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

xiii. "This stupid dress"

John and Ruby rode through the Heartlands in the darkness, dodging, rather than engaging, the green glowing eyes that marked the scattered undead out on the range. Before long, a halo of yellowed light grew on the horizon; the few lamps burning outside the various buildings of Emerald Ranch. Halfway through their second night without sleep, John paid the exorbitant amount the night foreman charged them for a place to rest with little more than a scowl.

It was a modest cabin - more of a shack, really - with a narrow bed and a woodstove, a small table and two chairs by the door. Ruby made for the stove, feeding in the couple of logs and dry grass the foreman had supplied to them and striking a match, coaxing a merry fire to life in short time, rubbing her bare arms in front of the glow. "I'm good here, John," she said to the flames, her back to him. "You take that bed."

"Don't start that, Miss Dufresne," he warned. "I can sleep in a chair, same as a bed."

She chirped a laugh, reaching her hands closer to the fire still. "Ain't good for your old bones."

The brass on her. He smirked. "These old bones have slept in plenty of chairs." John reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder, to implore her, to find that it felt like ice. The smile disappeared from his face. "You're freezing."

"Lost my warmer clothes back in Strawberry," she said quietly, shrugging her shoulder out of reach, offering him a small smile, instead. "The fire's fine, John, honest. I'll be warm in no time."

He snorted out an exhale, sensing that she'd argue him all the way into the morning, if not the grave. He seized the threadbare quilt from the bed instead, draped it around her. She opened her mouth, but he held up a finger, backing onto the mattress and kicking off his boots, laying back with a groan. "Compromise is when no one's happy, Miss Dufresne, but it might mean both of us get a little sleep." He pulled his hat over his eyes, succumbing almost instantly to a deep, needed slumber.

John awoke to the continued dark, his teeth chattering. The fire reduced to a few embers seen through the woodstove's open door barely illuminated a shivering Ruby, curled into a ball under the quilt. He staggered to his bare feet, clutching his arms around himself. "C'mon, Miss Dufresne," his voice was gravelly from sleep, rasped more so than usual. "We need new ways to be unhappy, here, 'fore we both freeze to death."

She moaned gently in protest, but was encouraged to climb onto the bed all the same, facing the wall, John stock straight beside her on his back, the quilt over them both. Soon, their shared heat warmed them, and Ruby's shivering ceased.

Hours later, John woke to daylight, feeling both the pleasing, warm weight of Ruby's head and arm on his chest, and the heart-wrenching fear of a shotgun's twin barrels in his face, wielded by a rather unfinished-looking young man.

"Get up, stretch," he ordered to John around a lipful of tobacco, prodding him with the gun. Ruby awoke then, springing from John's body, her back pressed against the wall. She looked between them, eyes wide, hands repeatedly making for her hips to find the revolvers, absent, draped over the back of a chair, instead.

"You ain't in no position to argue, feller," another voice chimed, with the strained vocal whine of a particular kind of southern man. An equally-young man with flax-coloured hair seized Ruby by the arm, yanking her from the bed, holding a knife to her throat to stop her struggling. "You're in the shit for sleepin' with the rancher's daughter."

"This stupid dress," Ruby lamented, more to herself than the overcrowded room, then louder, "We didn't sleep together, and I ain't the daughter, you hayseed piece of shit."

"Su-ure you ain't," the flaxen-haired man singsonged, pausing to spit onto the floor beside him. He hauled her backwards out the door, the shotgun-wielding one prodding John to follow. They marched them down the main causeway of the ranch, past pens of cattle and sheep, drawing the attention of several other of the ranch hands, the foreman.