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Tsurai forced himself up on two legs, albeit looking like a fish out of water doing it.

"Don't touch me," he growled as he got up.

Tsurai's own hand went to his forehead to feel more sweat while he turned his head to see what he was looking for..
And there it was. Walking toward the door, Tsurai took his hand from his head and grabbed the knife with it, stumbling and falling back on his knees with it in his hands at Cyrus' head.

He stopped there for a moment, hesitating, left hand rubbing the red marks still at his throat.

Finally, he took the knife and slowly, wearily, weakly even, slid it into Cyrus' throat until it touched bone, where Tsurai stopped.

He flopped over on his side again with a sigh.
"Leave it there, he'll suffocate in a minute..." He breathed, closing his eyes. "If you take it out, he might survive... I'm going to... I'm gonna..." He shuddered.

"Sleep now..."

And with that, he fell into a deep sleep, similar to unconciousness, but not quite so.

Tsurai had slept for a few hours, waking up in the night frequently inbetween weird, fever-induced dreams.

By morning he was covered in sweat and more dehydrated than before, but still wanted to get up and move someplace. He still wasn't used to being sick, and although he felt like doing nothing, he still wanted to do something.

Isiah was still asleep, so Tsurai decided to force himself up, and using support from random walls and upstanding debris, walk from place to place to get a better-fitting pair of pants. Or a belt. A belt was probably a better way to go.

Going from place to place in a daze, with how he looked, no one would help him. Everyone was more bigoted than before the bomb.
If you were dying, they didn't want to waste supplies, if you were living, you kept the supplies. That was all.

So Tsurai decided to stop trying. He found some rope, and tied it around his pants to keep them up, then collapsed at the well an hour after dawn.

Some time later, as Tsurai had zoned out and wasn't exactly sure what time it really was, there was a shadow looming over him.

Looking up, Tsurai realized it was a person. A woman, actually, and she bent down to look at him.

"Is that you, Tsurai?" She asked, crouching to look in his eyes.
Tsurai looked away, not saying anything.
"You grew your hair out," she tried to touch it, but Tsurai grabbed her wrist. "Don't touch me... Urgh.." He winced.

"What happened to you?" She said, trying to pull her hand away, but Tsurai wouldn't let go.
"Your face? You're so skinny now, and you... Chicken pox? Let go.." She finally pulled her hand from him.

"What vault were you in?" Tsurai said hoarsely.

"Wasn't in one," the woman smiled, lifting up her shirt and turning to the side, showing a very large, hideous burn. "I got this.. But I managed."
He put down her shirt and asked, "What about you? Why are you out here?"

"335..." Tsurai rasped. "What are you doing here... Why aren't you in Georgia...?"

"I was looking for you... And now that you're... You look so bad, Tsurai. I thought you were dead. And you look like you are, and... Come on, I can help get rid of the pox for you."
She stood up and offered Tsurai her hand. Tsurai took it and pulled himself up, falling back on her.

The woman, who was named Alex, put Tsurai's arm over her shoulder, and she supported him as they walked. But it had only been two steps when Tsurai unexpectedly stopped and said, "Wait... Isiah..."

Alex looked at the boy questioningly. "The book? I didn't know you read the Bible..."

Tsurai shook his head, "No... I'm travelling with him, let's go back so he doesn't..." He coughed, forgetting to put a piece of his sentence in, ".. Know where I am."

"Alright," she replied. "Where is he?"

Tsurai pointed in the general direction of where Isiah would be.
"On the bricks."

Alex and Tsurai reached Isiah's burning form.
"Denzien..?" The woman growled to herself, but Tsurai by that time had gotten out of his mind again, and haden't heard her.

"He's almost worse off than you, Tsu-"

"Huh?" He only heard part of his name.
"What?"

Alex narrowed her eyes and tore of Tsurai's jacket, "Give me THAT," she groaned, throwing it ontop of Isiah.
"Now wake him up," Alex ordered.

"Yer not my mom," Tsurai groaned, leaning all his weight on Alex, practically falling over.

With that move, though, Alex felt his fever getting even worse.

"Jesus, I guess if you never get sick it really pounds you the first time..." She kicked Isiah's duffelbag.

"Get up Ezzekiel.. Er.. Jesus.. Ugh... What was his name?"

"ISIAH! Damnit, get the f**'s name right..." Tsurai yelled.

Alex shifted her weight to support what was now all of Tsurai's weight. She growled in annoyance, replying with a quick "None taken" comment with an afterthought in her mind going "ya dumb denzien."

But the last part wasn't verballized since Tsurai, the residential ill idiot, started to say something along the lines of "shut the ******** up," but came out more of a garbled mess, and promptly lost consiousness, where Alex allowed the boy to fall to the ground as she narrowed her eyes at her fallen comrade.

"I think the fever's killing his brain cells," Alex sighed, bending over to pick the boy up with a few "mphs" of effort.

"Now come on, we're going to my house, Denzien.. Ezeikel.. WHatever the hell your name is..Denzien..."

It was apparently clear that she hated Denziens, by now.

When Tsurai was taken from her, she glared at Isiah and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I had him just fine, Ezekiel." She answered while she walked.

"I was in one of the gangs he was in before the bomb. Had a crush on him, but he was with Kris with the time... Lucky b*****d..." She said to herself.

"But whatever. Point being is, I don't care if you're ex- or not, you're still a Denzien to me, Denzien."

So by this time she though his name Was Ezekiel, but was calling Isiah Denzien. Ha, how wonderful.

They reached a tent, where Alex told Isiah "Ezekiel" Denzien to wait. She crawled in and got out a few things. A towel, for one. A pair of jeans, a shirt, one of those long fuel lighters, a few washcloths, a bowl, and after some liquid-pouring, the bowl was full of water.

All these things were pulled out in front of the tent, in a decent-sized pile. She got the towel and flapped it in the air to lay it out for Tsurai to lie his hed on, and Isiah and Alex to sit on either side of the boy.

She put the washcloth in the water, then had it dripping ontop of Tsurai's forehead while she began to pull off the kid's medical wrapping on his face.

"Yeah, you know h-- Oh my GOD... What the hell happened?"
She had finished unwrappinf Tsurai's face at that point, and had seen the huge gash in his face.

Alex frowned. She didn't want a scar on Tsurai's beautiful face... But with a gash like that, it was inevitable, no matter how it was fixed.

She reached over for the lighter, and got a flame before she thought better of it. She put the gas lighter out and leaned back into the tent, getting out a bottle of liquor.
Putting that in one hand, she got one of the extra washclothes in the other, and poured some of the alcohol onto the cloth.

Then she put the bottle down, and started wiping over the gash with the alcohol that had soaked into the washcloth.

TEXT!

She glared at Isiah again, grabbing the lighter back from him before the man could toss it. "I DO mind."

She slammed it back on the ground, finishing her work and tossing the liquor-soaked wascloth purposefully onto Isiah's face, and thus, his lit cigerette.

"I'd APPRECIATE it, if you didn't tell me what to do," she growled, expecting Isiah to catch fire.

She took her lighter back and lit it again, placing it at the very end of the gash, then quickly turning it off once the flame flared up for a moment and blistered Tsurai's skin over.

After that, she put the lighter back in the tent, keeping her gaze on the Denzien at all costs.

"I can't sew, and I think he'd freak out with a bunch of thread in his face, anyway. And I didn't have wine, 'else I would've used it. Actually, Tsurai's used to damn gunpowder. But that's just inhumane. Not that anyone has any, anyway."

She hmphed and decided to watch Isiah get burned before starting on Tsurai's pox.