sgt cal davidson. (resourcefully) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-10-11 02:02:00 |
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He didn’t know what day it was. More to the point: he didn’t know what day it was, and that was the least of his problems. Archer Avery had been tired before they began this trip out but he figured he had enough in the tank for one more mission. He knew the difference between when he was fine and when he was a danger to the rest of his team. When his reflexes were shot and his mind wasn’t firing as fast as it should be? That was when he allowed himself the luxury of rest, after making sure at least one or two of the others that he could trust -- folks like O’Brien, Davidson, and Jenkins -- were gonna be awake in case of emergency. Right now, they were in the thick of things and while they still had a mayor and shreds of government in place, the city was still in bedlam, a condition that a few factions were desperately trying to correct. No one was turning down ready help, something Archer offered and accepted, so it was probably not entirely correct to say that he was operating solely as a police officer these days, though he was certainly still a ranking member of the APD. Folks had taken to calling him ‘captain’ and the former homicide lieutenant was darkly amused to think that the promotion he’d applied for, been set to take the exam for prior to this madness, had somehow come through in the worst possible scenario. It didn’t fucking matter: these days, he cared more about living through it to see the next day, about his people living through it. Because, somehow, he had fucking people. Didn’t matter that there were higher ranking cops than him, that there were other people with far more important jobs: he was the one that had stood placidly through exactly one ‘crisis meeting’ with the shiny new appointees in the council and the DoR and then asked his commanding officer if he could show her exactly where the bigwigs had been wrong. There had been a couple of people in Resources who’d been willing to listen to Archer’s tactical analysis and it had just kind of gone from there. It turned into a team of people that wound up being responsible for some fairly large decisions, behind the scenes: testing out security for the initial supply routes, clearing out the most troublesome zombie infested areas, saving civilian populations that were pinned down or outnumbered. In his eyes, he wasn’t exactly the leader. Not all of them were cops and every one of them had an important job to do as they worked to clear the streets, rescue people, and survey the damage that had been done. Every person doing the work was important. But a lot of them looked to him and Archer did have a knack for making the plans. He helped to make the decisions; it wasn’t in his makeup to sit idly by and do nothing. He didn’t feel useless and he wasn’t alone. There were definitely times some of the others he trusted would step up. Brannon O’Brien, his partner on the force and best friend, backed his plays; Bran had been in New York with Archer, saw first hand just how fucked this could get if they weren’t careful; Archie was systematic and had the right kind of brain for this sort of work so Brannon would always back the captain, guns at the ready. Jenkins, the guy that did Archer’s taxes every year, turned out to be former military, a member of the ‘Retired Reserve’ who’d skittered down the street in pursuit of Archer and Bran after they’d taken out most of a hoard of shufflers. Jenkins jammed the butt of the shotgun into the face of a shuffler that looked to still be moving, flipped the gun neatly to shoot the zombie in the head at close range, then politely asked Archer if he might be recruiting. Archer made him a 'consultant' on the spot, because the seemingly mild mannered man had a photographic memory and knew Austin like the back of his hand, making him a valuable asset. On good days, it meant that Jenkins could give them efficient paths to transport supplies and people. On bad days, it meant he could plot three different escape routes, adapting on the fly. Davidson -- Cal -- was former military and before the end of the world, he and Archer had talked a little, about how the cop’s life would have been different if he’d joined the Navy like he’d been about to do before his father got sick. Even now, Archer didn't fucking know how they’d stumbled onto that quagmire of a subject, on a day when he’d brought one of the precinct’s cars into the shop for Cal to look at. It did give him a gut instinct about Cal when the fucking apocalypse hit, that Cal was someone he trusted implicitly without necessarily understanding why. Maybe it was because the kid reminded him of himself, just a little. The work ethic. The stubbornness. Maybe it was because the kid reminded him of Bran, too. The kind of fucking mouthy that’d get you into trouble if you didn’t look out. Not that the young sergeant wasn’t respectful, or serious: when they went out to do a job, he’d been glad to have Cal along because the job got fucking done. But still. Time working together was showing Archer the ways they were more similar than different and he realized he liked the guy, wished that before the zombies he hadn't been the cold bastard he always mistakenly thought himself to be. There’d been one more among their number that Archer would have counted as a trusted compatriot and not someone merely following orders they’d created -- be they DoR agents or an APD squad, depending on the task at hand -- but Margaret McShane had been bitten by a zombie three weeks ago… and it turned out that she wasn’t immune. Archer had to comfort himself with the fact that Mags hadn’t had to suffer long before she’d known the way it was going and that they’d made her send-off as humane as fucking possible in this fucked up life. It was a sober reminder that any one of them could be next. None of them knew their immunity status. He refrained from putting old Jenkins on radio duty to keep him out of harm’s way because he was older than the rest of them, because it wasn’t like he could invent a reason to keep Cal away from the action because he was younger and potentially had a life to live after all of this, and Archer sure as shit couldn’t wrap Brannon in bubble wrap and stick him in the Capitol or the medical center until the zombie shit was over. No. They’d all fucking go on like they had been, Archer working that much harder to make sure all their bases were covered if there was time to make a plan before a mission, listening to Cal’s suggestions regarding supplies, relying on Jenkins for his sense of direction, trusting Brannon on how much additional manpower might be needed for a given task. There was shit to do for the good of the whole population, the folks he'd sworn to protect just as much as he wanted to protect these people he was working with, starting to see them as folks he cared about. So they went on, putting out fire after fire (mostly metaphorical, only twice literal). With every success achieved came something new they had to tackle. One of the greatest legends of the zombie apocalypse in Austin was the team that would swoop in to kill zombies or shield people from the dangerous gas or to bring supplies to a group in need and coax them into a real shelter. Those men and women were heroic, risking life and limb to give hope to the hopeless. The mayor’s patrolmen liked to take credit for these deeds. Archer didn't give a fuck who took credit for it getting done; what mattered is that it was. Right now, Archer wasn’t feeling all that fucking heroic. Or hopeful. He couldn’t remember what day it was -- they’d taken to bleeding together this week, one job after another -- and he couldn’t remember just how many crawlers and runners were left in this area, if he’d even had a chance to count them before they swarmed in, and Archer was just trying to keep everyone fucking safe. This was supposed to be fairly routine. He and Cal had received intel that there were civilians holed up in the Old Bakery building down on Congress Avenue. Archer could see the pros for a small shelter there: once upon a time, the historic location was an actual bakery, and the museum and emporium of today had a lot of crafting supplies and training equipment. Hell, it still had a working oven. Jenkins said the place functioned as a welcome center and did a lot of volunteer work: people in the neighborhood likely thought of it as a safe place to come, especially the older folks. But it just couldn’t function the way that larger buildings could. Protocol now dictated that they mobilize a unit to calmly address the folks at the Old Bakery and take them over to the medical center for assessment. Any bite victims or those otherwise potentially infected would go to quarantine at La Quinta, no arguments. Those needing other medical attention or special care could stay at the medical center. The rest would find a place at the currently functioning shelters. It was a good plan, a solid plan. It was a good, solid plan that hadn’t accounted for the pack of crawlers and runners. They’d had no intel, no chatter on the radio that there was such a major threat in their area and even as he ran to get this load of people up into the waiting transport, even as he barked the warning and their usual defensive protocol, Archer cursed heartily into his headset, too. He should’ve known by fucking now that there was no such thing as a simple extraction and delivery. No such fucking thing. It came down to this: Jenkins and a few APD cops departed with their first caravan and Archer was in a good position to swiftly sling his rifle from his back and raise it to his shoulder, to take aim at the three crawlers and one runner trying to chase after it. He took the runner down first, had to take it down; it was easily the most dangerous and even as Archer blew the back of its head off, it took a few stumbling steps forward. Though less of a threat, the way the crawlers hunched on all fours meant the crack shot didn’t have a clear line of sight to their skulls (pity), but all three of them were put down just the same. A quick, methodical shot to the spine sent them sprawling to the ground; Archer had time to kick the nearest two in the head, to take a shot on the last one as he scanned his surroundings. How many other crawlers had there been? How many runners? It wasn’t the first time his tactical vest was spattered with gore; it would hardly be his last. Archer did a quick assessment of the situation. His shots had pulled attention and the remaining civilians (he hoped), were on the second transport vehicle. He could distract the zombies: a live person, with actual flesh, was more of a draw than a metal box on wheels. Archer had enough in him to dodge these fuckers, he was sure of it. Had to be sure of it. The crawlers were easy prey: a shock to the senses if you weren’t used to them, but easy to deal with once you knew their movements. The runners were a nightmare. Another glance back to the vehicle and he locked eyes with Brannon, now in the driver’s seat. A small nod. Okay. Good. Archer would go left; Bran would go right. Just as they always did. Bran and Cal and the others would see to it that the civilians had safe passage through and somewhere safe to land once they were checked out. It was up to Archer to draw the zombies toward himself, away from them, to give them their best chance out of here with a minimum of bloodshed. Well. Human bloodshed. He didn’t think about fatigue -- adrenaline was covering that nicely -- and he didn’t think about how he was gonna drop the rifle soon and go for a pistol or two next, how it was easier to maneuver and change clips on his duty piece while he was running. He didn’t think to say goodbye to Bran or Cal, since he might fucking mean it for the last time, and that wasn’t the kind of shit he said or did. He didn’t think about how he knew where Bran was, where the other APD officers were, but how he didn’t exactly know Cal’s location. Archer didn’t have time to think in any linear way: for once, the careful cop that thought before he spoke had to rely on instinct. Instinct had him growling, “Get ‘em the fuck outta here,” into his headset, squeezing off the last shot of his rifle into the body of a crawler to get its attention, dropping that gun and setting off at a dead run in the opposite direction of the truck. It peeled away down the road, kicking up dust and dirt; the tyres spinning before it finally caught and lurched away, carrying its precious load of civilians, O’Brien yanking at the wheel. The last twitchy staticky echoes of Archer’s message over the headset were still just fading when the zombies’ attention turned. But helpfully, Calvin Everett Davidson was a man who did think on the fly and by the seat of his pants. The moment he saw the captain tearing off by himself, the sergeant hadn’t even hesitated—his mind had pieced together all of the variables in a flurry of consideration, calculated the odds of one fast, well-armoured truck against one middle-aged (albeit fit) man on foot, and Cal knew exactly where he needed to be. Not where he wanted to be—what sort of madman wanted to act as human bait for a horde of fucking runners?—but, yes, where he needed to be. So it was that the next time Archer threw a quick glance over his shoulder, the sound of pounding of boots beside him came from one blond soldier: clothes grimed and sweaty, five o’clock shadow permanently etched into Cal’s jaw since the outbreak, rifle bobbing at his shoulder, face set into a mask of grim determination. The surprise on the older man’s face was what made Cal finally crack into one of his trademark grins. “No fucking way,” he said between clenched breaths, with each gasp of air he could wring out of his lungs, “you were going alone.” The runners were hot on their heels. He knew it; they both knew it. The look of surprise on the captain's face became one of consternation for a few rapid heartbeats after that grin. Considering he was putting all of his energy into the essential systems of running and breathing and hatching a plan that would keep himself -- now both of them -- alive, things like Archer's extensive emotional armor were thrown by the wayside like his discarded, empty rifle. That look of shock was probably the most Cal had probably seen Archer emote for a few weeks now. Archer bit off a curse and spit it out in time to their frantic footfalls: "Fuck's sake, Cal." No heat in it, though. In a perfect world, he'd have Cal back on that truck with Brannon, making sure he and Jenkins got those people to safety, so the civs didn't turn into vics. But in a perfect fucking world he, Archer Avery, was not running from a pack of zombies. Tactically? Having Cal at his side gave them more of a fighting chance to get through this okay than either might've faced alone. Like Bran, it was someone Archer trusted, someone he'd fight for and with, someone who could watch his six while he planned and who could plan in return. Okay. Okay, there was something there, watching his six, Archer's mind clicked like billiard balls getting racked together for a fresh game. Once upon a time, before the end of the world, Archer used to run for fun. He'd run to untangle his thoughts after difficult cases. He'd go for a run after sleeping at his desk instead of going home because running would unwind the tension in him from all the weight on his broad shoulders from the job. Yeah, that shit was real fucking funny now. Archer could run, and he could probably keep it up for a good while yet without feeling the effects... but they really couldn't run from the zombies indefinitely and he didn't want to place bets on the pain that might flare up in his left leg when he finally did stop running. The beginnings of a short term plan were beginning to form but he needed data. With Cal telling him what he needed to know and providing support, he could pick off the closest runners, buy a little time. What they did with that time depended on the answer to this question... "Ballpark it," Archer fought for the controlled breaths he took back when running didn't mean running for his fucking life, still sounding like he was gasping by the end of his barked command. "How many?" “Fifteen.” Cal had done a quick headcount from his perch atop the truck before hitting the ground running, and the word came through gritted teeth now. It was bad news, but then again, ever since the outbreak life had rapidly deteriorated into a series of bad news and worse decisions. None of them had had enough sleep. They were running on fumes and adrenaline and panic tamped down under ammunition and bandages. (Don’t get bit: it was the mantra searing its way through them with each step, each time their boots punched the dirt. Don’t get bit don’t get bit don’t get bit—) If this were television, they might have been able to trade witty banter while surviving. But it wasn’t. Instead Cal barely managed to squeeze out, “High ground,” before shifting to throw a quick glance over his shoulder. The two living men couldn’t keep going forever; they needed to pick a spot to take their stand. What he saw chilled him. Too many runners for comfort, and a few crawlers on top of that. Shufflers behind the horde, too, but lagging behind and almost out of view now. At least they wouldn’t have to worry about those. Small mercies. Fifteen. Archer didn't repeat it aloud: it'd be a waste of breath and it'd be followed with a bunch of curses that'd just distract from the controlled breathing he was still forcing his lungs to remember from all of the pre-apocalyptic running he'd done. He cut his eyes over to Cal when the younger man took that glance over his shoulder and seemed to see something in his face that made any further explanation from Cal unnecessary. Yeah, they were fucked. But the wheels were cranking for Archer, and Cal's comment about high ground was fed into the machine, factored into his short-term plan. The street they were now running down was gritty, residue from that fucking gas causing crumbling masonry in an already arid climate, in an area that was unforgivably windblown. Archer could see that the road dipped ahead, that it started to climb to the west. Fuck, he hoped this wasn't the stupidest plan ever. "Right," he grumbled, reaching for his first pistol in the tactical vest, the one he carried near where it would be in his shoulder holster. "High ground. 'Kay. Gonna hang a left. Three blocks. I'm taking the turn wide." Then there needed to be time to breathe, to run, to rack the slide on his duty piece. Two blocks away. Cal was nodding curtly as he listened, his gaze following Archer’s down the street. Archer hesitated over his next words. "Might need you to grab me. If I slip." But if I fall, take a real tumble, keep goin' downhill, you keep fucking runnin'. Don't you dare stop. Fuck, he wanted to say it. Maybe it even came through in the serious stare he leveled at Cal before using his forearm to shove moisture off his forehead and to consider the pistol at his back, to have one in each hand, to then decide against it. One gun would be enough. There was nothing for it: he was slowing down just a little with all of this -- one block away -- and that was okay. This was a goddamn stupid cowboy bullshit thing he'd expect from Brannon, for fuck's sake, but here he was gonna try it himself. And there's no way he could do it and run at top speed, or whatever passed for top speed when it's been a long couple of days in a really shitty month which is kind of saying something in the midst of the fucking end of the world. Left turn. It wouldn't have worked -- wouldn't have come even close to working -- if not for a few key factors: the downward grade of the road before the turn, the highly worn down tread of Archer's boots (a new pair were waiting for him back at the Capitol; he simply hadn't switched them out), the juxtaposition of a thin sandy/rocky layer on top of what had been a previously smooth blacktop, Archer's exceptional marksmanship... and Cal being there to snag him as his forward propulsion turned into a potential crash. Archer broke away from Cal at the indicated juncture to high ground and took the turn beyond wide; darting farther out into the street, the captain made a sweeping arc and as he started back around toward his intended destination, he turned his upper body to see the approaching horde. Just as quickly, his arms lifted, Archer holding the gun and sighting down it as if he was standing still, as if his targets were stationary. Even Archer couldn't have pinpointed the exact moment to himself when he stopped running and let forward momentum carry him across the street, thin-treaded boots sliding on the small crumbled detritus covering the roadway, body shifting in a complete turn to face the zombies with feet shoulder width apart (for balance far more than it was proper firing stance). He let the slide happen because he'd prepped for it in his mind, gone so far as to warn Cal that he might slip... though there hadn't been time to warn him that he meant that he might slip while performing his own version of a shooting gallery in the middle of the fucking street half-running and half-sliding towards Cal. Archer wasn't concerned with any of that because he was zeroed in on picking off as many zombies as he could, because he knew that after this, he wasn't going to be able to keep up such a frenetic pace of running. So he started in perfect shooting formation: sighting his closest targets and taking them down in rapid succession. Runner zombie: head shot. Runner zombie: head shot. Runner zombie: head shot. But this wasn't a fucking western where everything happens in slow-motion so the heroes can shoot all the bad guys at once. This happened in the space of only a few seconds and he had to make the most of them. Archer's vaguely controlled slide definitely turned into a skid and he had to use an arm for balance, making his next few shots good but not as precise: from what he could see at least another runner went down, a couple of crawlers that had joined up toward the front of the pack. Then Archer had to look and see where he was going so his last shots he fired blind, and as he did he felt the soles of his boots catch on completely solid blacktop, a foot or two from the sidewalk, and he grit his teeth as he stumbled forward, hoping not to fall, hoping that if he did fall that his left leg wouldn't be the one he fell on. No, he trusted Cal to right him if he was close enough; he'd hope Cal would keep running if he wasn't. Unsure of the final zombie count, given his last shots taken without him really looking at them, Archer thought he bought some time. He really fucking hoped he did. And Cal was close. He was always close, haunting Archer’s side like the symbiotic balance he’d later earn with Karen Sharpe—but he reached out and caught the older man’s arm and braced him steady, bringing his stumbling, floundering scrabble to a halt. “Are you fucking insane,” Cal said, but half-laughing, half-exultant at the sheer fact that it had worked. "Could be," agreed Archer without missing a beat or catching his breath, though he took a step back and away as he worked to eject the clip on his firearm. After Archer enacted his own private shooting gallery, Cal readied himself in the breathing space the other man had carved out for them. The soldier wasn’t exactly a sharpshooter—he’d driven and reinforced trucks in the war, not done much firing himself—but he had the training, at least. Cal balanced his rifle at a straight angle to his arm, sighted down its length, one eye squeezed shut. He picked off the remainder. One, two, three—his headshots weren’t as neat and precise as the police officer’s, sometimes it just drilled into their neck and they kept fucking coming, he squandered more ammo this way, but he’d have time to learn over the next couple years. He was still having trouble adjusting, re-learning new vulnerable points and targets on the human body. (No, zombie body. Had to keep reminding himself of that.) Archer had dropped his first empty clip to the ground and replaced it with the first one to come to hand, which he knew wasn't even half full, from a previous mission that hadn't had a chance to go through a supply refresh and was buttoned into his top pocket for later, the one he could get to fastest. He'd used the shots he did have to make sure the zombies Cal maybe shot a little wide on were down for the count, using those few seconds to make a call on digging for a fresh clip or taking out his other gun. Fresh clip would be faster. Archer pulled the trigger; he heard a click; he dropped the empty clip and reached into a pocket on his tactical vest... And the last crawler was scurrying low to the ground, leaping out of the way of their bullets just in time, and Cal’s stomach clenched tighter and tighter as it came rapidly motoring its way down the street towards the men. Archer’s aim was better, but he was in the middle of reloading the pistol he’d used—it’d be up to Davidson, and if he didn’t succeed, well— Deep breath. Exhale. Count. Breathe. A tug of the finger, a recoil thudding into his shoulder, and the crawler came skidding to a halt in the earth, facedown in the gravel in front of them. They both stared down at it. Exhale. Breathe. Archer finished his reload, the clip sliding home with an audible noise, breaking the sudden silence of their mutual and briefly mute stare downward. Then he raised his head and surveyed the street strewn with zombie corpses, the previously human, previously living that were now neutralized. No worry about a bite from this horde. Blocks away, there were still shufflers from the back of the pack wandering at a sedate pace, but the immediate threat to Cal and Archer was taken care of. The captain was suddenly, powerfully, profoundly grateful... and equally as exhausted. Archer had to resist the urge to sit down where he stood, to just let his knees unhinge and let gravity get the upper hand for once. Instead, he looked again at the crawler that had skidded to a stop in front of them and said, "Nice shooting, kid," with unmistakable approval in his voice. “Goddamn accident, I feel like,” Cal said, trying to laugh, trying to hide that little shake in his voice. He’d been at this for weeks, running on autopilot and barely thinking past surviving the next day, the next hour, the next five minutes. And now that they’d survived these five minutes, he could finally breathe again—which meant noticing that there was a hitch in his chest, gulping at precious oxygen as he tried to settle his heartbeat. It felt like it ran permanently hot these days, a drumbeat about to burst out of his chest. It was easy to make something look thoughtless and easy when you weren’t fucking thinking. Cal looked over at the older man now, the solid reassuring lines of Archer’s jaw, the unshaven and untended stubble that matched his own. No one had time for personal grooming these days. “You alright?” Archer was shaking off Cal’s question before it was barely out of his mouth, finally loosening both his tactical stance and the two-handed grip on his service weapon. “‘M good,” he assured him, turning the question around with a tilt of his head and a hand gesture in Cal’s direction. Archer’s breathing had returned to normal faster than Cal’s -- thanks, years of running that he’d never do for enjoyment or self-reflection again -- but he could hear his still-swift heartbeat in his ears, thumping in between his temples, precursor to a headache that signaled he’d gone so far out of the orbit of exhaustion that he didn’t want to know what the fuck reentry into the atmosphere of his baseline of just plain tired was gonna look like. A crash fucking landing, that’s what it was gonna look like. His free hand moved over the back of his head in a characteristic gesture of fatigue, frustration, or both. His first couple of paces forward seemed a touch on the ragged side, the left leg a little stiff on the first step downward; by the time Archer was putting weight on his left leg a second time that unevenness in his walk was gone, too small to have been a limp in the first place. Cal’s attention was wired for catching hints of injury, and he was watching for this sort of thing—always attuned for the worst, keeping an eye on his coworkers for the hairline fractures, the hints that might foretell a bite or a collapse—but then it was gone, almost as quickly as if he’d imagined it. Archer detoured around the zombie that Cal had felled in front of them and started up the street, pistol still in his left hand but held down at his side, on the lookout for any shambling stragglers. The younger man lingered for a moment, scrutinising that last runner that had come far too close for comfort, but then he fell into a lope to catch up to Archer’s side, wordless. A rip of Velcro as Archer pulled out a larger clip for the rifle that Cal carried; Cal's was the twin of the one Archer dumped on the ground once he’d picked off the worst of the lot immediately visible around the Old Bakery because he knew he wouldn’t be able to run and reload. Extra weight then. He offered the clip over to Cal. “Need this? Pick off the crawlers. Not too many left. Couple blocks.” After a second of hesitation, the captain clarified why he’d prefer Cal to reload the rifle and be the one to shoot. “I’m beat.” Cal’s eyebrow lifted in surprise. It was said softly, a trifle gruffly, and it was a little inexact as confessions go… but it marked one of the first times that Archer ever audibly admitted weakness to Cal. Brannon had been given the unenviable gift of seeing Archer nearly bleed out on a warehouse floor on a Chelsea pier back in NYC, the dubious honor of watching his partner wake up in the hospital and fight his way back to health. Jenkins, who seemed intent on treating Archer as if he were just as young as Cal and therefore meant to be a recipient of his worried advice, seemed to have a barometer for knowing Archer’s limits better than he did, something developed not long after the accountant heard the gruesome details of Archer catching a round to the back and one to the leg. But Archer didn’t tell these stories, the same way he didn’t tell with any great detail about what it had been like to do relief work in New York before coming back to Austin just prior to the virus spreading here, not unless a story was pertinent to their work. Archer trusted Cal implicitly, yes, but it was still rare for anyone to hear him admit pain or fatigue. Though the captain was still on alert and checking to make sure that another runner wasn’t going to dash out from somewhere and make a break for them, even though he was watching Cal’s six… he’d had to admit that he couldn’t 100% trust himself with safely discharging his weapon unless they were in trouble again, and then fuck all of his principles in favor of living to see the next time he could espouse them. Archer had been awake so long he didn’t know what fucking day it was and had been about to allow himself to rest before this job came down; he’d poured damn near everything he had left into that fucking shooting gallery stunt. In a different man, passing out might seem like a viable option right about now. So Cal took the rifle clip without question, nodding even though part of him was still, irrationally, surprised at this handover of responsibilities. It was like realising that the Statue of Liberty wanted a break, wanted to put her torch down for a little while. Realistically, he knew everyone tired; he’d been in the war, he knew how it went. But empirically, Archer had just never seemed to. These first few weeks had been a crash course in drawing themselves beyond their limits. “We’re about tapped out,” Cal said. It could mean ammunition, but it meant their energy reserves too. They needed rest. They could feel the requirement gnawing at them, clamouring, before it led to any dumbshit accidents that could’ve been prevented by just a few hours of sleep. It was time to return. They walked back up the way they’d come, Cal finishing off the last few crawlers without incident, when there was a crackling staticky sound that came from the vicinity of Archer’s chest. He’d forgotten all about his headset when he started to run; the small microphone and receiver fit over his ear and clipped to the front of his vest. He hadn’t thought about it because he’d run in the opposite direction of the radios Bran and Jenkins had. Reception was shit some of the time; the lack of a communications grid was one of the things Archer missed most about the way the world used to be. Wasn’t the only fucking thing, to be sure, but there were days when it’d be nice to call something in and be able to rely on that. The crackle resolved itself into a fractured, tinny voice as Archer fished the headset wire from where it was still, mercifully, clamped down to his tactical vest. Finding the receiver and mike had gotten caught on a loose flap of Velcro, he untangled it and held it away from his chest and toward Cal so they could both hear the broken voice on the other end of the line. Archer had just finished quietly muttering, “That Jenkins?” when the reception cleared and the man in question could be heard over the line, repeating their last names and the standard ten-code to please respond. Archer did, only to have Jenkins demanding to know their cross streets so he could have a better picture of where they were. It turned out that he was in a Jeep driven by a young APD officer specifically so Jenkins could try and raise Archer or Cal via radio contact. He’d gone for higher ground and had been several blocks left of their current location... which was where Archer and Cal would have been headed had their stand at the turn been less successful. “Here comes the cavalry,” Cal said lightly, but there was genuine relief in it. Jenkin’s voice was a tether: an anchor of sanity, a reminder of stability and the outside world. A reminder that there was something else outside of running and shooting and running. Life, coming back to pick them up. It seemed like only a minute later before the Jeep had pulled up alongside them and Jenkins was hopping down from the passenger seat, reassuring them that the civilians they’d rescued were being processed with due haste before Archer could even open his mouth to ask how they were doing. It was a sign of how truly tired he was that he let Jenkins ease the pistol from his hand and put the safety on while he was in the middle of asking the officer behind the wheel -- more like ordering in the nicest way possible -- to go the half a block to the Old Bakery and retrieve the rifle he’d tossed. Better not to waste a good gun if it was safe to retrieve it. Archer remembered locking eyes with Cal after Jenkins handed him his pistol back and turned to worry at Cal for a while, the corner of the captain’s mouth quirking up in the smallest of smirks. Cal subjected himself to the attention with placid, amused acceptance. Jenkins was pretty damn cool under fire. Archer didn’t want to get between his former accountant and a zombie, that was for damn sure. It was afterward that Jenkins tended to… fret. Archer would’ve been surprised if the photographic memory number cruncher guy wasn’t a little neurotic. Archer remembered that, sort of remembered holstering his weapon and climbing into the front passenger seat and keeping an eye on the driver as he jogged back with the rifle, but once the guy was safely in the vehicle, once Jenkins and Cal were safely strapped into the back, Archer closed his eyes. The murmur of voices in the background was lost to him, fading into a murmur as the sergeant checked in with the accountant. He was conked out before the Jeep started moving, dozing quietly as they moved through the streets of Austin. This was rare, beyond rare, but it might be the only sleep the captain would get for the next day or so… and right now Bran was holding down the fort, Jenkins could guide them back to home base, and Archer had Cal to watch his back. |