Who, Cerberus: An RDR Undead Nightmare Story [ John Marston x OC ]

viii. "Why I'm a natural with these undead"

John retreated from the house, heading for the old walnut tree by the fence, looking out towards Blackwater. He leaned against the tree, sliding down to sitting, grasping a fallen walnut and throwing it in a neat arc over the fence with a grunt, in the direction of the town.

There had been no comfort in this visit back to the ranch. Seeing his wife and son reduced to writhing, twisted bodies on his bedroom floor did nothing but make him hurt. The home he'd worked so hard for had been reduced to a living graveyard. John exhaled deeply, closing his eyes against the bright morning.

After a few moments, he felt the kiss of paper brushing against his cheek, his hands where they rested against his knees. He opened his eyes to see the three bills he'd thrown at Ruby in his lap, and she beyond them, her face full of concern. John gathered the money into a fist, holding it up to her, inquisitively.

Ruby chewed on her lip for a moment before exclaiming, "Jesus, Marston, you hired me to keep you alive, fuckin' listen to me now and again." His expression flipped from curious to hurt, guilt-laden, and then curious again, when Ruby wrapped her tanned arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. "I'm so sorry 'bout your family, Mr. Marston."

"Thank you, Miss Dufresne," he whispered, awkwardly patting her back, holding her briefly before gently pushing her away. Her hair smelled honeyed as she disentangled herself from him. She backed up to the fence, smiling bashfully.

"You looked like you needed that," she said. "Sorry if I was untoward." John merely nodded, afraid to admit to her - and himself - how right she was. After experiencing the physical and emotional turmoil that was his wife's attack, the press of Ruby's warm body was a salve.

"Want to talk about it?" She asked, carefully, kindly. John shook his head, his only capable mode of conversation after what he'd seen in the house.

After a few moments of still silence, he finally spoke. "How is it you always seem to know what I'm thinking?" He tried to bury the tension that had formed between them, realizing he still knew almost nothing about her. He started with what he did. "You get that in Rhodes?"

Ruby smiled, pulled a strand of long grass up from where it grew out beside the fencepost. "Sure did. Never learned to read books, so I got real good at reading people, 'specially men. Grew up around a mess of brothers."

"How many is a mess?" He was glad of the distraction, something that wasn't his sorry life.

"'Round twenty." John raised an eyebrow, which she noted, corrected. "Not my blood brothers, I mean - I came up in an orphanage."

"Ah." A sorry life of her own, then. He wanted to tell her he too had grown up an orphan, but the story had too many offshoots and digressions. Where to begin, when he was adopted by, and made in the image of, one of the most wanted criminals the country had ever seen?

"Think it's why I'm a natural with these undead," she offered, "Can sleep with one eye open and hell knows I can keep unwanted hands off me."

"So you shot your orphan brothers, that it?" John smiled to show he was joking, but then grew serious. "I've seen a few shots like you in my time, but not many. Where'd you learn your way around a gun?"

"Orphanage, still," she popped the end of the grass she'd plucked into her mouth, slid the sweet inner stem out between her teeth. John noticed how quiet she'd become, her usually cantankerous voice tamed to a gentle murmur. "It was run by a bunch of Catholic nuns who loved old west stories, turned us into a little wild west show. I had a knack for it all, the shooting and roping and riding, so they kept me out practicin' instead of doing lessons with the rest. We did performances for the big families out in Rhodes and some of the surrounding towns."