in about two weeks.

CHAPTER SIX: AT THE CABIN, MARC AND ANNA ON A MISSION

"By the harshest pathways i have travelled
to a place where, for fear, I dare not move;
and if I try to change or take but a single step,
I'm dragged back there by my hair."

Garcilaso De La Vega
[unofficial translation, sonnet VI]

At the cabin, Sophia and Tom went to take care of the body, letting the other two start unloading the cargo on the porch. They followed the usual method: while searching for other potential surprises – which they found, right by the couch in the living room -, they also looked for sheets to wrap the cadaver in. The one the man had encountered with Marc was easy to take outside, the other not so much. Considering the state it was in, which I won't describe to you for your own good, it had to have been there for at least a few days. The odor was so pungent and omnipresent that staying inside without feeling like suffocating was impossible, and being outside wasn't safe either. She hadn't been in the presence of that many dead during her life, but if aked she would have sworn that the Infection made the smell so much worse.

After ordering Marc and Anna to not come in for any reason, they opened every door and window they could find, even the ones on the first floor, for some reason covered and blocked with furniture. Then they went through the routine, trying their very best not to touch the rotting flesh, using rags and gloves. Upon finding cleaning products, without which the house couldn't have been made habitable, they scrubbed the floors, throwing out everything that was bound with the stench. There weren't shovels anywhere to be found, so the couple had to ditch everything far away enough into the woods for it to not be of trouble. In the end, the house seemed to almost smell good.

Tom and Sophia sat on the steps to the porch, leaving Anna and Marc to take everything inside. The sun was almost down; they had started traveling the night before.

He lit up his second to last cigarette.

"Just one more?" she asked.

"The mall will have some packs, surely."

"You sound more optimistic than usual."

"Someone has to do the heavy lifting," he responded, blowing smoke out of his mouth. "And besides, I would rather kill myself than get comfortable with constant utter desperation."

She half-smiled, her empty look lost somewhere in the distance. "You would have been an amazing novelist."

"Yeah. Theater was a mistake."

The woman almost laughed, but what came out sounded more like a defeated sigh.

While the couple was working, Marc and Anna had had time for a productive conversation.

"How long have you known them?

The question was so out of the blue, that he flinched, having forgotten he had company. "Uh?"

"How long..."

"Why do you want to know?"

She paused, looking at him sideways. "Just... curious."

Should he tell her? He wasn't too sure. Only a few hours earlier, Sophia was so worried about her that she grabbed and threatened her. The woman had been a bit abrasive with him, but not to that extent, and he was absent during Vin's visit, so that was his first time seeing that side of her. But then, when he had come back with Tom, the two were good, the random girl they found on the street was not a potential threat anymore. Who was he to not trust her judgment?