Chapter Text
“I wanted to… bzzzzzt… like my-…bzzzt. Civilian!… that’s all… still… on hope… bzzzzzzt-”
Kuvira reached over to shut the radio off, one leather-bound wrist still resting lazily on the wheel to keep her ole faithful ‘64 Chevy C10 steady on the centerline. There was an agitated furrow in her brows when she sat back in the driver’s seat; the radio stations that were still up and broadcasting were getting fewer and farther between. Most were just dead static now. She could assume soon there’d be nothing at all to fill the silence that lingered just under the clunky roar of the engine.
Oh well. It wasn’t like she could expect much else, with the whole ‘the world is officially over’ and all. Corpses walked the Earth…. and also ate people. Most didn’t really have music as something high on the priority list. Kuvira didn’t either. Not after half a year of this survival thing.
But the white noise really was nice whenever Kuvira had access to it.
With an eyeroll, she manually cranked the window down, resting one elbow on the sill to let the chilly autumn wind reverb between her ears instead. It wasn’t as good as a song, but she dealt.
Before her, the winding mountain road seemed to go on forever– an endless expanse of trees, cracked asphalt, potholes, strewn car parts, and brownish-black sludge spots that she could only assume was a human being… at some point, at least. Kuvira shifted, the peeling leather protesting against her jeans. Grabbing at a map she’d looted from an abandoned rest stop a few miles back, Kuvira opened it with one hand, trailing a fingertip along it as she looked up and then back down in quick succession.
A nearly bent double sign was her saving grace in trying to estimate her location. Kuvira let out a pleased hum.
It didn't take long to pinpoint where she was, her eyes still taking measured shifts between the road and the map as she studied it, weighing all her options as methodically as possible. A brief glance at the gas tank: half-full. Good enough but not great, she supposed. Another fleeting look at the various baskets, messenger bags, and bins of supplies strewn about the truck were less ‘good enough’ for her tastes.
Dwindling snacks… check.
Dwindling water bottles… check.
Dwindling canned goods… check.
Kuvira would have to ransack for essentials soon. No more excuses or putting it off. With renewed purpose, she slowed the truck to a creeping roll, fern-green eyes narrowed in thought.
She was apparently on Hwy 74, near some town called Bryson City. Which, as it was, seemed as good a place as any to stop and search for supplies. Kuvira haphazardly rolled the map back up, tossing it back into the passenger seat. An impatient press of the gas pedal later and she was on her way, a handful of corpses shambling out of the underbrush to follow after the truck.
Inwardly, she was already regretting her choice. This many on the outskirts never boded well.
Still, Kuvira pushed forward, following the map by memory alone, occasionally looking over at the passenger side window to watch the way the sun dappled in the rushing waters of the creek.
In the past 6 months on the road, she’d seen parts of America she’d never dreamed of. She was only supposed to be in Florida on ‘vacation’, but because the concept of airplanes didn’t exactly exist anymore… a 2-week ‘vacation’ had become indefinitely permanent. And one stolen truck from a parking lot, and she had made the most of it by making her way through so many different cities, capitals, and states. Mississippi… Alabama… Tennesese… Anywhere.
They were all the same, anyway: either complete chaos or an overturned ghost town populated by wandering corpses that mindlessly followed any sound like bloodhounds catching a scent.
Most humans had migrated and banded together in tight-knit, governed communities like Washington D.C that would do anything to survive. Even if that meant killing other survivor camps for their sorry scraps. She avoided places like that and refused to join them on principle that she didn't like being told what to do.
Wiggling around, Kuvira peered out the window at the freely flowing water again. If she had to admit anything, it was that this road trip through the smokeys was the closest she’d come from feeling relaxed since the start. Maybe it was the way the air felt cleaner… less clogged with the stench of death that permeated the air seemingly everywhere she went. Or the leaves were just starting to change and bathe the landscape in a spectrum of red-green-yellow-orange rainbow.
Part of her even wondered what this blissfully quiet little place had been like before everything ended. Tired of her own looping thoughts, Kuvira allowed herself to imagine it to pass the time.
Fishing, hiking, camping, families laughing amongst each other as they went down the white river rapids in those bright yellow floaty tubes that were absolutely everywhere. Maybe an impromptu picnic or two at one of the spots you could pull over and sit to watch the scenery.
A sad smile tugged at the corner of her lips, the solitude louder than ever.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
Empty. Empty. Empty. Everything had been picked clean… even some shitty tourist-y sweatshirts to pack up and take with her as the Appalachian mountain cold began to settle in.
Having decided the local Railroad Depot was as good a place as any to start her scavenge, Kuvira pulled the truck into the intersection of what was apparently Everett and Fry. Baseball bat in hand, she had broken the closest available window of the antique looking dusty-blue building and scrambled inside without a second thought. Terrible decision… awful, actually. The corpses couldn’t quite figure out how to get to her yet, but she could hear them moving around out there.
All that for seemingly nothing too.
Just dust and debris.
Desperation made her want to keep tearing this place apart until she found a single scrap of something. Even a single bag of stale chips. And, maybe, against all odds, some fresh water.
Kuvira knew it was wasted effort, though. Too much unnecessary noise. Dozens of other people just like her had probably rolled through here heading Northeast and thought the same thing.
At this point, she’d be lucky if she could find a chair to break down into usable kindling.
So, there was no choice but to give it up. Hunker down on the floor and wait it out and hope they got distracted by something else before nightfall, or she’d be risking overstaying her welcome by being forced to stick around. After all, traveling the roads at night was the quickest way to get yourself tagged by a group of raiders. Either the glow of the headlights that the bumps in the road mandated stay on drew them in or the careful cover of darkness motivated them. But either way…
Kuvira wasn’t going to risk it.
She settled against a wall, letting her extra flannel she’d brought to use a cover for the broken edges of the glass rest over her knees like a pitiful makeshift blanket from the slight chill.
Every so often, her fingers twitched towards her baseball bat on the floor. Out of habit. It was impossible for Kuvira to ever feel fully safe. It didn’t matter how nice— how relaxing and quiet and utterly peopleless— a place outwardly appeared… This cruel new world punished naivety like that severely these days. Getting comfortably meant becoming a meal or a head on a pike.
But nothing, human or corpse, tried to break in. Eventually, Kuvira’s eyes closed, a weary sigh on her lips. An actual nap was out of the question. But nothing said she couldn’t settle in a little.
45 minutes later, Kuvira peeked open her eyes to the sound of yelling outside.
“-fuckass rotter!”
Sitting straight up, she grabbed at her bat. Narrow eyes and clammy hands, she was immediately on high-alert as she crab-walked on her haunches towards the glazing in the door, peeking through the gingham curtain out into the gravel parking lot outside. There— for the first time, in the trucks’ fleet-side long bed, knife in hand, metal glinting in the midday sun like a flare gun as it swiped at a few nearby corpses– she saw… you?
You, with your stupid denim shorts that didn’t provide any kind of protection.
Slogan T-shirt torn at the collar and falling off one shoulder.
Voice raised as you swore at them.
It was a miracle you’d lasted all this time, kicking and screaming and running around like that. Kuvira almost considered letting you be sacrificial bait. Then she could quietly and efficiently fix her little problem one by one, while they chowed on you… But then she’d be no better than those single-minded groups she detested. Instead, with a healthy helping of indecision, she rose up and turned back to the broken window. Tossing the flannel back on the jagged edges, she carefully vaulted over and began stalking towards the commotion. Boots crunching in loose rock underfoot, Kuvira made her way closer, bat raised offensively-
SMACK!
In a brilliant arc of blackish goop and decayed brain matter, there was 1 less to worry about. Some of them moved away from you and towards her at the sound, their hands— if they had anything more than bloody, bony stumps, that was— reaching out for her. Kuvira readied herself.
“I got this one!” Your voice again, still too loud. There was a light crunch as a blade met skull bone and another dropped. Kuvira didn’t waste time swinging her own weapon again, catching a corpse in the jaw and ripping the joint just the right way to knock it completely askew, a wet gurgle rising out of the widened hole. With another resounding wooden SMACK! of the bat against flesh, slightly better aimed this time, there were only 2 approaching bodies to worry about.
But your knife was faster. Kuvira watched as you hopped down off her truck and ran forward, embedding the blade into the back of a skull before yanking free and taking out the last one.
Your knife was wiped off on your bare thigh. “Thanks,” you muttered, eying her. “But I coulda-”
Her finger pressed against your lips. “Don’t talk,” she hissed under her breath, a clear warning, glancing around. Grabbing at your wrist, she dragged you around to the passenger side, silently opening the door and beginning to grab at random things in the seat to toss them into the back.
Remembering something, her mouth curved downward and her eyelids flickered in frustration.
The flannel. The one she had regulated to muffling, wiping, and buffering.
It wasn’t worth dying over, but… every bit of spare clothing helped. Especially now.
“There’s a flannel.” Kuvira titled her head over the shoulder. “Window. Left side.” When you raised an eyebrow at her she rolled her eyes and pointed over the roof at the building. “Grab it.”
Without another word, you took off back around in that direction and Kuvira watched you go for a second before returning to the task at hand. A basket of canned goods was spilled out in a noisy clatter of metal on metal into the rotted wood of the truck’s bed floor. Then she dumped two half-empty burlap messenger bags on top of the scattered mess. She’d have to reorganize it later. Right now what mattered was just clearing enough of the seat for you to slide in so you both could-
Kuvira’s throat bobbed. She didn’t know you. In fact, the only she knew about you was that you were loud and you’d almost gotten yourself killed in the first 30 seconds of her merely meeting you.
Taking you with her was yet another terrible decision. What if you were one of those recruits the raiders sent out to die in their steed for food and water? Her fern-green eyes flicked in your direction as you came to a stop beside her, the flannel grasped in your hands, a pensive look on your face.
You seemed to be thinking the same thing she was. Silently, she ripped the flannel from you and debated telling you to just go ahead and get lost. But then you were pushing past her and jumping into the passenger seat anyway. Settling in was an ordeal that involved you stifling a gag for her sake at the texture of raw, aged, crumbling foam padding rubbing against your skin.
…And Kuvira unceremoniously shoved it back in your hands, willing herself to not think too hard about anything. “Here,” she whispered. “For the cold.” Her voice sounded odd to her own ears after months of minimal to no use. “Or as padding,” she added, gesturing at the state of the seats.
The smile you sent her was lopsided and toothy as you whispered back a quick “thanks.”
And Kuvira could only close her eyes in response, turning her head up at the bright blue sky overhead– hoping against hope that you wouldn’t bring any more trouble along with you.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
“See that tubing place?” Your hand waved at the passing business. “Just keep heading straight.”
The ‘64 Chevy C10 flew down the road, following your instructions. After a mostly unsuccessful 3 hours of sweeping over a large swath of Bryson City… Kuvira was almost too eager to take up your offer to stay at your hideout at a nearby campground’s office. You’d spent a lot of the trip between telling her where to turn by talking her ear off about your life. Why were you there— at some motorcycle store across the street from the depot?— and explaining how you’d wound up stranded here. And she’d spent the drive answering with half-hearted “mhm’s.”
She was trying to listen. But the 180 from her normal solitude was a little too uncomfortably unfamiliar. Every so often, your incessant babbling became nothing more than a string of noise.
“Annnnd then… ap! ap! ap! Stop! Turn!”
Kuvira almost missed it, slowing the truck down to survey the bridge that led to the campground entrance.
Her brows crinkled as she turned, going at a snail’s pace. “You’ve been here a while, with no problems?” she asked hesitantly. Up ahead, a trio of big brown park signs came into view in front of a tiny, unassuming looking building, made from wooden beams and metal cladding, a large eave overhanging a single bench and a payphone that probably hadn’t worked in ages.
It looked like it needed more than a little TLC. The past half a year wasn’t exactly kind to the paint.
“It’s super safe!” you reassured her brightly, your hand already impatiently resting on the door handle. “Like I said, I’ve been mostly right here since the start.” You frowned. “Food’s the only problem, really. I haven’t even had to deal with fucking raiders, outside of when I go into town.”
“...Mhm.”
As she parked and threw open the door, Kuvira walked up to read them. Some of the letters had either been purposefully rubbed off or faded with time and the eroding power of the weather:
‘D p Cr ek
Campgr und’
‘BEAR HABITAT
FOOD STOR GE
REG LATIONS
ENFORCED’
‘Campers O ly
During Quiet Hours
10pm to 6am’
A dirty, scribbled on sneaker connected with the signpost, making her flinch and wheel around to glare at you with her lip curled. In response to her glaring, you simply snorted, the noise echoing in the cricket-filled quiet of the campground. Kuvira had half a mind to waste a couple strips of tape on your mouth so you wouldn’t keep risking drawing either the dead or the living here with the way you couldn't ever fully shut up. But she— truly, unfortunately— had enough self-control that she didn’t.
Kuvira folded her hands behind her back with a weary eyeroll, giving you an expectant side-long gaze that you returned a little too readily, the golden glow of the sun catching in your wide eyes.
“What?” she mumbled, her braid falling over her shoulder as she sharply turned her head away when the sheer amount of… life… that you exuded made her feel something other than apathy.
“If we’re gonna room together,” you started, climbing up onto the tallest sign to hang off of it, “we should get to know each other better. I told you alll ‘bout me, but you didn’t tell me anyyything-”
“No.”
“But-”
“No.” she repeated. “I’m only staying the night.”
Your face fell in real time. “Oh...” you mouthed, jumping back down to scuff your foot in the grass.
With a bored scoff at your dramatics, Kuvira busied herself with the process of reorganizing her supplies. It was with practiced ease that she hauled herself up into the long bed, dropping onto her knees to start sifting through the cans. As you watched, your exaggerated frown turned to a disinterested nose crinkle, and you turned to go inside. She couldn’t exactly blame you. Sorting wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world to do for most— much less to watch from a distance.
But… Kuvira disagreed. Because Kuvira had always been a calculated person and knowing what was where and how to quickly access gave her a comforting, temporary taste of control in a world where there was little to be found elsewhere. There really wasn’t a way to control where a random corpse decided to pop out. Or when someone tried to rob you. But this… this she could.
Soups were first sorted together as one group, then sub sectioned further by flavor, and finally, by expiration date. The same thing went for everything else. From the canned fruits to the milk.
Just as she was setting the first basket aside, there was a CRASH followed by a string of shouted swears from inside. And Kuvira swore under her breath too, rising up to look over at the building. There weren’t any windows– save for the one in the door that'd been boarded up– to see into the interior, but she could picture what had happened pretty readily all on her own.
Yes, coming along with you was shaping up to have been just as much trouble as she had previously feared it would be. Something she should have realized after you almost got eaten…
Ah, she lost count how many times she’d had to save you from a close call with death.
You just made… Too. Much. Noise. Your self-preservation skills left more than a little to be desired. The closest call had been from a bakery down Main Street that the pair of you had barricaded yourselves into in order to avoid a herd gathered down Rector Street. The problem was there’d been a couple of the beasts in there too. Kuvira’s full body tensed at the memory of the fight that ensued, hands subconsciously reaching for a bat that wasn’t there.
It was your— too loud, too dangerous— voice that made her snap out of it, angrily throwing a can of peaches that she had been holding onto in with the rest of the fruits without checking the expiration date. She’d have to sort it better later. For now, she unwillingly gave you what you wanted: her attention.
“Sorry, sorry! Fuckin’... Look! I got you something!”
When you came back out, you were holding an armful of beers that looked like they’d been buried. Dirt smeared the aluminum in dried clods, crumbling off onto your skin and the front of your shirt. As you came to a stop to offer her 1, Kuvira’s mouth curved down in distaste. But she reached for it anyway, rubbing the top off on her flannel, taking her time to get all the gunk off.
You, however, did not have such foresight. A disgusted “Bleugh…!” came out of you seconds later, the rest of the beer cans by your feet in the ground where you'd casually dumped them.
She watched you spit out your first sip by them, gagging as you got a mouthful of dirty beer.
Something resembling what might have been the faintest of smiles played on the corners of her lips. You made too much noise, yes, but… you also maybe… maybe mildly amusing… Maybe.
The nice thing to do would have been to offer hers to you and clean off another for herself.
…Kuvira didn't. Popping the tab, she threw it back to take a healthy swig of the amber colored liquid. It was room temperature, which was a rough enough start on its own. Fair enough, though. That couldn’t be helped, when refrigeration was just a foreign concept as air travel was these days. Still, not being chilled affected the flavor, making it sit weird on her tongue. That, and despite her best efforts, it still tasted slightly of musty Earth. She let out her own disgusted reaction, balancing the can on the lip of the tailgate to give you an unamused look down her nose.
“These are awful ,” she deadpanned.
“Oh, I'm sorry.” It was your turn to glare. “I'll make sure to contact customer service on my nonexistent phone-” you made a call gesture “-and groan into the receiver until the rotter on the other end sends us a bone marrow and brain matter refund through the non-existent mail.”
Picking the can back up to take another sip, Kuvira looked oddly at you. “...Rotter?” she echoed blankly, curious since she’d heard you use it multiple times now without asking you about it.
Obviously, it was a nickname for the dead. Everybody had a slightly different one. Some were more… creative than others, that was for sure. Kuvira had never heard of yours before, though.
“Y'know… the not-dead dead people,” you explained. “They're rotting… rotters…” She watched you hold both your arms out, shuffling in place with your face screwed up as you growled at her.
When you finished, you deflated at her blank expression. “Get it…?” you poked your lip out.
“I just call them corpses,” Kuvira offered, raising an eyebrow at your antics. There you went again, being entertaining, even if she wasn’t about to give you what you wanted by telling you.
You squinted at her. “That’s lame,” you concluded. “Complete shit.” Kuvira now raised both eyebrows at your brutal honesty, resting one hand on her hip as she leaned one side against the truck, silently daring you to keep going. An offer you took without thinking twice. “It’s too boooring,” you continued, mimicking her pose. “Sounds like somethin’ a coroner would say…”
Kuvira laughed, humorlessly. “Because it is.” she retorted dryly.
“Well, duh,” you shot back, stealing her beer to take a sip. She didn’t stop you. “Rotter’s better.”
Without dignifying you with a response, Kuvira leaped back into her truck bed, picking up a can of vegetable soup from its basket to give it a good toss or two. The other nice thing she could do would be to offer food. This was your hideout, after all. And you were letting her stay over, even if neither of you had any reason to implicitly trust the other that much. Plus, you probably knew where the campfires were, if your little story about being up here for the entire 6 months since the start of the outbreak was true. Kuvira swallowed, still mindlessly juggling the can as she thought.
It was your presence by her side that brought her back to reality. “What? Hungry?” You grinned.
Slowly, hesitantly, she nodded, handing the food off to you. You took it, reading the peeling can label.
“Niiice!” you exclaimed, scampering up and off down the road to presumably start up dinner.
Kuvira once more watched you go, before shaking her head and half-heartedly returning to the rest of the cans that hadn’t been picked up yet. Absentmindedly, 75% of her brain still thinking about why she had come here, she tossed a can of peaches in with the pears, before catching it.
With a frustrated mumble, this time she made sure to banish all thoughts of you and put it in the correct pile.
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
The last of the pitiful campfire you'd scrounged together was beginning to die out. The last embers illuminated the space around the both of you in dull orange as the sun was sinking below the horizon. The time eating a shared can of soup had been passed with your talking, and her listening— occasionally, awarding you a "mhm."
“So, I know you said no or whatever earlier but… what were you doing at the depot anyway?”
The question came through a mouthful of soup, your palm smacking flat against the bottom of the can to get the last of the potato chunks out of the bottom, some of the juice dripping down your chin in the process. Kuvira scoffed at the sight, cautiously nursing her fourth musty beer. Last she checked, you were on your fifth… Which would explain why you were so uncoordinated as you tossed the soup aside and wiped at your face with the back of your wrist.
“Supplies,” she briskly, her own head feeling lighter than she was used to. It was dangerous to let loose like this, but something about you made her feel both entirely on edge and utterly free.
“I didn’t find much, obviously. No thanks to you.”
You nodded, lazily crossing one ankle over the other in the dirt by the rusted firepit. “My bad,” you answered, shrugging with only your shoulders. “There was an older couple from out of state holed up in the depot a couple ‘o’ months back, y’know. They were really-” burp! “- really nice…”
Oh. The way your voice trailed off, a distant look in your eyes, a sad crease between your brows. Someone else might have asked “well, what happened to them?” out of polite conversation. However, Kuvira could wager an educated guess about what happened to the ‘nice older couple from out of state’ that had been ‘holed up in the train depot.’ Probably the same thing that happened to everyone in the end. Either the corpse had sunk their rotted teeth in them… Or a group of raiders had made them wish that they had been lucky enough to just be eaten.
“What were you doing?” Kuvira tried to change the subject. At her half-interested pressing, you brightened a fraction and held your pointer finger up, waggling it back and forth in her direction.
“Supplies!” You mimicked playfully, your head lolling to one side. “Like I said, I was lookin’ for a uh… uhh… part of a bike.” She watched you lean over to make grabby hands for the last beer and she kicked it out of the way. The last thing she needed was you completely drunk. “Heeey!”
Her eyes followed you as you stood up with a disappointed stretch, shuffling over to a branch of the namesake creek near campsite 1. Unsure what to do, Kuvira eventually followed after you. The pair of you sat side by side beneath the changing leaves of the Oak-hickories and Loblolly pines, as the pinky purple of the setting sun reflected off the trickle of water that glided over time-smoothed river rock. She tugged her boots off, tossing them aside to let her cramped toes free.
As you both stayed in blissful quiet, neither willing to break the moment, Kuvira felt her eyes slide over to study you.
Shorts, torn t-shirt, sneakers held together with globs of glue and tape and a dream. ‘eat shit’ was inscribed on the toe, with a lifetime of illegible, messy scrawls of multicolored ink lay below it. ‘no longer a danger’ had been written in red ballpoint pen along the rubber heel of that same shoe, some of it smeared off, but still just visible enough for her to make it out.
Kuvira let her own fingers itch with the desire to grab and turn your ankle to read the rest. It was just the alcohol making her uncharacteristically open, she told herself. Nothing more to it, really.
As it got darker– and the beer settled– that self-control she clung to weakened significantly, though.
“What’s… all that?” Kuvira muttered, gesturing blindly at your sneakers. You spread your legs to look down at them, letting out a breathy, slurred little giggle as your fingers ghosted the letters.
“Song lyrics.”
She “mhm”d again, scooting half a centimeter closer as the Appalachian night air settled over the campground. “You like music?” Kuvira questioned. With a sigh, she admitted softly, “me too.”
Your eyes turned sad again. “Fills the silence, huh?” you admitted just as softly.
A sour, nauseous, sickly feeling clenched in her stomach and Kuvira forced herself to not spew.
You must have noticed the tension in her body, because your hand came to rest over hers, droplets of the cold creek water running down her clammy skin and forcing her to come back.
“We used to come up here a lot,” you said. “When I was lil’.” Your finger pointed out, at the bank on the other side. “I remember falling down on a rock… that one right there, probably, covered in all the shit?… and busting my knee open. I cried til I got ice cream at the parlor we ransacked earlier." A sharp splash of creek water washed up on the rock in question as you mindlessly slapped at it.
Kuvira looked over at the overgrown stretch of land, biting hard on her own tongue till it nearly bled from the effort it took to not tell you about her own family— what her own childhood vacations had been across the bodies of water that separated your respective homes. About her adoptive mother, Suyin Beifong, who was a famous politician, and owner of a successful art gallery for her son’s metal sculptures. Or about her sister, Opal, who was a world class gymnast. And, especially, about how she’d been a dancing coach before the world ended and… and…
“It’s late,” she mumbled, before rising up and grabbing her boots by their fraying nylon laces.
A janky nod and you swayed on your own two feet after her. The short, 100-ish yard walk from the campsite to the office was a lot of helping the other not careen into a tree branch or trip over.
With nobody left to maintain it, nature down here had started the long process of overtaking humanity’s touch. Overgrowth covered what had once been a crystal-clear road through the entirety of the campground— fallen leaves, fallen sticks, and kudzu vines densely covered the cracked asphalt in tangles that caught on your sneakers and made Kuvira’s bare feet ache.
Whenever you both finally did manage to reach the door of the campground office, you had to wiggle the door open, shoving her roughly through it. From inside, Kuvira was greeted with a mess that made her feel like she’d been slapped completely sober.
Empty cans, both beer and food, strewn everywhere.
Every single corner.
Her eyes widened further, landing on a German Shepard that was sprawled out fast asleep on a stained recliner— that had obviously been drugged in from one of the nearby lodges and plopped carelessly in the tiny space as a ‘bed’— as you pushed past her to floomp! onto the floor beside it.
“This-” you giggled, giving the dog a kiss on the nose, waking it from its nap. “-is Bosco! Hiya, Bosco, you fwat ugwie bwitch. Oh, you’re so fwat and uwgy! I hwate you sooo munchies! Yes, yes I do. Ohh, I hating you, stiiinky boooy!” Another flurry of kisses, to the top of his furry head.
Bosco responded easily to your smoocch-y, insult-laden baby talk, wagging his tail as he sat up to lick at your face. Kuvira blinked a few times, running a hand through the loose strands that stuck out of her braid. At least the dog didn’t stink that much, or look starved, like most she saw on the streets. You were obviously taking… well, good care of him.
Kuvira took a tentative step forward, reaching a hand in his direction. “Good… dog…” she whispered, holding it there for him to sniff. He stiffened at her approach before sniffing. Once. Twice. Thrice. She held her breath, terrified he’d tear into her, before he grew… disinterested? Kuvira huffed indignantly.
Returning to you, he jumped up, two giant paws against your shoulders. Lick, lick, lick. Whiiine.
“I found him in here-” you squealed, ducking unsteadily in the onslaught “-all alone,” you explained, carefully rising up.
“What have you even been feeding him?” Kuvira asked dumbly. “He’s-” She gestured blindly. “Surprisingly healthy.” She frowned. “I can’t imagine dog food is easier to find than... people food.”
Without a second of hesitation, you responded, in a cheerful chirp: “Rotters!”
“Come again?”
“I.” You pointed at yourself. “Feed him.” Then at Bosco. “Rotter parts.” And there was yet another pretend show of being a shambling corpse, this time ending with you falling in a giggling heap on the floor.
She didn’t try to help you up.
Shakily stepping over you, Kuvira sagged against a wall and went to slowly peel her leather bracelets and flannel overshirt off. Then, with a little less confidence, her jeans. In only her tank top and a pair of old women’s boxer briefs, Kuvira’s hands smoothed over the tattoo of a rosewood branch on her right forearm. Kuvira’d gotten it when she was 18, despite the culture around tattoos leaning negative. But she still loved it 7 years on, thumb tracing a circle over one of the blossoms before she switched arms and touched the silhouette of a ballerina on her wrist.
You rolled over on your side, staring at her with unsteady eyes. “You’ve got tats?” you slurred, letting Bosco slide onto your stomach to rest his head on your chest. Kuvira nodded stiffly once.
“...A few.”
“How many total?”
“4. There’s one on my back.”
“Ohh!” you pushed Bosco off, earning a grunt from him. “Lemme see!” On all fours, you crawled over, looking expectantly up at her. It was a hard inner battle, but Kuvira didn’t give in to you to peel her shirt off enough for you to see the moth that swept across the muscular planes of her back.
With a shake of her head, she pushed at your face. “No.” And when you whined, she groaned.
“Go to sleep.”
“But if I sleep, you’ll be gone...”
“I promise to wait until you wake up, then.”
⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘
“I’m only staying the night.” turned into another day, then another, until a full 3 weeks had passed her by without Kuvira even realizing it.
Neither of you brought up the fact she'd promised to leave when you woke up. Instead, each day, at sunrise, you dragged Kuvira out on the same trail for Bosco’s daily walk— as if that's how it had always been. Tom Branch Falls had started to become a strangely familiar sight to her. Sometimes, she even liked to hike up there alone, bat hanging limp in her hand— “just in case”— to sit on a random rickety bench and watch the water cascade in thin, zigzagging sheets down the jagged rockface. It reminded her of the fancy wall fountain in the garden back home at the Beifong estate.
Her food stash dwindled. Shared soups became cans of peaches and then just diced tomatoes. Kuvira still didn’t mention leaving.
The horde from Rector Street had made its way down. Those days were spent cooped up inside the office. And Kuvira still didn’t pack up her truck and go.
Not even when you were loud and she had to barricade the doors with the recliner and wait for the corpses… rotters… to get distracted. Or when Bosco barked at shadows on the walls and made both of you panic as you rushed to clamp his snout shut. It was only after the herd had moved further on and you could both breathe easier and go for those walks again that Kuvira realized… she didn’t want to. Call it a trauma bond, but you had somehow managed to become important to her in the span of a mere 504 hours.
She formed a plan on week 5 for fortifying the base better, using your knife to chop at the kudzu that creeped up on the road so that she could wrap it around the office to hopefully conceal your scents under the faint grape soda-Esque aroma of the plant. Then she set about using the mountains of cans you kept inside as noise makers that she spread around the eave using twine she'd been uselessly lugging around for a while now. Together, you stole the closest available bear safe trash bins to use as moveable blockades to the bridge entrance of the campground. Overhanging branches were chopped and whittled down to make bundles of spikes that you placed like a fence outside. Homemade nets to try and catch trout.
No, Kuvira truly didn't care if food and clean water and the onset of winter was still a looming threat on the horizon that she couldn't outsmart.
Against all the odds... being around you was something she started looking forward to.