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

ix. "Strawberry don't want no trouble"

The Upper Montana river was, like most rivers, arbitrary; a result of hundreds of years of water forcing its way through rock to Flat Iron Lake beyond. Yet, despite its chance provenance, it had become deliberate, in this new world of the undead.

John and Ruby had first crossed the river via the bridge just north of Beecher's Hope. The air they rode into, undoubtedly the same as in West Elizabeth's southern half, nonetheless hung thicker, seemed more effort to breathe. There was a metallic taste on his tongue when John swallowed nervously, surveying the sky for any visual cues of the change he felt in his body. Ruby noticed his hesitation and met it with a grim smile. The atmosphere - like that before a rainstorm, yet, nary a cloud in the blue expanse above them - robbed her of her usual good-natured quipping.

They crested a low hill and spotted the abandoned Fort Riggs, its usual dirt ground cover grown over with a dark moss. No, John squinted, swore to himself he could see the moss moving. Bodies. John had once pointed out a snake ball to Jack on a walk in the forest - hundreds of wriggling garters slithering up and over each other - and it came unsettlingly to mind now. Fort Riggs crawled with so many undead that they'd formed a writhing, shapeless mass, blanketing the entire area. It was impossible to know how many there were.

Ruby and Sybil, a few yards ahead of John, finally spotted what he'd already seen. The horse and rider skid-turned and started galloping south towards the river, Ruby's face white. He and Thoreau followed, gladly. They halted once back over the water, their eyes wider than normal, panting slightly.

"Well," John said, waving his hand vaguely in the direction they'd come from. "That was...uh..."

"A horror-show, John, fuck," Ruby huffed, reaching back into her saddlebag for a nip of bourbon. She took a drink, forced the cork back in, and tossed the bottle to John, who danced Thoreau back a few steps to catch it. He shook his head slightly before tipping the neck of the bottle to his lips, the liquor hot down his throat. They'd been almost cavalier setting out from the ranch, John forcing his thoughts of his family's condition into a small corner of his mind. But the undead - scattershot so far, more an annoyance than a true quandary, with the exception of the Blackwater saloon - were something of a different animal up north.

John readied himself for another drink; steadying the bottleneck by his mouth, thinking. "We could try crossing further out from that Fort, maybe?" Ruby turned to look at him, stopped fussing with the ends of her hair. "It's out of our way, but we could head up to the crossing over at Owanjila and stop through Strawberry before heading east. Might be more pleasant a ride than..."

He trailed off, taking a sip of the bourbon and then handing it back to Ruby's coaxing fingers, she and Sybil beside him, now. She uncorked and drank deeply, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. "Anything to spare that from infecting mine eyes again, John," she said with a brief laugh, stowing the bottle and tilting her head towards Owanjila Dam. Thou dost infect mine eyes, John thought, unbidden; where had he heard that, before? Ruby spurred Sybil on with a gentle kick, and John followed, dutifully, without the time to puzzle it through.

*

"Help!"

A scream greeted John and Ruby from the Owanjila Dam's crest; they forced their horses on, drew their guns. A thin man in a torn shirt was stood on a crate, leaning against the parapet wall, dangerously close to tipping over the side and ending up in the river below. Surrounding the crate were three wolves, snarling and lunging up at him. The wolf closest to John and Ruby turned, bared its teeth.

It was a general rule that when a wolf stared and bared its teeth, one looked at the teeth, first. So by the time John and Ruby's gazes had individually moved from the pointed teeth to the wolf's eyes, glowing green; its fur, matted with dirt and old blood; its left foreleg, flesh dangling noncommittally from bright-white bone, they were already committed to shooting, largely free from the additional fear of a wolf, undead.