“Cassie?” I walk up behind her.

  She jolts at the sound of my voice, and quickly reaches up to wipe her eyes.

  “I’m fine.” Even though she tries to say it forcefully, her voice still sounds small.

  “I think I had the same thoughts.” I reach the edge of the ke and sit down next to her. I wish I could dunk my legs into the cold water, but it’s too dangerous.

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t, but I’m not.” No matter how much I try to not process them, images of everything I’ve seen today keep fshing through my mind. Innocent people, sughtered for nothing.

  Cassie sits down next to me and roughly pulls my head onto her shoulder.

  “I want to bury all of them.” I say.

  Cassie gives a small nod of agreement.

  “My legs used to be waterproof.” She says quietly.

  I understand what she means. She wants to swim out there and grab the child, pull them back to nd. I couldn’t waterproof her legs with what I had, and her missing arm certainly isn’t water tight.

  “We’ll think of some way to get them out.”

  Cassie once again nods and tightens her grip on my head for just a second before rexing her arm.

  “I’m going to go get started.” She stands up and wipes her eyes one st time without trying to hide it. “It reeks down here.” She grabs a fshlight from the small collection of tools the town gave us and clips it onto her shoulder.

  “Alright. I’ll work on this.” I gesture vaguely towards the ke. I’d really rather not see the bodies again, seeing just one is bad enough.

  Cassie doesn’t respond as she heads towards the burnt out town.

  “Alright Corax, I need your help.” I grab the medical kit and pull out the fishing wire. I tie one end to my hand, unroll a long length, and tie the other to Corax’s foot. “If you just nd on them and hold on, I’ll pull you back.” I’m sure he could do it on his own, but I’m not going to risk him falling in the water and disappearing. This is far safer.

  Corax takes off without compint, nding as gently as he can on the child’s back. He makes sure to grab onto the tattered remains of their clothes, not wanting to damage the body any more than it already is.

  I pull them both in slowly, careful to not tip the body over. It takes a few minutes to fish them both back to shore. Corax hops onto the solid ground, and I quickly untie the string from him.

  All that’s left to do is to move them.

  Don’t think. Don’t process.

  I grab the back of the child’s shirt and lift, setting them gently on the cold floor. Their bloated body shifts as they move, squelching slightly as I y them down. Their head rolls to the side once again, staring into me.

  I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this. They didn’t deserve this, none of them did. None of this would have happened if I wasn’t created.

  I stumble backwards as the child's hand reaches out at me, grasping for life. Their mouth opens, water pouring out, desperately trying to speak, but the endless flood just keeps coming. A scream pierces the air, reverberating off the cave, creating a terrified harmony.

  Corax pulling on my ear makes me look away for just a moment, and when I look back, the child is in the same position I left him in.

  “What’s wrong?” Cassie comes sprinting from around a corner, her pistol drawn, ready for anything.

  “Nothing! I’m fine!” I say hastily.

  Corax gives me a tap on my cheek, prodding me to expin.

  “I just had a small hallucination, that’s all.” I say quickly. “Sorry to make you worry.”

  Cassie looks down at the body in front of me, her face softening in understanding.

  “It’s all stone down here, there’s nowhere to bury everyone. But I found a small alcove not too far away that we can board up, if you want to move them.”

  Right, she is missing an arm. Picking people up is going to be nearly impossible for her. I just have to do this, I can colpse afterwards.

  I lean down and cradle the body in my arms. They deserve that at least. Just don’t look down.

  I follow Cassie through the remnants of the town where a small entrance sits. It opens up into a small cavern where she’s already pced a few charred corpses. I pce the child down in the center of the room, and their eyes follow me as I leave.

  I help Cassie move the rest of the citizens into the small cavern, ying them in long rows next to each other. Cassie found a bnket that she’s loading people onto, before dragging them to their final resting pce.

  It takes hours, but eventually we fit everyone inside. The two of us find a rge sheet of metal that we wedge into the entrance. It’s not the peaceful rest they deserve, but it’s the best we can do for now.

  I pick up one of the endless pieces of charcoal on the ground and begin to write a simple fact on the door.

  ‘They deserved better.’

  Cassie takes the charcoal when I’m done, and begins to write a fact of her own. A fact written in rge letters, dominating the surface, and she even circles it a few times for emphasis.

  ‘FUCK RAIDERS’

  She drops the charcoal the moment she’s done and turns to leave, marching back towards the car. I follow close behind her.

  She reaches into her backpack, pulling out a clean shirt, pants, a few scrap pieces of cloth, and fresh bandages before moving towards the edge of the ke.

  “I need both of you to turn around.” She says.

  “Alright.” I walk to the other side of the car and sit down with Corax perched on my knee.

  I hear a bloody shirt spt against the ground, followed closely by pants doing the same.

  It feels weird sitting here listening to Cassie clean herself, so instead I begin to loudly read to Corax over the sounds of spshing water.

  I slowly work my way through a few chapters before Cassie speaks again.

  “You’re good to come out.”

  Corax hops to my shoulder and I push myself to my feet.

  Cassie is still at the edge of the water, wearing a spare set of clothes, swirling her shirt around in the ke to clean it. The small clumps of hair she still has are wet, and water is slowly running down the side of her head.

  “I should probably clean too.” I’m not sure I trust my hands being completely underwater, but that’s alright, there’s another option. I strip off my shirt and put the electric pump back into the ke.

  Cassie gnces at me for just a moment before returning her focus exclusively to cleaning her shirt.

  I hold my shirt in one hand far away from me, and use the hose to rinse out the blood. It only takes a few minutes to clean it, and another few to clean my shorts. After that I grab a rag from the truck and use that to wipe off my body. It’s not as nice as the shower I took in Vegas, but feeling clean is really nice.

  I dry myself off with another few scrap pieces of fabric and leave my clothes hanging up to dry.

  “Will you put something on?” Cassie asks, still focusing on getting her clothes cleaned.

  “I don’t want to wear anything else.” I say. “But, I can do something.” I grab our bnket out of the car and cover up my body with it. It’s pretty thin, and hopefully the bottom being open to the air will help, but it won’t take too long for heat to become a problem. I can just make sure I’m away from Cassie before I have to remove it. “Does this work?”

  Cassie gnces at me for just a moment.

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” She finally pulls her pants out of the water, and spreads her clothes next to mine. She then takes a few steps to the car, and sits down against it.

  “Are you doing alright?” I ask, and sit down next to her.

  “Oh yeah, I’m doing fine. I only vomited once.”

  I’m not sure if that’s a joke or not. Just in case, I grab some water from the car and hand it to her.

  “Thanks.” She takes a small sip, swishes it around in her mouth, before spitting it into the ke. I guess it wasn’t a joke then.

  “I should have pushed harder to keep you out of here, I’m sorry.”

  “Blue,” Cassie reaches up to brush her short hair out of her face before looking at me. “Will you stop making every mistake about you?” She’s annoyed again, but is trying to keep it hidden for me. “You did what you could. Nothing short of locking me in the car could have stopped me from coming down here, it’s my choice. You want to help? Just shut up and comfort me.”

  She’s right, I need to think about her more. She must be freezing, the cave is cold as is, and she’s wet to make things worse.

  I open up the bnket and drape it around her as well, pulling it tight around the both of us so she doesn’t have to see my body. I even go so far as to drape my arm across her shoulder to transfer more heat. It’ll make me heat up faster, but I can at least keep her warm for a while.

  Corax takes off from my shoulder, disappearing against the still-dissipating smoke at the top of the cavern.

  “Is this helping?” I ask.

  She takes a few long seconds to respond, her eyes gncing around, searching for something unseen. Maybe I went too far, I shouldn’t have touched her without asking. Why am I so dumb? These thoughts swirl through my head endlessly until she finally speaks.

  “Yeah.” She eventually lets out her breath. “This is helping.” She leans into me further, resting her head on my shoulder and her arm on my thigh. Her hair tickles my cheek, and my worry withers with every touch of her skin. “You’re really warm.” She sighs.

  “Sorry you don’t have any alcohol this time.”

  She ughs, the pure sound further washing away my fears.

  She reaches through the crack in the bnket and mimes pouring out a bottle over my head.

  “Pshhhh.” She mimics the sound.

  “I didn’t have time to mention it before, but when we passed one of the drug dealers in Vegas, he changed his sign to malware and pointed at me. I think it’s possible for me to get drunk, or something close to it.”

  “I’d love to see you rex sometime.” She lets her eyes drift closed and retracts her arm into the bnket.

  “Corax and I were rexing during the week after I fixed your hand. You could have come to visit, I was feeling great.”

  “I was uh- kind of busy.” She mumbles.

  “That’s ok. I’d like to rex with you again after we save Vince and Ivy.”

  “Mm-hmm. That sounds nice.” She nods zily in agreement. “But you're buying alcohol for me.”

  “I've never actually been paid, and all I want is a new motor for Corax and a telescope. You can have the rest of it if you want.”

  She tilts her head back to look at me for a second, her emerald eyes boring into me.

  “Sorry I don’t have any skin.” I look away from her gaze.

  “You're ok, I just…You’re just…” She lets her voice trail off into nothing, only to give a small shake of her head and tuck herself back into my shoulder. “Nothing.”

  It’s not long before Cassie’s breathing slows in my arms as sleep takes her. And it’s far too soon when the heat builds up to something approaching dangerous.

  I lower the bnket from around us, only for Cassie to grasp onto it and pull it back up to her chin. I slip out of the other side, and wrap the rest of the bnket around her.

  “Sorry, I have to move you.” I carefully put one hand behind her back, being sure to support her head, and the other supporting her legs and back.

  She shifts further into me when I pick her up, leaning into me so she doesn’t fall. I carefully open up the passenger’s door, set her in the seat, and push the seat as ft as possible.

  “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She mumbles.

  I make sure to plug her battery into the car and turn the AC on for her before I leave, it’ll probably get hot in here without it.

  I slot in Lucas’ light and head into town.

  How in the world am I going to charge the car?

  JanePtinum