"I don't want her living off hope!"
"There are worse things."
"You're wrong. Bad news stops us for a while, but then you move on. Hope is paralyzing."
- Criminal Minds, Season 4, Episode 25. To Hell.. and back
...
There's a chilled breeze in the air as I throw what little belongings I have back into my pack, slinging it over my shoulder. My chest throbs slightly, the many slashes and claw marks from the dogs attack still trying to heal. I blink away the thoughts of growling and teeth to look ahead, moving my feet to follow the line of everybody else's footsteps.
The plan is to follow the tracks until we reach a sort of turning point, then figure out a way to get down so we can get closer to Norfolk. According to Ivy's expectations, we should be there by midday tomorrow.
"So what did I miss when I was out?" Zay asks, walking beside me. He still looks as white as a sheet, but his eyes are bright and alert.
"Nothing much. Just murderous mutated human beings running after us and quite literally driving us up a wall." I give him the side eye. "You sure you're ok?"
Zay sighs. "Yeah, I think so. It's really weird, you know? One minute I feel like my brains gonna implode in on itself, the next I wake up thirsty. Seriously, I feel like an X-Man."
"Zay, nobody understands your ancient movie references."
"Because nobody is cool anymore." A smirk begins to form on his lips. "How's your hand?"
"What do you-?" I start to say, but then I realize what he's doing and roll my eyes. "It's great, actually, thanks for asking."
Xavier chuckles. "Ivy may or may not have slipped that hilarious bit of information in my ear last night."
"When, as you were having steamy, apocalyptic sex?"
Zay's cheeks turn a horrendous shade of red, his eyes darting to see if the girl heard me, and then it's his turn to roll his eyes. "No, you naughty little scientist. We were just talking."
"Just talking." I hum, laughing a little to myself. "Sure thing."
A loud squawking prevents any further conversation, and when I look in the direction of the sound I see a massive bird nosediving straight towards us. It's obviously mutated, with huge sharp claws and an ugly, red gaze. I barely get more than a two second glimpse of it before one of the female soldiers is whipping an arrow into her bow, pulling it back and sending it straight through the thing's eye sockets, skewering its head.
It lands in the middle of the group with a sickening crunch.
"That can't be good." Michael says, sighing, before turning his back on the creature and beginning to move again.
Nobody stops to pick the thing up, and everybody just keeps walking as if nothing had happened at all. Only the warrior girl who shot it bends down to wretch her arrow from its corpse. She wipes the greenish black blood off gingerly on her cargo pants, a grimace on her face.
More birds come after that, one every five or ten minutes swooping down on us like clockwork. Luke takes a few down with his knives, but let's arrow girl take care of it after he almost loses one to the edge of the tracks. They become more frequent the farther we walk, and this little bit of information does absolutely nothing to soothe my nerves.
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Akeldama | lrh
Fanfiction"With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is...
