Apocalypse Tango

ladydarke

A SHORT STORY IN "THE RAGGED" WORLD

Warning: Rated NC17 for graphic content, foul language, violence, sexual content.

Broken Glass is not about zombies. This is a short story written to expand on a 24 Hour Comic I did set in the world of a zombie novel I am writing, called "The Ragged." There was so much interest during the process of this comic, which you can read by navigating to it in the dropdown menu, that I wrote this short story based on the book to further introduce the main character, Nico, from the comic and to allow some exploration of the world.

Warning: Rated NC17 for graphic content, foul language, violence, sexual content.

"Dude, you wanna learn to dance? Now? In the middle of a zombie apocalypse?"

"Yeah, so?"

Frigid wind dodged between buildings and Nicodemus Velazquez widened his stance on the ice-caked rope bridge as it bucked, riding out the turbulence like a sailor in a storm. Winter gasped, catching its breath as abruptly as it had screamed, and he stepped quickly forward into the lull. Holding a black bag tucked under one arm, his free hand shuffled steadily along the frosted stiffness of a single guide-wire; the only guard against a two-story fall to the street below, white with snow and fog and the pale, hungry dead.

A wall loomed almost close enough to touch, certainly close enough to see the gaping wooden shutter and speak to the man inside holding it open against the wind. His heel found the snow-dusted floor within, and a gloved hand shoved the back of Nico's neck, sending him sprawling forward and down, chest skidding over the aureole of drifting snow. His black medical bag flew loose and scudded along with him, handcuffed to his wrist.

"Oops." The other man strong-armed the shutter closed in an abrupt cancellation of both wind and light, dropping a garden-gate style latch into place. He turned lazily in the sudden shadow, boots creaking in the cold, and grinned with teeth on edge. "Thought you were gonna fall."

"Yeah, not until you helped with that." Nico got up quickly and quietly and ready to move, eyes darting around the chill stillness of the stairwell entry point. The stairs to the first floor had been forcibly removed, leaving only a few struts of twisted metal. He spared a glance for the pitch blackness below, then scanned the second story landing door, intact stairs leading upward into what thin, milky light dribbled in from the snow-covered windows on the floors above. "Is the building clear?"

"Thom and me swept it, though like the captain always says, keep your eyes open for the one that got missed. Barricades are double-checked and reinforced. This old hotel is as secure as it's gonna get."

"So where's your partner? He's not dead or my beeper would have gone off." Nico unlocked the medical bag, chained to him against loss during his precarious trek over the streets in the wind. He brushed off his Superman knapsack and coat, wiping the snow from his eyelashes. "Did he get bit? His transponder ain't gonna trigger on my reader until fever actually sets in and his temperature rises."

"Thom's reconnoitering the area, looking for a position across the way so if one of us gets taken out, the other can clear up the situation and call for the resurrection man."

"'Kay, you already did that last part." Nico picked up his black bag again, the traditional doctor's kit further emphasized with a reflective red cross as a hopeful badge of safe passage. "Where's my patient?"

The blonde soldier fidgeted.

Nico raised a brow. "Just us breathers, then? No zombies here needing resuscitation?"

"Nope, no ragmen."

"Seriously. Fauche. Dude. You got on the radio, opened a private channel, and called me to the complete opposite side of the district - in a snowstorm - like it was a giant emergency just to tell me you got, like, this sudden urge to tango?"

"It's not a blizzard yet, just kicking up to be one."

"Like hell it's not a blizzard yet. I wouldn't want to try to make my way back in that, not over the skyway and even less on the ground." Nico sighed without rancour, glancing towards the shuttered skyway entry window. He said softly, "What's with the fog, anyway? I know they dust the sky over the city with it to, like, keep zombies off google earth or whatever, but that wind must'a been forty clicks an hour. Whatever they're seeding, it's gotta be viscous. Just kinda stirs around even with that gale. Jeez, you can't even hear the fighters and stuff they got up there all the time, way it's screaming out there."

"That's right, I forgot this is your first winter in Winnipeg. This isn't a blizzard." The soldier grabbed a knotted rope tied to the top of the missing stairway and rappelled easily down. His voice lanced up from the shadowed hole. "Congrats on being the lucky white coat the military picked to insert inside the perimeter wall."

"They didn't." Nico offered his gentle half smile before swinging over the edge and following Fauche down one-handed, the bag once again under his arm. "Technically, it was the government, not the military, and they picked my old professor, not me; he just wanted an assistant." He hit floor and released the rope, said mildly, "Also, us getting infected was accidental, not an intentional insertion."

"Sure, believe that."

The soldier shoved open the stairwell door in a line of pale light, and Nico hesitated. "Fauche, hold up a second. Why are we down here? It's safer up a level; the ragged can't climb."

"There's something I want to show you."

Nico uneasily followed the other man into the hotel lobby, an expanse of darkness looming with the half-seen shapes of furniture. He stayed behind Fauche, letting the soldier take point and find their way in the frigid murk. The windows here had been boarded over. A dining table had been tipped over the outer door and boarded into place, then further reinforced with an upended couch. Little streams of light slunk through cracks in the window 'cades and trembled in lines across the tiled floor, showing up dust, old blood, and the thin debris of a passing human presence; empty cans, crumpled paper, a dessicated boot, all glistening with shards of glass from the shattered windows like a sprinkling of ice. Their breath sparkled silver in the dimness. Cold settled and stirred restlessly through the lobby, and Nico saw Fauche flexing his fingers over and over in a continual effort to keep them warm enough to draw his gun without fumbling.

The blonde soldier made a direct line into a hall, then opened another door, made a habitual check of the room, and gestured Nico inside. He glanced at Fauche, then brushed past, reflexively performing the same check.

And stopped in surprise as he took in the stage with its pole and the stools lining it. Clustered tables all faced inward. He looked over his shoulder at Fauche. "This is a strip club."

"Burlesque Palace."

"You called me across the entire district to show me an abandoned strip joint. Dude, there's not even any zombie girls here."

"It's the only place in Saint Boniface I could find with a dance floor," Fauche snapped, then scowled, pausing to shut the door lest anything come at them from behind. When he looked back at Nico, he had arranged his face into a pleasant expression. That smile, teeth set so that it better resembled a snarl, made a return. "I want you to teach me to tango."

"What makes you think I even know how?"

"You're a slut. I thought that was part of your repertoire."

Nico lifted both brows, said with perfect calm patience, "Wow, that's a real diplomatic approach for asking a favor."

Fauche ground his teeth but held the grin. "Well, you have to admit you get around."

"Not so much, actually. Odds are the women in the city are gonna either quote you a price or give you a free bullet."

"That's how it'd work for me or any of the rest of us." Fauche glowered under his military crop; self-cut and somewhat jagged, but institutional enough to maintain his mostly-clean-shaven, square-jawed, lean, mean army-boy look. "You; you've got your..." His finger swirled in the air like a wand. "Magic touch. Maybe girls like you 'cause you look like one."

Nico shook his head, ignoring the bait. "I'm goin' back upstairs now."

Fauche remained in front of the door, chest puffing out like a rooster. His smile widened. "What about your boss? I hear you're all shacked up with the resurrection queen, the Director of the Pale Band."

"What?" Nico took a step back, eyeing the soldier. "Funny, Gina accused me of the same thing. Oh, no, wait; never mind. You heard it from her."

"C'mon, you made it through resuscitation training in what? Three days? That's a little unprecedented given every other recruit the captain sent up to white coat school is gonna be in there for years."

Nico sighed, said quietly. "You know what? They took my M.D. into account. Real fishy how they didn't make me repeat medical school, yeah? Must mean I slept my way into the Pale Band. Can you please just put that rumour to bed? I'm getting a little tired of it."

"Fine. The ferryman's daughter, then."

"Dude." Nico rolled his eyes. "She's seventeen. Also, she flirts and flashes everybody. She's lucky her dad resembles a grizzly bear or she'd'a got in trouble ages ago."

"Wait, she actually flashed you?"

"Uhhhh...no, 'course not."

"What about the Grey Nuns holding out in Saint Boniface General Hospital? I've seen it when you do rounds up there, how a gaggle of them follows you around cooing and giggling. You've got yourself a harem!"

"Nuns, Fauche. Nuns."

"Well, how about this? You have a stalker, Nico! It's post-apocalyptic zombies, and you have a female stalker!" Fauche shoved him triumphantly, knocking him back. "The prosecution rests!"

Nico took an additional step back as if still off-balance. He ran a hand through overgrown hair, dragging it off his face. It pushed his loose, shapeless toque accidentally askew. After a moment he smiled, sweet and soft as a painted Madonna. Serene, he said, "I don't wanna talk about that."

Fauche's eyes dropped. His shoulders slumped, aggression deflating. "So you can't dance."

"Well..." Nico shifted uncomfortably, juggling the medical bag to his other hand. "Yeah, okay, maybe a bit. Just stuff I picked up..." the soft voice trailed away as he incriminated himself, "...here and there from various girls over the years...and stuff..."

An embarrassed shrug, and Nico grinned ruefully. "Yeah. We're pretty much storm-stayed anyway. May as well pass the time. No premeditation there at all, hey, dude? Lemme call in."

He thumbed on his police-style radio. "Nico in. Holding position on the eastern border with Fauche and Thom. Try not to die until the snow stops and I can get to you. Over."

"Captain here. Can't--scshhhhskkkkh --breaking up--zzzkkkkkkkk--please repeat."

"Nico in. Holding position on eastern border."

"Captain here--" Static fizzled into a long parade. "Acknowledged. Over and out."

Nico let up the switch and glanced at Fauche. "Connection's out. Wind probably took down one of our antennae."

"Fuck!" Fauche kicked backward, slamming his foot into the door, and pressed his own transmitter. "Fauche in. Thom, do you read?"

An empty crackle, then a garbled voice. "Thom in. It's not a good signal."

"Fauche in. You heard that last transmission. We're cut off until the Copper Band can get out there and do repairs. Means we can't rely on being able to mayday each other, even just the next building over."

"Thom in. Want to hole up together?"

"Fauche. Naw, I think it's better we keep the two locations, so if one goes we know for a fact we have a confirmed bolthole to pull back to. Weather out there isn't gonna give us the luxury of setting up a new safehouse on the fly."

"Thom in. Agreed. We need to check in every few hours, though, and do a house call if we can't raise a signal."

"Fauche. Affirmative. Out." He released the radio and eyed Nico. Anger still polluted his tone. "So how do we do this?"

"Man, you're gonna be peaches to be stuck with. Let's go have a look at your dance floor."

Nico crossed the room and vaulted effortlessly onto the stage, where Fauche had rigged a string of Christmas lights feeding off a car battery. The strand laced the edge of the stage and twined up the pole, weeping a creamy golden radiance.

"Looks like you cleaned the floor, too," Nico commented, scuffing the toe of his beat-up work boot over the boards; no dust stirred. "You did a lot of work."

"And there's music." Fauche leapt onto the stage after him, both of them young and wiry and fit as starved foxes from life in the plague city. He crouched beside an iPod with speakers, also hooked into the battery. "C'mere and look, see what's good for a tango. I've been scrounging around for a while, but I couldn't get much."

Nico knelt beside him, tilting the screen so they could both see the skimpy directory. "Dude, Tom Lehrer? The Masochism Tango?"

"Well, its got tango in the name, doesn't it?"

Nico pressed play without a word, letting the song speak for him.

I ache for the touch of your lips, dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.
You can raise welts
Like nobody else,
As we dance to the masochism tango.

"What?" Fauche demanded. "It's not like I could be picky. So it's no good?"

"No, it's a tango. It'll work." Nico stood up and took center stage as the song played on repeat. "'Kay, this is how you stand."

Fauche stood facing him as if they were on opposing sides of a dojo, copying the stance.

"Good. Now, you lean back a bit, like this; idea is both partners are sort of leaning away with, like, a martini glass effect and stuff. Then you turn your head to the side, like this, so you're sort of looking away from each other. Yeah, yeah." Nico stepped forward, adjusting the angle of Fauche's back by demonstrating with his hands but not actually making contact. "'Cept you wanna be leaning to the side, not backwards; back is gonna throw off your balance. Okay. The tango basic is five steps and the beat goes like this - slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, T-A-ng-O. So it's like, step, step, step, side-step, together. Now you do it."

They crossed the stage, Fauche following behind Nico like a duckling, mirroring his movements.

"Okay. Yay!" Nico clapped. "Now you can tango."

He made a beeline for the edge of the stage. Fauche grabbed his arm.

"No. Lame. You agreed, now do it proper."

Nico sighed resignedly and pulled off his coat, removing the armband from its sleeve before tossing it aside. Fauche tore his own off and threw it beside Nico's like a glove. The two jackets lay in an identical heap, battered urban fatigues sewn here and there with Kevlar plates and fitted with removeable arctic liners. Both bore the MDC crest: the Ministry of Disaster Control, the provisional government that had formed inside the walled city. The only difference was in the brassards each man now tied around his bicep; Nico's of a pale grey-green and stitched with a simple pale lightning bolt on a black field, the sigil of a resucitationist, while Fauche's sported a peace symbol on the black shield; the red band of the Peacekeepers. The blonde soldier had a second band, which he fastened beneath the first with a look of sour distaste, this one of unmarked reflective white cloth. Nico gave him a sympathetic look as he tied it.

They faced each other in the cold, several steps apart. Neither moved for a long moment, until Fauche bared his teeth in that savage smile and threw Nico in an exaggerated dip. "Christ, Nico. Your hands are warm. How the hell are you warm?"

Nico jerked backward, then cooperated. "Mammalian features. Jeez."

"Must be your hot Latin blood." Fauche shook his head. "Well, that's gonna make this more pleasant than I thought."

"Whatever. Kay, the flavor of tango is, like, adversarial, all about the drama. It's like you're stalking your partner across the floor and she retreats. Each movement is thrown out like a challenge."

"Not a problem." Fauche began marching them across the stage.

"But really," Nico went on, "there's subtle leads and cues you got to give, telling her what's coming, where to go, when to move.

"Let's try the corte. It's like a little dip thingie. See, you take a step back, 'stead of forward, and as you do it, you put just a little pressure on the small of the lady's back, where you have your hand, so she knows where you're going. Then you stop and you support her while she does this leaning thing, like so. That covers slow-slow, then it's back to the basic for quick-quick-slow."

"Like this." Fauche yanked Nico forward and he stumbled frantically to avoid bumping into the other man's chest.

"Yeah, not so much. Do that with a lady, 'specially in heels, and you're gonna have her on the floor. It's a lead, not a frickin' judo throw."

"Sorry. Let's try that again."

* * *

Upstairs, in the chill and dark and still of the stairwell, the latch bobbled and the shutter flung inward in a skirling curtain of wind-driven snow. A pale figure blew in with it, shivering and blue, wrapped in nothing but a sheet. She crouched against the wall, rocking, disoriented, arms around herself. She shuddered with eyes wide and staring, listening to the music floating from below, so out of place in the storm and the desolate cold.

It led her like a golden thread, drew her out of that frozen vestibule, falling more than climbing to the floor below. She crawled in shivering silence down the hall, on hands and feet like a lizard, until she pressed her ear against a door and heard the music; the exchange of male voices. She cringed back, twisted, rubbing her hands, made to run - then crept back. Again she put her ear to the door; listening, listening with such intensity she quivered.

"Not so much. Try the left promenade again"

"I thought the tango was supposed to have all these kicks. Why aren't we kicking?

"Well, for one thing, I don't want you kicking between my legs. For another, this is ballroom tango, not Argentine."

"But you're Latin."

"Okay. One: I'm Cuban-Canadian, not Argentine. Two: I've never been further south than Toronto. Three: I speak French, not Spanish. What all that adds up to is, I don't know the Argentine tango. And I still don't want you kicking me in the crotch."

She wound clumsy, cold fingers around the doorknob, beginning to turn, freezing at every sound from within; jittering, waiting, listening, managing to turn it another fragment before startling again when they spoke.

"Anyone who knows how to fight has better control than that. If I kick you, it's 'cause I damn well meant to. Christ, Nico, leave it to you to know how to dance and not fight. I mean, look at me: it's hell on earth over here and I'm taking the time to work on my social skills. You'd think you'd pick up some martial arts, you pussy bastard."

Her breath fluttered at the edges of her blue lips. She swallowed and kept easing the latch open.

"And not even that, Nico. What about the most basic defense possible? What about actually carrying a firearm like every other person with an iota of survival instinct?"

She inched the knob a little further; stealthily, oh so stealthily.

"I'm just not the cowboy type, Fauche."

She spread her shaking fingertips on the door and gave the tiniest bit of pressure; just the smallest increment of her weight.

"Fuck that! I know the captain tried to give you a gun when you first signed on, and you were like, 'Heavens, no, I'm too pussy to shoot anybody, even if they're already dead and trying to eat my face!'" The voice started off doing a high-pitched mockery and ended in a raging snarl.

She froze again, her weight poised. Her heart pounded on and on before she again leaned a subtle pressure against the door. It moved millimeters, just millimeters, so slowly - oh, so cautiously - that movement would never be detected.

"I'm not Red Band, Fauche," the calm, gentle voice remarked. "Not a Peacekeeper. I'm not the one who goes in to clear buildings. I'll try to hold the 'cades 'til the place can evacuate, sure, but if they cave, I'm gonna book it and call in the cavalry."

"And what if there's civilians at stake, huh? Huh? What then? You run off and leave them to die, defenseless?"

"If it's a major breach, having a gun isn't gonna save the day. The ragged come swarming in and even if you're armed, it's the best you can do to get out alive, then come back when the feeding's over and most the ragmen are gone to try to take the building back."

The door stood open a crack, just the minutest crack, enough for her to press her darting eye to the jamb and peer inside.

The two men were poised in a twinkling aurora of jury-rigged stage lights, kilted away from one another even as they stood joined in dance, one wearing the red band and the other with the pale. Uniform black tank tops, uniform fatigue pants in faded grey urban colors, similar lean builds, sleek and muscled like hunting cats; all made them look like a performance troupe. The resemblance ended there. The blonde stood taller by an inch or two, chin jutted forward, chest following, his whole body taut. Dog tags from a former life glinted at his throat and guns and knives were laced over his limbs in a personal arsenal. The shorter man was darker, tawny skin merging with the golden light as if it were water, his posture smooth, all quiet grace. Unkempt black hair stuck out beneath his shapeless toque, grown long enough to hang past his eyes. The suggestion of dark stubble brushed his chin. Metal sparkled around his neck as well; a jumbled collection of devotional medals, the cheap tin discs stamped with the images of saints. The dark one had a careless appearance where the other's was as polished as possible. The blonde emoted everything, expression sliding over his face and through his voice, while serenity hovered over the brunette's fine gentle features and thoughts moved in the depths behind his dark eyes.

Their heads turned in tandem, the light and the dark, and they went through a promenading turn like stalking lions.

"Screw that!" The blonde threw the dark one into a violent dip. "It's not even just the ragged! There's enough psychos and robbers and murderers out there, it doesn't take a dead man to kill you. You need to be able to defend yourself."

"Dude, I keep telling you, don't shove and drag like that. Lead." The dark one arched back upward and their heads snapped into another promenade. "Anyway, not carrying a weapon kinda means I don't got to use one. Turn yourself into a gunfighter and then it's all about going, 'yeah, you can't take me,' and then the black hats are, like, 'dude, I'm gonna call you on that.' I don't throw out a challenge, man, I'm just there."

"That's just fine until someone notices you off cringing in your corner and decides they're gonna help themselves to your medical supplies, or your food or, hell, just plain see how you bleed."

"Well, that's when I point out if they take out the resurrection man, I'm not gonna be there to rez them when they go down themselves. Also, mess with me and I'll remember their face when I'm doing the rounds of the ragged."

"No way. That works?"

"Guess so, if they give me half a chance to talk 'em out of it. I don't go down any more often than you cowboys do." They did another promenade. "Dude, the cues. You're supposed to give the cues, not wrench your partner into place. This is, like, chronic with you."

"Just takes one exception, doesn't it?" The blonde flung him into another dip, smiling with teeth set and bared. "It didn't work with your stalker. She's one of the Four Horsemen, the bloody Ministry of Disaster. That's the smartest, fastest, most coordinated horde of the most aware zombies we got in Winnipeg. That's danger on wheels in their ridiculous Munster-mobile car," his voice rose, crackling with anger, "and when they're alive - whatever crazy-ass motherfucker keeps rezzing those bastards - there's no reasoning with them! I saw your corpse the last time you met up with her, Nico!"

The Peacekeeper whipped the resuscitationist into a promenade turn, almost causing him to fall, catching him by throwing him into next basic, shouting into his face, the tendons rigid down his neck. "What she did to you--she ate you like a hyena, right through the groin and into the gut! I puked, Nico!"

"Jeez, seriously, take a pill and call me in the morning." Nico pulled away and took a step back, hands spread. He spoke with calm patience, though he kept his eyes lowered, hidden. "I got better, right? Resuscitate and wake up whole. I'm kinda lucky that way. S'okay.

"It's not okay!" The blonde rounded on him, finger pointing in his face. "Dying is not okay! Getting tortured to death is not okay! You get immunity, you bastard! I got immunity!" He violently slapped the reflective white band on his arm; a symbol that spoke to a resuscitationist about his condition when he could not. "Die often enough, die hard enough, and you stop coming back easy! Hell, eventually they figure you'll stop coming back at all, and that's it, Nico."

Fauche shoved him, hard, with both hands. "The ragmen don't die."

Shove. "You can't kill them so it sticks! That's forever and no coming back!"

Shove. "And the worse you get yourself butchered, the bigger the chance for immunity!"

A final shove, knocking him into the backstage wall. Fauche roared, "And you could have saved yourself! All you had to do was shoot her!"

"Fauche. It's all right. I can take it." Gentle against the rage, dark eyes met the other man's. "But I couldn't handle gunning a woman down in cold blood."

She pressed against the tiny crack, her eye flickering from man to man, watching the exchange, flinching and trembling, but holding herself immobile, unseen. Her senses quivered, nervous and extended, and she whipped around as a faint sound caught at the edge of her attention.

It didn't come from the room. This was from behind, from the window. She scuttled away from the door, fast and silent in her tangle of sheet, back down the hall into the dark. She peered up from the blackness at the stairwell.

Food.

The smell of food, thick and rich. It nearly drove her crazy when she had thought herself so numb she could feel nothing. Her mouth flooded. She scrabbled at the knotted rope, managing to drag herself up, drawn on by that tantalizing scent of meat. She slithered down the darkened hall after it, so very cautious, creeping along the floor, along the shadows, until a man came into sight. He wore the Ministry uniform, a red band around his sleeve. He was big, this one, and he strode with watchful confidence down to a janitor's closet, disappearing inside with the pot of food.

She crouched in the shelter of one of the rooms, weaving to and fro, up and down, naked in her sheet in the cold, her hands wringing. Her lips moved with stiff slowness, a silent, twisted laugh.

The man left again, heading for the stairwell. She followed him, quiet and unseen; saw him descend to the lower level.

She slunk back the way she had come, towards the closet with its irresistible aroma.

* * *

"MDC!" Thom called, announcing his presence before he entered the burlesque hall. Nico and Fauche looked up from opposite ends of the stage. The blonde Peacekeeper shadow-boxed against the wall. The doctor sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage in reverential stillness, quietly counting over his medallions like a rosary.

"Stone soup's done." Thom came up and took one of the stools, plunking a covered bowl on the stage in front of him. He pulled off the lid and gobbled a spoonful; said with his mouth full, "I dropped the pot off in your bolthole, Fauche. It's there whenever you guys are ready for it."

The black man moved his eyes between the silent others as he ate. "What? The two prettyboys in the crew aren't dancing together like pretty fairies?"

Fauche snarled his grin. "We're taking a break. We needed to cool down."

Thom grunted, slurping his stew. "Interesting music."

Fauche flushed and turned off the Masochism Tango. "It's got the right beat."

Nico stepped onto the stools and walked across them, dropping onto the seat beside Thom. "Smells good. What's stone soup?"

"Ah, we don't like to cook." Thom shrugged a little. "So we just toss everything we've got into a pot together and keep adding to it. Sometimes it gets pretty thin, sometimes it's not bad."

"Depends how close it is to the next food bank day." Fauche picked up his coat, shrugging into it as he slouched casually onto the stool on Thom's other side. "Oy, Nico, you're not cold now we stopped moving?"

Nico hooked his thumb under his tuque, tugging it down. "I got my hat."

Thom gave him a look askance. "What do you run on? Nuclear fusion?"

"I'm not cold either." Fauche yanked his jacket back off and sat there shivering.

Thom hunkered further over his dish. "If you get sick, I'm not taking care of you."

"I don't get sick."

Nico and Thom exchanged a mutual rolling of eyes. Nico got up and went to fetch his own jacket.

Fauche sneered. "What are you doing?"

"Dude, I'm putting on my coat so you don't freeze to death."

Thom finished the stew and began methodically licking out the bowl. "I should get back to my hidey-hole. I'm sure you two want to be alone together."

Nico faked a gag. Fauche gave his partner a light shove. "Shut up. You know why I wanna learn this twinkle toes shit."

They both shot a dark, significant look at Nico.

He sighed. "Dude, I'm not stupid. It's February. Valentine's is like three days away. You wanna go sweep Gina off her feet and you think this will do it."

Fauche bared his teeth in that smile. "What, you're saying it won't?"

"Hello? I'm. Not. Stupid. You think I'd be teaching you if it would?"

"Well, fuck you, then. Why wouldn't it work?"

"Yep." Thom rose from his stool. "I'm definitely thinking sitting all alone and listening for dead things knocking at my 'cades is sounding pretty good right now."

Fauche put his coat back on, not quite able to pretend he wasn't desperate to do so. "Fine. Let's go for grub, Nico."

"Kinda feel I should be contributing something to your pot."

Thom clapped him on the shoulder. "Not after Fauche shanghaied you out here. 'Least we can do is feed you."

The three went together to the second floor, parting ways as Thom went back out into the storm and the other two started down the hall.

"So," Fauche demanded, "Why wouldn't it work on her?"

"Aw, c'mon, dude. Peace out on the subject already."

The blonde man jerked open the closet door.

The smell hit them first, thick and meaty and delicious. The tiny space had a bedroll spread out with Fauche's kit set beside it, fully packed, ready to be grabbed and run with on a moment's notice. A tiny camp propane heater puffed away, warming the limited space.

"What the hell?" Fauche switched it off and propped up a flashlight. "I didn't need the place pre-heated. Thom's wasting my propane."

Nico shrugged. "He was just bein' thoughtful, man."

They settled down around the pot, as far from each other as they could get in the confined area. Fauche positioned himself with a clear view of the door and an easy draw. Without a word, Nico put himself out of the line of fire and on the soldier's left side to leave his firing arm unhindered.

The blonde dug bowls from his kit and served two portions of the stew. Fauche frowned into the pot. "Thom was a piglet today. That's gone down."

They ate in silence, listening to the wind. It howled louder here on the second floor, keening around the corners of the old hotel like a pack of wolves. There was no hope of hearing the shuffling of dead feet in the street outside or the warning groans of a gathering horde.

"Something I'm not really clear on, Nico," Fauche said when his bowl was half empty. He glanced up, eyes glinting. "Are you and Gina actually partners?"

"Not so much." Nico's quiet voice wended into the lukewarm dimness. "We're not actually supposed to see each other unless one of us is dead." A soft smile, a shrug. "It being a bad thing if the two resuscitationists in the district are holed up in the same safehouse and both of us go down at once."

"But you do."

"I'm not sleeping with her, if that's what you're asking. We just talk."

"See, the thing is I can't read you." Chewing, Fauche jabbed the handle of his spoon at Nico. "I got no idea if you meant you're just friends or if there's so much sex you're not getting any sleep."

"Dude. We just talk." Nico licked his spoon, said softly, "Anyway, she's not a fun times kind of girl. She dun' need somebody macking on her."

Fauche eyed him uncertainly, then flashed his teeth. "Naw, man, you got Doc. Virginia Farrow all wrong. She's got the PC, prim little Victorian girl exterior going. You know she's a wild thing underneath it. Bet the tango'd bring it right out in her."

"Not even." Nico tipped his head back against the wall. "That's not fair, man. You're, like, projecting onto her; she's a person, not a fantasy. Yeah, it's not her real core and yeah, she wears a mask. But underneath she's just...complicated."

"You know her so well? You got by the mask? What's she like, then?"

A pause. Head resting against the wall, Nico opened his mouth, then grinned wryly. "She's Batman."

"Straight to the moon, Nico. Straight to the moon."

"No, really." He closed his eyes, thinking that the comparative warmth of the room was making him groggy. "She's like dark and angsty and driven, fighting this big war on death kind of thing. It's all obsession and absolutes with her. All you can do is try to be, like, an anchor, maybe a bit of a compass."

"Bullshit." Fauche yawned. "She wears a tie. For her zombie patients."

"That's 'cause you're just dealin' with Bruce Wayne."

"Yeah, well," the blonde soldier laughed. "Bruce Wayne has a nice ass."

Somewhat light-headed now that he was fed and warm, Nico asked, "So what do you think? Had enough lessons?"

"Awww, is the poor widdle baby getting all pooped out? I'm still good to go." Fauche sealed away the leftovers, got sluggishly to his feet and stretched. "C'mon, time for round two."

"If we must." Nico got up and was shocked at dopey he felt, but swore to himself he'd fall asleep on his feet before giving the soldier an opening like that. He stumped down the hall after Fauche, trying to blink himself awake in the chill air. Getting down the rope, he slipped and fell the last few feet, landing badly. Nico winced, not at the fall but at the potential ribbing, and looked around to see if Fauche had noticed. The soldier leaned against the door, waiting and yawning behind his hand, and Nico was able to clamber up without comment.

By the time they reached the stage, the room was spinning and his limbs had turned to lead. All he wanted was to lie down. Nico leaned on the pole, trying to think of a way to call off the lesson. He glanced over as Fauche bent determinedly over the iPod - and realized with a sudden spike of fear that the other man was on his knees, one hand braced on the floor and the other held to his head.

Both of us, he thought.

A ragged white figure dashed from backstage, snagging at the corner of his eye. Nico blinked, and she flew at the Peacekeeper from behind, swinging what looked awfully like a giant rubber penis.

He opened his mouth and it felt like slow motion. He had time to say, "Fauche--"

She clubbed the soldier in the back of the skull as he reached lethargically for his gun. Nico watched the rubber member bounce, saw the blonde head jolt and his eyes roll up. Fauche crumpled as the world faded and Nico felt himself sliding helplessly down the pole.

* * *

Nico woke to the slinking rhythm of a tango. He couldn't move. Nico moaned, eyelids fluttering, and the music burst into full-throated, furious female chorus.

He had it coming
He had it coming
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there
If you'd have seen it
I betcha you would have done the same!

Nico opened his eyes. The world rolled and pitched before focusing. A woman squatted over the iPod, bouncing and shifting restlessly on her haunches, playing with Fauche's music. Her limbs were scratched and bare and filthy, feet and legs veneered with the ominous white of frostbite. She wore only a sheet, hung over her head like a classic ghost costume and fastened at the neck with a noose. It fluttered around her in foul, tattered rags, parting around glimpses of grimy naked flesh. Cackling giggles dribbled from her like a gasoline leak, slow and burbling and spasmodic, threatening to ignite into madness.

He could feel the pole against his back. Nico shifted, testing his restraints; wrists and elbows handcuffed. He pulled, and Fauche whispered his name under cover of the song.

"Nico? You awake?"

"Mmhm." Murmured response, barely audible. "You hurt?"

"Only my pride." A sub-voiced laugh just behind Nico's head. Fauche stirred, and Nico felt it against his back, felt the tug against his own arms. He realized they were cuffed together, back-to-back, the pole between them. "I just got beat up by a girl and she had a bigger dick than mine."

"She had a bigger dick than a horse, dude."

"Is that...?"

"Yeah." Nico rested his head back against the pole, eyes shut. "Yeah, it's the Pale Rider. Fauche...I'm sorry."

"He ran into my knife," said the female singer on the iPod, smirking through the lines to the Cell Block Tango from the musical, Chicago. "He ran into my knife ten times." The Pale Rider's snickering giggles ran undercurrent and she repeated the line to herself.

"I'm so sorry you got dragged into this, man."

"Your stalker. Oh shit." Fauche slammed his elbow backward, vicious precision hampered by the cuffs, digging into Nico's ribs. "We wouldn't be in this mess if you carried a gun. You saw her before I did. Instead of mewling for help, you could have popped the bitch!"

"If either of us had killed her, we would have passed out with a zombie in the room." Nico watched as the Pale Rider turned her head at the disturbance, canting a sly glance over her shoulder at them. She nibbled coyly on her filthy fingers and spilled those gasoline chortles all over them. "Anyway, I could never have pulled the trigger, not even on her, not even to save my life. It's not in me."

The girl moved, creeping along the ground like a scorpion. Her eyes glittered grey-green, the color of ice, of the Pale Band. They fixed on Nico through two oblong holes cut in the sheet. She had gnawed a third hole through the cloth over her mouth, the edges frayed and draggling, clotted with layers of blood. She giggled as she crept closer, twisting and contorting the rubber penis in her hands like a banshee washerwoman.

Nico met her eyes and smiled as sick fear lurched in his belly. His gentle voice betrayed nothing but calm. "Hey. What are you doing here?"

She reached out to him, her fingers crusted with dirt and dried blood. She had bitten at them, chewing the flesh raw. Broken nails brushed across his cheek. He held still under the touch, eyes lowered. The Mona Lisa smile never wavered.

"Freezing to death." She giggled, fire rising behind the madness. "It's fun."

He swallowed, carefully slow. "So I see. How did you find me?"

"Oh, I always know where you are." She leaned closer, bluish lips almost touching, her whispering breath ghosting over his face. "You're my personal demon." A smile, a tiny dribbling laugh. "My Nicodemus."

"You know me and I don't even know your name." Nico chose words like picking through a minefield. Fauche stayed silent behind him, so tense Nico could feel it through both their coats.

"Who are you?" He moved his head, closing the distance between them just enough for her to feel the heat coming off his skin, though he didn't quite touch. Soft as warm ash on the wind, he whispered, "What's your name?"

She growled, recoiling, then swayed back into the radius of his warmth as if drawn by a scent. Her hands gyrated aimlessly on her wrists, chewed fingers hooking and flexing. "Such things you say when we speak. There was a story you told, that story about the girl, the blonde girl who lived on Notre Dame Street."

The growl came back; her voice lowered. "I want to know how it ends. I want to know what happened to her after the outbreak.

"You made me kill you once already because you wouldn't tell me. Not that I cared how it ended, you understand." Her fingers curled around his throat one by one, slow and gentle and frozen. Plaintive, she whined, "Why won't you tell me the rest of the story?"

"Because it's for you to finish. How do you want it to end?" Nico lowered his chin to cover those icy fingers threatening to strangle him, enveloping them in his heat. "What's her name? What's the name of the girl?"

She whipped him with the rubber shaft, screaming inarticulately into his face. Nico flinched and flattened against the pole; but the Pale Rider only doubled up, rocking and muttering incoherently.

"I guess you could say we broke up because of artistic differences," the song purred in the background. "He saw himself as alive, and I saw him dead."

Fauche cursed under his breath, voice strained and shaking. Nico moved his hand enough to catch Fauche's thumb and give it a quick reassuring squeeze. His own heart thudded against his ribs so hard it hurt, and he drew a long, slow breath. "Sh, sh," he crooned to the woman, "It's okay. Hush, don't be afraid."

Fauche laughed at that, harsh and scraping. The Pale Rider jerked her head up and the blonde man went silent.

"You're so cold," Nico murmured to her. "What happens if you die again? You can't talk to me, then. You'll never know the name of the girl."

The woman whimpered at the back of her throat. Nico pointed his chin towards the Superman pack piled by the iPod. "Go look in my sack. I got a spare set of clothes. Take them, even just for a little while. You can freeze later."

She sniffled and crawled into his lap, an icy bundle in her soiled sheet. Dirty, naked arms wound around him and slid under his clothing, up the bare skin of his back. Nico gasped at the sudden cold and shifted as much as he could to accommodate her, bringing up his leg to form a cradle. She pressed against his chest, her filthy, frostbitten, raggedy fingers twitching out a faint little tattoo to the beat of his heart.

Nico lowered his head, nuzzling her chill skin, rubbing his cheek against hers. He murmured gently, "What did you drug the food with?"

"I don't know." The Pale Rider squirmed, worming deeper into his warmth. Muzzily, she mumbled, "Just something I found in a pharmacy. I thought it might kill you."

"You know, " the woman on the soundtrack gloated, "some guys just can't hold their arsenic."

"But if I'm dead," he whispered, breath sliding hot over her ear, "then I can't talk to you."

She hissed into his shoulder, nails tensing and digging into his back.

"Shh." He kissed the top of her head through the sheet. "It's okay. You know I'd hold no interest for you if I were dead."

She said nothing. He waited, smoothing his chin over her shrouded hair, but she remained still, coiled against his heart. Nico bowed his head to her again, soft voice murmuring in the twinkling light, "You ate from the pot before you drugged it, didn't you? Warmth and food, even the music; life. Your body wanted it. You want it." He brushed lips against her ear through the bloody sheet, whispered, "Life."

She bit at his throat and he jerked. She settled with a savage nip, then growled against his skin, "Be quiet. Silence makes you safe. Dead is safe."

Nico turned his head subtly, trying to feel if his throat was bleeding. He couldn't tell. Nothing touched his voice but tender quiet. "If that's how you wanted me, then why am I still alive?"

She backed away on elbows and knees in a disjointed crawl. Her eyes upturned to his through the holes in her mask, as watchful and wary as if she were the one tied and helpless. "Because," she hissed, and it rattled hoarsely in her throat, "because you have to die for you, Nico. Not for me. You have to wish you were dead."

She lurched forward with reptile quickness, staring into this face. The laughter was gone. "I can help you," she blurted, earnest and intent, pale eyes wide. "Let me help you."

She whirled off him in a billow of crusty sheet, the rope of her noose skittering behind like a tail, and scampered to the pile of equipment. Nico and Fauche watched her muttering to herself as she dug through the Superman backpack, fingering each piece of Nico's gear before throwing it over her shoulder.

"Yeah." Nico squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back memories of the last time he had died at her hands. He swallowed hard, marshalling his breathing before Fauche heard it. "That wasn't good."

"What's happening?" Fright beat raw in Fauche's rasp.

"I think she's gonna torture me until I beg her to kill me." Even that, he managed to say calmly.

"Jesus Christ! What the hell is wrong with her?" Fauche kicked at the floor, helpless in their shared bonds. "Why is she like this?"

"Dunno. Us in the white coat brigade; we don't understand yet why some of the ragged go corrupt like that, even when you bring 'em back. Pale Rider herself doesn't remember her life. But if I had to, I'd guess something happened, maybe after the outbreak, maybe when she first died; something she couldn't cope with." Behind his eyes, Nico saw her face as she'd killed him the last time; looking up from between his legs, his blood all over her mouth and her grin showing through the crimson, his flesh hanging from her teeth like a cat with canary feathers. "I think she's pissed at guys."

"She took our radios along with all my weapons. She found everything, even my boot knife. How long before Thom comes back, you think?"

Nico shook his head. "Depends on how long we were out."

The Pale Rider tore off her ghastly sheet, exposing a matted jungle of platinum hair. She began donning Nico's spare set of clothes, muttering along with the women in the chorus.

"We have to have been sitting here for a while." Hope clawed against the soldier's customary anger. "I'm starting to get really cold. My feet are numb. Hands are okay, though."

Nico shifted, trying to push closer against the Peacekeeper to share more body heat. He didn't say aloud that they had to assume she had seen Thom and they had no way of knowing if she had already taken him out. He was pretty sure Fauche was also not saying it aloud; that he had brought Thom up to give Nico hope of rescue.

"It's a rotten situation to be in," Nico told Fauche quietly. "All I can say is, stay off her radar. I'll try to hold her interest, keep her off you."

"You don't want that kind of interest."

"It's okay. She said she's not gonna kill me unless she gets me to ask for it."

"Fuck, Nico. I saw what she did to you last time. You'd be better off just letting her kill you clean."

"C'mon, Fauche, could you just let yourself die? Start giving up and you're gonna end up a career ragman." Nico hesitated, then added softly, "Anyway, I kinda got her life riding on mine now. Whatever little spark she's got glowing inside; that's what she's tryin'a kill, not me. I've just become a symbol for it. She might not make it this rez, or the next, or the next, but I'm not gonna let her give up, either. And look at her. She's wearing human clothes, getting warm, stepping that much closer to life. Maybe this doesn't have to end bad."

The Pale Rider came again, tiny in Nico's clothes, clutching one of Fauche's knives in one hand and dragging the rubber penis in the other.

Nico looked up as she stopped in front of him, his throat gone dry. She looked down at him, eyes glittering in the medusa-tangle of her hair. He found it somewhere inside himself to smile up at her, gentle and sweet. "You stayed alive to find me, didn't you? Why do you think you did that - and you keep doing it - unless you want me to help you?"

She shrieked and stabbed downward.

The blade ripped into his coat, caught and tangled on one of the Kevlar plates. She screeched, dropping the rubber member to place her bare foot on his chest and grab the knife in both hands, sawing and rending until the coat hung open. Nico turned his head aside, eyes shut, trying to keep his face out of the way of her knife, holding rigidly still. She slashed again and again, slicing the coat apart, hacking it off him in pieces, screaming all the while. Strips of his shirt went with it, shreds still hanging off him, the sleeves of his jacket ending abruptly above his handcuffed elbows, bloody scores and gouges all over his skin.

"Nico!" Fauche called his name, frantic and angry. "Nico! Goddammit, Nico!"

He opened his eyes when the bladed whirlwind stilled, both of them panting, breathless. Nico rolled his head to look down at himself, assessing the damage. She grabbed his chin, jerking his face up to her and snatched off his toque. Black hair poofed out in a thick mass and she dragged her fingers roughly through it, tucking the disheveled locks off his face.

She cupped his face in her cold hands. "Now you can be the frozen one."

She spun away, her chest heaving, and snatched up the rubber member. She looked at it, looked at him; grinned pure evil. Nico's stomach dropped and left him nauseous.

"Nico!" The Peacekeeper demanded from right behind his head and a thousand miles away. "Talk to me!"

"Hey, Fauche?" Nico swallowed cotton as the Pale Rider advanced on him, her mad titter drooling through her hair. "He had it coming," the speakers screamed, "he only had himself to blame." With soft serenity, he murmured, "I'm sorry, Fauche. I need you to cover your ears as best you can for a bit, okay, buddy? Just try to pretend you're not here. It's gonna be okay."

* * *

Fauche tried to focus on his own breathing, but it was too close to meditation and he'd never been good at that. He scrunched lower and pressed his knees tighter against the sides of his head. His ears were filled with the rush of his own blood and fury seethed at the back of his throat; but nothing could block out the jerking thrusts ricocheting into his shoulders.

He swore under his breath, pouring his heart and his rage and his helplessness into a constant foul monologue. No way to solve this situation with arms, no way to rise up in a blaze of lead and glory; no way to deal. So he hung onto Nico's advice and tried not to be there, shamed and awkward and angry with the tightness in his pants.

"One, two, lick my shoe. Three, four, in your back door." The Pale Rider threw the rubber toy across the stage. She followed it into his line of vision, chewing on her fingers as she crept away from Nico. She went backwards like a crab, her eyes on him. Her gasoline giggles burped and flared through her singsong chant. "Five, six, play with whips. Seven, eight, what a nice date. Nine, ten, do it all again."

Fauche glared at her, but she didn't even look at him. She turned off the iPod and picked up her grotty sheet in two fingers, examining it. She plucked next at the plaid shirt hanging on her like a boyfriend's jacket. "Your clothes are wrong, all wrong."

With the music gone, the Peacekeeper could hear sounds behind his head like a panting dog. She looked over her shoulder, not at Fauche but behind him. It felt like he wasn't there.

"They're not white. I wear white."

Nico didn't or couldn't respond. Fauche thought of what the doctor had said about her putting on human clothes, but had no idea what to do or say.

She laughed, burbling and hot, flames rising through the cackle. She flourished the sheet off into the deserted tables. "I saw this little white nurse suit in the dressing room while I was lurking back there. And, well, I think that's more me.

"I'll be back." She crept slowly away, into the hidden wings of the stage. Her eyes gleamed on Nico until the last moment, as if he were too dangerous to let out of her sight.

Fauche sat motionless, the chill growing ever deeper, gnawing at him like rats except for the pond of warmth emanating from the doctor.

"Nico?" He didn't want to ask. It caught in his throat. "You all right?"

"It's okay, Fauche." That soft voice ghosted back, composed and at peace as it ever was.

"But..." He really didn't want to know. He didn't know how to know. There was nothing to say. He couldn't handle it. "But are you okay?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." Gentle and final, just as untroubled as before when Fauche brought up his stalker. The soldier swallowed and tapped his head back against the pole, raging at himself.

They sat with quiet building between them until Fauche couldn't stand it anymore. "The girl in the story. It's her, isn't it? So what is her name?"

That sedate voice came back, unruffled but very quiet even for Nico. "Don't know."

"You were bluffing." His heel scraped against the boards, lashing out at the only thing in reach. "You shit, you were bluffing the whole time!"

"Mostly. I dug up a rumor, months ago." Nico gasped; Fauche thought it a soft laugh at first. The gentle voice went on. "Half a rumor. Scraps of unfounded gossip. Fed it to her one time while she was dead. She remembered, came lookin' for me next time she got rezzed. Don't really matter if it's true or not, s'got her thinkin', questioning, trying to remember. She's chasing me 'cause she kinda has to; s'like I got a hook in her mouth. She's gotta validate something through me, either life or death."

"You tricky bastard!" Fauche elbowed him again. "You realize what you've done to yourself? There's no way out. You don't know the safety word. You can't call off the game."

"I could let her win and she'd walk away, deeper into death and madness and the dark."

"So you're gonna be her little ray of sunshine even if you have to die to do it."

"The ones like her, the corrupted ones, are aware in their own rotten flesh, hungering and suffering and broken. Even when you bring them back to life, you can't lift them out of it. If you can think of a better description of damned, I'd like to hear it."

Fauche had nothing to say for a long moment. "Does the captain know about this?"

"No, but the Pale Director does."

Fauche pulled in his legs, getting colder and colder. It seemed the heat from Nico was lessening. He snarled, "Why? Explain to me why you're doing this."

A moment of quiet, just long enough for Fauche to think he wasn't going to get an answer. Then the reply came, soft and reasonable, "She's one of the MoD, dude. If she can wake up inside, it's a pretty good indication maybe any of the corrupted could. There'd be hope, Fauche; hope for all of them."

"Bloody mad scientist." Fauche muttered and shut up. He could hear Nico breathing behind him, even and steady but a little too deeply. There was the odd troubling catch. He pretended it away. They sat together, getting colder and colder while the lights sparkled merrily. He wondered how long it would take the Pale Rider to dress; if she would fuss with her outfit like a sane woman. He shifted, his butt numb, and realized abruptly what he was sitting in.

"Christ." Fauche shut his eyes, banging his head against the pole again. "Nico, you're not okay. Where are you bleeding?"

"She stabbed me when she cut off my clothes." Nico gasped, unmistakable this time, then said in that gentle, unaffected tone, "It's an anterior abdominal wound, near as I can tell. Don't think it penetrated the peritoneal cavity."

"Fuck, what does that mean?"

"If she unties me before I bleed to death, I can treat it pretty easy."

* * *

The Pale Rider sashayed back on stage, modeling a stripper's tiny white nurse uniform over her filthy, frostbitten limbs. She turned, hands on hips, displaying how it hung on her gaunt body, her movements becoming subtly more predatory than wary, as if she drew confidence from the color. All the while she laughed, a high-pitched, gurgling twitter that rose and fell, fading in and out, but never went away. "Now we can freeze together!

"Nico, Nico, Nico." Her white stilettos clipped across the stage until she braced a foot on his chest, pushing him into the pole. Fresh blood washed out the puncture in his belly, and he went ashen, his face set. She giggled down at him and twinkled two fingers in a little wave. "Shall we begin our little tango all over again?"

"It's just your same old dance." So serene, that voice, though pain veiled his dark eyes. "Sure, it hurts; that's part of being alive. And I want to live. You haven't changed that, haven't proven me wrong."

Pale eyes narrowed. "If I can't break you, then I'll have to break him."

She raised her hand, her deadly mad smile spreading, and pointed at Fauche. "I'm going to break him and I won't stop until you beg me to kill you instead."

"Touch him and it's over." Bent forward over the wound as much as his bonds let him, Nico raised his head, tousled hair sliding over his eyes. Sweat sheened his face in the chill. Infinitely gentle, he whispered, "If you touch him, you are not someone I want to save. I won't talk to you. I won't interact. I will cease to acknowledge you. You'll be just another corpse."

She shook her head, staring through the pale seaweed of her hair.

"You'll be dead to me," Nico repeated, soft as a distant echo. "Dead."

The Pale Rider took her shoe from his chest, the knife coming up. "Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!" She made an aborted slash at his face. Her hand trembled, threatening another. "I can make you notice me."

His aching dark eyes met her pale ones. Gentle grace hovered in his face, his soft smile. "You just admitted you can't break me."

She stared back, wild, then abruptly whirled away from him, tottering off on her heels. She fell off the stage. They watched her run, stumbling and falling and cackling, fleeing into the hall. Her frenzied warcries echoed from the lobby; they could hear her pounding at the boards, heard wood crack.

Then stillness.

Fauche started to speak. Nico shushed him, head bowed.

She screamed again, short and loud and sharp, echoing with bedlamite laughter. It cut off as abruptly as if her windpipe had been torn out.

"Is she..." Fauche's voice grated. He had to clear his throat and begin again. "Think she's coming back here dead?

"No." Nico turned his head, letting his cheek rest against the pole. His face burned though he knew he was losing heat and blood alike.

Fauche cleared his throat a second time, unnecessarily. "We'll, uh, have to hope Thom checks in before the ragmen find that open window. I'm kinda worried about the blood smell bringing them down on us, but I think we're far enough inside the building we've got a chance it won't."

Nico gasped around the pain, nodded. The gesture carried across their connecting backs. His voice floated between them, soft and self-possessed. "If we don't make it, our transponders will go off. Gina will come after the storm. It's gonna be okay."

"And we'll still be sitting here with frost in our hair like undead snowmen." Fauche laughed harshly and rattled their chains. "'Least we won't be able to attack her. Or each other."

More silence.

Their radios spat in tandem, out of reach but not out of earshot. A ragged signal fizzled into the chill. "Thom in. Fauche, do you read?"

Nico sighed with relief. Fauche whistled. "Hot damn. He's alive."

The doctor managed a gusty laugh. "Hot anything would be kinda nice right now."

Fauche chuckled back, more from release than the joke. "If you ever tell anyone she whipped me with her dick, I'll kick your ass."

Nico smiled, eyes closed against the hurt, and said lightly, "I can keep a secret if you can."

"Yeah." Fauche sobered.

"Thom in. Fauche, do you read? Please acknowledge. Out."

They waited, almost holding their breath.

"Thom in. No signal, huh? Well, if you can hear me, come over for cards. Otherwise, I'm just gonna sit here and play solitaire. Over."

"There," Nico breathed. "The codeword."

"Solitaire." Fauche expelled air. "He's assuming there's something wrong."

Nico let himself slump back against Fauche, head lolling. "He's coming over."

"Hey." Fauche turned his hand enough to grip Nico's wrist. "You told the Pale Rider you wouldn't speak to her any more and she went away. I call that a win." Fauche gave a laugh. "You actually drove off the Pale Rider by threatening not to speak to her! Fuck, Nico. Fuck.

"You didn't even have to fire a shot."

Nico smiled wearily and said with his gentle quiet, "Told you, dude. It's all about the leads. The rest is just drama."

--END--