[Promo] dry as a bone (Noah) (tw: red-eye)

[prolixity]

Ten minutes before the supply drop is due, the lights begin to flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Fail. Nobody speaks. In the next room over, Noah watches Jess's eyes sharpen, and he is not afraid, not precisely.

The portal fails to open. Noah leaves quietly, before anyone can get angry about it. He doesn't return to his room. There's only one door and the window sticks. He finds himself a good spot, seats himself quietly crosslegged on the furthest toilet in the unused ladies' room on the far end of the building.

Fifteen minutes later, someone pads into the bathroom with the soft footfalls of a person trying to be quiet. They walk down the row and pause in front of the last stall. Under the door, Noah can see the dull-red sneakers that belong to Annamaria. He stops breathing.

HUNGRY, Laz says.

The feet turn and pad back out. Noah remains where he is. He listens to what happens just outside the door, and he stays put for another two endless hours.  

[prolixity]

Noah sleeps at the nest site. The flies have not yet found what happened earlier. He sleeps lightly, restlessly, his sleep punctuated with dreams of a swirling void of red and black. Twice he awakens to stare dry-eyed at the blackness of the night, hungry and sick in equal measure.  

[prolixity]

It's oddly peaceful, oddly satisfying, to be so deeply in tune with Laz. Noah hasn't felt like this before. Laz approves of it. Hunger is part of Laz's existence and has always been; even before, the zombie dog thinks, he was hungry, always hungry. Laz doesn't remember anything specific, they know. But they recall or maybe sense that the hunger was always there, always.

Noah hasn't rolled in it like this before, not like this. He has been hungry, had hungers and needs, but there is something in Noah that denies he hungers or needs, denies it and refuses to feed it. Now, though, like this, it is different. He hungers, they hunger, they feed.

They are bright enough not to take on stronger hunters one on one. But they are not ashamed to take part, not ashamed to scavenge. Lazarus is proud. Lazarus is hungry, and Noah is closer to Laz than he's been in the two years they've been bonded, and it feels good. It feels so very good.  

[prolixity]

The lights have gone out again. Noah leans slightly out the end window on the upstairs hallway, checking, because he knows what he would do. Laz wanted to do it, but Noah knows that he is not the only smart one here. Movement at the door on ground level alerts them. A brief mental exchange that ends in Laz admitting that yes, perhaps it would have been unwise, because it's Jess down there, slipping silently back to flatten herself against the wall behind the generator shed. If they'd been down there, she'd have found them there alone, and the rage and hunger say yes, yes, but they know how that would end. If they are going to hunt her, they'll need to do it after she's killed, when she's weakened, and they'll need to surprise her.

(Two others left. They'll have to act soon.)

Jess summons her daggers and holds them low at her sides, their golden glow hidden by her body, and she waits. Above her, Noah waits too, silent, not moving. She hasn't looked up, but he can't risk it.

A few minutes later, Michael comes out to start the power, because someone has to. It's a rule. Michael is big on rules.

Noah withdraws back into the room when Jess makes her move. He listens to the sounds below. There is no yelling, only the hiss and clang of metal on metal and the dull thud of weapons and fists impacting flesh, the thud of impact, the thud of impact, on and on and on. Then there is silence. Then come the ripping sounds, the wet sounds, the cracking and the tearing. Noah listens, and wipes the corner of his mouth, and swallows his saliva.

It's fitting that Jess took this kill, even if it's a little frustrating. Noah hasn't been here long, but still he understands that Michael and Jess belong to each other.

Jess is somewhere else in the building when Noah finally creeps out to scan what's left of Michael. He takes his notes, methodical and careful, and then, finished with the formalities, he summons his weapon. Laz is a meat cleaver. Laz is very, very helpful.  

[prolixity]

It's not that he doesn't dream. It's that he only dreams one dream, red and red and red and black and red. It is the same each time, and each time he wakes hungrier. Each time he wakes it is overlaid on him, overlaid on reality, and each time he wakes it's harder and harder to remember anything else.  

[prolixity]

Jess is stronger than Noah and Tim. Noah will tell himself later that he couldn't have known, but he will never be able to justify turning on Tim when Jess breaks Tim's shield first. He will tell himself that it was the red driving him, and that will be true enough.

When it is over, he slinks away, and Jess lets him, this time.  

[prolixity]

The red has left him, and taken with it the certainty and the rage. He takes his notebook and scanner, and he fills a canteen with water, and he doesn't take any food with him, because he is hungry and also he will never be hungry again. He makes the trek out to the nest site, and holes up in one of the empty rooms in the building. He waits, because one of two things is going to happen: the red will return, and it will draw him inevitably back to fight Jess and die under her knives, or it won't, and Jess will find him anyway and he'll die under her knives trying to get away.

He feels hollow and empty and numb, but he still doesn't feel inclined to give up and make it easy.  

[prolixity]

He sips a little bit of water each time he can't stand it any more, and forces himself to hold off and ration it out. Every few hours he's awake, he scans himself, and records the results, and watches the numbers slowly declining.

The rage has not returned. Jess has not come for him. He doesn't know what that means. He is very, very thirsty.  

[prolixity]

The water runs out on day three.

How long, Noah wonders, does it take for a hunter to die of thirst?

Laz hasn't spoken to him for three days.

On the night of day four, he gathers up what he has and walks back to the base.  

[prolixity]

The power has come back on. Jess is not there. Noah remembers reading somewhere that he shouldn't drink as much water as he wants all at once, because he'll throw it back up. It's still hard to keep himself from doing it.

When the portal opens and two hunters step through carrying a box, Noah is sitting on the floor, waiting. His clothes are covered with dried blood. He hasn't washed and hasn't slept well for over a week. Their reaction is probably very logical.  

[prolixity]

They strap him down in a bed in the infirmary and put an IV in him. After a while, he starts to scream and can't stop, and has to be gagged.  

[prolixity]

When his voice comes back, some time later, he says only, "I recorded it."