amicus certus in re incerta

The Birth of an Alliance

He lets you stay in his makeshift campsite with the caveat that you split anything you scavenge together. You're more than willing to oblige as long as you get to watch his chest rise and fall over and over again.

It's been too long since you've encountered anything but death. It's worth whatever final demerits the Commission strikes against your record.

Although he doesn't admit it aloud, Five doesn't mind the company, either. It's weird, creepy, unsettling, and a complete burden on his already limited resources, but it's nice to hear your voice, rough from disuse, and share glances with you that mean something, that convey messages.

In the first week he's known you, Five leads you down a street he hasn't scavenged yet. He knows it's unlikely to be as good as some of the other spots he's found, and he's grateful for it. The last thing he wants is to sacrifice the good stuff to you if you're going to turn around and attack him.

The pickings are slim, and he can't help being unnerved as he sees you across rubble. It's been so long since he's seen another person, half of him suspects you're a hallucination. But Delores said you aren't, so he's content with more or less trusting you for now.

You're good at finding food to eat. That's a bonus of your company, at the very least. Somewhere in Iowa, you'd found work gloves, which means you dig through the rubble with a rigor that surprises and horrifies Five.

He isn't that good at providing company, but he helps cook the food the two of you find, and at the end of every day, he sits with you at the fire, choking down rationed food well beyond the cusp of expiring and watching the sun be swallowed by the horizon.

You're beautiful when painted in oranges and pinks and golds. He doesn't tell you that. In fact, you're usually the one to break the silence, small words and phrases lapsing into comfortable silence again and again.

"It's weird," you observe one night. "It's terrible here. And it's bad in little places all over, too. But in others, things are just roughed up a little from the wind."

"What are you saying?" he grumbles. It's his fifth day of canned tuna, and he would rather eat dirt. But unlike the dirt, the goddamn tuna's perishable, so he feels obligated to eat it first.

"The whole world's destroyed. But something happened here."

You sound distracted, and he looks up to find you gazing across the wreckage of his home town. It takes a moment for your words to click; he hasn't taken in this much information related to anything beyond basic survival for ages. "You don't know what happened?"

"No. They never told me."

He wonders if there's a way to find out. Maybe he could take you hostage, force the Commission to tell him the truth. But then he looks up again. You're wringing your hands together against the oversized, grimy coat you'd undoubtedly pilfered from some place in the North. Despite your strength and survival skills, you still manage to look impossibly young, impossibly anxious. He doesn't trust you, but he doesn't want to hurt you, either.

Your unlikely alliance of scavenging continues on for several weeks. You see new parts of the city, occasionally with commentary from Five about what once was in place of the decimated buildings. However, it's clear from scavenging that he hadn't been to the city in a while; the remaining rubble often indicates a change of business that leaves him quiet and puzzled. You give him space when the bouts occur. He seems most amenable to that approach.

It's hard work, digging through the rubble. You don't waste too much time talking during the excursions, and you rely heavily on Five's guidance. He helps you find places to search. Occasionally, there's even running water, though it's nearly black as tar, so you rely on rationed water collected from rainstorms.

The city itself is cold and unforgiving. There are bodies. So many bodies. Picking over the rubble carefully can only do so much when every misstep sends you careening towards a corpse.

Calm and collected. You just need to be calm and collected.

It's hard to stay calm and collected when he stares across the rubble at you, eyes bright and curious but not without judgment.

He's beautiful. You've noticed that more and more as the weeks drag on. But he's also smart and resourceful. He's a good partner to have been stranded with, and you can only hope he feels similarly with every sealed can and warm blanket you manage to find.

As he leads you down a street with felled trees, you wonder what he was really like before the apocalypse. Had he always been so quiet and reserved? How much had this world—the world without—changed him. Was it for the better or the worse?

Your thoughts are distracting. As you crest a mountain of rubble, your foot slips, and you brace for the sharp scrape of concrete hitting skin well before you've hit the ground. An arm—warm, solid, and safe—smacks across your shoulders and hauls you upright before the dreaded splat can occur. Fire licks through your lungs, and Five clearly feels similarly because his chest heaves as he stares at you. "Be careful," he chides.

"Sorry," you whisper.

He pulls away, and you mourn the loss of pressure, ducking your head so he can't read the despair in your expression.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," you lie, knowing everything wrong with you is firmly rooted on the inside. "I'm all good. We don't need to stop."

Five nods once, hair flicking into his eyes momentarily. "We're close, anyway. Just around this corner."

"Good."

The rest of the trek down the rubble is easy solely because you're paying attention this time. Thankfully, you don't have much farther to go. Five remembers a convenience store just around the block; you're both hoping it has something other than canned fish and beans. Both of you give the corner a wide berth, content to avoid the smattering of glass littering the ground—blown out windows and maybe a sign? You'll never really know.

It happens in an instant.

You both freeze as the stench of death washes over you, ripping the breath from your lungs and trapping them in a vice until your eyes water.

"Fuck," Five growls beside you. "What is that?"

He'd come upon public spaces before. They always reeked of rotting flesh, but nothing had ever hit him quite this hard.

There are tears slipping from your eyes, stinging trails down your dusty cheeks—even if you survive this, you'll be infused with asbestos from the inside out. Whether the tears are from the smell or the realization, you're not sure, but you manage to keep your voice impressively flat as you answer, "It's a school."

He stiffens beside you. There are no words to describe the pain of that statement. The horror.

You move on. But neither of you say much for the rest of the evening.