Hope II

Brothers

For the past few hours I have been staring at nothing but the road ahead, dead and desolate. No tree's surrounded us for now, nothing but a long road in between two fields covered in snow. 

The day was young and dark, lit only very dimly by the white morning sky above, still dropping snow on top of road and onto the windshield of the jeep, wiped by the window wipers throwing the snow off to one side.  

We need to get straight to Vertuga to properly treat Jerry's gunshot wounds before they get any worse. The bullets went straight through him, pierced only his body but luckily they did not explode inside him. He lost a lot of blood, if he and Mark did not have the same blood type... he'd probably be dead by now. Sam used the syringe in the first aid kit to draw Mark's blood and share it with Jerry. Enough to give Jerry the energy to move, and keep Mark from passing out. Two bullets, the man took two bullets and survived. I don't know what the odds are of both going straight through him, but he survived it. And his foe didn't.

The others will realise we have moved straight on to Vertuga when we don't show up... or they may think we are dead. One or the other. Either way, they will go to Vertuga. With Kate in their presence, they will realise that they must now continue the mission they originally set out for. 

The rendezvous point was a good hour off our journey to Vertuga, and that hour could mean life or death for Jerry. He may have survived the gunshots, but that doesn't mean he will survive without medical care. 

Kate is with Aaron, and although primarily she was the only intention to get to Vertuga, we now have another. We need to get Jerry there, we can rendezvous with the others when we get there, send out a signal to the radio tower to let them know we got there.

'Never realised how much I cared about you until you died' Mark laughed from the seat beside me while Sam placed a band-aid over the mark on his arm where she had pierced the needle. 

'Maybe I should play dead more often... might soften you up a bit' Jerry said, and I caught his grin when I looked into the rear view mirror. 

'So the infamous Ripper is dead' I said, bringing optimism to the conversation at the joyous remark in hopes of bringing back happiness to the air of misery. 

Jerry's smile was short lived however, and he stared into the distance again ominously, out the window to the white fields that surround us. 

'I still cant get it out of my head' he said 

'He asked me if I ever wondered about what happened to Clarke? And a walker we met on the streets... when I went to kill him... he turned his back on me and stopped, as if he were waiting to die' 

'Clarke was unstable' Sam said, fixing the syringe into the first aid kit and securing it tightly. 

'He ate a damn runner... runner bit him, and he bit back' 

'But that wouldn't mutate him the way it did' Jerry replied, and both Mark and I sat completely clueless of who or what they were both referring to, yet it intrigued us both. 

'Clarke turned into a giant beast with overgrown fungus plates and a severely mutated infection... a runner couldn't cause that, something else did. And the Ripper knew' 

Sam looked at Jerry and asked 'Why are you so curious? It's behind us' she questioned him. 

Jerry looked at me through the mirror, and then to Mark before looking back to Sam.  

'I think it has something to do with Vertuga' he said, surprising us all with the words. 

'After you shot him and he fell, Thomas whispered the words "It's Vertuga" to me... I think whatever happened to Clarke and the walker on the street, Vertuga has something to do with it'