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Dead Men Walking
Topic Started: Nov 28 2014, 02:20 AM (70,971 Views)
Make-7-Up-Yours
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Is that so?
"Dad?"

Randall smiled as he heard Kelsey's voice hesitantly call out to him through the radio. He had since sat down on the ground, leaning his back against the wall beside the generator. The beeping from the self-destruct timer rang occasionally overhead. He didn't know how much time was left on it at this point. A minute? Two minutes? He hoped the others could get out in time. But for now, he just wanted to talk to his daughter.

"Do you remember what we talked about back at Flint?" He reminded her gently. "About what you're supposed to do if something happens to me?"

There was a silence over the radio. It lingered for a few short moments before Kelsey finally responded; "Yes... stay with Brandon and Willow."

"Good girl. Brandon and the others are on their way back to you guys right now. You are going to stay with them. They will keep you safe."

Randall paused; he could feel tears welling in his eyes. The realization was finally hitting him. he was never going to see Kelsey again. The years of puberty that he had been dreading before... now he knew he was going to miss them. He was never going to see her grow up. The thought hit him hard. His throat tightened as the tears began to freely flow.

"D-dad... wh-what are you talking about?" Her voice cracked back at him.

Fear. It was so clear in her voice. The fear and uncertainty that she had been trying to mask from him for so long. There was an irony in this; he could finally see the fear his daughter had been hiding from him when he could no longer see his daughter.

"I love you a lot Kelsey, you know that, right?"
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Strompy
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Their words were heartbreaking to hear. Brandon stood in disbelief, he felt heavy. Too heavy to move. These were Randall's last moments. He just gave his life to save them. To save the cure. There were so many things he wanted to say. Things he wanted to promise, thanks he wanted to give. He wanted to let him know how much respect he had for him.

Randall had just entrusted his daughter, the only thing he knew he had left in ths world to Brandon and Willow. The responsibility was shared but even so it was a huge thing. It was terrifying.

The pleasant "ding" of the elevator doors opening broke him from his thoughts. Somehow he was able to move his feet. He scooped up the bag he left by the door as he exited.

Thank you, Randall. I swear I'll keep her safe.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Emmett heard Randall’s words to his daughter and his heart sank in his chest. It was clear now what was happening – not how or why, but what. He felt immense empathy for the little girl in front of him. He knew exactly what it was like to lose family.

He didn’t know what it was like to lose Randall, though. In a minute, he knew that was going to hit him as well.

Randall was one of the main reasons he had agreed to come along on this journey. His subconscious influence had helped him stay his hand when he had Eli at gunpoint. If Emmett hadn’t seen him bedridden earlier that day, in more pain from the missing daughter than the missing hand, he might have still been too angry to show mercy. He might have turned out to be a pointless force of destruction, like the bandits that attacked the pharmacy, or the ones that attacked Flint.

Instead, because of Randall – and because of the forgiveness he offered once Kelsey was returned – Emmett got to be a force for good. At least for a little while.

If Randall was actually saying goodbye right now, Emmett knew he would miss him.

* * *

As the elevator continued to rise, Eli stared forward, entranced with nothing at all. He listened to Randall’s words in his radio, but they didn’t feel real. They felt like they were remnants of a dream of his, and all he needed to do was wake up.

Ding.

The elevator bell broke him from his detachment. He blinked and climbed onto his feet. As he did, he noticed his Supergrade – still on the elevator floor, where he dropped it after he jumped inside to help Jen.

He had just enough presence to collect it, along with Randall’s pack – the one that still held the cure, which he had just sacrificed his life for.

As the doors opened on the lobby, he hesitated. Leaving it felt like leaving Randall behind for real. He didn’t want to do that. What he told Randall last night was true. He was family.

It took everything he had, but Eli obliterated his mental block a moment later, and then took off. He was fulfilling Randall’s last wish. He was getting the hell out of there.
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Willow covered her mouth with her hand as the realization struck Kelsey. She saw it in her eyes; the realization that her dad wasn't coming back out. As it dawned on her, her eyes well up and and her face became flushed. Her arms and legs started were shaking uncontrollably, but she still managed to press the button on the microphone. Nobody knew what was going on down there, but it sounded like Randall was willingly leaving himself behind.

"No... get up, dad! You can get out of there!" Kelsey begged into the radio. "Get up! We're not leaving without you!"

"Sorry, pumpkin. No can do. I missed the ride up. Even if they came back for me now, there wouldn't be enough time." Randall's sorrowful voice answered her. "It was wrong of me to hide what happened to mom from you. I didn't even give you a chance to say goodbye to her because I was worried that you wouldn't be able to handle it. But I was so wrong. You're strong, Kels. And I am so proud of you. And so is mom. She told me to tell you that."

"NO! YOU- YOU PROMISED ME THAT WE'D STAY TOGETHER!" Kelsey sobbed into the radio as she finally burst into uncontrollable tears. "YOU PROMISED THAT YOU WOULD ALWAYS BE HERE! YOU CAN'T! DAD! PLEASE! PLEASE!"

Willow's heart wrenched. Kelsey had always tried her best to look strong and stoic for everyone. She was cheerful and happy and so care-free at first glance. But when the going got tough, she always rose up to the challenge. She knew how to protect herself and how to bring others back. But that facade was gone. All that Willow could see now was a little girl bawling her eyes out and begging her father not to die.

"Looks like I gotta break my promise, sweetie."

The pain was clear in Randall's voice as he responded. Willow detected a hint of something more in there though. But she was still too stunned to even process it. This was too much for her right now. And if Willow thought it was too much for her, she couldn't even imagine what Kelsey was going through. As it started to hit her, she saw a group of people come running out of the central building. Brandon, Eli, Annie, and Jen. Willow raised her hands in the air to try to catch their attention and wave them over.

* * * * *

Thinking back on it, Randall could remember a lot of the hard things he'd had to do. Choosing between which high school to go to had seemed like such a hard choice at the time. Quitting the baseball team to join the football team had been a hard choice. Yet he didn't think anything would ever top saying 'Will you marry me?' to Elaine on that 4th of July night.

None of them compared to this. This was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do.

"This is goodbye, Kelsey. Be a good girl for everyone while I'm gone."

"DON'T GO, DAD! I LOVE YOU!" She screamed back at him. "PLEASE DON'T GO!"

Randall took a moment; he stuck his tongue out slightly and bit down on it. Harder than he ever had. He inhaled sharply and tried to compose himself to his voice wouldn't crack and wimper has he spoke. He wished he had a Kleenex right now. Course, it didn't really matter. His running nose wasn't going to be a bother much longer.

"I love you too, Kels, my beautiful, amazing daughter. With all my heart. Whatever you do out there, don't ever stop making me proud."

Randall placed the radio on the ground. There was nothing more he could say. Kelsey's now incomprehensible blubbering crackled through the receiver. She was in good hands. Eli, Brandon, Willow, Annie... they were all good people. He had so much to say to each and every one of them. He wished he could have told Eli how much he respected him now and how he saw him as a friend. How much he appreciated Brandon for dedicating his time to helping everyone, including his daughter. He wished he could tell Willow just how much she had proven him wrong with her grit and determination. How strong Emmett had proven himself to be both mentally and physically. And how much he owed Annie. How he wished he had more time with her. After all the trouble she went through for him, he went and pulled a stunt like this. He really could be a heel sometimes.

Randall lulled his head back and recalled his final moments with his wife.

Illuminated by the morning sun, Randall could see just how pale Elaine had become. After helping her get dressed, he took her out to watch the sunrise. Her last sunrise.

"Do you want me to get Kelsey?" Randall asked her softly.

"No..." Elaine gently replied, not even tilting her head to face Randall with her bloodshot eyes. "Tell her... tell her that I just went somewhere nice. And you don't know when I will be back. Then she can just... forget about me. And she won't need to go through the pain of saying goodbye to her mother or the pain of seeing me like this. I want her to remember me as I was... not as I am now. But when you do see her... make sure to tell her how I proud I was of her."

Randall bit his tongue. "A-are you sure you want it to happen like this?"

"I think it is better this way..."

Elaine shook her head sadly before leaning into Randall and burying her face in his chest as she sobbed; "I'm scared, Randy... I'm so scared..."

Randall couldn't hold back the tears either. He embraced Elaine and pulled her in close. To take her mind off of it all, he recalled memories that they had shared when they were younger. When they were dating back in High School. Old stories about people they knew and the stupid things they did. They kept talking like this, alone in some distant corner of the Mount Kisco golf courses, until Elaine finally passed out. Randall didn't move, nor did he stop talking. He sat there and recalled the stories himself until he finally felt Elaine give her last breath. It wasn't until the moment that she died that everything felt real and the tears erupted once again. That was when he decided that he had to take the cure to Argonne National Labs himself. For Elaine.

It wasn't until another hour later that he finally walked back to Mount Kisco, cradling her body in his arms, and took her to the funeral pyre. He didn't draw attention to himself; he simply laid her to rest in the flames with as much dignity as he could spare. As he watched at the dancing flames as they enveloped her body, he took a morbid solace in the fact that this is how she would have wanted to go. She wouldn't have wanted a big ceremony with fanfare and people crying. She wouldn't have wanted people to see her lifeless body out on display. She would have wanted something quaint and reserved.


"It's ironic, isn't it, Ellie?" Randall muttered to himself as he opened his eyes, which were once again wet with tears. "Isn't it?"

All Randall saw was a flash of light; he didn't even hear the explosion that ended his life underground beneath the streets of Lemont, Illinois in Argonne National Lab.
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Strompy
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Brandon felt the shock from the explosion through his feet before he heard it. He looked back to see the windows on the ground shatter as a flash of fire errupted from the elevator. There was a loud roar with it and then quiet and smoke. The destroyed lab wasn't a fitting resting place, but that was it for Randall.

The man whose determination had brought them through hell was gone. Now they would have to learn to find their own way. Fleeing that building felt like fleeing his home all over again. Brandon felt like he'd been orphaned a second time.
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Is that so?
The blood drained from Kelsey's face as the explosion rattled the ground. For a few moments, she watched the smoke rise from the lab, her face glistening and her lips quivering. When a few long seconds had passed, she scrambled back to action and pressed the button on the radio again.

"Dad? Are you there?" She frantically asked into the radio, her voice shaking and uneven behind her tightened throat.

No answer.

"C-come on, dad... please?" She tried again. "Dad?"

No answer.

"Dad? Can you hear me?"

Again, the radio was silent. She sat on the ground, looking at the radio. She stared at it blankly, even as it began to shake violently in her hands and her vision blurred from the mist building anew in her eyes.

"D-dad... where... where are you?"

Nothing.

She dropped the radio on the ground as her arms fell limply to her sides. Kelsey's entire body became tense; she clenched her hands tightly into fists; she ground her teeth together; she bowed her head to the ground and stared at the radio. Willow was there in an instant, she grabbed the young girl by her shoulders and spun her into a tight hug just as Kelsey started wailing at the top of her lungs.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
As the explosion roared fiercely, Emmett turned away. He felt a sudden wave of heat on his face, the kind he felt when he got too close to a campfire. In an instant, though, the wave washed away – replaced by the cold autumn air.

He looked at the kids and Willow to make sure they were okay. They weren’t. How could they be? Randall had almost certainly perished in that fire. It was more accurate to say they were uninjured by the blast.

Beside him, Connor’s gaze had silently fallen on Kelsey. He looked like he wanted to cry as well. Emmett watched him for a moment. When he looked up at the building, so did Emmett. They saw Eli, Brandon, Jen and Annie’s approach.

Connor took off into a run towards his mom. She fell to her knees as he approached. She was choking back tears – Emmett could tell from where he stood. When Connor ran straight into her embrace, she couldn’t hold them back anymore.

Emmett looked to Eli, who looked back to him. He recognised the empty look in his eye. He’d had it this morning, after being discovered with Julie’s body. It had remained for over an hour, as he struggled alone to dig her grave.

On the way here, the look had started to go away. The urgency of the mission and the proximity to the finish line had injected some fire back into him. Not a lot, but a little. Enough.

That fire was gone, now – it was nowhere to be found Eli’s vacant stare.
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Annie was reunited with her son. They were both crying.

Brandon would no doubt be on his way to see Willow and Kelsey.

Eli... Eli looked like a rotter.

Jen knew that she looked no better than them. She limply dragged her baseball bat on the ground behind her with one hand as she walked; her other held Maxwell's former butterfly knife which was still drenched and dripping with rotter blood. Her black jacket and the blue shit she wore underneath it were spattered in that same blood. She probably had some caked on her face and in her frizzy hair as well but, even if she had a mirror, she didn't care to look and find out. Like everyone else, she was in a state of shock. She was emotionally overwhelmed; even thought she barely knew these people, two of them had died today. One of them she owed her life to.

Had she been thinking, had she been more aware, she could have repaid the debt right there. She could have gone back into the facility and reactivated the generator instead of him as her way of thanking Randall for saving her life back in Flint. She should have been the one to go in there. But she didn't. In that moment when it was all on the line, she froze. She froze and was simply a spectator in her own body, forced to watch as she let Randall sacrifice himself to save everyone. And now she felt like it was her fault. If it wasn't for her freezing, Kelsey would still have a dad. Annie might even have a boyfriend. God knows she deserved a good boyfriend for once.

Jennifer walked up to Emmett. She lifted her head and started at him blankly as she struggled to form words.

"There was... explosion. Explosives. Th-the power went out as we were leaving... Randall... he... he went back in..." Jen attempted to explain before she broke her gaze from Emmett's and shook her head. "He turned the power back on for us... we... thanks to him, we were able to escape... I..."

She suddenly dropped to her hands and knees like a guilty child caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar and begging for forgiveness.

"I... I'm sorry... I couldn't do anything..."
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Four. Of the nine that set out from Patterson, four were dead. The thought filled him more with fear than grief. Brandon was overwhelmed by the sense that if they stayed this path he would lose them all. He turned to look at Willow as she held Randall's weeping daughter. Those two. To lose either of them would be the end of him. The woman he'd come to love and the girl he'd sworn to protect.

He made his way to them and folded his arms around them both. Instinct told him to take them both and run somewhere safe. Not to Flint but somewhere they woukd never see another rotter ket alone another human. Go north across the border into Canada or flee to the mountains, just go somewhere isolated and small. Hide them. There was more to be done though. Kelsey might still have family and he had to ensure they were together if she did. Furthermore the cure her father died for had to be delivered and he had the skills to help make that happen.

"We have to go." he said, the words seeming heartless to him.

He nodded to Willow to let go of Kelsey. He picked the girl up without any trouble, all the fight having gone out of her. He held her tight and gave Willow a kiss.

"Let's get out of here." he said to nobody in particular.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
The journey back to the hotel took longer than the journey from it. Eli led the way and set the pace, and the pace was slow. He wasn’t in any mood to hurry. He wasn’t in any mood to walk at all. It was only necessity and Randall’s last wish that kept him going.

Seeing the Champagne Lodge’s distinctive sign from the interstate did nothing to improve his disposition. Arriving in the parking lot and finding the front undisturbed didn’t help either.

He didn’t say anything to anybody as he took Randall’s pack inside. He didn’t look back before making a bee-line to his room. The one he shared with Julie. The one Randall had discovered him in that very morning.

The day wasn't even half over, and it already felt like the longest in his life.

“Eli…” Annie’s voice started up behind him. He could sense her jogging to catch up with him. She probably had something empathetic to say.

Eli ignored her and shut the door.
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Thank God for Emmett. The few rotters they encountered on the way back to the hotel were dealt with discreetly ahead of the group. Everyone else was too shaken up by what they'd just been through or otherwise incapable of mustering that kind of functionality. It meant the others could slow down, meant that Willow didn't have to stray from Brandon and Kelsey. The three of them walked as one, Brandon carrying Kelsey who wrapped her arms around his neck, and Willow at his side with her arm around his waist. He felt safe in that tiny unit they formed.

As they came back to the hotel Brandon couldn't help but look at Julie's fresh grave and felt another wave a grief. His mind took him back to Flint, seeing Glenda there in front of him and then a second later dead on the ground. Further back to the border, he didn't see that, just heard the bang and Mac wasn't there anymore. At the lodge, the outbreak only hours after he got there and the horrible quiet of the morning after as they went about the process of cleaning up after dead friends and family. Then of course his own family, the look in Kyle's eyes as the rotter bit him and the weakness in his voice as the life was leaving him sounded just like Randall had.

He also remembered the screams of the people in the rec centre, and from their neighbors houses. He remembered the desperate reports over the radio asking for calm, and before those the reports on TV cautioning about a deadly outbreak advising against travel. Just another overblown flu scare he had supposed.

There would be no time to take Julie's body back to Flint. Just like his hopes of going back home to bury his family began to fade in both possibility and importance. What did it matter? Dead was dead. The only thing there was do for the dead was remember them, and these were all people he could never forget.

Willow opened their door. The room was more than a little disheveled. The bed had only been set upright roughly, some chairs were turned over, the desk had been moved and there was a broken lamp on the floor across the room and a considerable dent in the wall. He gave an apologetic look. Earlier that morning he'd lost his temper in his panic at misplacing one of the bullets in his pocket, though that had just been the final straw. Willow straightened the bed up. Brandon lay Kelsey down in the middle of the bed, atop the covers since the sheets weren't exactly clean, and gave her one of the spare pillows from the wardrobe. She curled up there and Willow and Brandon lay down either side of her. She didn't voice any desire for solitude immediately. If his experience was anything to go by, she probably wasn't of a mind to want anything, if she were even aware of her surroundings.

Brandon's heart broke for her, and he mentally reaffirmed his promise to do whatever it took to find her brother for her. To keep her safe also. That was their responsibility now. Her safety was everyone's responsibility, but specifically it fell to him and to Willow together. His rattled brain jumped in leaps and bounds from the thought. He wondered if this was what a little sister was like. Or if it this was like having a child. Their child now in a vague way, his and Willow's. What about having children with Willow? That was an insane prospect. He felt passionately about her it was true but in reality they really had only just met. Should this cure save them all and return the world to normal and they had that time together they may find that that need and constant threat of danger was all that they actually had. They might not even have a future together if they had a future at all. Still he could dream as recklessly as he liked considering they might all be dead tomorrow.

I love you. he mouthed to her.

He withdrew the three copper bullets from his pocket and placed them on the nightstand. He wasn't risking misplacing those again.
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I love you, too. She mouthed back to Brandon with a rueful smile.

She felt sympathy for Kelsey, who rested beside her. She had stopped crying during the walk over, but had then just fallen silent. She simply stared blankly ahead like everyone else; she hadn't uttered a word since her conversation with father over the radio. Brandon could probably feel empathy, considering what had happened to him already when he found his parents. She had never had that. She hadn't been there to lose an immediate family. The closest thing to a parent figure she had lost was Glenda, and that had hit pretty hard. It still hit her pretty hard, but Brandon had been there to help her from falling too far into grief. He had been there to help pick her back up. Hopefully the two of them could do the same for Kelsey. But Randall was the last family she had. Except for Nolan. He could still be alive, but that felt like a pipe dream. She didn't think it was healthy to get Kelsey's hopes up like that so quickly after her father's death when she expected those same hopes to be shot down brutally.

Willow wanted to go talk to Julie. She had a lot of things she wanted to get off her chest. But not right now. Kelsey needed her here. Brandon might need her here too. She mourned the loss as heavily as anyone else right now. But she couldn't help but think that the loss of Glenda and Julie had started acclimating her to the prospect of death. That idea honestly scared her a little.

* * * * *

Jennifer didn't want to sit alone in a dark room right now. She had too much on her mind to want to sit passively and stare at the ceiling. So instead she chose to take a seat behind the desk in the lobby of the hotel. Her empty magazines were on the table and she absently loaded them with new 9mm rounds.

If I had reloaded these earlier, maybe he wouldn't have died. Maybe the extra bullets would have culled the rotter population down there just enough to have allowed us free access to the generator. Then he would have been able to make it back after leaving.

She knew these thoughts she had been having were destructive. The what ifs and maybes that had been swirling through her head ever since she left. Ever since they survived and he hadn't. Now she was left with a constant barrage of guilt that did nothing but eat away at her.
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Eli stared at the bed where Julie died. He had been lying next to her at the time, watching her last breaths, waiting for the moment when he’d have to act or risk letting her turn into a monster. It had been one of the hardest moments of his life. It had drained him, left him running on empty. He had managed to push past it, though. The cure was so close to being delivered and they had come so far, he had to finish the job.

But the job wasn’t finished. Not even close.

They had sacrificed so much for the canister in Randall’s pack. The last couple days in particular had seen unbearable losses. Glenda, Julie, now Randal. By handing off the cure in Mount Kisco, Eli had set in motion events that had doomed them all.

Thinking about that, Eli realized he was empty. There was nothing left in the tank.

With Glenda, his outlet was anger and hatred – and the target of that hatred had been right in front of him. With Julie, he had the immediacy of the mission to distract him. With Randall, there was no escape.

All those people dead, and what was it all for? To find out they weren’t even halfway there yet. To get a brand new mission that would probably end the same as the first.

There was a gentle knock on the door.

“Eli?” It was Annie’s voice again. She hadn’t given up.

He didn’t respond. She knocked again.

“Eli…” she said again, sounding sad. “Can you please… can we talk for a second?”

Eli kept ignoring her. He didn’t want to talk. As always, he had nothing to say. He was useless. As useless as he was back in Flint when Maxwell made his move, as useless as he was in that warehouse when he let Julie get bit, as useless as he was in that elevator.

She stopped knocking. Eli could hear her footfalls as she walked away. Good.

Maybe I was right from the beginning, he thought bitterly. He wanted to hand off the cure and be done with it, take off on his own and not have to worry about anyone else. Instead he found a family, and now that family was dying off one by one and the pain was excruciating. He could have spared himself that pain if he had just never found a family at all.

Or maybe he should have taken Jimmy up on his offer and left with him. No commitment, no strings. And unlike with Julie, it would have been no strings for real.

He looked away from Julie’s literal deathbed, and found himself staring into a mirror. Once again, his clothes were covered in dry blood and his visage was pale and weary. He had looked like that before. He had tried washing it off, finding new clothes. But he always ended up looking the same.

He hated it. He hated everything about it. He hated his reflection.

He marched over to the nightstand, and wrapped his thick hands around the base of a lamp. He pulled it sharply away, dragging the cord violently out of the outlet. Then he threw it – right into the mirror.

CRASH!

His reflection shattered into a hundred broken pieces. It seemed more accurate now.

Not accurate enough, though. He turned, yanking the drawer right out of the nightstand. With both hands, he hurled that too. The mirror broke apart a little more and the wall behind it took a dent.

Seeing the wreckage only stoked his anger. He spun around, looking for anything else he could break.

* * *

Annie was feeling restless. She was having a hard time standing still. She remembered feeling the same way when her parents died, and again after she first visited Chase in the hospital. She had only known Randall for a few days, had hardly known him at all, really – but her feelings for him were real and so was her feeling of loss.

In this day and age, when life was so uncertain – when life had proven to be so uncertain, time and time again – every day with someone was meaningful. She knew that. Her time with Randall, as brief as it was, meant something.

Connor had been feeling just as fidgety. He got that from her. He didn’t want to be alone in a dark room either, so Annie had left him in the lobby with Jen. When Annie left to take a walk through the hotel, neither were saying much.

An hour or so had passed since their return to the hotel, and really, no one had done or said much of anything. Annie couldn’t imagine what it was like for the others besides Jen – people who had known Randall for much longer than they had.

Thinking about Kelsey, in particular, broke her heart. Losing one parent was heart-wrenching enough. She had seen Connor go through it slowly, and it was tough to watch, Losing both parents, though, especially at such a young age. That was tragedy.

Kelsey had Willow and Brandon to look out for her, at least. Annie could see how much they cared about her and each other. They were all together now. Hopefully that was some comfort.

Emmett had seemed sad too, of course, but seemed to be coping the best of all of them. He had absorbed it in his grim and serious way and had stepped up and protected the group all the way back.

Eli, though, may have taken the loss as hard as anyone. It seemed to have left him raw. The empty look in his eyes since it happened was hard to take.

She had tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t have it. A while later, she had heard crashing and banging sounds coming from his room. She took that as a sign that he needed some time to himself, and she didn't try to talk to him again.

Instead, she wandered. She stopped, however, when she arrived in the spa. She found Emmett sitting on the edge of one of the sleek and minimalist recliners by the pool. He was staring into the clear water, looking contemplative.

“Hey,” she said. She didn’t want to sneak up on him.

“Hey,” he replied simply. He didn’t look away. She got the feeling he knew she was there.

She wrapped her arms around her waist to stave off the cold as she made her way over to one of the recliners and took a seat, hoping he wouldn’t mind the company. She was trying to think of something else to say when he surprised her by going first.

“How are the others?” he asked.

“What you’d expect,” she answered. “I heard Eli breaking things.”

He nodded sadly, and then finally looked over to her, meeting her gaze. “How about Kelsey?”

“She’s with Brandon and Willow,” she answered.

He nodded sadly again. “Good. That’s good.”

“What about you?” Annie asked.

“I’ll be okay,” he said, looking away and into the water again. After a few moments silence, he continued. “I know you cared about him. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And I think we all did. I’m sorry too.”
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Is that so?
"I'll be right back."

Willow quietly announced to Brandon and Kelsey. They had been trying to comfort the poor girl, but she had yet to say word and simply continued to stare blankly at everyone. The atmosphere was, frankly, getting a little thick after an hour of awkward silence. She wanted to be here for Kelsey, but she felt like she was being strangulated. She needed a little fresh air.

She made her way through the hotel, passing by Jen and Connor in the lobby. She exchanged the bare minimum greeting she could muster as she marched on through, leaving the hotel itself and navigating back to the unmarked grave where Julie now laid. Willow glanced over her shoulders as she made sure there were no rotters or anything nearby, then carefully took a seat on the ground by the grave and pulled her canvas jacket closer to her.

"Hey Jules." Willow's greeting was heavy. "We finally made it to Argonne National Lab. I know you were always hesitant about whether or not the cure was real, but it looks like it was. There was a real lab here looking into the virus. You didn't miss much, though. It was overrun. Randall is... he didn't make it out. He died in the lab when it exploded. I didn't get the full story on that either, don't worry."

Willow curled her feet up close to her chest and hugged them. Her thigh still throbbed from its use through the day, but it seemed like such a distant feeling now.

"It all feels so surreal, you know? Like none of this is even real. Like I'm living in some sort of dream. I just... I just don't know, Jules. I wish you were still here, I swear to God I do. You had this way with people that just... seemed so natural. You could start up a conversation and everyone would listen. Everyone would smile. We need someone like you right now. We're all so fucking lost. We have no direction, no motivation. And I don't even know what the hell I'm doing. I feel so useless."

What would Julie say back to her right now? Would she have anything to say? What would Julie say to everyone else?

"I mean... I'm not over Glenda's loss yet. She only died yesterday. It hurts. It feels like there's a fucking hole in my heart. And now with you and Randall gone too? The whole group feels like it has nothing left. And I just... I'm tired, Jules. I'm tired of all this. I wish there was more I could do."

Then why don't you?

"Because I... I don't know what I could do. I'm not anything like a leader. I'm not like Glenda or Randall. I don't have the strength to lead anyone."

Then who will?

"I dunno... Brandon? Eli? They're both street smart and quick. They would be fine."

Do you really think they can do it alone? Randall always had help. Glenda, Brandon, Eli, Julie, they all stepped up and tried to help. There aren't many people left. You've stepped up to every challenge before this one. No reason to stop now. This groups needs you now more than it ever has.

"I'm really having a conversation with myself, aren't I?" Willow groaned. "I'm fucking losing it."

Still, she couldn't deny that the disembodied voice in her head had a point. She did need to step up to the plate. But she didn't know the first step to doing that. Maybe the first step was going back and talking to everyone. Before anything could be done, they all needed to get back on their feet.

"Thanks Julie. I think you helped me figure a few things out." Willow nodded to the grave. "Unfortunately we can't take you to Flint. We need to go to California now to deliver the cure. But... if Randall is over there now and you can talk to him... tell him thanks for me. For everything. And tell him that I'll make sure the cure gets to California. And I'll make sure Kelsey stays safe."
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Connor sat quietly in one of the chairs in the lobby. Glumly, he rested his elbow on his knee and his cheek on his fist and stared out at the window at the snowy ground. He spared the occasional glance over to Jen, who was idly handling her gun nearby. Besides his mom, she was the most familiar face around.

“I miss home,” he said out loud.
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