sgt cal davidson. (resourcefully) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-09-13 01:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [09] september, calvin davidson, mary-june greenling |
and it's gonna be fine.
Who: Captain Greenling & Sergeant Davidson
Where: Nau's Enfield Drug
What: Accidental run-ins, and an exchange of water for a medical checkup.
When: Monday, September 2
It would be his last day before checking himself into voluntary quarantine, and so Cal found himself savouring each last minute and hour of freedom, roaming the city and letting the fresh air whistle in through the window and hit his face. If things went awry, this would be his last sight of— But he couldn’t let himself think like that. So he shut his brain off instead, content to absorb the sunshine like a thriving plant drinking up all of the light it could, his face turned up to its blistering heat and squinting into the blue, blue skies. The man was out and about the city again, having parked his SUV on the way back to the Capitol. He was avoiding a great many places today—the library, the hospital, the tunnels—which meant accidentally drifting back towards his former pastures on the other side of town. Which meant Enfield, one of his favourite old-timey pharmacies. Cal had positioned himself across the street, having clambered to the roof of a bicycle service shop in order to have a clear view of the surroundings. He was sweating in the sun, taking a few sips of water as he sat back in the shade of the roof. He had a good view of Enfield’s teal-green colours and vintage signage, the shattered broken glass of its front wall being the main indication that times had changed. He was just enjoying the peace and quiet—not even a shuffler to be seen, just the empty, forgotten streets of Austin. Which meant the rumbling of an approaching vehicle made all of the sergeant’s senses prick up in anticipation, twisting his head to watch a… was it an ambulance? It was an honest-to-god ambulance rolling down the street, and for a moment it felt odd not hearing its plaintive wail, and he found himself expecting the sound. The first days after the outbreak had rung nonstop with them. Instead the ambulance was silent as it approached the pharmacy, silent as it pulled to a stop and, after a moment, the door opened. Captain Babs Greenling needed water. She needed it to drink, her throat was parched and seemed to suck in dust and grime like a sponge that needed to be wetted. She needed it to bathe, to stop the overwhelming smell of humanity and blood off of her. But more importantly, she needed it for her dog who was breathing more and more shallow with every passing hour. His mouth was drier than hers, his eyes sunken in, and he wouldn’t even wag his tail anymore. She’d locked Kaleo up in the back of her ambulance where it was cool, hoping that she didn’t come back to another dead family member. The pharmacy was in her view. She was hoping that water would be there, along with medication. It was miraculous what people had missed in running through pharmacies when the looting had been heavier. Sure, it was hard to find advil or any other pain meds. But the prescriptions in the back were ripe for the picking when you knew what was what. The door was smashed awkwardly, half off the hinges; Babs could almost hear the noise it would make it she tried to walk through it. The windows nothing but sharp, jeweled shards. She carefully stepped through the window, trying to avoid the cutting edges- she almost made it, but the palm of one hand got a nick. Nothing major, just an inch and a half. But she’d need a bandaid. Ointment. That was funny- there was never ointment in these places. The pharmacy was quaint. It wasn’t like CVS or Walgreens, and maybe that was why it was in better condition. She walked through the aisles- no water. Not yet. She passed through the feminine needs aisle, pink and purple scattered on the floor. Back in Arizona, she would have killed for a place like this to make runs to. In the days before zombies, of course. In the days when Brian had been alive, Gray a call away. She would have bought the pregnancy tests that always turned negative here. Felt an urgent fear and then a relief after taking the test first in the bathroom in the back before going home and trying again for Brian’s benefit. The pregnancy tests looks pristine here. She slapped them off of the shelf with a grunt, she stomped them. She stopped- turned, put her hands in her hair, and laughed. She left a smear of bright red in once-blonde locks. “Water.” She said it out loud, she promised it. “Water.” The woman was speaking to herself, the words ringing out through the store. But she wasn’t alone. While Kaleo sprawled on his side in the back of the ambulance, his sides rising and falling at a too-fast, too-frantic pace, another living being stepped carefully over that threshold of broken glass and stood watching the newcomer. It wasn’t good to startle anyone, these days. Cal had learned and taught that lesson over and over, and knew that’d be the route to a startled tug of the trigger and a bullet in his skull. So the sergeant cleared his throat and announced his presence, much like a police officer might have, once upon a time pre-outbreak. “Don’t shoot,” he said loudly, his own voice carrying strong and steady where the woman’s cracked. “I have water.” Funny how ‘don’t shoot’ really just made Babs mentally locate exactly where her handgun was, and wonder how to reach it quickly and shoot the man. The blonde was wavering on her feet, busted up, blood slicking her skin, miserable and grimed and unwashed almost like the ghouls were. It wasn’t quite the same as his dirty, dusty look after a supply run out to the desert; this was someone at the end of their rope, not come sailing triumphantly home but metaphorically limping, a battered skiff barely making its way back into safe harbour in time. You’d think Cal would have learned his lesson by now—but there were light years of difference between this stranger and Emilie, and aisles and aisles between them. If she seemed violent, he’d turn on his heel and leave. Babs swallowed thickly, coughing a little pathetically. It was more like a hiccup. Despite the heat she was dressed head to toe- black jeans with worn knees, a plain white tee that had been Brian’s, and her red leather coat. The red at least hid just how much damage she’d done to the undead, and how much they’d done back. She held her chin up, slowly raised her hands and turned around. Her gun, the little hand gun she’d taken out of her Daddy’s closet, was in the back of her pants. She could reach for it once the guy loosened up. “What do you want for it?” she asked. She hadn’t spoken in a while. Hey lips cracked. There was lip balm in the next aisle. $1.25 a pop. What a joke. “I don’t have a lot. But I’m a nurse- I was. I was a nurse. Before. This, all of this. You hurt?” she asked, scanning him. There was that voice in the back of her head that was keenly aware that she was alone, and a woman. He was a man. And he had the drop on her. “I need water. For someone else, they’re going to die without some.” She almost said she couldn't get into the LBJ camp until morning. That was stupid. That would have been telling him ‘you don’t have to worry about people looking for me until…’ Her voice had the disjointed sound of something having gone rusty with disuse, like an engine stopping and starting and sputtering. Cal was personally familiar with a lot of post-outbreak struggles, but that wasn’t one of ‘em—despite all his solitary wanderings in Austin, he was a pack animal at heart. There was always a partner with a badge and a gun to wait by his side, and to while away those long late lonely hours. “I don’t need anything,” he said. His hands were up, palms splayed in the universal gesture of peace and harmlessness. (Not that it necessarily worked: he was taller than her, broader, muscled like the army men she knew so well, his clothes surprisingly clean, but he was still an unknown. If she squinted, he would have looked like Brian to her water and sleep deprived brain.) Cal’s pale blue eyes weighed the woman and assessed what he found. Chewed over that decision a little before reaching some semblance of a decision. “I’m from the Capitol, so I’ve frankly got more than enough water to spare. I’d rather it get to someone who really needs it. But I actually do have an injury, though, so you—and your friend—can have it in exchange for a second opinion. I haven’t been able to get over to the hospital.” The Capitol. Babs had talked to those in the Capitol before, but she hadn’t been there- and without having stopped long enough to get back onto the network, she didn’t know the whole story. She still thought Grey was alive, that there was no feud. That everything was fine. As fine as it could be, anyways. He spoke in a cool, level ebb-and-flow, his southern drawl curling out through his words and matching hers. It was stupid, he was stupid, he was going to get fucking killed one day doing this, but there was a reason he’d first donned that DoR uniform. Suicidal risks came with the job description. “I can do that,” Babs said. She knew that she needed to be on alert, but she’d been trained- nursing was her first duty. Both in job, and in her heart. She believed in it, she believed in her calling in life. Most people couldn’t claim that. “My name is Captain Greenling of the US Army Nurse Corps. My friend is in my car, so are my supplies. How hurt are you?” she asked. What she wanted to ask was if he’d been bitten, and when. How long. Was it putrid. “Can you show me?” She tried to a more soothing tone- she failed. It was in her interest to endear herself to him, he still had the cards. The man seemed to brighten upon her introduction. She was army. He hadn’t realised; most people carried some steel in their spine these days, they wouldn’t have survived otherwise, and Greenling’s travels had frayed her down to the wire until he almost didn’t recognise the signs and mannerisms of one of his people. But Cal could see it now: like gold ore glinting beneath the topsoil and slippery mud. “Sergeant Davidson of the U.S. Army Transportation Corps,” he echoed back, the beginnings of a ghost of a grin starting to spread on his face. He resisted the urge to throw off a flippant salute. “You sound Southern. I’m Southern. South Carolina.” “Yep.” It was better than he hadn’t saluted, because for the first time in forever, Babs smiled back at someone. She let out a desperate, thankful sigh as he said his title, and she didn’t even care. He was southern, he was army, he was part of the unspoken army family. And while that family had a few rotten apples, there was no proof that Davidson wasn’t one of them. And for a moment, despite the fact that they were both eyeballing each other from across that gaping gulf of the store, the wrecked shelves and crushed supplies, they could almost pretend that this was a normal meeting. Getting to know one another without shooting each other. “Texan born and raised, ma’am, though we moved to Kentucky when I was a kid. So that’s two for the price of one.” She still looked stiff and mistrustful, however, and he could see that question looming in her eyes. Did he want to bite her? Babs’ back was still straight, her smile hadn’t reached her cheeks. Just the eyes. If she died, Kaleo would die. So would Gabe, her hitchhiker she’d left on the edge of town for his own business. She had to go get back, after all. The man moved slow, shifting one of his hands by inches, careful to not startle her. “I can show you. It’s not bad, I already got my partner to clean me up a couple nights ago, but it’s not the same as having a real nurse take a look. It ain’t a zombie bite, either, if that’s what you’re worried about. I got jumped by a good old normal junkie with a knife and teeth.” He peeled back his sleeve, which revealed a slightly stale but not bloodied bandage. Someone had already patched him up well. Partner. Fear pricked again- were they being watched? Was someone scoping this out, ready to take her down the second she made a move they didn’t like? She wanted to trust him- trust had earned her Gabe’s friendship, a final night with Brian, the chance to go back to LBJ. But trust had always got her in plenty of scrapes too. She felt like Kaleo, back when Brian had found him in the overcapacity shelter in Phoenix. The dog had been beaten and baited in fights, smacked by humans, stomped by humans. But he’d wanted to trust Brian. He trusted Babs. He needed water. And this man wanted to trust her, or at least he was doing a damn fine job pretending. She stepped forward, step by step, hands going down to her sides before touching his arm. She looked at the bandage and gently unwrapped it, going for the real wound. Zombie or human? Impossible to tell, really. Her fingers weren’t soft, or feminine. Her nails were ripped, her cuticles bitten in anxiety. He stood still and let her attend to the wound: a knife cut still raw and leering with the look of mangled meat, whereas the bite mark wasn’t quite so bad compared to that. With Greenling now having come closer, his eyes drifted to the telltale lump at the back of her jeans, the slight jut of fabric that denoted a concealed weapon. If possible, Cal went even more still, though his expression remained casual, unconcerned. “I need to stitch you up for this to heal right. I have what you need. But first I need water.” She paused. The words in her mind sat on her tongue, threatening to slip out- because without water he’s going to die, and if he dies I have nothing to convince myself to live. “We’re all just tryin’ to make our way out here,” he said. He could be staring death down a barrel right now if she decided to prey on him (as so many others had), but trust made the world go around. Babs didn’t believe in that- but it was a nice thought, wasn’t it? “Here.” The man reached into his cavernous coat pocket, pulled out a battered bottle of water, and held it out—an offering, an olive branch. Back in the day, Cal might have lobbed it playfully at her, but people carried water like manna these days, precious bottles siphoned off from the few freshwater sources and the Capitol’s supplies. He’d seen the giant tanks of water ferried by his department, and even he still treated it like liquid gold. Everyone had been rubbed raw by the sand and dust these days; they all knew the sensation of your tongue gluing itself to the top of your mouth, a feeling like knives in the back of your throat. It wasn’t gold to Babs, she could live without gold. It was life itself, it was the holy grail being raised up to Indy’s lips. She felt a deep instinct to grab it, and shoot the man before walking out. But that wouldn’t be polite, now would it? Instead she looked at it, her own mouth eager to take a few gulps. But she closed her eyes, and breathed. She’d survive without it. “We need to go to my car,” Babs said. “You’re going to walk a little ahead of me, seeing as you’re a Southern Gentleman who knows his manners.” It was sarcastic, sure, but it was also calling on their mutual raising of what was genteel and what wasn’t. She pointed to the door and he walked obediently, hands still kept in plain view and body moving with the casual nonchalance of someone without a care in the world; when they got out, she told him to go right. They walked a few blocks to the ambulance, and when Babs got to the back door she closed her eyes, praying Kaleo was alive. “Water,” she said, gesturing for it. One hand was on the handle, which was hot and hurt. But it was a pain that reminded her that she was alive. She needed reminders like that. Cal passed her the bottle (lukewarm, heated in the sun and against the palms of his hands, but still water nonetheless: water, water, water, life-giving), and stood by patiently as the woman clutched the hot metal and cracked open the back of her ambulance. And when the door swung open, he had to bite back his surprise. The man took an involuntary step forward, to look at the wheezing creature within. “Your partner is a dog?” he asked—stunned, but not judging—but Greenling was already hopping up into the back. Babs couldn’t help but roll her eyes a little as she got into the bus, walking carefully to her scared and needy dog. The animal was part pitbull, part mastiff and all brindle covered muscles. She opened the water and carefully wet her hand, rubbing it on his nose, lips, and gums before he brought his head up a little. “That’s Kaleo. My partner is my dog.” She gave him a look, as if she dared him to question it. As if he would say ‘no, he was Brian’s. You just happened to be more liked. And then you took the dog when you left him, you heartless cow. And then you left Brian in Pickens, dead and rotting.’ A silver tray meant for medical tolls was grabbed, and Babs let the water run over the metal. It was shallow, but easy for the dog to drink from. Before long Kaleo was needily licking for more. She did so. Babs let him have three trays before taking a sip of her own. It was like fucking heaven. And the moment she was done with the sip, her body wanted more right away. That was hell- she knew it was still lingering around. “Get in here if you want me to fix you up.” “Yes’m,” Cal shot back amiably—he found it easy to default to obedience, especially around a curt and to-the-point personality like hers, following orders and still resisting that urge to salute. Instead, he lifted himself carefully into the bed of the ambulance, carrying most of his weight on his left arm rather than the right. Once he was positioned, he let himself slide into a seated position on the floor, his back propped against the wall of the car. Now he was in Babs’ element. “I’m actually hoping to take one in if the right dog comes along, from a friend who collects ‘em. I need to train up a working dog. For cattle.” It was a wistful, thoughtful aside, not even really meant to spur conversation. And it almost didn’t- Babs had started to pull latex gloves onto her hands after rubbing them with hand sanitizer. She unwrapped the arm again and began to work, prepping his limb for stitches. The interior of the ambulance reminded him so much of various crisis centres and field tents and trucks overseas, right on down to the scorching heat and wasteland outside. Captain Greenling could’ve been one of no end of American nurses that he’d flirted with, even slept with. After all, Babs had slept with a soldier during her tour- she’d just happened to marry the man. He never thought he would’ve been fucking nostalgic over the war, but there you had it. These days, life was just another kind of war and more unpredictable to boot. It was what they’d both been trained for, told they’d get glory by and with. It was a duty. A wanted duty for Babs. She cleaned off his skin with antiseptic. She didn’t have pain meds anymore, not other than basic advil and those were precious. Once she’d had Olivia to try and look for morphine and other opiates, but not anymore. She was on her own. Well, really- Cal was on his own. “So, you’re a cowboy now?” she asked him, quirking a brow. “If you’re starting Oklahoma I’m liable to throw you out of my bus.” As she said that, the needle pierced his skin. It was well-timed: just as she cracked the joke (or something near to a joke), Cal let out a bark of a laugh at the exact same instant that the needle jabbed in, turning his laugh into a hiss of indrawn breath. His light eyes watered as he stared up at the ceiling, his other hand clenching into a fist. Blunted nails digging into the skin of his own palm. Normally, they would have numbed the area beforehand, but post-outbreak ideas of priority had changed and morphed. At least she was good, Cal realised: the captain gave quick, clean sutures like he was accustomed to. It would’ve been ideal to say that he was perfectly stoic and macho and didn’t bat an eye at the hatchet job they were doing on his arm, but he wasn’t—the man couldn’t help another involuntary groan in the back of his throat as the needle and thread pulled his flesh into place. Fucking ghoul, he found himself thinking. Then that thought shimmied along to its other natural conclusion, as it always did: Fucking Prax. Fucking Hellhounds. Babs was sure as hell not a ghoul. She was member of LBJ, not that she was sure of her membership. She wasn’t hooked up to the network yet, she didn’t remember how people had reacted when she left, because she’d done it in such a hurry you’d think she was the one who put a bullet into her friend’s skull. She still thought Grey was alive. There wasn’t nerves or vessels to worry about in the stitching process. Or, at least, Babs was choosing not to worry about them. She had medical thread going in and out of his skin, the color black and stark against the white skin. There was a slowness to her movements; nurses weren’t the ones doing stitches, normally. But there was nothing normal about the end of the world. “I’m Cal,” he said suddenly. “Calvin. But everyone calls me Cal.” Cal. Babs said it back to him, imprinting it onto her memory. It snuck in between memories of being harassed in high school and the old route she’d taken between her classes and apartment in San Francisco. It wasn’t important enough to put anywhere else yet. “I’m Captain Greenling. Everyone calls me Captain Greenling.” A pause. A look. “Some call me Babs.” She wasn’t about to go into it- Mary-June. Babcock. Mrs. Greenling. Nurse Babcock. All of it, the layer of names all around her. Once, it had been a tease for her and Brian. What was the pretty nurse’s name? Now it was just… a title. A label that differentiated her slightly from the other living creatures. One which he filed away himself, shelving her name after Archer but before Bode. His other fingers kept flexing instinctively as she worked, but then his head craned to look away, distracting himself, thinking of other things while Babs’ needle plunged and swept. “Are you new in the city? This used to be one of my favourite haunts.” Cal was staring outside where the pharmacy stood visible down the block, its old neon sign gutted and dim. “It was a drug store, but also a pretty sweet old-timey soda fountain and grill. Could grab a greasy burger and milkshake here while on lunch break.” The mention of old-timey soda fountains conjured up images of the desolate, abandoned ones in the South. The sort that lost business as the times changed and the community in Pickens had turned bit by bit against ‘Whites Only’ establishments. Before Babs’ time, of course. In Babs’ childhood they’d been empty places, full of dust. The sort of place you snuck into as a teen to kiss a boy. She’d kissed Brian before pressing the gun against his jaw and firing. A final goodbye. It had tasted like blood. Different times. Cal couldn’t talk about it without feeling like he was describing a forgotten world, a parallel dimension, where none of this had happened and would never happen. And Babs couldn’t think about it without feeling like she’d cracked open a history book of little things that didn’t matter anymore. No- shouldn’t matter. But did. Too long had passed between the question and Babs’ answer, she knew it. And she wanted to lie to this man, and so she did. It was easy. “I am new. I was in Arizona before. I had business to settle in the South, so I went there. Now I’m here.” “Alright.” Cal wasn’t gonna push or dig any further than that; she was a total stranger, and everyone deserved their privacy. Most everyone had stories they didn’t want to share, people they’d lost, blood on their hands, experiences to be locked away safe under that hood. He gave another hiss of breath, until Babs was neatly pulling the thread taut and snipping it. His attention drifted again, looking at the dog instead: still sprawled on the floor, but after going through the pan of water, its breaths seemed less laboured. “What’s his name? He’s a beauty.” Oh, Babs was so ready to be defensive. To tell him to stop even looking at that dog, because that dog was the only thing between Babs and a cliched suicide walk into the desert. She stripped the gloves off of her hands and put them into the red plastic waste bin on the wall. “Kaleo. I had him before… all this,” she said simply. The dog raised his head at the sound of his own name, snout wet from having laid his face in the wet water-tray. On any other day the dog would have gotten up and tried to maul Cal for some petting, but he was about as tired as his owner was right then. The dog did move- but not to get attention. His head perked and he began to growl, staring straight down the street. There, at the end, staggered a figure. Babs didn’t know if it was a big dog or a human, but it looked hurt, and she knew better than to risk it. She stood up quickly and closed the doors, locking them up tight and then moving to the front to double check that the front doors and windows were locked too- they were. While Babs moved up front, Cal had laboured his way up to his feet, hand propped against the wall of the ambulance while he leaned over to peer through the back windows. In the side mirrors, she saw a group of a dozen dead following the figure. “We’re stuck,” Babs said, closing her eyes. She looked over her shoulder at the man. “Hope you don’t have anyone waiting on you.” “Not really. Today’s...” But he couldn’t really think of a way to describe what today was—his last day of freedom, and as usual he’d squandered it entirely fucking recklessly—so he went quiet instead, head cocked, still watching the road behind them while Kaleo’s growl turned into a low bass vibrato by their feet. Babs reached down and patted his head and neck, feeling the vibration against her hand. “They’re too slow, so I don’t think there’s any runners or crawlers,” Cal said thoughtfully, his keen eyes picking out the telltale characteristics of the group, “but it still wouldn’t be a good idea to head outside. Best to just be quiet, so they can’t hear there’s anyone in here. Let ‘em pass by and eventually clear out.” He glanced at the dog. The dog wagged his tail, and then rested back onto the floor and rolled onto his side. Cal remained standing for a while, still watching out of morbid curiosity—but before the shufflers could draw close enough to notice his face in the smudged glass of the window, he dropped back down to the floor of the van. She took a seat next to Cal- there was really no other room in the car for her to go. Head against the wall, she closed her eyes for a moment. In the heat of the sun, in the metal box, Babs knew they were going to sweat and be uncomfortable. She opened one eye up slightly and looked at Cal, wondering just how much she trusted this man. No much, but enough to feel that he wasn’t going to push her out of the bus as bait for the zombies. Only a moron would have done that. She stripped her boots off first, tossing them towards the front of the car. She’d been in enough hordes to know her bus passed their detection; she wouldn’t have to run anytime soon. Babs’ jacket came next, leaving her in a wrinkled, filthy tee and jeans. Better- cooler. He shrugged out of his own jacket (the vehicle was already hot and stifling in the Austin sun) and pillowed it behind his head, shifting until he could find a comfortable position, still careful with his newly-stitched and re-bandaged arm. The man was aware of Babs watching him out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t acknowledge it at first. Until he finally returned the look, noting Babs’ matter-of-fact approach to this wait. “You done this before?” “Yeah, lots. When I drove from Arizona to South Carolina there were a couple of days I ran out of gas and just had to pull over and sit a hoard out. The bus is built solid, they can’t get in. Well, they haven’t yet, anyways,” she said. She crossed her arms, almost defensive as she laid her head back down. She could almost hear them, the slow shuffling. If Cal was right about their speed, this could take a long while. Her eyes were heavy. They started to droop. She wanted to sleep, she clenched them shut for a moment and then opened them back up. Sleeping was not an option then- they needed to get closer to LBJ and sleep until 8:30. But she wasn’t near the library yet, it wasn’t time for her to sle- She drifted before her reasons not to drift finished compiling in her head. It drifted forward, chin on her chest and eyes shut as her body began to slump and lean. Cal immediately noticed the shift in the woman’s posture, the almost indefinable slowness of her breathing—he’d sat watch with Karen and other partners and squadmates enough times, after all, to tell when someone had finally tipped over into unconsciousness. The woman must be fucking exhausted. Which didn’t surprise him; when he’d first seen her in the pharmacy she was frazzled, haggard, laughing to herself with the sort of punch-drunk mania that always came at the end of too many hours awake and watching one’s back, running on fumes. He might have wondered if he was locked in a metal box with a madwoman, except that she had a dog that trusted her. He was inclined to trust in the instincts of a canine. Cal and Kal met each others’ eyes, and the dog’s tail thumped once against the floor. The nurse kept dozing. And the sergeant, content to let her rest, settled himself in for a long wait while footsteps shuffled outside. The nurse’s body shifted, it slumped against Cal. It found comfort. And unlike the last man she’d slept next to, Cal wouldn’t be dead when she opened her eyes. And maybe that was why Babs Greenling didn’t punch Cal the second time she saw him. |