silver finish. Taking it with his left hand whilst running his fingers along its barrel gently, Val falls into a complete silence that nothing short of the firearm had provoked, the care in which he takes to it noticed by those across from him, who also prematurely end their verbal conflict. “I’ll take it that gun’s important to you?” Sebastian wonders aloud, immediately prompting the man opposite him to look up, only staring at him for a moment before redirecting his sights toward the metal piece. “My father gave it to me” Val replies, the dismissive and argumentative reflection in his voice having disappeared, replaced with the soft tone of a man taking obvious sentimentality in being reunited with his possession, “I asked them not to take it, but...” Able to make out what the man was about to say, the newest additions to the community continue to look on silently, not wanting to press further than they already had, wishing to prevent themselves from disparaging the man’s moment. “It’s been a long few months for us” Bruno speaks aloud, again earning a brief glance from Val, who sets his stare back upon the weapon he’s both grateful and shocked to be returned. Whilst Courtney and Sonya hang their heads, both Jules and Terry look toward each other with a similar expression, feeling a fair commonality with those they’d argued with as if dissimilar. “We know what you mean” Sebastian sighs, meeting Bruno’s eyes with a shared look of dejection, their different paths having led them to the same moment in time, one that alleviates the initial feeling as if they’d not been capable of sharing strife like the others do. | “I’d been trying to get to mom and dad’s place in Alberta. I’d walked for days, but I’d gotten no farther than this” Ally confesses, staring at the ground while her boyfriend watches on, keeping to himself so as not to disturb her. “I got caught in a gunfight about a week after I left Terry and the others. I tried lending Val cover fire when his guys got caught around the artists” she continues, finally reaching the point in her tale where the paths of her people and herself collide. “We lost five people that day. They lost three the day before, and we lost nine more the day after” Ally explains, shaking her head with the memory of chaos that surrounded just freeing herself from a place of constant danger. “They let me stay around them ‘cause they knew I was on my own, and we started keeping our feet on the ground. It was dangerous to stop for anything more than a night” the woman proceeds, shrugging as she fixes her hair, “guns were going off every night.” Having pulled both knees against his chest as he sits atop his sleeping bag, Lou watches his girlfriend’s face hang as the memories only continue to devolve into cruel thoughts, most of whom she wishes not to share. “Eventually, we got to an abandoned outpost and held it down for a little bit. Then, the artists came with more people than they had before” Ally furthers with her finger tracing the lumps in the ground through the tent’s nylon floor, visibly rattled by the memory. “They led whatever zombies they came across along the way too. If it wasn’t their bullets that were coming at us, it was the dead” Ally concludes, clearing her throat as she quickly throws her chin up, sending loose hairs flying over her head, “we couldn’t do anything other than run off into the woods.” Saddened to hear what the woman’s experiences had come to since they’d last interacted, Lou hangs his head with shame that he couldn’t change matters or have found her sooner, the luck of them crossing paths again- in the face of all odds- not being strong enough to change that outlook. “That’s why Val sits up at night. That’s why he watches wherever the entrance of the camp is” Ally speaks, reuniting her line of sight with the man opposite herself, “we never found our way back to some of them.” Nodding as his eyes fall toward the lumpy ground, Lou takes the woman’s account of events into his mind before her eagerness to switch the conversation catches him by surprise. “What about you?” she wonders aloud, watching as her boyfriend’s face lifts toward her, not yet speaking toward the question asked, “what happened with you since the boat went down?” Momentarily widening as if the inquiry made sense, the quick recollection of what his friends had informed him of since his return to the grounds catches the silver slayer’s mind. “Jenn said you talked to her and some of the others. Didn’t they tell you anything?” Lou queries, a conclusion that his girlfriend assures him of. “Yeah, but they only told their part. I haven’t talked to the other people in your group yet” Ally replies, her gentle smile warming the air between them. “Jenn filled me in on everything after you found her and Halston” she continues, watching as her boyfriend nods along, clued into what she’d yet to know, “she said you had that beard on you when you two found each other.” “I did, yeah. It, uh... It didn’t take long to grow. Maybe two weeks or so?” Lou replies, still staring at the nylon covering of the earth’s surface, able to feel the cold that emanates from it despite the warmth that his body contains. “The time between the boat and when I met the others is kind of blurry. I hiked up to the mountains thinking that, if you were looking for me, you’d expect me to have gone up there” he proceeds, shrugging his shoulders dismissively, “I just hung around a bit.” “Jenn said you told her that you washed ashore. Something about jumping off the crow’s nest when the boat went under and ending up on the beach” Ally recalls, speaking to the same claim that Lou nods agreeingly toward. “Yup. I walked around Victoria a bit, got a new staff and started heading for the mountains. There wasn’t really much than that to it” the man doubles down, considering the months spent in isolation as nothing worth talking further on. “Honestly, the days just bled into each other. I didn’t see anyone with a pulse until Sebastian found me outside a little village” Lou confesses, looking anywhere in the tent that his girlfriend doesn’t occupy whilst speaking. “He’d been keeping the place up in case help arrived. He wanted them to not think the whole mountain was a lost cause” the handicapped warrior remarks, “his friend, Kim, got bit. I cut off the leg, but she didn’t make it.” “Why did you think she would?” Ally immediately questions aloud, watching the shrinking of her boyfriend’s face present the admission that he’d yet to voice aloud. “Honestly, I didn’t think she’d make it anyway. They cut off my arm on the boat and the infection that was settling in was gone by the time I woke up” Lou carries on, the hope in his eyes making it clear he’d desired a different outcome for the lost woman, “it didn’t work for her. Either way, Sebastian made it out alive ‘cause of me.” “Oh. So Val took me in for the same reason Sebastian brought you in, huh?” Ally cheerfully inquires, watching her boyfriend’s smile precede his nod, the conclusion she’d drawn pleasing the man across from her. “Even when we were apart, our fates still managed to keep intermingling with each other, didn’t they?” Lou wonders aloud, sharing a subdued laugh with his girlfriend, their amusement gradually fading off to allow the survivor his continued speech. “I tried shutting them out for a bit, but they grew on me pretty fast. They’d sheltered up in a cabin since the outbreak started and hadn’t left. That wasn’t something they were too open to changing” Lou explains, shaking his head with a playful patronisation at those he’d grown close to, “Marta was the only one that was. Courtney had been interacting with what remained of some cities every now and then. I didn’t know Kim at all, but she seemed familiar enough to make due.” “Yeah, Terry said he knew the people from the cabin had to be forced out. I didn’t know what he meant by that, he never brought up that cabin part” Ally interjects, a stance that her boyfriend doubles down on. “He wasn’t lying. The only reason they actually left was because I found Theo in the woods. He and Lee had made a camp near the bottom of the mountain and offered us refuge” Lou assures, watching the woman’s eyes widen with surprise, “an avalanche wiped the place out hours later.” “Shit. So it was a real ‘skin of the teeth’ kinda deal, huh?” Ally quips, again sharing a humoured and warm bout of laughter with the equally battle-tested man, finding commonality in their plights and a way to look at them through more favourable lenses. Letting out a deep and pleased sigh, Lou shakes his head whilst staring at the floor, having said all that needed to fill in the gaps to his story that his love had yet to be informed of. “So, these people... You’ve grown close to them, haven’t you?” Ally questions aloud, shifting the conversation’s direction slightly from the path it had been straying down, the claim one that the man across from her holds little issue in reassuring. “I have. They’ve been there for me even when they had no reason to be. I owe them a lot” Lou replies, earning a curious nod from the woman across from him that doesn’t appear as genuine as it’s made out to be taken as. “I see” she replies, forcing a smile upon her closed lips as she looks toward the ground, shrugging as her eyes widen, almost trying to stake a similar claim to those she joins alongside, “I feel the same way about Val, Bruno, and the others.” Lifting his eyebrows without being able to share in the same ease that had come over the pair in the minutes that have since passed, Lou nods toward the woman’s remark without offering a rebuttal at first, sitting in silence for a moment. Looking the woman in the eyes as the air keeps quiet, Lou’s head allows its nod to slow to a halt, joining the same gradual stop of his girlfriend’s similar gesture. “That’s good to hear. Sebastian, Marta, and the others...” the well-travelled survivor begins, pausing as his girlfriend’s eyebrows lift just as his own had seconds prior, a smile coming over his face during the purposeful hush, “...they’re like family to me.” Doing a poor job of convincing her boyfriend of the feigned pleasure she takes in hearing his comment, Ally musters the best expression of jubilation she can manage, feeling nowhere near the delectation that her visage presents. “I can say the same for-” she begins to reply, only to be interrupted by the snapping of velcro being freed from their binds, parting the tent’s vestibule without request. “Can I come in?” Val wonders aloud, keeping his eyes averted in the instance those within the cloth sanctuary aren’t able to present themselves in a way considered decent. “We’re just talking” Lou replies, leaning back as far as his body can handle without being taken to the ground beneath gravity’s might, “you can make yourself at home in here as long as you don’t shove another gun in my face.” Letting out an audible sigh as he steps through the nylon flaps, Val hangs his head with disappointment before coming to a stand in the distant corner from the tent’s intended occupant. “Listen, I don’t want to waste time here. I misjudged you a little while back and jumped the gun... Literally” the American born community mouthpiece remarks, surprising the young survivor he issues his apology to, “I came here to apologise. Whatever my reasons were, they weren’t justified. I’m sorry.” Sending his eyes to the opposite side of the camping structure’s interior, Lou considers the man’s apology as it was delivered, aware that the man who stands before him takes no pleasure in providing it. “I would’ve used a stronger word than ‘misjudged’, but I suppose it’s a fair enough conclusion to agree on” the one-armed survivor answers, nodding toward the community’s leader before patting the tent’s ground, “my friends and I will leave at sunrise and be out of your hair.” “What?” Ally interjects, prompting both of the men’s eyes to take toward her, an immediate displeasure carried in her remark while her sights fall upon the man opposite her. “I told him earlier that we’d be willing to leave him be and get on with ourselves” Lou responds, doubling down on the vow that he made when the night was younger than it is now, “he’s clearly not fond of myself or my friends. And as far as he’s concerned, there’s not a damn thing he can offer me that I can’t get myself.” Rolling his eyes as they take to the way he’d come, Val forces himself to endure the comments made by the young stalwart of survival that he’d thought lesser of not long ago, feeling himself worthy of them. “I might’ve gotten lucky, but I put down fourteen of those pricks without wasting my breath. If this joker wants to play god, fine... let him play god” Lou retorts, not taking kindly to the presence of the man that Ally puts herself in the corner of support to. “If he wants to sit up all night hiding away from the animals outside and waiting for his friends to come back, that’s fine by me” the man concludes, refusing to pull punches against someone he feels the shots taken at are warranted, “he can play god and build his little kingdom in the mountains. I’ve dealt with savages like the kind he’s scared of... I don’t need a pair of pearly, white gates to hide behind. Neither do my friends.” “Are you done being a jackass?” Ally interrupts, watching her boyfriend look away from the community’s leader and back toward her, his dissatisfaction incapable of being wiped away entirely despite the redirection of his attention. Without saying anything at first, Lou takes a second look at the reserved and angrily-respectful leader before descending from the metaphorical pillar he’d built himself to stand atop, eyes falling to the ground in silence. “Val’s an asshole too sometimes, but at least he was man enough to come in here and apologise for fuck’s sake” Ally proclaims, watching as her boyfriend nods along with the explanation she paves like a road in fairer climates. “Don’t nod your head at me like that, look me in the eyes, cocksucker” she doubles down, commanding the man in ways no one else does, its effectiveness made resoundingly clear as Lou does exactly what’s told of him. “I don’t give a fuck how long we’ve been apart. I don’t care what we have or haven’t seen since we last saw each other. You will not be some petty son of a bitch with everything that’s at stake” Ally declares, pointing her finger toward the disgruntled expression her boyfriend meets her with. “You may have handled them well, but those pricks out there are still dangerous” she continues, her warning bringing Lou back to the earth he’d temporarily lifted himself from. “After what happened tonight, there’s a target on all of our backs. They know someone came in and fucked with them, and they’ll be looking to get the shit they stole from us back” Ally proclaims, a conclusion that the man who stands behind her had already come to. “They’re gonna be even more ruthless now that they’ve been stepped on. Leaving now would put you and your friends right in the line of fire” she concludes, shaking her head, “after all this time, I am not losing you again.” Remaining silent, Lou’s lack of an immediate reply is joined by the hush that comes over the woman he’d just reunited with, the collective lack of communication freeing the floor for the calm and soft-spoken tone of the compound’s leader to take for himself. “You don’t have to leave” Val concludes, willing to look past the differences and the complaints levied at him by the surprisingly capable young survivor in the name of a greater good, “if anything, it’d be better if you didn’t.” “How so?” Lou questions back, finally speaking up at the man’s behest, trying to appease his girlfriend by entertaining the proposition raised, reserving his own suspicions in the process. “Even if you’re actually sorry about pointing a gun in my face, that doesn’t change the fact that you did it ‘cause you didn’t trust me” the one-armed stalwart proclaims, a point that can’t be disputed by his opposite party, “why am I to believe you’ve found a change in heart after, what, an hour or two?” “Because the others, your friends and my friends, are right when they say we can’t afford to be running people off” Val replies, assuring the man that he’s come to accept the point of view bestowed upon him, “we’re knee-deep in artist territory, and I’m not even sure how far it stretches.” “So go find out. No one’s forcing you to stay here just like no one’s forcing us to stay here” Lou replies, failing to find the sense in assuming anything other than that, “travel far enough and you might not have to hide out in the forest anymore. I don’t see what the problem is.” “And where would you suggest we go?” Val questions aloud, watching the man roll his eyes as his face looks in every direction, both amused and puzzled by the inquiry. “Where the hell were you headed before they attacked you? Go there” Lou answers, only to find the proposal falling on deaf ears. “We were never going anywhere specific. We all came together after the zombies started popping up” the assumption-humbled leader explains, “I’m not even from this country, I was born in Montana.” “So you’re just planning on hiding out in the mountains all damn day?” Lou queries, looking to Val for answers before receiving them from the woman who occupies half of the conversation. “We haven’t been able to make much of a move out of them. When we found you and the others, we were out looking for cars abandoned around the side of the road” Ally explains, shaking her head without much more to offer than that, “we’ve been slowly getting ready to head off somewhere else.” “We don’t know where that would be, we’re just looking to go wherever those animals aren’t” Val explains, crossing his arms before switching the conversation’s course when a realisation dawns on him, “where was your group going?” Lowering his head, Lou suddenly gives the man a cold shoulder, reserving his speech so as not to clue someone he doesn’t fully trust into the plan concocted by his friends and himself. “They were going to Calgary. My parents have a ranch out near Priddis” Ally replies, watching her boyfriend look up with widened eyes, almost surprised at the ease in which she’d spill her guts to the man. “What the fuck, Ally?” Lou questions aloud, showing an expression of betrayal to the person who’d so casually thrown the answer out, visibly bemused at the demeanour in which he receives. “You weren’t going to tell him, so I did” Ally replies, the retort proving to be one baffling enough for her boyfriend to look around in bewilderment. For a few seconds, the only response Lou can afford the pair are a few unsorted sounds of puzzled disbelief that precede him rising to his feet, shaking his head out of frustration before grabbing his prosthetic case and marching for the vestibule. “Where the hell are you going!?” Ally hurriedly proclaims, given no warning of the man’s attempt at wandering off until he takes part in it, allowing his boots to crush the soft layer of snow that coats the ground. “Somewhere that’s not here” Lou calmly mutters back, walking at a consistent pace that his girlfriend hurries to catch up to, her hand grabbing the man’s shoulder and spinning him back. “What the fuck do you mean? Get back here!” she shouts, catching the attention of those who surround the camp in their separate quarters, those that had spent the prior few minutes socialising now setting their sights on the conflict unfolding not too far away from them. “Don’t fucking touch me!” Lou exclaims with disgust, violently pulling his shoulder away from the shocked woman, who reacts to his outburst with incredulity. “What the hell is your problem, Lou!?” Ally questions aloud, watching as the man takes a few steps away from her, emotionally hurt by her willingness to confess what he’d made obvious was information he wasn’t willing to part with. “You good, Lou!?” Terry calls out, having been standing nearby before taking to the man’s direction, only needing to venture a few steps before being called off. “I’m fine. I’m just going off to get some air” Lou replies, directing his chin toward the man’s general vicinity whilst maintaining eye contact with the woman he’d been stunned by the actions of. For a few seconds, the man looks on without saying a word while slowly backing up, eventually turning around to retreat entirely with just as much of a warning. “You can’t just walk off like this, Lou! It’s dangerous!” Ally proclaims, only to hear her boyfriend’s enraged shout take back to her, his face never looking back while the reply is paid. “Then don’t follow me!” Lou calls back, carrying himself in the opposite direction of the camp’s entrance, heading for the woodland’s treeline without the intention of stopping, prepared to vanish into the coverage of the unknown as he’d been used to, being watched by his girlfriend, who’s voice falls silent. == RISE and REVOLT == “Bullshit!” Val bellows, firing his finger toward the young man with anger, his community’s gradual return from the makeshift obstructions that they’d hidden behind following suit. “That’s just some creeper’s face that you painted up! You’re a fucking liar!” the vigour-fueled leader proclaims, his spouted rage doing nothing to change the pleased, one-armed survivor, who continues to stand pridefully with his trophy.
“I have whatever I picked off from them in the back of the truck” Lou responds, easily sliding his weapon free from the soft ground before gently swinging the staff as if it were a baseball bat, freeing the undead skull from its top, allowing it to roll to a stop near the edge of the campfire. “The only stuff they grabbed off of us are the coolers. Those are ours, and you can have the rest” the silver slayer commands, wiping off the rebar’s tip in the soft, white snow. “How did you manage out there?” Sebastian calmly inquiries, the reaction to this ordeal from his group and himself wildly juxtaposed to those across the compound from them. “I followed some roads in the direction they drove away from the arcade in, saw a bunch of streets splattered with red paint, and then I went wherever there weren’t any of those markings” Lou replies, shrugging his shoulders as if the recollection were of no big deal whilst Josie and Jules make for the vehicle’s bed. “I found a warehouse with an open garage, drove up to it, went in, and saw around fourteen of them huddled around a grill” the man continues, staring into the sky as he searches through his mind for whatever details feel important to provide. “They left a rifle at the door, so I picked it up, shot them, and waited a few minutes for anyone else to show up” Lou concludes, looking back to Sebastian he speaks to as if the work had been easy, “when no one did, I loaded our shit up and drove off.” “He’s not lying! The coolers are here!” Jules proclaims, helping his fellow survivor into the truck’s bed as the collective community stares toward him, “there’s a bunch of other shit too, but these are definitely our coolers!” With widened eyes, Val stares into the depths of the forest without offering so much as a huff, this reaction watched on by both Bruno and Ally, who hesitate to react in lieu of their leader’s loss for words. “This doesn’t add up” Val soon mutters under his breath, watched on by the majority of Sebastian and Terry’s combined groups whilst Elsie approaches her friends in the vehicle, attempting to assist them in recovering their cooler-filling supplies. “Unless there are more than fourteen of them, those ‘artists’ aren’t going to be a problem anymore” Lou declares, his voice’s continuation only further irritating the compound’s leader, “if there’s anything else you need, feel free to-” “Shut your fuckin’ mouth!” Val howls, interrupting the young man’s comments by extending the barrel of a rifle toward him, his unwillingness to hear the handicapped survivor out drawing an immediate cause for concern amongst the collective woodlanders. “Woah! Easy, Val! Easy!” Bruno shouts, leaping toward his leader with a hand reaching out, Ally’s instinct to step back with a look of shock at the threat looking her boyfriend in the face allowing just the two men to interact undisturbed. “Something’s not adding up, Bruno. Something’s not adding up!” the rifle-wielding leader barks, looking the unphased, yet much more alert and aware young man in the eyes, able to see the serious shift in his visage take place. “There’s no fuckin; way this kid went out there and did that!” Val doubles down, staring Lou in the face without receiving any reply otherwise from the handicapped killer, whose eyes simply hold firmly upon his own, “he’s gotta be one of them or something!” “You just saw us bury one of our own last night!” Marta proclaims, earning the undivided attention of the leader as she steps between himself and the gun, refusing to allow him a clear shot at his target, “Lou is one of us! We buried someone last night and so did he!” Pressing his teeth together, Val shakes his head with the intent to respond, unsure of what to say. “I don’t know any of you! I don’t know where any of you come from! You could be lying to me for all I know!” Val proclaims, splitting his view off from the subject of his ire and toward the group he’d entered the camp with. “I didn’t take out an entire army, I caught a group of thieves by surprise and emptied a magazine into them. If that’s so hard to believe, that’s fine...” Lou rebukes, gently brushing Marta to the side in order to step in front of her once more, “...we’ll leave.” “We’re not interested in causing you people any trouble” Sebastian doubles down, carefully approaching Marta’s side along with the young woman’s father, their hands raised in a show of good faith. “You’ve certainly caused a ton of trouble as it is, so pardon me if I’m not so willing to believe that” Val interjects, gestured to lower the gun by the much larger gentleman to his side. “Val, let me just go see what the kid brought back in the truck” Bruno explains, sharing the disbelief in the vagrant-looking survivor’s ability to discard their enemies with the ease that is suggested, but less willing to do the young man harm. “If we find something from this camp, we’ll at least know that he actually found them” the brute of a man explains, only to be refused the chance by Val, who shakes his head immediately. “Like I said. We don’t know these people. For all we can be sure of, they may be these artists themselves” the accommodating leader remarks, watching as Adrian steps in front of his daughter whilst Sebastian is refused to fully overtake Lou by the young man himself. “We’ve got just as much of an issue with these people as you do” the one-armed man reassures, stepping forward to take the lead of his group, dropping the rebar staff in the ground as he holds out his palm. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again. If you don’t trust us, that’s fine. We won’t take it personally, and we’ll be on our way” he concludes, displaying nothing in the way of hostility toward the on-edge leader, “no one has to get hurt here. Enough people haven’t made it this far.” “I can’t trust that you won’t come back if you leave” Val replies, making it clear to the young man and those that had accompanied him to the campgrounds that such a proposition is not welcomed, “we don’t have enough room to take risks like-” “Ally!” Bruno proclaims, his voice firing through the air just as that of the community’s leader fades, falling silent at the sensation of a pistol’s barrel being pressed against the side of his head. “Lower the gun, Val” Ally demands, nipping the escalating situation in the bud before any rounds can be fired off, the tightly-pressed eyelids of the man at the mercy of her trigger finger making it clear that her presentation is undesired. “You should not be doing this, Ally” Val softly murmurs, a command that she knows to be true, but disregards in the name of keeping the peace. “And you shouldn’t be aiming guns at people who can help us” Ally retorts, taking a stand for those she trusts enough to be as clean of red painted-responsibility as they claim to be, “those fiends have been running around down there for months. The last thing we need to do with how many of our friends have been killed is to run even more people off.” “You’re not thinking straight, Ally. You’ve got allegiances to these people, that is your boy” Val rejoinders, directing his chin just slightly in the young woman’s direction, his claim being refuted and reversed. “Neither are you, Val. No one can blame you for it, but you’ve been getting more paranoid the longer you send people out that don’t come back” Ally argues, the conversation watched from the view of a front row seat by the group of new arrivals, “let’s not make rash decisions here.” “If there are more savages than just the people that I killed, I can’t promise the scene will be as empty as it was when I got there” Lou interrupts, trying to alleviate concerns as best as he can offer, “but I’d be happy to take any number of you out to where I went.” “I’ll lower my gun if you drop yours. Then, we can talk about this without making stupid accusations” Ally explains, letting the community’s leader know what her intentions are, allowing him to consider them for himself. Clicking from the suction that pulls the skin toward his tongue, Val licks the chapped flesh of his bottom lip as he looks away from the much younger member of his group, his eyes taking back to the man whose return had left him beyond perplexed. Without saying a word, the community’s leader tosses his rifle into the snow and lifts his hands in surrender, allowing for Ally to pull away and gradually redirect the barrel of her weapon toward the same direction. Convincing himself not to utter another word, Val angrily turns away from the dissenting survivor within his community and marches off toward the tent his refuge is normally taken in, leaving the scene for those that remain part of it to handle for themselves. = RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 = “Come in” Lou remarks casually, overhearing the sound of knuckles dragging along the outside of his cloth sanctuary’s entrance, the person calling for his answer making as polite of an attempt at knocking as they can manage. Sliding his prosthetic limb into the holder that he’d worn over his neck, the man who’d once occupied his time as a lone wanderer gently tucks the artificial send arm in the corner of his tent, stowing it away for later use before turning to address who awaits him. With a slight widening of his eyes, Lou takes his full attention toward the woman who steps through the temporary home’s vestibule, aware that she’d been in the camp since his arrival, but still taken aback by her presence being as close as it is. “I hope I’m not barging in on anything important” Ally mutters, politely returning the velcro strips that had held the covering’s entry shut to their prior places, not wanting to expose her boyfriend to the winter’s elements. Shaking his head, the scruffy bearded survivor attempts to tell her that she’s not to worry of her intrusion, but the words that he wishes to use fail to find themselves strong enough to leave his tongue. “We never really got a chance to talk before. You seemed like you might have needed some space last night, so I figured that I wouldn’t intrude on you” Ally explains, her confession being met with the continued shake of the man’s head. Whilst her boyfriend resides upon one knee, Ally finds herself resting upon two, her face held toward the man’s own as the following moments between them are spent in silence. Flashing a smile, the woman redirects her eyes from those of the man across from her to the full arsenal of facial hair that he adorns, gently reaching out and guiding her fingers down the man’s beard with a light in her eyes that the man had not seen since their last interaction, “you pull off the beard really well.” Uttering not one word, Lou disregards the reply he’d wanted to offer seconds prior as his face fills with enough emotion to bring him toward the verge of tears, his body throwing itself forward just as his hand does without warning. Pulling the woman into him, the reunited survivor holds his lover close as she reciprocates the embrace, immediately shedding tears upon the touch of a man she wasn’t sure she’d ever see again, her lips pressing a kiss into his cheek. “I can’t believe this is real” Ally mumbles in a whisper, holding the man even tighter than the force that he pulls her in with, tears streaming down the not-so-lone wanderer’s own face just as they do his girlfriend’s. “It’s real” Lou whispers back, resting his shortened arm on the woman’s upper back as their interaction proceeds in silence, their reunited bodies continuing to remain in the unabashed welcoming of each other. | “It’s all checking out, boss!” Bruno proclaims, calling out to the community’s leader, who stands by idly with his arms crossed and a dissatisfied look cemented upon his face. Glancing at the vehicle’s exterior before setting his sights upon the still-biting corpse skull in the middle of the ground, Val thinks quietly to himself whilst the rest of his group watches on, the people he’d accused of being wolves in sheep’s clothing staring at him much the same way. “What about my revolver? You see that anywhere in there?” the leader soon queries, prompting the large fellow that serves him without question to look back into the clutter that fills the truck’s bed. “If he finds it, will that be enough to get you off our case?” Jenn wonders from across the dirt-covered and paint-scratched cab of the vehicle, standing by with the same investment as those she stands side-by-side with. “No, he’ll accuse Lou of 3D printing the stuff instead” Jules quips, earning a collective chuckle amongst his peers, their amusement immediately drawing both the ire and bewilderment of the man who organises this inspection. “What is wrong with all of you? Have you not actually seen what the world is like out there?” Val questions aloud, not yet clear in the inquiry that he’s trying to bestow upon his humoured contemporaries to answer. “You just had one of your own killed because of those bastards out there, and here you all are... Sitting around and joking with each other” the man bemuses, a judgemental stare held in his eye. “Are we supposed to not try and find something to be positive about? Is that it?” Sebastian retorts, calling the man’s claim into question whilst leaning against the truck’s hood, “do you want us to just walk around without something to live for, pointing guns at whoever our paranoia tells us to?” “If you’d actually seen what the world is like out there... I mean truly seen it... you wouldn’t be criticising my paranoia” Val responds, defending his stance without success in convincing those across from him. “There aren’t laws in this world anymore, don’t you get that? People can just come across you and shoot you ‘cause they want your shit” the light-skinned survivor proclaims, a truth that those he stands opposite of had been grateful to not fall victim to. “People have broken up into groups like you and I. Some of them created new sanctuary cities to settle down in, others got together and started picking off whoever stood in their way” the man carries on, “some other people haven’t gotten lucky like that. They went off on their own and died that way or stayed like that.” “It’s here, boss!” Bruno exclaims, again interposes, hoisting a silver firearm into the sky, its polished shell reflecting the light of flames closeby. Falling silent from the pessimistic claims he’d made, Val’s eyes part further than they had through rest or rage, the cold and hostile visage that he’d worn beginning to fall as if he’d just been presented with a gift on Christmas morning. Climbing down from the vehicle’s rear, the hefty gentleman carefully extends the weapon toward the man whose name is delicately carved onto its side, his likeness beared upon the glossy and mirror-like silver finish. Taking it with his left hand whilst running his fingers along its barrel gently, Val falls into a complete silence that nothing short of the firearm had provoked, the care in which he takes to it noticed by those across from him, who also prematurely end their verbal conflict. “I’ll take it that gun’s important to you?” Sebastian wonders aloud, immediately prompting the man opposite him to look up, only staring at him for a moment before redirecting his sights toward the metal piece. “My father gave it to me” Val replies, the dismissive and argumentative reflection in his voice having disappeared, replaced with the soft tone of a man taking obvious sentimentality in being reunited with his possession, “I asked them not to take it, but...” Able to make out what the man was about to say, the newest additions to the community continue to look on silently, not wanting to press further than they already had, wishing to prevent themselves from disparaging the man’s moment. “It’s been a long few months for us” Bruno speaks aloud, again earning a brief glance from Val, who sets his stare back upon the weapon he’s both grateful and shocked to be returned. Whilst Courtney and Sonya hang their heads, both Jules and Terry look toward each other with a similar expression, feeling a fair commonality with those they’d argued with as if dissimilar. “We know what you mean” Sebastian sighs, meeting Bruno’s eyes with a shared look of dejection, their different paths having led them to the same moment in time, one that alleviates the initial feeling as if they’d not been capable of sharing strife like the others do. | “I’d been trying to get to mom and dad’s place in Alberta. I’d walked for days, but I’d gotten no farther than this” Ally confesses, staring at the ground while her boyfriend watches on, keeping to himself so as not to disturb her. “I got caught in a gunfight about a week after I left Terry and the others. I tried lending Val cover fire when his guys got caught around the artists” she continues, finally reaching the point in her tale where the paths of her people and herself collide. “We lost five people that day. They lost three the day before, and we lost nine more the day after” Ally explains, shaking her head with the memory of chaos that surrounded just freeing herself from a place of constant danger. “They let me stay around them ‘cause they knew I was on my own, and we started keeping our feet on the ground. It was dangerous to stop for anything more than a night” the woman proceeds, shrugging as she fixes her hair, “guns were going off every night.” Having pulled both knees against his chest as he sits atop his sleeping bag, Lou watches his girlfriend’s face hang as the memories only continue to devolve into cruel thoughts, most of whom she wishes not to share. “Eventually, we got to an abandoned outpost and held it down for a little bit. Then, the artists came with more people than they had before” Ally furthers with her finger tracing the lumps in the ground through the tent’s nylon floor, visibly rattled by the memory. “They led whatever zombies they came across along the way too. If it wasn’t their bullets that were coming at us, it was the dead” Ally concludes, clearing her throat as she quickly throws her chin up, sending loose hairs flying over her head, “we couldn’t do anything other than run off into the woods.” Saddened to hear what the woman’s experiences had come to since they’d last interacted, Lou hangs his head with shame that he couldn’t change matters or have found her sooner, the luck of them crossing paths again- in the face of all odds- not being strong enough to change that outlook. “That’s why Val sits up at night. That’s why he watches wherever the entrance of the camp is” Ally speaks, reuniting her line of sight with the man opposite herself, “we never found our way back to some of them.” Nodding as his eyes fall toward the lumpy ground, Lou takes the woman’s account of events into his mind before her eagerness to switch the conversation catches him by surprise. “What about you?” she wonders aloud, watching as her boyfriend’s face lifts toward her, not yet speaking toward the question asked, “what happened with you since the boat went down?” Momentarily widening as if the inquiry made sense, the quick recollection of what his friends had informed him of since his return to the grounds catches the silver slayer’s mind. “Jenn said you talked to her and some of the others. Didn’t they tell you anything?” Lou queries, a conclusion that his girlfriend assures him of. “Yeah, but they only told their part. I haven’t talked to the other people in your group yet” Ally replies, her gentle smile warming the air between them. “Jenn filled me in on everything after you found her and Halston” she continues, watching as her boyfriend nods along, clued into what she’d yet to know, “she said you had that beard on you when you two found each other.” “I did, yeah. It, uh... It didn’t take long to grow. Maybe two weeks or so?” Lou replies, still staring at the nylon covering of the earth’s surface, able to feel the cold that emanates from it despite the warmth that his body contains. “The time between the boat and when I met the others is kind of blurry. I hiked up to the mountains thinking that, if you were looking for me, you’d expect me to have gone up there” he proceeds, shrugging his shoulders dismissively, “I just hung around a bit.” “Jenn said you told her that you washed ashore. Something about jumping off the crow’s nest when the boat went under and ending up on the beach” Ally recalls, speaking to the same claim that Lou nods agreeingly toward. “Yup. I walked around Victoria a bit, got a new staff and started heading for the mountains. There wasn’t really much than that to it” the man doubles down, considering the months spent in isolation as nothing worth talking further on. “Honestly, the days just bled into each other. I didn’t see anyone with a pulse until Sebastian found me outside a little village” Lou confesses, looking anywhere in the tent that his girlfriend doesn’t occupy whilst speaking. “He’d been keeping the place up in case help arrived. He wanted them to not think the whole mountain was a lost cause” the handicapped warrior remarks, “his friend, Kim, got bit. I cut off the leg, but she didn’t make it.” “Why did you think she would?” Ally immediately questions aloud, watching the shrinking of her boyfriend’s face present the admission that he’d yet to voice aloud. “Honestly, I didn’t think she’d make it anyway. They cut off my arm on the boat and the infection that was settling in was gone by the time I woke up” Lou carries on, the hope in his eyes making it clear he’d desired a different outcome for the lost woman, “it didn’t work for her. Either way, Sebastian made it out alive ‘cause of me.” “Oh. So Val took me in for the same reason Sebastian brought you in, huh?” Ally cheerfully inquires, watching her boyfriend’s smile precede his nod, the conclusion she’d drawn pleasing the man across from her. “Even when we were apart, our fates still managed to keep intermingling with each other, didn’t they?” Lou wonders aloud, sharing a subdued laugh with his girlfriend, their amusement gradually fading off to allow the survivor his continued speech. “I tried shutting them out for a bit, but they grew on me pretty fast. They’d sheltered up in a cabin since the outbreak started and hadn’t left. That wasn’t something they were too open to changing” Lou explains, shaking his head with a playful patronisation at those he’d grown close to, “Marta was the only one that was. Courtney had been interacting with what remained of some cities every now and then. I didn’t know Kim at all, but she seemed familiar enough to make due.” “Yeah, Terry said he knew the people from the cabin had to be forced out. I didn’t know what he meant by that, he never brought up that cabin part” Ally interjects, a stance that her boyfriend doubles down on. “He wasn’t lying. The only reason they actually left was because I found Theo in the woods. He and Lee had made a camp near the bottom of the mountain and offered us refuge” Lou assures, watching the woman’s eyes widen with surprise, “an avalanche wiped the place out hours later.” “Shit. So it was a real ‘skin of the teeth’ kinda deal, huh?” Ally quips, again sharing a humoured and warm bout of laughter with the equally battle-tested man, finding commonality in their plights and a way to look at them through more favourable lenses. Letting out a deep and pleased sigh, Lou shakes his head whilst staring at the floor, having said all that needed to fill in the gaps to his story that his love had yet to be informed of. “So, these people... You’ve grown close to them, haven’t you?” Ally questions aloud, shifting the conversation’s direction slightly from the path it had been straying down, the claim one that the man across from her holds little issue in reassuring. “I have. They’ve been there for me even when they had no reason to be. I owe them a lot” Lou replies, earning a curious nod from the woman across from him that doesn’t appear as genuine as it’s made out to be taken as. “I see” she replies, forcing a smile upon her closed lips as she looks toward the ground, shrugging as her eyes widen, almost trying to stake a similar claim to those she joins alongside, “I feel the same way about Val, Bruno, and the others.” Lifting his eyebrows without being able to share in the same ease that had come over the pair in the minutes that have since passed, Lou nods toward the woman’s remark without offering a rebuttal at first, sitting in silence for a moment. Looking the woman in the eyes as the air keeps quiet, Lou’s head allows its nod to slow to a halt, joining the same gradual stop of his girlfriend’s similar gesture. “That’s good to hear. Sebastian, Marta, and the others...” the well-travelled survivor begins, pausing as his girlfriend’s eyebrows lift just as his own had seconds prior, a smile coming over his face during the purposeful hush, “...they’re like family to me.” Doing a poor job of convincing her boyfriend of the feigned pleasure she takes in hearing his comment, Ally musters the best expression of jubilation she can manage, feeling nowhere near the delectation that her visage presents. “I can say the same for-” she begins to reply, only to be interrupted by the snapping of velcro being freed from their binds, parting the tent’s vestibule without request. “Can I come in?” Val wonders aloud, keeping his eyes averted in the instance those within the cloth sanctuary aren’t able to present themselves in a way considered decent. “We’re just talking” Lou replies, leaning back as far as his body can handle without being taken to the ground beneath gravity’s might, “you can make yourself at home in here as long as you don’t shove another gun in my face.” Letting out an audible sigh as he steps through the nylon flaps, Val hangs his head with disappointment before coming to a stand in the distant corner from the tent’s intended occupant. “Listen, I don’t want to waste time here. I misjudged you a little while back and jumped the gun... Literally” the American born community mouthpiece remarks, surprising the young survivor he issues his apology to, “I came here to apologise. Whatever my reasons were, they weren’t justified. I’m sorry.” Sending his eyes to the opposite side of the camping structure’s interior, Lou considers the man’s apology as it was delivered, aware that the man who stands before him takes no pleasure in providing it. “I would’ve used a stronger word than ‘misjudged’, but I suppose it’s a fair enough conclusion to agree on” the one-armed survivor answers, nodding toward the community’s leader before patting the tent’s ground, “my friends and I will leave at sunrise and be out of your hair.” “What?” Ally interjects, prompting both of the men’s eyes to take toward her, an immediate displeasure carried in her remark while her sights fall upon the man opposite her. “I told him earlier that we’d be willing to leave him be and get on with ourselves” Lou responds, doubling down on the vow that he made when the night was younger than it is now, “he’s clearly not fond of myself or my friends. And as far as he’s concerned, there’s not a damn thing he can offer me that I can’t get myself.” Rolling his eyes as they take to the way he’d come, Val forces himself to endure the comments made by the young stalwart of survival that he’d thought lesser of not long ago, feeling himself worthy of them. “I might’ve gotten lucky, but I put down fourteen of those pricks without wasting my breath. If this joker wants to play god, fine... let him play god” Lou retorts, not taking kindly to the presence of the man that Ally puts herself in the corner of support to. “If he wants to sit up all night hiding away from the animals outside and waiting for his friends to come back, that’s fine by me” the man concludes, refusing to pull punches against someone he feels the shots taken at are warranted, “he can play god and build his little kingdom in the mountains. I’ve dealt with savages like the kind he’s scared of... I don’t need a pair of pearly, white gates to hide behind. Neither do my friends.” “Are you done being a jackass?” Ally interrupts, watching her boyfriend look away from the community’s leader and back toward her, his dissatisfaction incapable of being wiped away entirely despite the redirection of his attention. Without saying anything at first, Lou takes a second look at the reserved and angrily-respectful leader before descending from the metaphorical pillar he’d built himself to stand atop, eyes falling to the ground in silence. “Val’s an asshole too sometimes, but at least he was man enough to come in here and apologise for fuck’s sake” Ally proclaims, watching as her boyfriend nods along with the explanation she paves like a road in fairer climates. “Don’t nod your head at me like that, look me in the eyes, cocksucker” she doubles down, commanding the man in ways no one else does, its effectiveness made resoundingly clear as Lou does exactly what’s told of him. “I don’t give a fuck how long we’ve been apart. I don’t care what we have or haven’t seen since we last saw each other. You will not be some petty son of a bitch with everything that’s at stake” Ally declares, pointing her finger toward the disgruntled expression her boyfriend meets her with. “You may have handled them well, but those pricks out there are still dangerous” she continues, her warning bringing Lou back to the earth he’d temporarily lifted himself from. “After what happened tonight, there’s a target on all of our backs. They know someone came in and fucked with them, and they’ll be looking to get the shit they stole from us back” Ally proclaims, a conclusion that the man who stands behind her had already come to. “They’re gonna be even more ruthless now that they’ve been stepped on. Leaving now would put you and your friends right in the line of fire” she concludes, shaking her head, “after all this time, I am not losing you again.” Remaining silent, Lou’s lack of an immediate reply is joined by the hush that comes over the woman he’d just reunited with, the collective lack of communication freeing the floor for the calm and soft-spoken tone of the compound’s leader to take for himself. “You don’t have to leave” Val concludes, willing to look past the differences and the complaints levied at him by the surprisingly capable young survivor in the name of a greater good, “if anything, it’d be better if you didn’t.” “How so?” Lou questions back, finally speaking up at the man’s behest, trying to appease his girlfriend by entertaining the proposition raised, reserving his own suspicions in the process. “Even if you’re actually sorry about pointing a gun in my face, that doesn’t change the fact that you did it ‘cause you didn’t trust me” the one-armed stalwart proclaims, a point that can’t be disputed by his opposite party, “why am I to believe you’ve found a change in heart after, what, an hour or two?” “Because the others, your friends and my friends, are right when they say we can’t afford to be running people off” Val replies, assuring the man that he’s come to accept the point of view bestowed upon him, “we’re knee-deep in artist territory, and I’m not even sure how far it stretches.” “So go find out. No one’s forcing you to stay here just like no one’s forcing us to stay here” Lou replies, failing to find the sense in assuming anything other than that, “travel far enough and you might not have to hide out in the forest anymore. I don’t see what the problem is.” “And where would you suggest we go?” Val questions aloud, watching the man roll his eyes as his face looks in every direction, both amused and puzzled by the inquiry. “Where the hell were you headed before they attacked you? Go there” Lou answers, only to find the proposal falling on deaf ears. “We were never going anywhere specific. We all came together after the zombies started popping up” the assumption-humbled leader explains, “I’m not even from this country, I was born in Montana.” “So you’re just planning on hiding out in the mountains all damn day?” Lou queries, looking to Val for answers before receiving them from the woman who occupies half of the conversation. “We haven’t been able to make much of a move out of them. When we found you and the others, we were out looking for cars abandoned around the side of the road” Ally explains, shaking her head without much more to offer than that, “we’ve been slowly getting ready to head off somewhere else.” “We don’t know where that would be, we’re just looking to go wherever those animals aren’t” Val explains, crossing his arms before switching the conversation’s course when a realisation dawns on him, “where was your group going?” Lowering his head, Lou suddenly gives the man a cold shoulder, reserving his speech so as not to clue someone he doesn’t fully trust into the plan concocted by his friends and himself. “They were going to Calgary. My parents have a ranch out near Priddis” Ally replies, watching her boyfriend look up with widened eyes, almost surprised at the ease in which she’d spill her guts to the man. “What the fuck, Ally?” Lou questions aloud, showing an expression of betrayal to the person who’d so casually thrown the answer out, visibly bemused at the demeanour in which he receives. “You weren’t going to tell him, so I did” Ally replies, the retort proving to be one baffling enough for her boyfriend to look around in bewilderment. For a few seconds, the only response Lou can afford the pair are a few unsorted sounds of puzzled disbelief that precede him rising to his feet, shaking his head out of frustration before grabbing his prosthetic case and marching for the vestibule. “Where the hell are you going!?” Ally hurriedly proclaims, given no warning of the man’s attempt at wandering off until he takes part in it, allowing his boots to crush the soft layer of snow that coats the ground. “Somewhere that’s not here” Lou calmly mutters back, walking at a consistent pace that his girlfriend hurries to catch up to, her hand grabbing the man’s shoulder and spinning him back. “What the fuck do you mean? Get back here!” she shouts, catching the attention of those who surround the camp in their separate quarters, those that had spent the prior few minutes socialising now setting their sights on the conflict unfolding not too far away from them. “Don’t fucking touch me!” Lou exclaims with disgust, violently pulling his shoulder away from the shocked woman, who reacts to his outburst with incredulity. “What the hell is your problem, Lou!?” Ally questions aloud, watching as the man takes a few steps away from her, emotionally hurt by her willingness to confess what he’d made obvious was information he wasn’t willing to part with. “You good, Lou!?” Terry calls out, having been standing nearby before taking to the man’s direction, only needing to venture a few steps before being called off. “I’m fine. I’m just going off to get some air” Lou replies, directing his chin toward the man’s general vicinity whilst maintaining eye contact with the woman he’d been stunned by the actions of. For a few seconds, the man looks on without saying a word while slowly backing up, eventually turning around to retreat entirely with just as much of a warning. “You can’t just walk off like this, Lou! It’s dangerous!” Ally proclaims, only to hear her boyfriend’s enraged shout take back to her, his face never looking back while the reply is paid. “Then don’t follow me!” Lou calls back, carrying himself in the opposite direction of the camp’s entrance, heading for the woodland’s treeline without the intention of stopping, prepared to vanish into the coverage of the unknown as he’d been used to, being watched by his girlfriend, who’s voice falls silent. == RISE and REVOLT == UPDATED AND REVISED EPISODE ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN LATE 2025.
Season Five Premiere Drawing nearer to a clearing in the woods, the outgunned survivors take their eyes to a variety of campfires lit within an open plot of land, the bright, orange glow being the most notable source of intrigue from beyond the treeline they continue to wander. Without restraints around their limbs or being under the order of people forcing them to follow along, the group of apocalyptic misfits continue on as night draws nearer, setting the sun on a day best left forgotten. Growling like an animal taken captive by a predator and being led to the scene in which they’d be slaughtered, the painted-face survivor who’d led the attack that had seen Rudy’s death result from it is dragged by the arms, kicking and struggling. “What are you gonna do with him?” Courtney questions aloud, holding her sister’s hand tight whilst leaning against the side of her boyfriend, who remains quiet as the figure near the front calls back. “He and his friends have been killing mine” the light-skinned man responds, wearing an undisturbed expression as he makes the claims that are afforded to the group he’s newly been acquainted with, “we’re going to be interrogate him, and then we’re going to kill him.” Her question answered, Courtney lets her lips press together as she leans more of her body’s weight against Sebastian’s side, letting the reply be taken without a rebuttal. Travelling a few paces behind his daughter, Adrian keeps his thoughts to himself and instead keeps his eyes glued upon the uneven terrain that he wishes not to lose his balance walking through. “Why did we have to leave our cars?” Terry questions aloud, he and Jules both keeping close to each other’s sides and sharing a mutual reservation, not too open to the idea of trusting new people so soon after they’ve gotten antiquated with their own team’s other half. “Aside from the truck, none of your vehicles would’ve been able to make it through here” the survivor at the front of the group answers, the comment one that Jenn nods along with, as if she’d already come to assume such. “Why did you set up camp so deep in the forest?” Elsie quickly wonders aloud, not minding the hike that they’re forced to endure for more answers or even the slightest amount of help, but intrigued by the reasoning the yet-unknown group had come to. “We’ll talk more when we’re at camp” the light skinned soldier at the pack’s head-position replies, his professional tone both declarative and commanding whilst remaining peaceful and unalarming. “We’re already at the camp” Josie responds, correcting the man’s conclusion to silence, the ease in which he’d provided insight not coming along this time around by choice. “We’re not the bad guys here” Ally speaks up, offering an explanation in lieu of the group’s leader, who doesn’t move his head, but does redirect his line of sight in the young woman’s direction. “You’ve just buried someone important to you” she reiterates, looking over her left shoulder and toward the larger assortment of survivors, “you’re hungry, you’re tired, and you need a decent place to rest.” Stopping along her continued progress, Ally prompts those that had joined her in confronting the then-unknown survivors in the snow-covered field to halt just as she had. “We’re not forcing you to stay, we’re just offering you a place to lay low for the night. We know how much you probably need one” the woman replies, looking back to those- most of whom she’d spent time with since the world’s ending- whilst addressing them as warmly as she can. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk...” she concludes, turning to her right and looking past Marta toward the man in which she follows closely, her eyes locking onto his own, “...about everything.” Lifting his chin just slightly, the scruffy-bearded survivor shares her stare without saying a word, the shock that had come over his face at their reunion having faded into one of uncertainty over the circumstances that surround them somewhere along their travels since. Taking the equally-young man’s silence as enough of a nod to continue forward, Ally turns her body to face the path ahead, the winding route that leads to her camp still leaving some length yet to be traversed. “Who’s ‘we’?” Lou suddenly asks, prompting his girlfriend to turn back just as she’d set off carrying onward, her head turning back to face him once the inquiry is launched. “You’re referring to yourself and them as the same people” the one-armed stalwart restates, looking at the woman he’d gone months without seeing in the eyes and refusing to part from their shared stare. Taking the man’s question to heart, Ally looks him in the eyes for as long as she can manage before letting her face fall, a gesture that both Lou and Marta take notice of in the quiet moments that pass. “We’re nearly there” Ally finally speaks after some pause, changing the conversation’s course back to the most pressing of matters, turning to face the journey they have left to hike before moving forward. Not receiving his answer, Lou remains stoic for a moment as the light-skinned leader, who’d allowed his girlfriend to assume the discourse’s control, watches on at a group unwilling to budge from their stop until the one-armed figure ahead of them does. Letting the woman’s non-reply settle with him for a moment, Lou’s straight face takes in her direction as he becomes the next to move his feet, following the tracks laid out by the shoes the acquaintances of his girlfriend wear. As if they’d been outright ordered to, the rest of the young man’s group carry on with their travels the moment they watch him do so, leading an uncomfortable and unpleasant into the crisp, Canadian night still yet to be endured. = RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 = Stepping through the tent’s passageway just as the sun begins to take shape behind the thick layer of storm clouds that obstruct it, Lou finds a muddy ground with sparse patches of grass laying before him. Significantly smaller and less-maintained than the one they’d left behind on Vancouver Island, the Silver Slayer finds himself captivated by the deja vu that surrounds the ground where they reside, its plot occupied by cloth coverings that don’t appear as if they’re meant to be permanent. With his rebar staff tucked beneath his arm, the grizzly-appearing survivor uses the unclipped nails on his hand to scratch at the rough beard he still wears proudly, its presence upon his face felt like a badge of honour he takes from making it as far as he has. With wandering eyes, Lou surveys the area for all that it can offer, nothing of important infrastructure worth taking note of beside the litany of muddy, unintentional pathways created through days of being trifled over by boots. Scattered around, tents similar in their drab and uninspired colours house the rather minimal number of residents who call the middle woodlands site home, the people within them likely trying to catch as much sleep as they can manage. From near the camp’s centre, the light-skinned leader sits in damp clothes with a rifle draped over his lap, his beard carrying droplets of water that had fallen upon him the prior night from the tearful heavens above. With his arms resting on the sides of his nylon chair, the man stares at the one-armed stranger as the subject of his interest investigates, looking around his immediate area before taking his eyes toward a tent not too far off. For a few seconds, Lou’s line of sight freezes upon this makeshift home without the desire to leave it, forcedly doing so when the man redirects his own eyes elsewhere, knowing there to be a greater task at hand. Following the scene that his stare soon centres itself upon, the stranger’s legs carry him toward the man halfway across the campground from him, his head following the new pathway his boots leave as muddy imprints. “Unless you plan on leaving, I’m not sure you’ll be needing that walking stick anymore” the hispanic man murmurs, watching as the younger man approaches, still wielding the metal stick between his arm and side. “Is Ally up and around or should I wait for her to wake up?” Lou instead queries, not providing much care toward responding to the leader’s suggestion. “Ally doesn’t wake up until an hour or so after the sun rises” the unnamed leader responds, smirking as he looks off toward the way in which they’d entered the camp one night prior, visibly amused, “quite frankly, I’m surprised someone like you is.” “Should I take that as an insult or a compliment?” Lou retorts, shrugging his shoulders at a genuine uncertainty, receiving a similar demeanour from the still-unfamiliar, rifle-wielding soldier. “You’re a kid from Los Angeles. I wouldn’t expect you to make it this far... This far into the new world or this far up north” the stranger quips, earning a chuckle from a tall, white man a few metres away, “honestly, I’m surprised you have enough testosterone to grow a beard like that.” “I’m surprised he has enough testosterone to grow a beard at all” the well-built survivor restates, sharing a laugh with the light-skinned figure he remains awake through the night alongside, their humour dismissed by the unphased young man they pick at. “Thanks for the input, Caucasian Shaq” Lou chirps back, meeting the man’s prod with one of his own, earning a genuinely amused reaction from those he stands before, “do either of you have names or do you just communicate in grunts?” Flattered to be thought so highly of, the light-skinned figure greets himself whilst pointing toward his own chest, directing his thumb toward the much taller man beside him when introducing the group’s muscle. “I’m Val, the big guy’s Bruno” the leader replies, one leg kicked over the other as his eyes set their attention toward the forest’s edge. Nodding, Lou follows the man’s line of sight toward the forest without offering a reply at first, caring not to greet the man, but to gain insight. “By the looks of it, you two seem to be waiting for something” Lou remarks, re-earning their eyes before shifting his own toward them, “my question is whether it’s the dead or the living?” Shaking his head whilst returning his attention to the entry they’d come through the night prior, Val dismisses the gesture before beginning to nod, still not offering any verbal clarity. “It doesn’t seem like you or your people have been around here long. It also doesn’t seem like you’re too interested in staying” Lou carries onward, again provoking the men that stand beside him to recentre their focus upon him. “You’ve been dragging your shoes through the dirt here long enough to leave tracks. You’d think there fire pits would at least be something more than holes in the ground by now” the one-armed survivor carries forward, “I’m sure they would be if you’d intended to stay.” Pointing his finger in the younger man’s direction whilst wagging it, Val smirks at the stranger’s conclusion. “I’m starting to see why Ally’s brought you up so much” he proclaims, a gesture that Bruno doesn’t fully buy into, but is willing to play along with. “If she brings me up enough, I’m sure she’s told you that I’m not into beating around the bush too much” Lou replies, letting the rebar staff fall into his palm before he drives its tip into the mushy ground. “The camp’s not as big as you’d expect it to be, which suggests you only chopped down enough trees to suffice what you needed” he continues, wrapping his hand around the spear’s end as he leans against it, “there’s no better time than now to start asking questions. Here’s mine... what are you hiding out here from?” Not changing the expression that his face had taken on during the man’s explanation, Val looks into the face of the younger man at his side for a few seconds in silence before actually replying. “We call them ‘artists’. People, probably a bunch of heathens from the city, who came together east and started attacking groups smaller than them” the leader confesses, holding up his chin with the side of his left hand, “they carry around these buckets of red paint. They mark their territory with it.” Remaining quiet, Lou stares off into the woodlands whilst extending a finger, guiding it in circles as if to imply he were wishing for the leader to continue speaking. “They attack people. They get the jump on them, usually send the creepers after them to buy time, and steal what they can” Val explains, not offering much more than what he’s already stated, “we sent a few guys out after them a couple weeks ago and never heard back. We found their bodies on the road not too long after.” “Why not go down there with your own people and attack them back?” Lou queries, earning another chuckle that Val seems all too willing to offer at the slightest appearance of humour. “If they mark their territory with red paint, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out where they are” the young man continues, paying too little attention to Bruno to watch the man’s head shake, “unless you’ve already gotten rid of him, you’ve still got the guy we caught outside the arcade for leverage.” “That boy wouldn’t spill shit. We tied a weight around his ankle and dropped him in the lake hours ago” Val retorts, dismissing the cruel nature in which they’d disposed of the enemy. “But that ain’t the problem. They don’t mark their territory with red paint, they mark the places that they claim with it” the leader reiterates, having no reason to refuse the young man information which he craves. “They don’t live in the territory they mark. They go down when they need shit, take whatever they want, and get rid of people who are in their way” he continues, his lips puckered as his face sours at the thought of the savages. “You entered their territory and they tried to take care of you” Val explains, a gesture that the young man beside him takes little offence to until it’s followed up by the claim that cannot be agreed upon, “you got lucky.” Refusing with the shake of his head, Lou disregards the conclusion as incorrect, not yet voicing that as a man he does know personally begins approaching from off to the side. “We didn’t get lucky. We know how to handle ourselves. That’s why they couldn’t take care of us” the one-armed survivor rebukes, a comment that Sebastian only hears the tail-end of, “but that doesn’t matter. They took our shit and got Rudy killed. I wanna know where they are.” “Join the club, kid” Bruno responds, looking past the man and toward the older gentleman that approaches, “hey pops, talk your son down from this hero game he thinks he’s playing.” With a squint, Sebastian looks toward an undisturbed Lou, who continues to stare at the forest before crossing his arms, “Lou’s not my kid” the man replies, a remark that the brute muscle beside Val disregards. “It doesn’t matter. Tell him to cut it out with the tough guy act” Bruno doubles down, not entertaining the young man’s posture as anything other than phoney, “he’s talking like he’s the main character in an action movie.” Shrugging as if that were already well-known, Sebastian appears to dismiss the comments from those unfamiliar to him before setting his eyes upon the younger member of his group. “The people that attacked us have been attacking others. Apparently they attacked Ally’s group, too” Lou remarks, speaking over his shoulder to the man he knows has now begun to face him. “They mark their territory with red paint, but apparently they don’t live there. These people call them ‘the artists’ and that’s all I’ve got so far” the young man proceeds, his eyes brightening as he recalls one other key point, “Oh, and they killed the guy we caught at the arcade already. He’s in the lake.” “Well, that was fast” Sebastian responds, carrying on with the conversation whilst those that stand beside him they listen in, refusing to interject partially out of a morbid fascination, “what’re you thinking, Lou?” Holding his squint toward the same scene that both Val and Bruno had taken to the direction of, holding his thoughts back from being voiced aloud at first as he considers what his options are. Veering toward the cloudy skies, Lou’s eyes wander high into the air, following the curves in the storm clouds above as he inspects the weather. “I’m gonna go after them. I’ll grab the truck if it’s still where we left it, throw on a gore coat when I get into town and see what I can find” the man decides, turning to look at Sebastian properly as he speaks, “tell Marta I’ll be back at night fall, and tell Ally that we’ll have that talk we didn’t have last night when I get back.” Concealing their laughter, Val and Bruno shrug their shoulders as the young man begins walking off, “it was nice knowing you, kid!” the taller man proclaims. “Tell the others to just hang tight until I get back” Lou remarks, disregarding the sceptics that see him off with a final declaration toward Sebastian, “Calgary’s not out of the picture yet. Figure out amongst yourselves if you’re still interested in the plan we’d made in Vancouver.” “Will do. Stay safe out there, Lou!” Sebastian calls back out, his voice prompting a few others within the tents that surround their temporary shelter to stir from their slumber. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” Val questions with a laugh held down, extending his hand toward the departing survivor that walks off- not expected to ever be seen again, “you’re just going along with whatever a kid tells you?” Finally knowing what it feels like to know what others don’t themselves, Sebastian crosses his arms and begins turning away, “yup” he responds while walking off, heading the way he’d entered from without another word. | “Hey” Jenn murmurs, watching as she’s returned a pleased expression from her visitor, who ducks between the flaps that make up the entrance to the tent she’d used for shelter the night prior. “How’s it going?” Ally questions back, paying her greeting to the woman as she stands upright, only momentarily adjusting her posture before lowering herself to the ground, one hand placing itself upon the thin fabric between herself and the muddy terrain. “I’m alive. We’re all together again, so there’s that taken care of” Jenn answers, swaying her chin from one side to the other, unsure of what else to speak for. “Yeah, that’s... Those are definitely good things” Ally responds, gently entering the discourse with as much of a personable attitude as she can present, able to notice the same odd tension in the air that separates her from the woman across, aware that her camp’s visitor can too. “Have you talked to the others yet? Maybe get re-acclimated with them?” Jenn queries, pressing her molars upon a handful of berries that she’d slipped past her lips. “Yeah. I, uh... I talked to Terry for a little bit a couple minutes ago” Ally replies, nodding along with the remark just as the increasingly-brunette woman does, “it sounds like there’s been a bit that’s happened since we last saw each other.” Paying little concern toward the past that leads her to the present moment, Jenn wipes her hands of the moisture that her recently-washed snack had left coating her palms. “Yeah, it’s been quite the journey” the chewing survivor replies, pulling her hair back to tie it into a ponytail with the elastic band her plastic wrapper of sweets had been held together with, “a lot’s happened. That’s definitely true.” Given little to work off in the reply, Ally deepens her nod before hanging her head, staring at the fabric ground whilst her friend adjusts her hair, unsure of how to segway into what she wants to talk about. “Halston’s dead, Ally” Jenn speaks aloud, interrupting the train of thought that the woman opposite her had been exploring, re-earning the woman’s line of sight, “she died a while back. It sucks, people die, she’s missed, and now it’s time to move on. That’s all.” Unsure of how to respond at first, Ally finds herself incapable of reacting with anything more than widened eyes and a slightly-parted pair of lips, stricken with surprise over the insouciant emotions that are portrayed. “I appreciate that you want to talk to me about it, but I’d really rather just try and put it past me” Jenn explains, fitting her loose strands of hair into the makeshift tie, “if I sit around all day wishing I could’ve changed things, I’ll throw myself off a cliff.” Accepting the way in which her friend has chosen to cope, Ally bows her head and waves off the woman’s remark, gesturing that it’ll be no issue from here on out. “If there’s any people grieving that you want to comfort, I’d start with the girls that just lost their dad” Jenn proceeds, watching as her friend’s eyes lock onto her, “Courtney’s got Sebastian to lean on. I’m not sure Sonya does, so if being a grievance counsellor is something you’re up for, I’d go talk to the younger sister.” Hanging her head yet again, Ally swipes her hair behind her ears, looking at the ground once more whilst presenting hesitancy. “Yeah, so what’s up with the others you guys brought along?” the natural brunette survivor questions, looking toward the woman whose teeth are stained blue from the berries, “I heard Lou met them somewhere along the way.” “Yeah, he camped out in the mountains after the ship went down. Spent a few months up there on Vancouver Island, and met them out in a cabin” Jenn replies, speaking to only what the man himself had informed her of. “He says they’re decent people. They seem like it. I don’t mind them and neither do the others” she continues, informing the runaway survivor as best she can, “they’re close. He thinks highly of them.” “Yeah...” Ally mutters, tracing the lumps in the ground beneath the nylon base the tent stands atop with the tip of her index finger, “...you don’t think he may have jumped to that decision?” With a squint, Jenn pulls one leg close to her chest whilst the other lays bent across the ground she sits atop, “what do you mean?” the woman wonders aloud. “Well, it just sounds like he took to them pretty fast. They never knew each other before we got to Canada” Ally explains, testing the waters on the length her friend’s trust is willing to go, “you don’t think it’s a bit soon to bond with people you’ve just met?” Easing the reserved look on her face, Jenn peers to the vestibule the woman across from her had entered, not able to see the outside, but picturing it whilst she retorts. “I could ask the same thing with you, can’t I?” the woman with dying blonde locks rejoinders, puckering her bottom lip throughout a pause, “it’s rather fast for you to attach yourself to these people, isn’t it?” With a humoured smirk, Ally shrugs as her head leans in, shaking her head at her first reaction, “these people are different.” “Yeah, ‘cause you know them. You’ve been riding with them since however long it took you to meet them after you ran off from the others” Jenn replies, nonchalantly dismissing her friend’s claims as is natural for her to do. “Lou, the others, and I have been around these guys for long enough to know who they are and aren’t” the woman who’d fought grief twice since society fell doubles down, “however you feel about Sebastian and the others is how we feel about these people you’re with.” “I’m not trying to say I don’t believe you. I’m just asking if you think Lou got comfortable with them a little too fast?” Ally questions aloud, only to watch as her friend again dismisses the query, this time with a shrug. “I think you think that because you don’t know who they are. I think you’re just as sceptical of his friends as he is of yours” Jenn replies, thinking nothing of the concerns that appear to weigh heavy on her fellow survivalist’s mind. “I just feel like I know Lou well enough to know when he’s making a call that might be a little rash. One that he may not have fully thought throu-” Ally attempts to restate, only to fall silent when she watches the head of the woman across from her begin to shake in refusal. “No...” Jenn confesses, speaking through the pause that follows her friend’s natural descent into silence, “...I’m not so sure you know him as well as you think you do.” Taken aback, the man’s girlfriend finds herself unable to reply to the quip that she hadn’t even taken into account, her mouth coming to a close as her mind draws a great void upon how to respond- not sure that there is a way at all. | “I’m fine with it” Marta confesses, gradually walking the woodland’s treeline with her hands hung by each side, circling the makeshift community alongside her friend as the sky grows dark, a fresh blanket of snow having covered the ground. “Oh come on, Marta. Don’t just leave it there” Courtney responds, matching each of the girl’s steps with one of her own, “I get it if you don’t want to say anything more, but after the past day I’ve had, I’m dying to talk about anything other than my dad.” Rolling her eyes with a smile, Marta puts aside her own desire to leave behind the discovery they’d made one day prior in the name of hopefully raising her friend’s spirits from the trench they’d fallen into. “Did I expect him to find Ally? Yes. He found Theo and Lee, he found Jenn, he found the others, I figured luck was just going to fall in his favour even if it seemed unlikely” she confesses, looking to the ground that her boots leave dirty imprints in, “it didn’t surprise me.” “But you’re not happy about it, right?” Courtney questions, trying to refrain from pressing too hard on the young woman for answers, though her hesitations are slightly skewed in the wake of her grief. “I’m happy he found her like he wanted to. The worst outcome for either of us probably would’ve been him not finding her” Marta corrects, struggling to fully explain her stance in a way beyond what can be doubted. “If we’d made it all the way to Calgary without finding her, he’d probably come around to accepting that she was dead. It’d sit on his mind, but he’d try to fight his way past it like Jenn does with Halston” the young woman continues, shaking her head in refusal. “He’d never fully give into that idea, though. There’d always be a part of him that felt she was still alive out there somewhere” Marta concedes, knowing the disheartening idea to be true, “at least now he has some closure.” “Yeah, but that won’t last long” Courtney replies, speaking to a line of thought that captures the young woman’s mind, her interest peaking in the claim she doesn’t know what to make of. “What do you mean?” Marta inquires, asking for clarification in the only way she knows how, watching as the grounded paramotorist looks off into the forest they pass. “Because he loves you way more than he lets on. He can deny it all he wants, but I know he’s full of shit” the grieving survivor confesses, a smile worn on her face- one that Marta looks away from. “He cares about you. A lot of that care is just natural, yes. But there’s a part of him in there that’s so madly head-over-heels for you that he just won’t let anyone see” Courtney doubles down, refusing to budge from the belief she’d assumed, “it’s like I told him- this is just a honeymoon phase.” Hanging her head with a smile, Marta takes appreciation in the woman’s claim before parting her lips, attempting to disregard the conclusion that was drawn before her sights fall upon the centre of camp. “What are the others doing?” the young woman queries, helping aid Courtney’s line of sight toward the campfire that Ally’s people had come together around, neither woman able to fully comprehend the reasoning behind such a coming together. “Hey, what is this!?” Elsie proclaims, stepping out of her tent just as Terry does, their conversation put to a halt by Josie, who’d stepped out of her own nearby residency with the question asked aloud. “For the love of god, go back to your tents or pack your stuff up and leave” Val retorts, taking notice of the blonde girl and her black friend’s approach just as he spots a similar drawing forward from Marta and Courtney a few paces off. “Tell us why and we’ll be on the first journey out of here” Josie rejoinders, taking the stand that neither Sebastian or Terry are able to make yet, only now coming around to the conversation. “We’ve been waiting for answers, and it doesn’t seem like any of you are really eager to give them to us” the tomahawk-wielding survivor from the sunken Euronam remarks, “start letting us know what’s going on and maybe we’ll be more open to getting out of your hair.” “Stand down, Josie. We can’t go threatening to leave when Lou’s still not back yet” Terry proclaims, drawing closer to the scene whilst Sonya, Sebastian, and Adrian emerge from their own tents. “He’s not gonna be coming back, so you might as well just start getting ready to head out anyway” Bruno shouts back, speaking up from the seat that he occupies, the only survivor of the still-unfamiliar group of campers not standing with the others. “If you don’t think he’s coming back, you have no idea who you’re talking about” Jules shouts aloud, doubling down as he steps through the vestibule of the tent that he, and he alone, had occupied and struggled to open. “Your friend is a fucking child. I don’t care if he’s got a beard, dropped balls, or two hands for crying out loud... He’s just a kid in this world” Val replies, not caring to hide the doubt he’s willing to let any set of ears- Ally’s included- overhear. “These pricks he’s sent himself on a suicide mission to get rid of are brutal. They might as well not even be considered humans at this point” Val remarks, standing firm in his belief as it’s offered to the new half of his community. “They don’t have morals. They’re not evil or pure, they’re just people who will do what they need to for whatever they want” the compound’s leader proceeds, “as far as I’m concerned, his body is already on the side of the road waiting for us to find it.” “I can’t wait for you people to look like idiots” Sebastian proclaims, watching the ground that he walks along whilst addressing the man he knows himself to be drawing nearer to. “I hope you’re ready to wait the rest of your lives, ‘cause we won’t be looking like idiots” Val responds, pulling away from his huddled assortment of campers to approach the man who sticks out most as the closest thing to a leader the opposite group can offer. “You people can’t just walk around this place thinking you know better than us. You’ve lost one person to these people, we’ve lost more than we can count on both hands” Val explains, growing tired at having to defend himself like his assumptions are anything other than reasonable. “Brothers and sisters, cousins, friends, you name it. We’ve lost them to those people” the light-skinned, bearded survivalist furthers, speaking loud enough for anyone to hear him. Hanging her head, Ally prevents herself from speaking whilst Marta watches on, the rest of her group having set their sights on the bickering pair of leaders while her own remain fully invested in her mentor’s girlfriend. “I think I know what Lou’s capable of a lot better than you do” Sebastian rejoinders, a comment that Adrian’s crossed arms and slow nod back up, the man taking a stand two metres off to the side of the group’s leader. “I think you’re delusional if you think that the kid is going to just go out there and find-” Val counters, kept from speaking anything further as the distant blaring of a vehicle’s horn draws closer than it has any right to. For a few seconds, the man freezes in terror just as the rest of his group does, a reaction that their newest members cannot fully dedicate themselves to doing. “Get into cover!” Bruno shouts, throwing himself off the seat that he’d occupied whilst gesturing for those standing by to seek out the closest thing to shelter they can manage. “What were you saying?” Sebastian questions, redirecting his sight toward the widened eyes of the community’s shot-caller, the look of awe that’s presented to him coming nowhere close to being duplicated. “Stand out here if you fucking want, you fool! Those are the artists!” Val proclaims, backing away from the confident survivor, who remains unmoved and uninspired by the dilemma that’s presented to him. “We staying out here, Terry?” Josie questions aloud, listening to the sound of horns grow louder, a set of headlights gradually following the path to the campground in the distance. Glancing to his right, Terry shrugs his shoulders toward Sebastian’s direction, the unintimidated leader of the group’s Canadian half presenting him with a very similar assurance. “Yeah, we’re staying put” the American half’s de facto leader replies, his follow up putting a smile on the woman’s face. “Good” Josie responds, setting her feet into the thin layer of snow that she and her peers stand atop, crossing her arms while the rest of her contemporaries await what they anticipate is their pal. “Ally, get the fuck over here!” Val barks, pulling the curled fingers on his hand toward himself, gesturing for the survivor to follow suit and retreat alongside him. Snapped out of her thousand yard stare at the woodland’s distance, Ally looks back to her leader before following suit, stepping in the direction of her group before taking a glance at her right side. Locking eyes with Marta, the brunette woman in a camouflage jacket inspects the unchanged visage of her counterpart in the faux leather coat, the retreat she’d looked to follow the lead of coming to a halt. Without uttering a word, Ally looks at the young woman’s face amidst a pause, hearing her own name leave the lips of Val once more, trying to gesture her into cover. Unsure of what to make of the interaction aside from its odd, unspoken aura, Ally snaps out of her stupor and continues the rest of the way back, siding with her peers whilst Marta watches on. From afar, Courtney watches her young friend’s head follow the mentor’s girlfriend, a set of lifted eyebrows and a smirk carried in her face as the woman’s side is made clear. With the groups having made their calls of siding where they wish, all that remains to pass are the seconds between the blaring horn’s presentation and the vehicle’s actual arrival. “Don’t come out of hiding until the people in the cars step out. Let them think the others are the only people here for a minute” Val proclaims, directing his community to allow Sebastian and Terry’s group to take the mantle as bait for their enemies to take advantage of. Drawing close enough for the crunching branches beneath its tires to echo throughout the air, the truck that rips through the forest eventually shines its headlights upon the compound that awaits it, only one set of people remaining out in the open to welcome it. Drawing to a stop without anything following after it, the off road tyre-equipped convoy of one parks itself at the entrance to the community whilst its headlights remain firing their lumination upon the modestly-sized grounds. No more intimidated than when he’d first heard the horn sounding off, Sebastian occupies the camp just as the rest of his group does, unmoved by the arrival they’d anticipated all along. For the seconds that remain without clarity on the issue at hand, Val and Bruno join the sides of their people as they huddle close to the ground, bracing for the sound of gunfire they anticipate to annihilate those they had aided the night prior. Instead, the driver’s side door of the vehicle opens up to allow its navigator the freedom of departure, another few moments passing before the soul who’d operated its steering wheel can climb out. “Where are the other ass hats?” Lou inquires, standing upon the side bars that had been fitted to the base of the vehicle, receiving not one voice projecting itself in his favour, but instead, watching the faces of those he asks turn toward those who’d hurried for protection. “Hiding” Marta replies, wearing a prideful grin that mostly comes from being proven correct, though a slight amount arises from having believed in her mentor enough to remain out in the open. Looking toward his protege, Lou shrugs his shoulders and nods whilst the rest of the community emerges from their hiding, Ally remaining stood behind both Bruno and Val as her boyfriend climbs down from the vehicle. “You can’t even begin to fathom how lucky you are, kid!” the light-skinned leader proclaims, watching as the Californian teenager remains silent, nodding to himself as he leaves his driver’s side door open, rounding the front of the truck’s cab. “Anyone else walks out into those streets and they’re dead within hours!” Val barks, pointing his finger at the fortunate man that opens up the vehicle’s passenger’s door and reaches in, “you better count yourself lucky they didn’t find you before-!” Falling silent immediately, Val steps back in shock at the same sight that brings the rest of his community into a collective awe, the surprise that is afforded to them being presented with a vocal gasp. Though they’d remained confident in their fellow survivor’s return, the group that Sebastian and Terry collectively front look on with a similar amazement, not having quite anticipated what their friend would come back with when he did. Stepping into the open space between the campfire and the truck’s headlights, Lou marches away from the ride he’d come back with and digs the dull end of his rebar staff into the soft terrain. “What were you saying about counting myself lucky?” the young man inquires, piercing the earth with his weapon as the sound of undead groaning emanates from it, “personally, I don’t think I was as lucky as they were unlucky.” With mouths agape, Val and his community stare at the same sight that prompts Sebastian and Terry’s group to look on with wide eyes and taken aback expressions. Wrapping his fingers around the rebar staff, Lou turns to look at his planted weapon, watching the jaw of the decapitated head he’d speared onto the sharpened tip of his weapon bite down at the sight of the woodland-based community, the red-painted, flesh-covered skull having newly reanimated. Having murdered the described ‘artists’ along his journey and kept one of their heads as a souvenir, Lou nods to himself as he looks into the pearly eyes of the corpse’s wandering eyes. Pleased at the revenge he’d enacted, the young man turns back to face those that his girlfriend had aligned herself with with a smirk, one eyebrow raised over his left eyes as his sights set themselves upon the awestruck community. “I found them” the one-armed slayer proclaims, unable to retain the unmoved and blank facial expression he’d wanted to wear as he refuses those that had expected less of him any reason to do so further, too pleased in the proof he’s presented them with that he’s as capable as he claims himself to be. == RISE and REVOLT == Season Five Premiere
Drawing nearer to a clearing in the woods, the outgunned survivors take their eyes to a variety of campfires lit within an open plot of land, the bright, orange glow being the most notable source of intrigue from beyond the treeline they continue to wander. Without restraints around their limbs or being under the order of people forcing them to follow along, the group of apocalyptic misfits continue on as night draws nearer, setting the sun on a day best left forgotten. Growling like an animal taken captive by a predator and being led to the scene in which they’d be slaughtered, the painted-face survivor who’d led the attack that had seen Rudy’s death result from it is dragged by the arms, kicking and struggling. “What are you gonna do with him?” Courtney questions aloud, holding her sister’s hand tight whilst leaning against the side of her boyfriend, who remains quiet as the figure near the front calls back. “He and his friends have been killing mine” the light-skinned man responds, wearing an undisturbed expression as he makes the claims that are afforded to the group he’s newly been acquainted with, “we’re going to be interrogate him, and then we’re going to kill him.” Her question answered, Courtney lets her lips press together as she leans more of her body’s weight against Sebastian’s side, letting the reply be taken without a rebuttal. Travelling a few paces behind his daughter, Adrian keeps his thoughts to himself and instead keeps his eyes glued upon the uneven terrain that he wishes not to lose his balance walking through. “Why did we have to leave our cars?” Terry questions aloud, he and Jules both keeping close to each other’s sides and sharing a mutual reservation, not too open to the idea of trusting new people so soon after they’ve gotten antiquated with their own team’s other half. “Aside from the truck, none of your vehicles would’ve been able to make it through here” the survivor at the front of the group answers, the comment one that Jenn nods along with, as if she’d already come to assume such. “Why did you set up camp so deep in the forest?” Elsie quickly wonders aloud, not minding the hike that they’re forced to endure for more answers or even the slightest amount of help, but intrigued by the reasoning the yet-unknown group had come to. “We’ll talk more when we’re at camp” the light skinned soldier at the pack’s head-position replies, his professional tone both declarative and commanding whilst remaining peaceful and unalarming. “We’re already at the camp” Josie responds, correcting the man’s conclusion to silence, the ease in which he’d provided insight not coming along this time around by choice. “We’re not the bad guys here” Ally speaks up, offering an explanation in lieu of the group’s leader, who doesn’t move his head, but does redirect his line of sight in the young woman’s direction. “You’ve just buried someone important to you” she reiterates, looking over her left shoulder and toward the larger assortment of survivors, “you’re hungry, you’re tired, and you need a decent place to rest.” Stopping along her continued progress, Ally prompts those that had joined her in confronting the then-unknown survivors in the snow-covered field to halt just as she had. “We’re not forcing you to stay, we’re just offering you a place to lay low for the night. We know how much you probably need one” the woman replies, looking back to those- most of whom she’d spent time with since the world’s ending- whilst addressing them as warmly as she can. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk...” she concludes, turning to her right and looking past Marta toward the man in which she follows closely, her eyes locking onto his own, “...about everything.” Lifting his chin just slightly, the scruffy-bearded survivor shares her stare without saying a word, the shock that had come over his face at their reunion having faded into one of uncertainty over the circumstances that surround them somewhere along their travels since. Taking the equally-young man’s silence as enough of a nod to continue forward, Ally turns her body to face the path ahead, the winding route that leads to her camp still leaving some length yet to be traversed. “Who’s ‘we’?” Lou suddenly asks, prompting his girlfriend to turn back just as she’d set off carrying onward, her head turning back to face him once the inquiry is launched. “You’re referring to yourself and them as the same people” the one-armed stalwart restates, looking at the woman he’d gone months without seeing in the eyes and refusing to part from their shared stare. Taking the man’s question to heart, Ally looks him in the eyes for as long as she can manage before letting her face fall, a gesture that both Lou and Marta take notice of in the quiet moments that pass. “We’re nearly there” Ally finally speaks after some pause, changing the conversation’s course back to the most pressing of matters, turning to face the journey they have left to hike before moving forward. Not receiving his answer, Lou remains stoic for a moment as the light-skinned leader, who’d allowed his girlfriend to assume the discourse’s control, watches on at a group unwilling to budge from their stop until the one-armed figure ahead of them does. Letting the woman’s non-reply settle with him for a moment, Lou’s straight face takes in her direction as he becomes the next to move his feet, following the tracks laid out by the shoes the acquaintances of his girlfriend wear. As if they’d been outright ordered to, the rest of the young man’s group carry on with their travels the moment they watch him do so, leading an uncomfortable and unpleasant into the crisp, Canadian night still yet to be endured. = RISE and REVOLT is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series from Season 1 onwards belong to Zachary Serra and his entity of Pacer1 = Stepping through the tent’s passageway just as the sun begins to take shape behind the thick layer of storm clouds that obstruct it, Lou finds a muddy ground with sparse patches of grass laying before him. Significantly smaller and less-maintained than the one they’d left behind on Vancouver Island, the Silver Slayer finds himself captivated by the deja vu that surrounds the ground where they reside, its plot occupied by cloth coverings that don’t appear as if they’re meant to be permanent. With his rebar staff tucked beneath his arm, the grizzly-appearing survivor uses the unclipped nails on his hand to scratch at the rough beard he still wears proudly, its presence upon his face felt like a badge of honour he takes from making it as far as he has. With wandering eyes, Lou surveys the area for all that it can offer, nothing of important infrastructure worth taking note of beside the litany of muddy, unintentional pathways created through days of being trifled over by boots. Scattered around, tents similar in their drab and uninspired colours house the rather minimal number of residents who call the middle woodlands site home, the people within them likely trying to catch as much sleep as they can manage. From near the camp’s centre, the light-skinned leader sits in damp clothes with a rifle draped over his lap, his beard carrying droplets of water that had fallen upon him the prior night from the tearful heavens above. With his arms resting on the sides of his nylon chair, the man stares at the one-armed stranger as the subject of his interest investigates, looking around his immediate area before taking his eyes toward a tent not too far off. For a few seconds, Lou’s line of sight freezes upon this makeshift home without the desire to leave it, forcedly doing so when the man redirects his own eyes elsewhere, knowing there to be a greater task at hand. Following the scene that his stare soon centres itself upon, the stranger’s legs carry him toward the man halfway across the campground from him, his head following the new pathway his boots leave as muddy imprints. “Unless you plan on leaving, I’m not sure you’ll be needing that walking stick anymore” the hispanic man murmurs, watching as the younger man approaches, still wielding the metal stick between his arm and side. “Is Ally up and around or should I wait for her to wake up?” Lou instead queries, not providing much care toward responding to the leader’s suggestion. “Ally doesn’t wake up until an hour or so after the sun rises” the unnamed leader responds, smirking as he looks off toward the way in which they’d entered the camp one night prior, visibly amused, “quite frankly, I’m surprised someone like you is.” “Should I take that as an insult or a compliment?” Lou retorts, shrugging his shoulders at a genuine uncertainty, receiving a similar demeanour from the still-unfamiliar, rifle-wielding soldier. “You’re a kid from Los Angeles. I wouldn’t expect you to make it this far... This far into the new world or this far up north” the stranger quips, earning a chuckle from a tall, white man a few metres away, “honestly, I’m surprised you have enough testosterone to grow a beard like that.” “I’m surprised he has enough testosterone to grow a beard at all” the well-built survivor restates, sharing a laugh with the light-skinned figure he remains awake through the night alongside, their humour dismissed by the unphased young man they pick at. “Thanks for the input, Caucasian Shaq” Lou chirps back, meeting the man’s prod with one of his own, earning a genuinely amused reaction from those he stands before, “do either of you have names or do you just communicate in grunts?” Flattered to be thought so highly of, the light-skinned figure greets himself whilst pointing toward his own chest, directing his thumb toward the much taller man beside him when introducing the group’s muscle. “I’m Val, the big guy’s Bruno” the leader replies, one leg kicked over the other as his eyes set their attention toward the forest’s edge. Nodding, Lou follows the man’s line of sight toward the forest without offering a reply at first, caring not to greet the man, but to gain insight. “By the looks of it, you two seem to be waiting for something” Lou remarks, re-earning their eyes before shifting his own toward them, “my question is whether it’s the dead or the living?” Shaking his head whilst returning his attention to the entry they’d come through the night prior, Val dismisses the gesture before beginning to nod, still not offering any verbal clarity. “It doesn’t seem like you or your people have been around here long. It also doesn’t seem like you’re too interested in staying” Lou carries onward, again provoking the men that stand beside him to recentre their focus upon him. “You’ve been dragging your shoes through the dirt here long enough to leave tracks. You’d think there fire pits would at least be something more than holes in the ground by now” the one-armed survivor carries forward, “I’m sure they would be if you’d intended to stay.” Pointing his finger in the younger man’s direction whilst wagging it, Val smirks at the stranger’s conclusion. “I’m starting to see why Ally’s brought you up so much” he proclaims, a gesture that Bruno doesn’t fully buy into, but is willing to play along with. “If she brings me up enough, I’m sure she’s told you that I’m not into beating around the bush too much” Lou replies, letting the rebar staff fall into his palm before he drives its tip into the mushy ground. “The camp’s not as big as you’d expect it to be, which suggests you only chopped down enough trees to suffice what you needed” he continues, wrapping his hand around the spear’s end as he leans against it, “there’s no better time than now to start asking questions. Here’s mine... what are you hiding out here from?” Not changing the expression that his face had taken on during the man’s explanation, Val looks into the face of the younger man at his side for a few seconds in silence before actually replying. “We call them ‘artists’. People, probably a bunch of heathens from the city, who came together east and started attacking groups smaller than them” the leader confesses, holding up his chin with the side of his left hand, “they carry around these buckets of red paint. They mark their territory with it.” Remaining quiet, Lou stares off into the woodlands whilst extending a finger, guiding it in circles as if to imply he were wishing for the leader to continue speaking. “They attack people. They get the jump on them, usually send the creepers after them to buy time, and steal what they can” Val explains, not offering much more than what he’s already stated, “we sent a few guys out after them a couple weeks ago and never heard back. We found their bodies on the road not too long after.” “Why not go down there with your own people and attack them back?” Lou queries, earning another chuckle that Val seems all too willing to offer at the slightest appearance of humour. “If they mark their territory with red paint, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out where they are” the young man continues, paying too little attention to Bruno to watch the man’s head shake, “unless you’ve already gotten rid of him, you’ve still got the guy we caught outside the arcade for leverage.” “That boy wouldn’t spill shit. We tied a weight around his ankle and dropped him in the lake hours ago” Val retorts, dismissing the cruel nature in which they’d disposed of the enemy. “But that ain’t the problem. They don’t mark their territory with red paint, they mark the places that they claim with it” the leader reiterates, having no reason to refuse the young man information which he craves. “They don’t live in the territory they mark. They go down when they need shit, take whatever they want, and get rid of people who are in their way” he continues, his lips puckered as his face sours at the thought of the savages. “You entered their territory and they tried to take care of you” Val explains, a gesture that the young man beside him takes little offence to until it’s followed up by the claim that cannot be agreed upon, “you got lucky.” Refusing with the shake of his head, Lou disregards the conclusion as incorrect, not yet voicing that as a man he does know personally begins approaching from off to the side. “We didn’t get lucky. We know how to handle ourselves. That’s why they couldn’t take care of us” the one-armed survivor rebukes, a comment that Sebastian only hears the tail-end of, “but that doesn’t matter. They took our shit and got Rudy killed. I wanna know where they are.” “Join the club, kid” Bruno responds, looking past the man and toward the older gentleman that approaches, “hey pops, talk your son down from this hero game he thinks he’s playing.” With a squint, Sebastian looks toward an undisturbed Lou, who continues to stare at the forest before crossing his arms, “Lou’s not my kid” the man replies, a remark that the brute muscle beside Val disregards. “It doesn’t matter. Tell him to cut it out with the tough guy act” Bruno doubles down, not entertaining the young man’s posture as anything other than phoney, “he’s talking like he’s the main character in an action movie.” Shrugging as if that were already well-known, Sebastian appears to dismiss the comments from those unfamiliar to him before setting his eyes upon the younger member of his group. “The people that attacked us have been attacking others. Apparently they attacked Ally’s group, too” Lou remarks, speaking over his shoulder to the man he knows has now begun to face him. “They mark their territory with red paint, but apparently they don’t live there. These people call them ‘the artists’ and that’s all I’ve got so far” the young man proceeds, his eyes brightening as he recalls one other key point, “Oh, and they killed the guy we caught at the arcade already. He’s in the lake.” “Well, that was fast” Sebastian responds, carrying on with the conversation whilst those that stand beside him they listen in, refusing to interject partially out of a morbid fascination, “what’re you thinking, Lou?” Holding his squint toward the same scene that both Val and Bruno had taken to the direction of, holding his thoughts back from being voiced aloud at first as he considers what his options are. Veering toward the cloudy skies, Lou’s eyes wander high into the air, following the curves in the storm clouds above as he inspects the weather. “I’m gonna go after them. I’ll grab the truck if it’s still where we left it, throw on a gore coat when I get into town and see what I can find” the man decides, turning to look at Sebastian properly as he speaks, “tell Marta I’ll be back at night fall, and tell Ally that we’ll have that talk we didn’t have last night when I get back.” Concealing their laughter, Val and Bruno shrug their shoulders as the young man begins walking off, “it was nice knowing you, kid!” the taller man proclaims. “Tell the others to just hang tight until I get back” Lou remarks, disregarding the sceptics that see him off with a final declaration toward Sebastian, “Calgary’s not out of the picture yet. Figure out amongst yourselves if you’re still interested in the plan we’d made in Vancouver.” “Will do. Stay safe out there, Lou!” Sebastian calls back out, his voice prompting a few others within the tents that surround their temporary shelter to stir from their slumber. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” Val questions with a laugh held down, extending his hand toward the departing survivor that walks off- not expected to ever be seen again, “you’re just going along with whatever a kid tells you?” Finally knowing what it feels like to know what others don’t themselves, Sebastian crosses his arms and begins turning away, “yup” he responds while walking off, heading the way he’d entered from without another word. | “Hey” Jenn murmurs, watching as she’s returned a pleased expression from her visitor, who ducks between the flaps that make up the entrance to the tent she’d used for shelter the night prior. “How’s it going?” Ally questions back, paying her greeting to the woman as she stands upright, only momentarily adjusting her posture before lowering herself to the ground, one hand placing itself upon the thin fabric between herself and the muddy terrain. “I’m alive. We’re all together again, so there’s that taken care of” Jenn answers, swaying her chin from one side to the other, unsure of what else to speak for. “Yeah, that’s... Those are definitely good things” Ally responds, gently entering the discourse with as much of a personable attitude as she can present, able to notice the same odd tension in the air that separates her from the woman across, aware that her camp’s visitor can too. “Have you talked to the others yet? Maybe get re-acclimated with them?” Jenn queries, pressing her molars upon a handful of berries that she’d slipped past her lips. “Yeah. I, uh... I talked to Terry for a little bit a couple minutes ago” Ally replies, nodding along with the remark just as the increasingly-brunette woman does, “it sounds like there’s been a bit that’s happened since we last saw each other.” Paying little concern toward the past that leads her to the present moment, Jenn wipes her hands of the moisture that her recently-washed snack had left coating her palms. “Yeah, it’s been quite the journey” the chewing survivor replies, pulling her hair back to tie it into a ponytail with the elastic band her plastic wrapper of sweets had been held together with, “a lot’s happened. That’s definitely true.” Given little to work off in the reply, Ally deepens her nod before hanging her head, staring at the fabric ground whilst her friend adjusts her hair, unsure of how to segway into what she wants to talk about. “Halston’s dead, Ally” Jenn speaks aloud, interrupting the train of thought that the woman opposite her had been exploring, re-earning the woman’s line of sight, “she died a while back. It sucks, people die, she’s missed, and now it’s time to move on. That’s all.” Unsure of how to respond at first, Ally finds herself incapable of reacting with anything more than widened eyes and a slightly-parted pair of lips, stricken with surprise over the insouciant emotions that are portrayed. “I appreciate that you want to talk to me about it, but I’d really rather just try and put it past me” Jenn explains, fitting her loose strands of hair into the makeshift tie, “if I sit around all day wishing I could’ve changed things, I’ll throw myself off a cliff.” Accepting the way in which her friend has chosen to cope, Ally bows her head and waves off the woman’s remark, gesturing that it’ll be no issue from here on out. “If there’s any people grieving that you want to comfort, I’d start with the girls that just lost their dad” Jenn proceeds, watching as her friend’s eyes lock onto her, “Courtney’s got Sebastian to lean on. I’m not sure Sonya does, so if being a grievance counsellor is something you’re up for, I’d go talk to the younger sister.” Hanging her head yet again, Ally swipes her hair behind her ears, looking at the ground once more whilst presenting hesitancy. “Yeah, so what’s up with the others you guys brought along?” the natural brunette survivor questions, looking toward the woman whose teeth are stained blue from the berries, “I heard Lou met them somewhere along the way.” “Yeah, he camped out in the mountains after the ship went down. Spent a few months up there on Vancouver Island, and met them out in a cabin” Jenn replies, speaking to only what the man himself had informed her of. “He says they’re decent people. They seem like it. I don’t mind them and neither do the others” she continues, informing the runaway survivor as best she can, “they’re close. He thinks highly of them.” “Yeah...” Ally mutters, tracing the lumps in the ground beneath the nylon base the tent stands atop with the tip of her index finger, “...you don’t think he may have jumped to that decision?” With a squint, Jenn pulls one leg close to her chest whilst the other lays bent across the ground she sits atop, “what do you mean?” the woman wonders aloud. “Well, it just sounds like he took to them pretty fast. They never knew each other before we got to Canada” Ally explains, testing the waters on the length her friend’s trust is willing to go, “you don’t think it’s a bit soon to bond with people you’ve just met?” Easing the reserved look on her face, Jenn peers to the vestibule the woman across from her had entered, not able to see the outside, but picturing it whilst she retorts. “I could ask the same thing with you, can’t I?” the woman with dying blonde locks rejoinders, puckering her bottom lip throughout a pause, “it’s rather fast for you to attach yourself to these people, isn’t it?” With a humoured smirk, Ally shrugs as her head leans in, shaking her head at her first reaction, “these people are different.” “Yeah, ‘cause you know them. You’ve been riding with them since however long it took you to meet them after you ran off from the others” Jenn replies, nonchalantly dismissing her friend’s claims as is natural for her to do. “Lou, the others, and I have been around these guys for long enough to know who they are and aren’t” the woman who’d fought grief twice since society fell doubles down, “however you feel about Sebastian and the others is how we feel about these people you’re with.” “I’m not trying to say I don’t believe you. I’m just asking if you think Lou got comfortable with them a little too fast?” Ally questions aloud, only to watch as her friend again dismisses the query, this time with a shrug. “I think you think that because you don’t know who they are. I think you’re just as sceptical of his friends as he is of yours” Jenn replies, thinking nothing of the concerns that appear to weigh heavy on her fellow survivalist’s mind. “I just feel like I know Lou well enough to know when he’s making a call that might be a little rash. One that he may not have fully thought throu-” Ally attempts to restate, only to fall silent when she watches the head of the woman across from her begin to shake in refusal. “No...” Jenn confesses, speaking through the pause that follows her friend’s natural descent into silence, “...I’m not so sure you know him as well as you think you do.” Taken aback, the man’s girlfriend finds herself unable to reply to the quip that she hadn’t even taken into account, her mouth coming to a close as her mind draws a great void upon how to respond- not sure that there is a way at all. | “I’m fine with it” Marta confesses, gradually walking the woodland’s treeline with her hands hung by each side, circling the makeshift community alongside her friend as the sky grows dark, a fresh blanket of snow having covered the ground. “Oh come on, Marta. Don’t just leave it there” Courtney responds, matching each of the girl’s steps with one of her own, “I get it if you don’t want to say anything more, but after the past day I’ve had, I’m dying to talk about anything other than my dad.” Rolling her eyes with a smile, Marta puts aside her own desire to leave behind the discovery they’d made one day prior in the name of hopefully raising her friend’s spirits from the trench they’d fallen into. “Did I expect him to find Ally? Yes. He found Theo and Lee, he found Jenn, he found the others, I figured luck was just going to fall in his favour even if it seemed unlikely” she confesses, looking to the ground that her boots leave dirty imprints in, “it didn’t surprise me.” “But you’re not happy about it, right?” Courtney questions, trying to refrain from pressing too hard on the young woman for answers, though her hesitations are slightly skewed in the wake of her grief. “I’m happy he found her like he wanted to. The worst outcome for either of us probably would’ve been him not finding her” Marta corrects, struggling to fully explain her stance in a way beyond what can be doubted. “If we’d made it all the way to Calgary without finding her, he’d probably come around to accepting that she was dead. It’d sit on his mind, but he’d try to fight his way past it like Jenn does with Halston” the young woman continues, shaking her head in refusal. “He’d never fully give into that idea, though. There’d always be a part of him that felt she was still alive out there somewhere” Marta concedes, knowing the disheartening idea to be true, “at least now he has some closure.” “Yeah, but that won’t last long” Courtney replies, speaking to a line of thought that captures the young woman’s mind, her interest peaking in the claim she doesn’t know what to make of. “What do you mean?” Marta inquires, asking for clarification in the only way she knows how, watching as the grounded paramotorist looks off into the forest they pass. “Because he loves you way more than he lets on. He can deny it all he wants, but I know he’s full of shit” the grieving survivor confesses, a smile worn on her face- one that Marta looks away from. “He cares about you. A lot of that care is just natural, yes. But there’s a part of him in there that’s so madly head-over-heels for you that he just won’t let anyone see” Courtney doubles down, refusing to budge from the belief she’d assumed, “it’s like I told him- this is just a honeymoon phase.” Hanging her head with a smile, Marta takes appreciation in the woman’s claim before parting her lips, attempting to disregard the conclusion that was drawn before her sights fall upon the centre of camp. “What are the others doing?” the young woman queries, helping aid Courtney’s line of sight toward the campfire that Ally’s people had come together around, neither woman able to fully comprehend the reasoning behind such a coming together. “Hey, what is this!?” Elsie proclaims, stepping out of her tent just as Terry does, their conversation put to a halt by Josie, who’d stepped out of her own nearby residency with the question asked aloud. “For the love of god, go back to your tents or pack your stuff up and leave” Val retorts, taking notice of the blonde girl and her black friend’s approach just as he spots a similar drawing forward from Marta and Courtney a few paces off. “Tell us why and we’ll be on the first journey out of here” Josie rejoinders, taking the stand that neither Sebastian or Terry are able to make yet, only now coming around to the conversation. “We’ve been waiting for answers, and it doesn’t seem like any of you are really eager to give them to us” the tomahawk-wielding survivor from the sunken Euronam remarks, “start letting us know what’s going on and maybe we’ll be more open to getting out of your hair.” “Stand down, Josie. We can’t go threatening to leave when Lou’s still not back yet” Terry proclaims, drawing closer to the scene whilst Sonya, Sebastian, and Adrian emerge from their own tents. “He’s not gonna be coming back, so you might as well just start getting ready to head out anyway” Bruno shouts back, speaking up from the seat that he occupies, the only survivor of the still-unfamiliar group of campers not standing with the others. “If you don’t think he’s coming back, you have no idea who you’re talking about” Jules shouts aloud, doubling down as he steps through the vestibule of the tent that he, and he alone, had occupied and struggled to open. “Your friend is a fucking child. I don’t care if he’s got a beard, dropped balls, or two hands for crying out loud... He’s just a kid in this world” Val replies, not caring to hide the doubt he’s willing to let any set of ears- Ally’s included- overhear. “These pricks he’s sent himself on a suicide mission to get rid of are brutal. They might as well not even be considered humans at this point” Val remarks, standing firm in his belief as it’s offered to the new half of his community. “They don’t have morals. They’re not evil or pure, they’re just people who will do what they need to for whatever they want” the compound’s leader proceeds, “as far as I’m concerned, his body is already on the side of the road waiting for us to find it.” “I can’t wait for you people to look like idiots” Sebastian proclaims, watching the ground that he walks along whilst addressing the man he knows himself to be drawing nearer to. “I hope you’re ready to wait the rest of your lives, ‘cause we won’t be looking like idiots” Val responds, pulling away from his huddled assortment of campers to approach the man who sticks out most as the closest thing to a leader the opposite group can offer. “You people can’t just walk around this place thinking you know better than us. You’ve lost one person to these people, we’ve lost more than we can count on both hands” Val explains, growing tired at having to defend himself like his assumptions are anything other than reasonable. “Brothers and sisters, cousins, friends, you name it. We’ve lost them to those people” the light-skinned, bearded survivalist furthers, speaking loud enough for anyone to hear him. Hanging her head, Ally prevents herself from speaking whilst Marta watches on, the rest of her group having set their sights on the bickering pair of leaders while her own remain fully invested in her mentor’s girlfriend. “I think I know what Lou’s capable of a lot better than you do” Sebastian rejoinders, a comment that Adrian’s crossed arms and slow nod back up, the man taking a stand two metres off to the side of the group’s leader. “I think you’re delusional if you think that the kid is going to just go out there and find-” Val counters, kept from speaking anything further as the distant blaring of a vehicle’s horn draws closer than it has any right to. For a few seconds, the man freezes in terror just as the rest of his group does, a reaction that their newest members cannot fully dedicate themselves to doing. “Get into cover!” Bruno shouts, throwing himself off the seat that he’d occupied whilst gesturing for those standing by to seek out the closest thing to shelter they can manage. “What were you saying?” Sebastian questions, redirecting his sight toward the widened eyes of the community’s shot-caller, the look of awe that’s presented to him coming nowhere close to being duplicated. “Stand out here if you fucking want, you fool! Those are the artists!” Val proclaims, backing away from the confident survivor, who remains unmoved and uninspired by the dilemma that’s presented to him. “We staying out here, Terry?” Josie questions aloud, listening to the sound of horns grow louder, a set of headlights gradually following the path to the campground in the distance. Glancing to his right, Terry shrugs his shoulders toward Sebastian’s direction, the unintimidated leader of the group’s Canadian half presenting him with a very similar assurance. “Yeah, we’re staying put” the American half’s de facto leader replies, his follow up putting a smile on the woman’s face. “Good” Josie responds, setting her feet into the thin layer of snow that she and her peers stand atop, crossing her arms while the rest of her contemporaries await what they anticipate is their pal. “Ally, get the fuck over here!” Val barks, pulling the curled fingers on his hand toward himself, gesturing for the survivor to follow suit and retreat alongside him. Snapped out of her thousand yard stare at the woodland’s distance, Ally looks back to her leader before following suit, stepping in the direction of her group before taking a glance at her right side. Locking eyes with Marta, the brunette woman in a camouflage jacket inspects the unchanged visage of her counterpart in the faux leather coat, the retreat she’d looked to follow the lead of coming to a halt. Without uttering a word, Ally looks at the young woman’s face amidst a pause, hearing her own name leave the lips of Val once more, trying to gesture her into cover. Unsure of what to make of the interaction aside from its odd, unspoken aura, Ally snaps out of her stupor and continues the rest of the way back, siding with her peers whilst Marta watches on. From afar, Courtney watches her young friend’s head follow the mentor’s girlfriend, a set of lifted eyebrows and a smirk carried in her face as the woman’s side is made clear. With the groups having made their calls of siding where they wish, all that remains to pass are the seconds between the blaring horn’s presentation and the vehicle’s actual arrival. “Don’t come out of hiding until the people in the cars step out. Let them think the others are the only people here for a minute” Val proclaims, directing his community to allow Sebastian and Terry’s group to take the mantle as bait for their enemies to take advantage of. Drawing close enough for the crunching branches beneath its tires to echo throughout the air, the truck that rips through the forest eventually shines its headlights upon the compound that awaits it, only one set of people remaining out in the open to welcome it. Drawing to a stop without anything following after it, the off road tyre-equipped convoy of one parks itself at the entrance to the community whilst its headlights remain firing their lumination upon the modestly-sized grounds. No more intimidated than when he’d first heard the horn sounding off, Sebastian occupies the camp just as the rest of his group does, unmoved by the arrival they’d anticipated all along. For the seconds that remain without clarity on the issue at hand, Val and Bruno join the sides of their people as they huddle close to the ground, bracing for the sound of gunfire they anticipate to annihilate those they had aided the night prior. Instead, the driver’s side door of the vehicle opens up to allow its navigator the freedom of departure, another few moments passing before the soul who’d operated its steering wheel can climb out. “Where are the other ass hats?” Lou inquires, standing upon the side bars that had been fitted to the base of the vehicle, receiving not one voice projecting itself in his favour, but instead, watching the faces of those he asks turn toward those who’d hurried for protection. “Hiding” Marta replies, wearing a prideful grin that mostly comes from being proven correct, though a slight amount arises from having believed in her mentor enough to remain out in the open. Looking toward his protege, Lou shrugs his shoulders and nods whilst the rest of the community emerges from their hiding, Ally remaining stood behind both Bruno and Val as her boyfriend climbs down from the vehicle. “You can’t even begin to fathom how lucky you are, kid!” the light-skinned leader proclaims, watching as the Californian teenager remains silent, nodding to himself as he leaves his driver’s side door open, rounding the front of the truck’s cab. “Anyone else walks out into those streets and they’re dead within hours!” Val barks, pointing his finger at the fortunate man that opens up the vehicle’s passenger’s door and reaches in, “you better count yourself lucky they didn’t find you before-!” Falling silent immediately, Val steps back in shock at the same sight that brings the rest of his community into a collective awe, the surprise that is afforded to them being presented with a vocal gasp. Though they’d remained confident in their fellow survivor’s return, the group that Sebastian and Terry collectively front look on with a similar amazement, not having quite anticipated what their friend would come back with when he did. Stepping into the open space between the campfire and the truck’s headlights, Lou marches away from the ride he’d come back with and digs the dull end of his rebar staff into the soft terrain. “What were you saying about counting myself lucky?” the young man inquires, piercing the earth with his weapon as the sound of undead groaning emanates from it, “personally, I don’t think I was as lucky as they were unlucky.” With mouths agape, Val and his community stare at the same sight that prompts Sebastian and Terry’s group to look on with wide eyes and taken aback expressions. Wrapping his fingers around the rebar staff, Lou turns to look at his planted weapon, watching the jaw of the decapitated head he’d speared onto the sharpened tip of his weapon bite down at the sight of the woodland-based community, the red-painted, flesh-covered skull having newly reanimated. Having murdered the described ‘artists’ along his journey and kept one of their heads as a souvenir, Lou nods to himself as he looks into the pearly eyes of the corpse’s wandering eyes. Pleased at the revenge he’d enacted, the young man turns back to face those that his girlfriend had aligned herself with with a smirk, one eyebrow raised over his left eyes as his sights set themselves upon the awestruck community. “I found them” the one-armed slayer proclaims, unable to retain the unmoved and blank facial expression he’d wanted to wear as he refuses those that had expected less of him any reason to do so further, too pleased in the proof he’s presented them with that he’s as capable as he claims himself to be. == RISE and REVOLT == |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2025
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