S5, E2 | Above the Savages

“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 ==