The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 53

Mal was chased out of her dreams by monsters.

From the moment she'd fallen asleep, she had gone running through a nightmare landscape where gigantic trees rose in black trunks that towered a thousand feet above her, their leaves burning with intense yellow fire. Mal ran through a field of blackened grass, and with every step a withered white hand would shoot up through the soul to grab her. She dodged and jagged and stumbled as hand after hand burst through the charred topsoil to claw at her.

No Infected emerged... just the reaching hands with their broken nails and bloodless skin.

As she ran she called Negan's name, but the hot wind snatched his name away and tore it to soundless fragments. She could not see him anywhere. She ran and ran.

She saw Max walking slowly away from her among the sea of clutching hands. Mal ran to him and grabbed his arm and spun him around. Max stared at her with black eyes. Max's face was the color of pale honey wax, and his teeth were all broken stumps. When Max opened his mouth to speak, all that escaped was the starving moan of a Runner.

"Max? Oh, no. NO!" Mal yelled, and backed away. Pale hands grabbed her ankles and held her as Max took one unsteady step toward her, and then another. And another. Mal screamed again and kicked her way free just as Max's dry fingers brushed her face. Mal ran as ash drifted down from the burning trees.

"NEGAN!" She cried, but still her voice had no volume. No power.

There was movement and color off to her left, a flash of red, and Mal cut that way. She saw Dylan sitting cross-legged on the hood of a burned-out car, his face crewed up with concentration as he tried to repair the broken pieces of his father's fishing rod. Lying slumped against the side of the car was a slender figure covered with bright red blood.

Vix!

Mal hurried to her and knelt down, trying to figure out where her friend was hurt. "Vix! Vix... can you hear me? Max is... oh, god."

Vix's eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. There was still life in her eyes, a wet glimmer deep in the brown irises. Vix tried to smile. She began speaking very slowly and softly, and Mal had to bend close to hear.

"Everything out here wants to kill you, Mal," Vix said.

"Vix! Where are you hurt?"

Vix lifted a hand, and with one bloody finger she tapped her temple. "It hurts in here, Mal. Nothing in here works anymore. How could you lie?" Then the hand fell limply away, and Vix slumped over sideways, her last breath rattling from her throat.

Mal fell backward, kicking herself away from Vix. More hands burst through the dirt and clamped around her wrists.

"No!" Mal bellowed, and she twisted and kicked and hit the fingers until they broke apart and became hot ash. She spat out the ashes and scrambled to her feet. Max was still coming toward her.

"You should have never came here," Dylan said without looking up from what he was doing. "'Cause you know that you're all gonna die out here. Except you. You'll only be with him."

"Where's Negan?" Mal demanded.

Dylan looked up. Instead of eyes he had two empty black holes in his face.

"He's him. You'll let everyone die... and it's your fault."

Anger and revulsion warred in Mal's heart, but she backed away. Suddenly hands grabbed her. Not cold hands of the buried dead, but two large, warm hands. They touched her back, then her shoulders, and finally the sides of her face. Mal turned slowly, gratitude and relief flooding her heart.

"Negan... God! Where were you?"

Her voice trailed away. Negan was an apparition, his eyes were not the hazel color... they were wrong. His eyes glowed in one blue and one in red. Then in the flash the dreadful effect turned himself to Charlie. Charlie stood over her as a withered but powerful thing. His dyed hair was patchy and blotched. His skin was leached of color and there were clear signs of bites on his cheek and shoulders and arms. Worst of all, his head is dented from the smash of Negan's bat Ellie.

"Oh, Mal," he said, and then he smiled. Rotting lips peeled back from jagged teeth. "How much a fool you are."

-:-:-:-:-

Mal screamed herself awake.

She sat up, gasping, heart pounding, her body drenched in sweat. Cold starlight filtered through the leaves, casting the world into a blue-white strangeness, as alien as the dreamscape from which she'd just escaped.

Mal turned to Negan, surprised that her scream hadn't startled him awake. Or had the scream been part of the dream too? She touched his arm to gently shake him.

But his skin was as cold as ice.

"W-what...?" Mal's voice was hollow and brittle.

She shook him and he moved stiffly, his limbs already freezing into the rigidity of rigor mortis.

"No!" She fumbled at his throat, trying to find his pulse, needing to find at least the thread of it. All she found was slack skin beneath which nothing moved. "NO!"

Mal grabbed him and pulled him to her, a new scream rising like volcanic lava in her chest. How could this be? How was it possible? Had he been bitten? Where? When?

"Oh, fuck. Please don't leave me, Negan. Please." She sobs in a mess. He was like a block of ice in her tiny frame and her arms, and Mal cried out his name over and over again.

Negan stayed cold and dead in her arms.

Until he moved.

Mal recoiled from him, staring at him, her splintering mind scrabbling for that last bit of hope. Please... let him be okay! Maybe he's just sick. I cant lose you, Negan. Please... please... please!

Negan opened his eyes.

They were muddy glowing brown diseased eyes of a Runner.

With a snarl of impossible hunger, he lunged at her.

-:-:-:-:-

And she woke up.

The forest was as black as death. The crickets pulsed and the night owls hooted. Negan laid on the tree with Mal on top of his warm reality chest.

Mal touched his moving chest. Her heart hammered and hammered. Sweat poured down her face, mingling with her tears.

"Negan," she said gently. He moaned softly in his sleep, then he slowly opened his eyes. Brown eyes. Not glowing and muddy and black.

"What's wrong?" He said, touching her face with his thumb to feel the wet tears streaked over her cheek. "It's okay. I'm here, Mal. It's only a nightmare. I'm here."

Mal let herself snuggling against him. He held her as tightly as he could before going back to sleep. Mal did not sleep again the rest of the night.

She did not dare.