1. He laid her to rest under the rock.

After three days he had decided she wasn't going to get back up again, like the beast they had had once, and some of the birds and beasts he had seen. He laid her in a shallow place on the earth and piled rocks over her like she done with the beast, and then he pulled the house down around her. This place would not let him live. It had barely been enough for the both of them.

He chose a direction at random and started walking. After two days of eating nothing but berries and leaves he came across his first village.

More houses and dwellings and similar shapes than he had ever seen in his lifetime, things he didn't know the names for. More creatures like herself and him, like those he had seen once or twice passing by on the edge of the horizon, walking on two stout legs. Men and women with fine robes? She had songs of those, and these must be them, although the reality was somehow more disappointing than what he had dreamed of. But there were houses. There were four stout walls and a roof and the ground was solid under his feet and didn't give way no matter how many random paths he tried. There were things, tools, people using devices that he also didn't know the names of, to do everything from make their food to clean their clothes to ... he didn't know what that man was doing that made the constant ringing sound.

They were also making noises. To each other, noises that sounded like the ones she had made, like the names for things and doings that he had learned, their mouths shaped the noises in ways that he didn't understand and he peered at them, trying to work it out.

Something large and heavy hit the side of his head and he went staggering. Now two of them were making noises at him, big angry ones, waving their arms in the way that he waved his arms to chase away the small creatures and he didn't know what they would do, and one of them hit him again. His feet and hands scrabbled at the dirt and he went running, away from the people and the big houses and the smells and the ringing noise and all the strange things.

He went back. He had to; he didn't know enough about which plants were good to eat or how to mend his broken clothing that kept him warm, or where to sleep at night. He went back and found as many hiding places as he could, snuck food when he thought he could get away with it without being hit, or was given it by the one or two kind ladies who looked like her. He did learn the right words, after a while. After he had learned that singing her songs would bring food and no hitting. He learned, by the smaller people pointing at things and saying the word over and over again until he understood, what the names for things were. He learned the parts of sounds and how to put them together to make speech. It took time. It took a lot of time. Learning the other things took even longer.

He learned about bartering, and was eventually able to barter his skills at picking his way through marshland and woods for food and shelter. They called him fey, and strange, but in the seasons when the animals were scarcest they needed his help to venture beyond the borders of their village and they took his help anyway. Then they hit him upside the head and threw him to sleep in the stables with the foulest smelling of beasts. They fed him stale bread and drippings, and whatever was left over. Clothes he got at the kirke from the old man who wore somber colors and told him he was damned. He still didn't know what that meant but it sounded bad.

There was one woman who looked like her, who treated him kindly. He hovered outside her house because her man didn't seem to want him around, but she did give him food and replaced his clothing when it wore thin. He would repay her by making her garden work and bringing her new plants from the marshes and often hovered outside her door in case she needed him. She petted his hair and told him he was a good lad. It was the first time he or anything connected to him had been called good. He wanted to do something special for her. He wanted to tell her so, but when he stood outside her window he heard her making noises that were strange. She sounded like she was in pain.

He had heard others make noises of strain, he had made them himself, and it wasn't pain but effort. This was somewhere between the two. She wasn't crying out to stop, but what he saw through the window was strange, and involved no clothes at all. She seemed to be encouraging the man to touch her and handle her and he didn't understand what was going on. She saw him, though. He knew she saw him.

After the man had gone she called him in and sat him down on the woven carpet in her house and explained to him what had happened. There were was that people could touch each other that would make each other feel better, he knew that already, when she held him and petted his hair, when he had done good things. There were other ways, too, she told him. And she told him and showed him while she took off his shirt, and then his under-tunic, and then his trousers. She touched him, explaining what she was doing, and it did make him feel good. And uncomfortable. It made him shift after a moment when she touched him, because every time she touched him seemed to make the feelings worse. Or better. He wasn't sure which it was but it felt strange, hot and cold at the same time, tingling like when he had put an ice cube to his skin and his muscles were all tense. He curled around himself where he sat, cross-legged, he remembered that very distinctly at strange points even centuries later, and she tipped his head up with her crooked finger as she touched him with her other hand and then his body convulsed and shuddered.

She didn't explain what had happened. Just that it felt good. He wasn't sure it had felt good, it had felt strange, yes. Good or bad, he didn't know. But then she was telling him how he could make her feel good, and guiding his hands to touch her. She was soft, wet, like the mud in the swamps. She moved his hands over her body in places he had never seen before, not up close. He knew she wasn't shaped like him but this was touching her in ways he hadn't known to do. She made noises like she had before. She touched him like she had before and climbed atop him like the other man had done to her and it was then that he realized just how much he had grown. She, not this woman but the first one, who had sang to him, had been so much taller than him. And when she had stopped, died, she had still been a little taller, if no broader. And now he was much taller than this one. Strange.

That thought stopped when they fit together in a strange way, like putting his finger in her, but different. Putting herself over him. He had words but none of them fit together the way they were fitting together now and it felt different from before, but the same, that same tension and pulling and tingling and she didn't seem to be paying attention to him anymore, she had stopped explaining. She bounced on his hips the way children bounced on a log and... something happened.

Something was happening. She was screaming, in pain this time, and he got up awkwardly, feeling the chill without his clothes. And then he felt the dull thump of a fist against the side of his head, and then more fists, and then a huge log from the fire. It was still burning at one end, and it hurt. It hurt a lot.

He ran. He didn't know what else to do but run, and he didn't know what had happened, and he ran. Out the door, out beyond the walls of the village where people were screaming and then they were throwing things and then he was out beyond the borders of the village, and he ran until the ground and the trees and the scrub looked familiar. He ran until he was back on familiar ground, and then he had to stop running because he had to be careful where he put his feet. He couldn't see out of one eye. His head was ringing. And there was no house to go to, no shelter except a pile of rotting wood and he crawled under the space made by the last two whole logs and curled into a little ball and tried to wish the pain away, wondering if he was safe.

2. They didn't yet know to call it the Great Plague, but still the rumors of plague ran through the villages faster than the disease itself. He didn't care. Disease rarely touched him thus far, and when it did it only lasted a short time. He had lived long enough to know that he was older than everyone he encountered, despite looking younger than most. He was calling himself Marc this year, and he managed to stay one step ahead of the leading edge of the disease until a bar fight caught him upside the head with a table and he went over. When he woke up he had a fever.

He burrowed in deep in the town, this time. If he stayed indoors, if he stayed away from the disease of others and away from the panic and the madness that was already sweeping the area, he would be all right. He had survived worse than a disease that killed quick and included nothing worse than pustulating sores and the winter cough. He ignored the fear that crept up from deep within where the memories of her death from winter cough had lodged. He was what he was, and such things did not kill him. All he had to do was wait this fever out and he would be fine. Keep a store of food, a barrel of drinking water, and he would be all right. He had blankets enough and stores of beer and he would be fine.

That was what he had thought on the first day. On the third day he was sweating. His joints ached. He was not only ready to die he was eager for it, waiting, pacing up and down in his tiny house when he could. These moments dwindled by the fourth day to almost nothing, his time instead occupied by twisting and writhing on sweat-sodden blankets that smelled of body odor, body fluids, and wet wool. Everything ached. Everything itched, was damp, filthy, messy. He didn't have the strength to leave the tiny half-underground apartment and he didn't have the energy to care. Every time he woke again he was surprised.

Days later. He didn't know how many days but the city had grown quiet with the plague. His water barrel was still somewhat full and, for a miracle, clean. He used the rest of it to wash in. If he remembered to, he would burn the house down later. He never wanted to live in this kind of filth and stench again.

When he walked out into the world the entire town was empty. Those who hadn't died had fled.

3. "Your name is what?"

He'd introduced himself as Owen to this strange, lanky young man. The strange lanky young man whose name was apparently Yves, and whose eyes darkened the moment "Owen" started laughing. He couldn't help it. The man's name was Eve, and despite the fact that he was lean and scrawny he didn't at all look feminine. Which might have made the whole thing funnier.

The punch took him by surprise only in that most people insulted him back or tried another, less openly hostile tack before getting down to brawling. Also in that the punch was harder than he had expected. Stronger. The man was stronger than he looked, which wasn't hard, but was also impressive on a purely puerile level. He punched Yves (snicker) back, of course. But it didn't stagger the other man as hard as it should have.

Nor did it make him let up. He frowned, skittering to one side only just in time to avoid the next punch and diving behind the chair, which smashed into kindling. Everyone in the room had either gone silent or cleared the way or both, by this time. Yves was coming after him like a madman, and within seconds he was not only dodging but hitting back just to keep the other man away from him. And, too, he was slowly getting irritated. Names weren't worth this much fuss. Names had never been worth this kind of hassle, to him, and if he'd known it was going to be such a sore spot with the boy he wouldn't have bothered talking to him in the first place.

All right, maybe he would have. But he hadn't been in the mood for a fight when he'd walked in, and now he'd gotten one.

More punches. To the face, to the chest and stomach, it didn't seem like Yves was directing his punches very much, not that that made more than a bit of a difference. He was coming on fast and strong enough to get a few through by sheer effort; no one could block every shot. The man's speed was inhuman, or superhuman, and his rage was something primal. Within minutes the fight had turned from a bar brawl to the man who called himself Owen just trying to survive the assault. Fists pounded against his arms, his sides, winding him from the force and the duration. He protected his head only to leave his torso bare, ducked down behind the table and the other man crawled over it and flung chairs out of his way to continue.

He didn't notice when he fell through the wall and into the mud outside, nor when he rolled into the pile of hay outside the stables. He only noticed when the blows finally let up, when three or four people had piled on the other man and pulled him back as the innkeeper pulled him into the stables to either die quietly away from the custom or survive on his own merits.

4. The ship reeked. Salt water had gotten into a third of the barrels and they were all taking their turns at drinking it, crew and prisoners alike. The slaves in the hold weren't faring as well, but he was indentured, and therefore accorded a certain amount of dignity. Not that that mattered. There was very little dignity involved in dying of scurvy and thirst.

He spent most of his time staring at the prow of the ship as though it could tell him how much farther they had to travel. One of the weaker ones had already dove overboard, dreaming that he saw land. He snorted at the thought. They weren't due for land for a while, long enough to possibly kill everyone on board. A ghost ship would reach the colonies, populated by the skeletons of men who had been sailors, servants, and slaves. Not his preferred way to die. And Guy would want to know what happened to him. He couldn't think of a way that the wolf would be able to find out if he died on the ship.

Sores were starting to crust over around his mouth. He was thirsty all the time, not that that was anything new. The worst was the smell. Salt water and rotting wood and piss. Stale piss, no less. The sweat of a couple dozen men or more who hadn't had anything more than hard tack and dried beef and rum and water to eat and drink for so very long. He knew the theory. Guy had ranted at him often enough for him to know that a man needed more than just bread and meat to survive, but he'd never had it so demonstrated for him. This was undeniable. He'd have to tell Guy, if he could avoid the I-told-you-so's. If he survived to make landfall. The heat was oppressive at the best of times; on the open sea it was brutal. He was burnt all over. He needed more water than the ship could provide. And he was hungry.

"What are you looking at?"

Nameless snarled at him, or sneered, it had the same effect either way, and the man went away. The other reason he was afforded as large a share of admittedly impure water and food as he was, was because he had scared half the crew. Bigger than most of them, broad across the shoulders and animalistic or crude at best, he could be a creature from another time when he wanted. Because he was, of course. But it served his purposes here.

If they'd allowed him on the deck he would have been pacing, but unfortunately it didn't serve his purposes that well. He was stuck in the hold, surrounded by sweaty bodies, given just enough of a berth to be able to breathe through the stink. He didn't know what they would do when they found out he was bluffing. As they all were, he was suffering the effects of scurvy, dehydration, the runs, losing water inside and out. His tongue was thick and dry in his mouth, and he knew what that was a sign of. He made the water last as long as he could; there wouldn't be any more until they doled out the next rationing.

Days passed. The heat didn't slacken, nor did the water improve. He wondered if the barrels were all contaminated or if they had started giving him just the contaminated water because they could get away with it. The slaves were below the indentured, but the indentured were below the crew. If they arrived in port with some indentured just recently passed or dying, no one would wonder why. The slaves could be tossed overboard and counted as lost cargo. He wondered where he stood in the order of the death rolls. There wasn't much to do but wonder in the hold while the sun counted the days overhead.

Memory failed, faded. The heat was stifling, the water wasn't coming quick enough, and he was starting to hallucinate. Dogs growled and snapped at his heels. The growling was familiar but he couldn't remember why. He talked to people who weren't there, who hadn't been there in years. Who were long dead. His mind faded in and out from the ship to other places, better places. There were a lot of better places than a baking hot ship with no drinkable water and very little real food. He was getting restless. He didn't have the strength to move. Others around him were dead, the stench of their rotting corpses choking the good air out of the hold. He was still telling a dead man to shove over and give him room when the trap door opened for the last time and they hauled him out, throwing him onto the docks amidst a pile of empty sacks and half-full barrels. He would have recognized that scent even if he had been dead.

Not being dead, he threw himself over the edge of the barrel and drank deeply.

5. It was a stupid way to die.

He shouldered his gun and then turned to fire, when what he should have done (knowing that the wolf was in front of him) was fired from the hip and turned around afterward. Turning just gave the enemy enough warning to fire the musket straight into his belly.

It hurt. It didn't feel like heat, it felt like pain, and it felt like being kicked in the stomach by an ostrich. He fell over and touched his stomach because he still couldn't realize that someone had had the audacity to shoot him. Guy's roars were loud in his ears. He opened his mouth to tell his friend to shut the hell up or they'd find them, and then he realized they'd already found them. That was why he was shot.

"Ah, fuck!"

There was Guy. Leaning over him, eyes dark with worry even if his face twisted into a scowl and his mouth spat out curses in French and English and even a few Irish phrases he'd picked up from his friend. "You look like shit."

"I got shot, thank you, that kinda has a way of doing that to a body." Every word was painful, though. He couldn't tell but he thought the musket had clipped a lung. "Why'm I not dead?"

"Because you're a fat, stubborn old bastard," Guy told him, feeling around the edges of the wounds. He couldn't tell what his friend was doing, it didn't quite make sense, except that he knew Guy was a damn fine hand in the kitchen, which made him open his eyes again. He hadn't realized he'd closed them. "Stop that, stop moving, I can't work if you're..."

"Man, you're trying to dress me up like the feast turkey, ain'tcha."

"Shut up. Stop talking."

"Hey..."

"Stop. Talking. That thing shredded part of your lung, you're gonna have a hard enough time breathing as it is."

He stopped talking. Guy wasn't swearing anymore, that was a bad sign. He was being serious, urgent. He was also poking around inside the other man's guts and that hurt. Nameless held himself together as long as he could and then he arched, screamed. It didn't come out very strong. Guy was right, and he didn't have as much air to bellow as he should have.

And then Guy's hands were on his shoulders, pinning him down. Then lifting him up, dragging him. "What the hell..."

"Saw a fallen tree not far back. Should do to keep you safe once I've patched you back up adequate, until I get through with the rest of them..." Growly. Very growly. But on the other hand that was sort of a comfort. Guy wouldn't leave him alone if he really thought he was dying.

Which didn't make the long, long trek over broken ground and being dragged by a werewolf with bony fingers any easier. He swore when he had breath to say anything, and other than that he kept his mouth shut like his friend had ordered him to. Guy didn't say much, either. No litany to keep his friend awake, no reassuring him he was going to be all right. They'd been through this too often to need that. Then again, the last time one of them had taken a gut wound, it hadn't made quite as big a hole as this musket ball.

"Half a musket ball."

"What?"

"Ball musta split off in the musket. Bad crafting."

He didn't need to say it, but it was probably the only reason he was still alive. Small favors.

They rolled him into the hollow of the old tree, half eaten out along the side it had fallen by animals, decay, other things that didn't bear too close scrutiny. He rolled onto his back and lay still while Guy finished patching him up, grabbing their spare bedroll, both their belts, using it to tie up a makeshift bandage and hold it tight against his body and keep it there. Then he packed both their bedrolls in around him. "There. That's the best I can do right now." And the only thing left to do was wait; he didn't say it and he didn't need to. They were both terrible at waiting.

"Well, go on, then," he told his friend, gruff with all the things they didn't know how to say and hoarse with the screaming and the pain. It wasn't better. He didn't think it would be better for some time, but he wasn't going to die tonight. He hoped. And even if he did, Guy had done all they knew how to do, all they had equipment, to do. He didn't want his friend to have to watch him die. He didn't think he could bear it. Didn't think either one of them could. And Guy had a violent streak as wide as the damn river. "Go do your killing. I'll just sit up waiting for you like a good little wife."

Guy snorted. "Thought you said I was the wife."

"You are the wife. Just look at the nice job you did on my vest, here," he even laughed. Which made him cough. Clear air, but not enough of it, which made him cough again, and on the third time bloody froth came up.

"Shut up," Guy hissed at him, enraged. "Just... shut up. Shut up and lie still, I'll be back by dark."

He shut up. Lay still. Waited for his friend to come back, though it was hard to tell when dark fell, eyes falling closed as often as they were and all. Drifting in and out. He was glad, though, his friend wasn't here to see this. Didn't want his friend here to see this. Wasn't sure if he was dying or not, but there were times, feeling the blood seep under his back and his breath coming short as it was, he thought he finally might be.

6. She was laughing. He liked it when she laughed. He liked to look at her when she laughed, all jiggling above him with soft flesh over curvy muscle. She really was a damn fine woman, and somehow she'd agreed to come along with the likes of him. Not that he was looking too closely at it. Not when he had better things to look at.

"Now what are you smiling at, old man?"

His grin widened. "A pretty young woman slumming it with some dirty old man."

She seemed to like that. It got him more laughter, and she stretched out over him, running her nails down his chest that way he liked. Following it up with her mouth. She had a damn good mouth on her, filthy words, filthy tongue. He moved the tips of his fingers, curled hand, down her spine. Down to the base of her spine and just at the crease between her cheeks. Nice ass, too.

"What are you doing?" she asked, still smiling. Teasing, he thought. She wriggled her hips as though she was teasing, shaking that fine ass of hers, brushing her body over his. He raised his hips in response, yeah, please. If that was an invitation. If not, hell, he got a free stroke out of it.

"Just playing with you," he told her. Wasn't like he had to force her to it, after all, and it was a little late to say she hadn't wanted to. She was still here. He wasn't holding her down. But she didn't seem to mean it that way. At least, not in the way of backtracking and claiming he'd forced her just to keep her purity intact or some dumb shit like that. She had meant to have a good time, and she'd had one. And now she was just curious. He liked that about her. His fingers curled at the curve of her ass and ran along noble skin. "Just playing."

"Just playing," she chuckled. She liked his way of playing, he could tell. And when she reached above him and to one side, giving him a good view of a clear white breast as it bounced with her movement, deep pink nipple standing erect, he didn't think about what she might be doing or reaching for. Some oil or ointment. Some toy. He knew where he wanted to put her toys next. "You are fun to play with," she admitted, right before she buried the knife to the hilt in his stomach.

The shock hit him before the pain did. Disbelief. Staring down at her hand around the knife hilt and for one incredulous moment he didn't see the knife hilt but the curve and bend of a phallus, some toy. Not a knife. Then the pain laced upwards and it was a knife buried in his guts and he groaned as she twisted it and moved it sideways. Her smile never changed. That was the most disturbing part of it. Her smile never wavered from the same delighted expression she'd worn while she bounced up and down on his cock. Any second now she might laugh and say another rude word. With her knife buried in his guts.

He didn't know how long the realization took; only seconds, by the shock on her face when he sat up and backhanded her. The movement forced the knife to shift and he groaned again, loud, almost a scream. It hurt. God, it hurt. He hadn't been expecting it and the surprise in the midst of the languid aftermath of sex made it hurt worse, and now he was really pissed. She dove at him again and he punched her just as she ripped the knife out. That hurt, too. They both screamed. He stuffed his fist against the wound to stop it from letting his guts tumble out to the floor. He needed those, dammit.

"What the fuck are you playing at, you crazy whore?" The door. He had to get to the door, get out of this damn room, and he realized she had the knife again just when she raised it and came running at him. You're announcing it too loud, he thought, blurry and dazed. You ain't no fighter.

But she was fighter enough to try. "Kill you!" she snarled, insane and rabid as she'd been sweet and warm a few moments ago. It made no sense.

"The hell you will," he muttered, throwing himself sideways more than dodging and then lunging for the door, one fist pressed to his stomach. He kicked the chair in her way when she followed, knocked the table over and onto the chair, and somehow managed to stumble into the door hard enough to knock it open. He had to stay alive long enough to get out. Once out of the house, he could get onto a cart or somewhat like, get out of the city. Once out of the city, he had to stay alive long enough to get to Guy's plantation. Even if his friend wasn't there, peace and quiet was, peace and quiet and medicines to help him heal. He still didn't know why she was trying to kill him. Maybe he never would.

7. He felt it before he heard it, before the dust rose up as the ground fell in on them. There was barely enough time to call out to his crew before they were buried, not that it would have done much anyway. Poor bastards. About all he could hope for was that it caught them by surprise, they didn't have enough time to grab a lungful of air and hold it till they suffocated. Drowned in dust.

He didn't expect to open his eyes again, but when he did, it wasn't much better. The darkness was absolute. The air was growing stale, and he breathed as shallowly as he could. He must have been trapped in a pocket of some kind, one of those strange open places they sometimes ran into. It couldn't be that big. But it was air, and it was something. It was more than the other poor bastards who had been in the mine with him had. Small blessings. Small breaths, too. He had to use as little air as possible. Think about what he was going to do as much as possible before he did it. As much as he had time to think. This was going to be bad.

Goddamn. Hundreds of years running around up top, I die in a fucking mine. There was something not right about that. He didn't mind cities and people the way Guy did, but damned if he wanted to die beneath the ground like a worm. He wasn't built for that.

They hadn't been that far in when the cave system collapsed. Which was probably why it had been as bad as it was, no one expected it to collapse up top the way it did. Soft soil, maybe. Maybe he'd been dropped down a couple levels, and wasn't that a shit thought. No use worrying about it, he told himself. Get moving. If it's soft dirt, you can dig. If it's soft, you can breathe. At least a little. He'd just have to be careful it didn't settle down further on him.

So get digging, you old bastard.

He got digging. Slow going. Slow and careful and every time the dirt shifted around him he sucked in another too-deep breath. Used up too much oxygen in that split second panic between feeling the dirt move and realizing it wasn't going to fall in on him. This time. And every time the dirt moved the panic lasted a little bit longer. He wasn't getting any closer to the surface. Even if he did, by the time his hand broke through the dirt he was almost out. He couldn't breathe through his fingertips. And if he moved, if he pushed that last bit of air to try and claw his way out, the dirt would cover him again and he'd be drowning in a shallow grave.

Strong, slender, bony fingers curled around his wrist. Familiar fingers. They pulled him up and without even stopping to think about it, he reached up to meet him. Grabbing at the hand, clawing at the dirt. He didn't need to think about this. He had no idea how the other man had found him, but now that he had, no more thought or planning required. Guy would get him out. That's what they did, got each other into and out of trouble. His limbs were on fire by the time he had managed to crawl out of the damn hole. God knew how many were still down there, the poor bastards. He gasped, stretched on his stomach and coughing up the last of the dirt and dust in his lungs, then rolled onto his back and wheezed some more.

"What the fuck kept you?" he managed.

Guy kicked his ankle. "Asshole."

8. Devil's Island had probably earned its name, but so had a lot of other prisons less talked about and more sinister. He'd been in and out of his fair share of them, and wasn't as impressed with this one as everyone else seemed to be.

But it didn't take an impressive prison to give Guy trouble when he was tossed into one, which was why he was here now, keeping a wary eye on the moon and skulking around through bug-infested damp jungles. He didn't like his friend being in prison. He liked his friend being in prison even less when the moon was dark, when they had two weeks left before Guy changed and either got his damn fool furry ass killed by some guard or went mad and killed himself throwing himself against the walls. He'd seen that kind of thing happen to caged animals, sometimes. Very rarely, but sometimes. He'd be damned if he let it happen to his friend.

The trip over was hellish. Down, really; he'd made the trip over a couple centuries back it seemed like, and he wasn't planning on going back across the pond anytime soon. Guy'd had enough of France, he'd had enough of the isles, neither of them knew anyone else they wanted to visit. Down was acceptable. He still wasn't sure why Guy'd gotten himself thrown into prison on Devil's Fucking Island, or how, but he didn't much care. Probably it had something to do with Guy's monthly problem, some time when he wasn't around to get his friend into an area where there weren't many people. When his friend hadn't been paying attention as he should. Probably found passed out in a pile of corpses. That was another reason to get Guy out, if that had happened. His friend didn't take too well to murdering people in his other form.

He didn't even realize his thoughts were getting a bit rambly, even for him. He did notice when the forest started swimming around him and he couldn't keep his balance any longer. He fell, shoulder-first, into a tree. Staggered a couple more steps and then dropped to his knees in the dirt.

Dammit. He couldn't drop now. His friend needed his help, he couldn't just lie around here in the dirt. And for a short while, yes, he did manage to pull himself upright and keep going. But his limbs wouldn't respond the way they had an hour ago. His hand trembled when he held it out at his side and he was sweating perhaps more than the jungle-like heat warranted. He was sick. Might be that he'd been sick since he landed, he had no way of knowing. Just their fucking luck. They'd survived wars and plague and every other damned thing only to die because he'd gotten caught in the middle of the damn froggy forest with his pants down.

Which was about as far as he got with that thought before he passed out.

When he woke up the first time his tongue was swollen thick and tasted like carpet, and his body reeked of sweat. On the other hand, maybe it was a good thing Guy wasn't here for this. If even he could smell the sickness on himself, Guy would have been bitching like crazy. He felt like he'd been hammered through hell and back again. His body ached too much to move. And he still had miles to cover. Fuck this.

Three or four passes of unconsciousness later he'd managed to fashion himself a walking stick, and leaned heavily on it as he stumbled in what he hoped was the right direction. His balance was so far gone he wasn't sure even of that any more. When he got in sight of the prison he'd stop and take a day to rest, if he had a day. After that, he'd have to be in shape enough to get his friend out, or they'd both die. Right now, dying seemed like the more likely option. By nightfall, he'd thrown up twice, fallen once and cracked his head open enough that the blood was still tacky on his forehead. By the next day, he could barely move. The sun rose and set. He lost track of the days, stretched open for the wildlife and too weak to do more than twitch his fingers. It was a shite way for things to end.

9. It was no less shite when he found himself stumbling through the house, fifty years later. The whole world had been falling sick; he and Guy had slipped blissfully through it, expecting to stay healthy and well as they had through plagues of the past. Most of them, at least.

He could feel himself getting sick; after all those years it took a mighty illness to knock him down, and he knew well enough to have some advance warning. He sent a letter to his friend warning him that he might miss their next meeting and laid in a store of supplies for two weeks, at least as much as he could. It was the only thing he could think of to do. He'd be miserable for a little while, but he'd get through it.

After the vomiting and the runs had stopped he actually thought he was getting through it. He was keeping his food down, he wasn't as thirsty. The fever seemed to have abated. All that was left was an annoying cough. He could lose that in a couple of weeks.

He made it as far as Jersey before the lack of oxygen caught up with him. Too dizzy to walk down a street without staggering, which was much more pleasant when he was as drunk out of his mind as everyone thought he was. His chest hurt, his throat hurt, his lungs hurt from coughing. This wasn't the damn Spanish flu or whatever it was they called it. This was a demon who'd reached down his throat and was squeezing everything in there just to see how bad it could make him scream before he popped.

The good thing about flu was that it was taking up everyone's attention. Be damned if he'd go to a hospital where there were more sick people than anyone knew what to do with, he was going to find an empty house and curl up and wait to die. Or something. There was a likely place down in Camden, boarded up doors that he could squeeze through and empty of furniture. The second day he wheezed his way out to find a mattress and some food. After that, he stayed in. Stretched out with his ankles dangling over the edge of the mattress, sun coming through the dusty windows as best it could and splaying a cold, white light over the floorboards. It would have been a nice house if he weren't too busy hacking up his lungs. Everything hurt. He leaned his head back till it bounced gently off the wood and stared at the ceiling, trying not to breathe too hard.

10. Old-style railways were a dying breed. Train-car hopping was starting to fade into the past as cars became more affordable, as more of the world was paved over and flattened and tamed down to where humans could handle it. It irritated him. It irritated Guy worse, made the wolf impossible to deal with sometimes, so he was working as a brakeman on one of the older railways that stubbornly refused to update their trains. At least if he was working and on the rails more often than not, he didn't have to deal with Guy's bitching.

Didn't mean he didn't miss the bastard. This was supposed to be their time together, and, yeah, they'd been living in the cabin for a couple years now, probably it was time to split off and make their own way in the world if they were getting on each other's nerves. But the world was getting smaller. Their places in it were getting shifted. Neither of them liked it. So, here he was, on top of a damn railway car, amusing himself while he kept an eye on things. Brakeman duty was risky work, but he was used to risk. Didn't mind it so much. And he liked the adrenaline rush it gave him. He'd always been in it for the rush. Most of the time.

And it was a rush, every time he nearly fell beneath the chugging wheels of the train. It was a rush every time his fingers slipped, every time his weight shifted. It was a nice little rush, kept him feeling alive, until the one time he did fall, tumbling, into the path of the next car, bouncing off the implacable metal and knocking his head on the wheel. Almost got scalped, there. The thought kept him company as he bounced down the hill and into the ravine, rock after rock after rock. He could have given a number if he'd bothered to keep count. He was hyper aware of the whole thing as he rolled to a stop in the floor of the ravine, aching, bruised, possibly cut. Possibly paralyzed. His body was overloaded with information, aches and bruises and blood and tearing and broken bones, and at first he couldn't feel anything. And he didn't dare sit up to find out what was wrong.

Night fell. It got colder. When they'd realized he'd gone off the rails the railway company had mounted a perfunctory search for him, but he hadn't had the strength to call out. Probably reported him missing, run of without saying good-bye, absent without leave, whatever. Fired, in his absence, for not showing up to work. Derelict in his duties. An assumed name was derelict in his duties, anyway, they did that so they didn't have to pay out to the family. He'd seen the same thing happen to two other guys. He wasn't worried, except no one would tell Guy where he was when he didn't come back.

It was cold. He faded out of awareness.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.