S5, E6 | Keep Safe Thy Plate from Blood

“This isn’t right, Lou” Ally utters, standing beside the man that she speaks to as he laces up his winter boots. “If you’d like to go out and find yourself a corpse wandering in the woods, be my guest” the man answers, parting his pinky finger and thumb as far as he can manage to deepen the knot as best he can, “I’ll warn you ahead of time, though. If you find one, they’re probably one of the people that left this place last night and didn’t make it very far.”

“I really don’t appreciate how dismissive you’re being about this” the woman rebuttals, watching as her boyfriend throws the strap of his prosthetic over his head, letting it hang halfway up his back. “What do you want me to tell you, Ally? We’ve got to do whatever we can to survive and we’re not always gonna like that” Lou retorts, stepping up from his place atop the air mattress they’d hooked up on just one night prior, fixing the ever-expanding locks of hair that fall over his shoulders.

“That doesn’t mean we should be cutting Val’s body open and slathering him all over some coats” Ally counters, a comment that her boyfriend only sighs at in the seconds that follow it being voiced. “It’s like I said, Ally. We’ve got to do whatever we can to survive and we’re not always gonna like that” Lou repeats, reclaiming his rebar staff as he turns to look at her face-to-face, “you’ve already lost way more than half of your camp. Are you really interested in losing more?”

“If this were one of your friends, you’d be hell-bent on not stepping foot away from this camp until they were buried” Ally rebukes, countering the man’s point with one of her own. Being met with nothing more than a silent stare, the woman locks eyes with her boyfriend and refuses to budge from the stance that she’d taken, not being dissuaded from her position through his stoic demeanour.

“Don’t tell me that I’m wrong. You would’ve buried Fink if you could. You would’ve buried Vinny, and Wyatt, Halston, Theo, and Lee and everyone else if you could’ve” she doubles down, again staring into a face that meets her with total silence. “If it were any of the people you met when we were apart, you’d still go out of your way to give them a proper burial” Ally continues, refusing to bend the knee to believing anything else, “you’re a good person who can see that this is wrong.”

“I see that this is necessary” Lou wastes no time in responding, allowing his girlfriend to finish speaking before interjecting with his own thoughts. “I see that we’re about to hike a mountain for a whole damn day without more than a few protein bars and some water. I see that we’ll be fucked if we don’t make it all the way up there before the sun sets” he continues to assure, “and I see no reason to have to worry about the zombies along the way if we can do something about it.”

Taking her turn to stare at the man in silence, Ally’s irritation is kept at bay as their eyes remain glued upon each other through the long, quiet interaction. “I’m sorry that your friends are dead, and I’m sorry we’re not giving them a proper burial. Aside from that, I don’t know what you want me to do” Lou doubles down, pulling his locks of hair free from the prosthetic case’s strap that holds it down, “he’s already been cut open and I don’t have a time machine. What’s done is done.”

“Tell me that you understand then” Ally quickly counters, letting her eyes fall toward the man’s chest before lifting back to his face, her expression still carrying the obvious look of displeasure, “tell me that you understand why I’d be so against this.” With the slightest furrow in his eyebrows, Lou keeps his stare held toward the woman’s own before looking off to the side for a second, considering the words he’d use to respond.

“He’s your friend. I don’t have to have liked him or known him in order to see that, Ally” Lou replies, nodding to his girlfriend before turning his body toward the tent’s vestibule, “of course I understand.” Watched on by the woman his discourse had been spent with, the one-armed soldier marches through the nylon flaps and across the snow-covered field, the sun that begins to ascend within the sky providing just enough light from behind the clouds it’d been hidden behind.

“This is fucking appalling” Dawn murmurs, standing beside Christina with her arms crossed, purposefully speaking loud enough for the passing stalwart to overhear. Going without a reply, the women continue to stare at Lou, who pays them no mind as he continues walking, dismissing their comments as he closes in on the members of his group that surround the body they mutilate.

“Are we almost ready?” the lone wanderer instead queries, calling out to those that lather one makeshift poncho after another in the remains of the community’s former leader. “Just about” Courtney replies, holding her breath for as long as she can whilst wincing at the sight of the deceased man’s innards falling like slop from the clothing’s material, “you sure your girlfriend and her holier-than-thou buddies are good as they are?”

“They’ve got a problem with all of this. They’re gonna abstain from dawning their big guy’s guts on their shoulders” Lou replies, aiming the tip of his weapon toward the maimed corpse laying on the ground. “I can’t say I blame them” a foul-smelling Sebastian responds, kneeling before the cadaver he’s spent the last hour or so digging his hands into, “I know it’s necessary, but... goddamn.”

“We all have to do what we have to do” Marta interrupts, dawning a plastic cover over her faux leather jacket, her hair tied into a bun so as to keep it from contacting the viscera. “I’m not a fan of smelling like shit either, but here we are...” she doubles down, extending a cotton blanket that she’d personally turned into a gorecoat toward her mentor, “...not being given much of a choice.”

With a frown and flared nostrils, Lou gingerly takes the piece of material from his protege and begrudgingly puts it on, having always hated the stench, but having gone long enough over the past few days without smelling it to react just as he had the first time he’d dawned guts. “I know the rest of you aren’t pleased with this, but I’m still asking...” Jules speaks up, wearing a denim jacket stained with the blood of Val’s body as he turns toward the man’s subordinates, “...you coming?”

“We don’t have much of a choice, do we? We either hike back up the mountain with you or stay here and wait to die” Christina replies, meeting the man with a visual displeasure. “Well, you’d rather worry about the dead than wear your friend’s guts on your clothes...” Jules retorts, shrugging as he meets those on the opposite side of his moral ground with sarcasm, “...forgive me for not putting it past y’all to choose waiting here and dying instead.”

“Shut up, Jules. We’re going with you” Ally responds calmly, the hostile vigour in her voice made clear to her former classmate, who curls his lip and silently turns away. “I’m not gonna put up with this annoying-ass bullshit. We’re either gonna get the fuck along, or we’re gonna have some problems” Terry interrupts, taking a stance at the front of the newly-unified group as Sebastian finally finishes off the final gorecoat.

“The people that are gone are not coming back. The people that are dead better fucking not come back. And the people that are still here and alive better stay that way” the American leader doubles down, refusing any room for an alternative, “whoever has a problem with getting along is gonna stay here and wait to meet their maker. So, I better not hear one-fucking-person bitch and moan from this point on if you’re coming with. Everyone got it?”

“Let’s quit talking about this shit and just get moving, alright?” Christina interjects, the first to turn her attention toward the mountain they’ve yet to climb whilst gesturing toward the sun’s direction, “we’re burning daylight as it is. Let’s go.” Being met with a few conceding nods of agreement and shrugs from those they’d barely known for longer than a cup of coffee, the community’s member watches on as their staff-wielding frontman leads the charge, the first to embark upon the journey.

Leading by example, Lou begins the march that leaves his footprints in the crunchy snow that scatters the ground, followed on by the final residents of the compound that bid it adieu in favour of what’s hoped to be literal greener pastures. One by one and in quick succession, the Canadians, Americans, and Val’s descendants break from the places in which they’d waited in various different bundles of clothing, taking advantage of the early-morning sunrise to leave their woodland home behind.

= 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 =

“Urgh!” Sebastian exclaims, thrusting his elbow through the driver’s windshield of a sedan and triggering its alarm, an issue the gorecoat his still-bloody hands had crafted leave him little concern with. “This is the most dignified breaking and entering attempt I have ever seen” Courtney remarks, earning a slight chuckle from the man whose sleeve-covered and glass-coated arm now reaches through the newly-created opening.

“I was a bit of a rebel in my younger days” the man sarcastically replies, not much older than the woman who accompanies him, “I was a jaywalking fiend that shouldn’t have been trifled with.” As he makes his amusing comment, Sebastian’s thumb presses against a button beside the steering wheel that prompts the hood to pop upward, his attention set upon the various aspects of the vehicle now left for his disposal.

“Yes, you carry all the intimidation of a middle aged maths teacher. Trifled with? You shall not be” Courtney quips, watching as the man smirks whilst reaching forward, disconnecting the battery and silencing the car that had screamed at him for all to hear. “Those mounties should count themselves lucky that they could never catch me” Sebastian replies with a purposeful lack of confidence, his chin lowering, “they’d never have known what they were up against.”

“Yes, you were such a bad boy” the man’s girlfriend reassures, walking into the man’s warm embrace before pressing her lips into his own, sharing a kiss that ends with her head resting against his chest. “It’s a blessing and a curse” Sebastian replies, playing around with the humour at his own extent as the brief exchange of pleasantries comes to an end, set elsewhere in favour of spending the time that they have together.

“You’re just a blessing in general, Seb’” Courtney responds, fully letting the shared laughter at her boyfriend’s expense subside, allowing the weight of their interaction to settle in. Having freed their arms from the gorecoats that their noses have grown accustomed to the stench of, the pair of lovers in a world filled with such lovelessness and cruelty stand in silence as one, taken into each other’s grasp as they spend a few seconds within the silent embrace of each other.

“I’d say the same about you, Court’” the man whispers, resting his chin against the top of the woman’s head before watching a few figures advance toward their temporary residence in the distance. “Alright, we’re ahead of schedule. For everyone’s sake, we should probably take advantage of that” Sebastian remarks, kissing his girlfriend on the forehead before returning toward the vehicle they’d intended to search.

|

“Alright, this is the last one. The building’s completely clear” Jenn remarks, stepping out of the bathroom of the condo they’d entered with a metal pipe in hand. Looking around the mostly empty and seemingly never-occupied residential space, the increasingly dark-haired survivor searches for the woman she’d walked in alongside before finding her figure on the patio in the back of the room.

“Did you hear me?” the woman wonders aloud, calling out to the as-of-yet unresponsive survivor that had joined her, a sour expression worn and an eye roll paid back. “All clear, got it. Thanks for letting me know” Dawn responds, holding a bitter and unpleasant tone in the voice she uses to address the American, one that’s not only noticed, but laughed off at first.

“What kind of stick do you and your little friends have up your asses?” Jenn inquires, watching as the other woman’s face glides toward the right, veering away with what the newly-brunette woman can only assume is another eye roll. “Alright, we cut your friend up so we wouldn’t have to worry about the dead. We’re guilty as charged” the young adult questions aloud, watching as a distasteful stare is paid to her by the stalwart that gradually spins around to face her.

“Can you stand there and tell me you haven’t done things you weren’t proud of just to stay alive?” the American-born holdover of a now-deceased era questions, at first receiving just a subtle shake of the head. “You wouldn’t have cut him open if he was your friend” Dawn retaliates, a gesture that immediately prompts the woman opposite her to hang her head, “you may not have known him, but we did. We knew him, we liked him, we cared about him.”

“Ma’am, you say that as if we stuck a knife in his heart and started slathering ourselves in his insides while he was still alive” Jenn responds, lifting an unbothered eyebrow in the survivor’s direction. “By that same logic, your friend was the one responsible for eating the tall guy and not the zombie he’d turned into” the American continues, watching the disturbed, yet well-restrained visage continue to grow more sour at the words she speaks.

“None of that matters, though. Terry made himself very clear back at the camp. What’s done is done, we’re all on the same side now, and it’s time to move on” the woman that Lou had once requested lead the American group in the event that he couldn’t explains, picking up a knapsack she throws over her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s let the others know this place is cleaned out” Jenn concludes, turning her back toward the survivor in an attempt to leave, “maybe they’ll have found some food to m-”

“You’re the gay one, right? The one who lost her girlfriend after your boat went down, right?” Dawn interrupts, her question prompting Jenn to freeze in place, her eyelids narrowing the second it’s asked aloud. “What if it was her body that my friends and I were covering ourselves in? Would it be so easy to write off then?” the survivor questions further, seeing no change in the younger woman’s demeanour, “would you accept the excuses, or would you want to give her a proper burial?”

Her face wearing an anger that cannot be seen by the soul who begs the question that produces it, Jenn stands in a silence strong enough to bring an audible quiet over the room they share. Grasping the cylindrical weapon she’d entered the room carrying with every last ounce of her might, the American wanderer forces herself to release the tension in her fingers as the weapon remains at her side, the muscles in her arm having wanted to join her legs in taking toward the opposite woman.

Barely directing her chin toward the opposite woman’s direction, the departure-prepared survivor glances over her shoulder to find a placid and undaunted opposition awaiting the answer to her inquiry. “Yes... it would” Jenn lies, convincing herself to wear a smile that fails to appear as persuasive as she’d like it to be. “Feel free to rewind time and bring her back to the dead to prove me wrong” the brunette retorts, aware that her claim cannot be fought any better than it is to be defended.

“Before you go, however, I’m just going to issue you this warning one time” she proceeds, turning her body the rest of the way toward the opened patio doors before lifting her pipe toward Dawn’s direction. “There are a million ways to get away with murder in this world and even more places to hide a body. There are no consequences for it and nothing to dissuade any of us from committing it...” Jenn concludes with a sadistic grin, “...keep that in mind the next time you bring Halston up.”

Leaving her comment off in the same breath that she uses to follow through on her departure, Jenn marches for the front door that she leaves open after stepping through it. Left behind with only the remarks to keep her mind occupied, Dawn stares at the parted entrance before looking at the ground, sitting with the declaration that had been made without much in the way of motivation to dwell on it.

|

“It’s a shame you were never much of a skier” Adrian remarks, walking around the living room of a cottage whose tenants likely hadn’t been present for months leading up to the dead rising. “Why? It’s not like we would’ve come up here any more often then we did for a Canucks game” Marta replies, taking advantage of her father being the person she’d assigned herself to travel alongside by occupying a seat on a plastic tarp-covered chesterfield and kicking her feet upon the nearby coffee table.

“Sure we would have” her father corrects, doing so with a chipper attitude in his voice, one that accompanies him toward the window that overlooks the mountain’s southern-facing slope. “I used to be in the ski club when I was in high school. We’d travel out here every month during the winter season” Adrian mutters, watching as his daughter stretches her arms out along the sofa’s supports, “if you’d been into it when you were younger, I’d have been more inclined to come out here myself.”

Rolling her eyes as she leans back in her seat, Marta allows the man to retain whatever beliefs he chooses to whilst the man peers out from the home. “With all these cars that Sebastian’s setting off, I sure hope he finds a few with some goddamn gas in them” Adrian mutters, peering past the curtain that had obstructed his view of the parking lot-bound couple whilst overhearing his daughter’s chuckle in the background.

“As long as I don’t have to drive, I don’t care how many cars he wrangles up or how much gas is in them” Marta replies, crossing her right foot over her left as it sways from one side to the other. “Why? You don’t like driving?” Adrian queries back, watching the woman’s aghast reaction take back to him.

“You think I want to be the one behind that goddamn wheel from here until Calgary!? No-fucking-thank you!” she proclaims, sharing a further laugh with the man who hangs his head with a smile. “Strap a fan to my back and have me fly from an island to Vancouver? I’m fine with that...” Marta doubles down, reassuring her father of the stance she’s hell-bent on maintaining, “...but bore me to death with a twelve hour, or however long it takes, drive!? You can fuck right the hell off!”

“You’d get behind the wheel if Lou asked you to” Adrian corrects, a conclusion he reaches that his daughter doesn’t argue against. “Okay, yeah. If Lou wanted me to drive, I’d bite my tongue and do it” Marta responds, lifting a finger amidst the pause to make clear the fact that her point has yet to conclude, “but knowing Lou, he’d prefer to be the one behind the wheel if he had the choice. So, as far as Lou asking me to drive goes, I’m pretty sure I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“You’re probably right. I’m just poking fun at you” Adrian concedes, a gesture his daughter had already come to, but doesn’t react accordingly with. Retaining her playful and unseriousness demeanour, Marta reaches beneath the plastic wrapping and retrieves a pillow that she hoists in the man’s direction, the ease in which he casually moves to the side in an effort to evade the projectile prompting his offspring to roll her eyes.

“How’ve the two of you been, by the way?” Adrian queries, allowing the light-hearted banter to settle as he moves the various knick-knacks that had littered the coffee table’s surface in an effort to free himself a space to sit. “We’ve been fine” Marta answers, shrugging at the question whilst her father lowers himself onto the hardwood furniture, “why?”

“You know why” Adrian responds without taking long to answer, coupling his hands together atop his left thigh, forced to sit at an angle that forces him to look over the same-side’s shoulder to face his daughter. “We’ve only been around the others for a few days, but it’s felt like a lot longer than that since I’ve seen you and Lou in the same room” the man continues, speaking his mind in a polite way that leaves his offspring little reason to enact a defence against the claim.

“I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew what would happen if he ever did find Ally” Marta replies, looking toward her lap as she addresses her single parent’s concerns, a puckering of her lips accompanying the gentle sway of her head. “Besides, it’s not like he would’ve felt the same way about me if he’d never found her. He’d have gone to his grave assuming she was still out there somewhere” the young woman reassures, forcing herself to smile, “...and she was.”

“You didn’t actually expect us to find her, did you?” Adrian wonders aloud, asking the question with a raised eyebrow and smug grin as if the answer were truthfully less straight-forward than his daughter makes it out to be. “As a matter of fact... I did. I know it’s easy to say that with the benefit of hindsight, but I’d known it the second I found his friends at the hotel” Marta reassures, the confidence in her visage surprising her father, who her words genuinely convince.

“He’d found everyone else. He’d found them at different times, in different places, and for different reasons. I don’t think there’s any coincidence more ‘in your face’ than that is” she concludes, shaking her head with lifted eyebrows, “I knew it was only a matter of time before he found her too.”

Though he believes the claim that his daughter makes, Adrian finds himself nonetheless taken aback by the honesty in which she provides. “As much as I wish he and I could feel similarly about each other, I don’t want to keep him from being happy. I’d rather he finally find her after all this time than live the rest of his days without closure” Marta confesses, shrugging as if the rationale she sports were just common practise, “I’m not gonna be the selfish bitch that puts my needs ahead of his.”

Though still in pleasant spirits, the face on the young woman drops a slight amount to match the well-hidden disappointment such an action has left her with. Watched on by her father, Marta lets her eyes fall toward the ground as the back of her head slowly comes to a rest on the cushioned seat she sits against, following the various patterns of the well-designed carpet that stretches from one end of the living room to the other.

“You’ve become a great kid, Marta” Adrian remarks, his voice catching his daughter’s ear enough to draw her eyes toward him, the stare she leaves him with being accompanied with a hush that allows him to continue speaking. “I'll always wish you could’ve grown up in the same kind of world that I did, but that will never change how happy I am to see the young woman you’ve become” the man concludes, putting a smile on the girl’s face, “I’m so damn proud of you.”

Through the slight part in her lips, Marta’s white teeth become visible through the room that’s lit by only the dying light of the day’s nearing end. Pulling her legs back and letting her feet drop to the floor, the young woman leans forward in her seat and wraps her arms around the man responsible for raising her in such a well-spoken way, resting her chin upon Adrian’s shoulder as he matches the gesture, receiving his offspring’s praise and appreciation whilst offering his own.

|

“I’m gonna be honest, Lou. It’s right about now that I’m starting to miss that old pain in the ass you brought along” Terry remarks, sliding his spatula out from beneath the burger patty he sets upon the bottom bun the friendly-faced, one-armed slayer extends toward him. “Since when the hell have you ever not liked burgers?” Lou questions back with a squint, grinning to the same man who playfully nods toward him.

“Since I started being the one that had to make them” the man jokes back, receiving a quiet nod of approval to the man who pats him on the shoulder, sending him on his way with the cafeteria tray that his meal sits atop. With eyes setting upon the assortment of wooden tables that line the main floor of the proper ski lodge, Lou finds himself met with a scene that he takes a self-disappointment in for not having anticipated on his own.

Without the command of the man who’d instead placed his focus upon making a dinner capable of human consumption, the divided group’s that Terry had demanded to play nice with each other do anything other than that in places that they occupy. At a table near the lodge’s main window, Ally sits with the stragglers from Val’s camp whilst purposefully averting her eyes, pretending to inspect the wider public area just beyond the building’s grounds for as long as her boyfriend remains standing.

Taking up two full tables a few dozen metres across the room, the combined forces that he’d known gather with each other whilst staying intentionally reserved. Receiving scornful glares from those in Ally’s group aside from his girlfriend herself, Lou begins quietly approaching his larger collection of friends with a frown on his face, their expressions of displeasure reading as loudly as his do.

“It’ll be a process. As long as they don’t end up dead in the next few hours, they’re not gonna have much of a choice but to play nice” Jules comments, moving aside for their friend to join. “We’re not missing anybody, are we?” Lou questions aloud, disregarding the optimistic outlook that his friend presents him with in favour of putting the conversation as a whole as far away from his focus as he can manage.

“Terry’s finishing up with the cooking, Sebastian and Courtney are syphoning off gas outside, and I’ve got no idea what Jenn’s doing” Elsie replies, being stared at by the man she speaks to as she skewers a slice of her hamburger. “What the fuck are you doing?” Lou asks aloud with unusually wide eyes, watching as the blonde lady looks up to him for a moment before looking toward her peers, their confusion as clear to understand as hers is.

“What?” she responds, watching as the man’s pupils take their dagger-like sights away from her face and toward the meal that she prepares to take a bite of. “Tell me that I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing” Lou rejoinders, again prompting the woman to look around for assistance in what’s being done wrong, “tell me you’re not eating a hamburger with a goddamn knife and fork, Elsie.”

“Huh?” she proceeds to wonder, leaning her chin forward before inspecting her plate, overhearing a small raucous of laughter from either direction. “Holy shit, she is!” Jules laughs, covering his mouth to politely hide the bite that he’d yet to finish whilst Josie shakes her head in feigned disappointment and Adrian lifts his hand over his eyes.

“What’s wrong with eating a burger with-?” Elsie wonders aloud, watching Lou’s face light up with amusement before switching the course of her rebuttal to a more comedically-defensive note, “you know what, leave me and my utensils alone! I don’t tell any of you how-”

Kept from speaking any further, the woman’s attention travels just as that of the rest of her group’s does, their ears taking to the distant sound of a door slamming shut and a pair of boots loudly approaching from a lower level. Regardless of which end of the lobby they occupy, the divided groups sit in undisturbed silence as they stare toward the direction of a ramp, its incline being travelled by the blonde-brunette mix who needs nothing further than footsteps to make her presence known.

Refusing to make a comment, light-hearted or otherwise, the unified group of Vancouverites watch on as one of those who had yet to join them rounds the corner, appearing in full with very obvious intent carried through her stroll. Bypassing her own group entirely, Jenn marches toward the opposite side of the lobby just as Terry departs the kitchen, having returned to the front counter for the pot of sauce he’d left for any and all to use just in the nick of time.

“What’s going on?” Sonya whispers, not receiving an answer through the deafening silence before Lou steps away from the table, recognising the poise in which his friend walks to be one that he wishes to keep as contained as can be managed. The first to follow the lead of their friend, Jules, Marta, and Adrian climb out from their seats and lend support to the same man that Terry takes after as well, preparing for a conflict the moment he watches the one-armed stalwart rise.

The first to step out from her seat on the recluse foursome, Dawn climbs to her feet the minute she sees the scowl that the foremost approaching woman wears, joined by both Darnell and Christina. Collectively unsure of what’s about to happen, the latter pair keep their guards raised whilst looking toward Ally, who remains the only one of her group confined to a chair, eyes colliding with the brunette that draws nearer.

“I don’t care who you’re dating or how long we’ve known each other, Ally. Telling anyone about my business that doesn’t already know is not your place” Jenn proclaims, kept from continuing to march by Lou’s hand, which forcibly takes her by the arm and holds her back. “What are you talking about?” the seated member of the now-empty compound queries, having realised that she was the cause of the woman’s anger without understanding why.

“You! You told this debbie-downer fuckface over here about Halston!” Jenn shouts back, grimacing in disgust at Dawn, who remains undisturbed and silent. “What does that have to do with anything?” Ally asks aloud, carrying the same calm and lost tone of voice that she’d initially opened the conversation with.

“The fact that she threw it back in my face a few hours ago!” Jenn exclaims, pointing her finger at the woman who now shakes her head in refusal. “I told her to move past us using Val’s body for the coats and she had the balls to ask me if I would’ve done the same to Halston” the increasingly-brunette survivor proclaims, attempting to walk beyond Lou’s reach the second Dawn attempts to offer a rebuttal.

“Stand the fuck down, Jenn! Don’t make me tell you a second time!” Lou shouts, yanking the woman back and stepping in front of her, speaking beyond his normally composed volume whilst much of the room aside from Dawn goes quiet. Nostrils flaring, Jenn concedes defeat and begins to simmer as Ally pulls her fellow member of the camp aside, trying to hash out their own conversation separate of those they’d seated themselves away from.

“I’m fucking pissed, Lou...” Jenn whispers, forcing herself to keep her voice low as the man follows suit, trying his best to assure her that he’s on her side, “...if that little cunt with the permanent bitch face mentions Halston one more time, I swear... I’ll-”

“You won’t do anything, Jenn...” Lou interjects, pointing his finger at the woman and pausing, her eyes speaking an intense anger at being told off, only for the emotions that hide behind them to change when the one-armed survivor finishes his thought, “...you won’t do anything. And the reason for that is because, if she ever speaks of Halston like that again, I’ll stab the little prick in the heart my goddamn self. Do you understand?”

Silenced and vindicated, Jenn’s boiled-over anger subsides in the same moment that her friend pledges his allegiance to her, the reassurance that’s offered affording the issue to resolve within her mind on the spot. With a nod, the new brunette begins stepping back, conceding the ground that Lou had demanded she leave behind before turning away, walking in the same direction she’d entered.

With one sight of the altercation subdued, the handicapped survivor’s eyes take toward his girlfriend’s direction, the other end of the conflict appearing to settle in the same moment. Frustrated and with a disgruntled shake of the head, Dawn marches for the building’s exit opposite the one Jenn heads toward, watched on for a few seconds by Ally, whose eyes eventually swing back toward her boyfriend’s.

Without uttering a word to each other, the two survivors stare into the other’s eyes and allow their discontented postures to do the speaking on their behalf. The first to pull away, Ally sets her sights on the woman that she’d directed away, following after Dawn whilst Christina and Darnell follow shortly thereafter.

“You good, man?” Terry wonders aloud, gently placing his hand on his friend’s shoulder with hopes that the answer is the one he hopes for. “Yeah...” Lou responds with a deep and noteworthy sigh, nodding as he turns back, watching as the cook of their collective dinner’s hand slides off of his person, the people he speaks to noticing the irritation that remains within his demeanour, “...I’m good.”

== RISE and REVOLT ==