It's the kind of question that get asked in a game, in the dark, the kind of dark that's always edged with the promise of light and therefore only terrifying for-pretend. This isn't that kind of dark. This isn't that kind of game. She asks him because she's reaching out, fumbling in the blackness, when they're holed up on the seventh floor of one of the office buildings downtown and they're listening to the monsters howling out in the streets.
The monsters are hungry. When the darkness came it ate everyone else.
What are you most afraid of?
Being alone.
She watched Neil ripped away from him, screaming. They were all screaming a lot in those early days--can one even call them days when there's no longer any such thing? Neil was taken by the dark, his hand twisted out of Mike's, and she heard the force of it break two of his fingers. Mike wasn't screaming from the pain.
Now he's very quiet most of the time.
"You're not alone."
He leans back against a row of filing cabinets, flicking the safety on and off his gun. On and off. On and off. "One of us is gonna be." They're burning paper in a trash can for a little light, praying it won't make it through the paint slathered over the windows, because you need light, you go fucking crazy without it, you'll risk death for a tiny bit of it. In that dim flickering she can see that he won't look at her. "It's just a matter of time."
She knows he wants to die. She's not sure she can stop him. And then what? The truth is that Mike is a selfish bastard and that won't change and he knows it.
"I won't let you stop fighting." She hates how petulant it sounds, but at least it gets him to look at her. His eyes look like hollow pits. She remembers they found food not too long ago but she can't remember him eating any of it.
She has to make him. She'll beat him into it if that's what it takes.
"You can still shoot straight," he says after a long moment. "That's not nothing."
It takes her a few minutes to understand that this is his way of telling her that he'll stay alive for now. That he won't abandon her to the thing of which he's most afraid.
The monsters are screaming for their blood. One way or another she's going to starve them to fucking death.
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It's the kind of question that get asked in a game, in the dark, the kind of dark that's always edged with the promise of light and therefore only terrifying for-pretend. This isn't that kind of dark. This isn't that kind of game. She asks him because she's reaching out, fumbling in the blackness, when they're holed up on the seventh floor of one of the office buildings downtown and they're listening to the monsters howling out in the streets.
The monsters are hungry. When the darkness came it ate everyone else.
What are you most afraid of?
Being alone.
She watched Neil ripped away from him, screaming. They were all screaming a lot in those early days--can one even call them days when there's no longer any such thing? Neil was taken by the dark, his hand twisted out of Mike's, and she heard the force of it break two of his fingers. Mike wasn't screaming from the pain.
Now he's very quiet most of the time.
"You're not alone."
He leans back against a row of filing cabinets, flicking the safety on and off his gun. On and off. On and off. "One of us is gonna be." They're burning paper in a trash can for a little light, praying it won't make it through the paint slathered over the windows, because you need light, you go fucking crazy without it, you'll risk death for a tiny bit of it. In that dim flickering she can see that he won't look at her. "It's just a matter of time."
She knows he wants to die. She's not sure she can stop him. And then what? The truth is that Mike is a selfish bastard and that won't change and he knows it.
"I won't let you stop fighting." She hates how petulant it sounds, but at least it gets him to look at her. His eyes look like hollow pits. She remembers they found food not too long ago but she can't remember him eating any of it.
She has to make him. She'll beat him into it if that's what it takes.
"You can still shoot straight," he says after a long moment. "That's not nothing."
It takes her a few minutes to understand that this is his way of telling her that he'll stay alive for now. That he won't abandon her to the thing of which he's most afraid.
The monsters are screaming for their blood. One way or another she's going to starve them to fucking death.