Re: Campbells.
Russ couldn't remember the last time he'd been in woods without a visible border, where the green spread out wide above his head and the ground was soft and pulpy beneath his boots. He had initial trouble maintaining the confident stride, mostly because the slickness of the mud threw him off but when he stopped it was to look at Ford with a seriousness that was all Campbell-blue eyes and concern he didn't care was visible.
The kid had died. Fear tasted like pennies on the back of his tongue. Russ couldn't remember a single person dying in recent memory that he'd given a shit about and the kid wasn't going to go anywhere or do anything that resulted in death. The hotel was fucked up, but it was impermanent, except the kid wore the hotel across his face like a livid scar and Russ had an uneasy certainty that Ford wouldn't shake it the same way he'd shaken it himself.
"No, I didn't die," he began to walk once again with an uncertain eye on the kid interrupted only to check he was walking in the right direction. "I had fun. Then I woke up and some woman said I'd..." Pause. Russ's throat worked briefly. "We all got fucked over. It wasn't fun after." This, it seemed, was the sum total of what he'd say.