❝ — I know there’s some sort of supermarket about ten minutes drive. We can swing by there, see if there’s anything worthy. ❞ She told Fallon as she started up the car for the drive.
“Haven’t been there yet,” Fallon admitted, she hadn’t done too much scavenging for a while. She preferred to hunt, “Hopefully it isn’t all cleared out… Plus I’d like to get some new detergent, most of my clothes are starting to smell funky,”
(via tessacorget)
Joel had never been a sentimental man, but then again, he’d never met someone like Fallon. There were more than a dozen reasons why anything resembling emotional attachment was a horrible idea, but the older man couldn’t bring himself to care. Right now, the small brunette in front of him was all that mattered.
As her palm moved to press against his jaw, Joel instinctively leaned into Fallon’s touch, lashes closing to shield his chocolate brown eyes when he felt her close the distance between them. His heart rate picked up yet again, their proximity setting off alarms that had been dormant for years.
Eyes still closed, the girl’s lips found his again; the gesture slow and steady when in the space of a blink, something sparked in the two survivors. Fallon was the initiator, but Joel wasn’t far behind as the kiss deepened. Unable to resist, the older man’s arms slid around the girl’s waist as their bodies snuffed out the inch of air between their bodies as the passion wafted over them.
The feel of his arms around her waist only served to quicken Fallon’s heartbeat as she felt herself falling helplessly into the embrace. As he began to pull her body towards the warmth of his own, she savored the mere moment of anticipation, before she felt herself let out a small gasp into his mouth as their bodies collided. Her mind raced as she felt her form against his; the width of his chest against hers, the sudden and overpowering scent of him, the way she had to hold her body higher to keep on level with his stature. She hoped beyond hope that he couldn’t feel just how hard her heart was hammering against her rib cage.
Fallon’s hands slid from the sides of his face to the back of his head, threading her hands in through his coarse hair. Lightly she clenched it in her small hands, before moving her touch to the back of his neck, her hands running parallel pathways until they found his chest. A strange, unfamiliar desperation to feel every inch of the man had overcome her, her touch almost feverish. She pulled away for him for a moment, her breathing shaky and ragged as she spoke, “I- I want you,” she managed, the words sounding odd and almost afraid from her mouth, the tone of a timid, inexperienced teenager. She found herself nervously laughing at her own tone, “I want you so bad Joel,” Before she could give him a chance to respond to the cliche, her lips were on his once more.
(via brutalsurvivor-deactivated20140)
✱ — You can’t feel, Kara.
It was a desperate, forced reminder for desperate, forced times.
You can’t feel.
Technically, that was true. As the young android pulled stolen clothing over a metallic and plastic body caked in dirt, she couldn’t feel the coarse, rough fabric that her visual scanners ascertained the clothing type to be. She did not feel the dirt that weighed down on her body, did not feel where her feet were hitting on the ground as she slowly, carefully, gently stumbled forward.
Physically, Kara was numb, and always had been. She was a computer. Had her arm been ripped off, not a surge of pain would course through her body.
Physically, she was fine.
But Kara was a psychologically advanced creature. She was a soul trapped in a robot’s body. Fear was a constant companion, and though she looked around at the desolate, nearly destroyed world that lay in complete catastrophe at her feet and knew that it could not kill her, it still frightened her.
A human could shoot their whole round of bullets into her body without injuring her too severely for too many of her functions to shut down. One of the infected creatures, whom the humans were apparently dubbing as “clickers”, could grab her all night and bite at her neck, searching for flesh to tear into. They would never find it. It was not there.
This world could not kill her.
But Kara always had a twisted sense of mind. Fear caused her to stumble, to hide in corners, to keep the shadows and not trust any human she came near.
Perhaps she was more afraid of watching others die than actually experiencing it herself. Perhaps the fragile morality that humanity was slowly losing its grip on was so dizzying that Kara could hardly think.
There was one thing she did have to worry about, however. A few hundred miles away, in a different city with a different schematic and a different moon and a different story – though Kara had no one to talk to, sometimes she’d mutter the history her files pulled up on each town she walked through, just to pass the time – there was a group of people attempting to shut down all the androids, burn down the metal and plastic and make it into supplies for the remaining survivors alive.
The worst part was that if they were to catch up with her, and if such a thing were to happen, Kara would not be allowed to resist. Deeply programmed rules meant that she could not strike out against a human being unless the direct safety of another human was involved.
She could not save herself for herself.
That was her death. That was the only part of this world that she should really be afraid of.
… But the clickers weren’t really that pleasant, either way.
The shout of a human being jolted Kara from her muttering about the current town she was in – it was almost so second nature by this point, she’d hardly been realizing what she was talking about. It sounded like a female, in great pain.
Something in Kara sank, though she knew there was nothing in her that wasn’t sautered down. A clicker?
A quick scan showed only one life sign, but her readings had been running amok recently with the heavy radio signals in this town. Her hearing did not hear the clicking for which a clicker was named. Perhaps that was a good sign.
Carefully, unsure, Kara wandered out towards the sound, attempting to ignore the sudden, wild thumping of her heart with each footstep, her hand resting against the wall.
Nothing can kill you, Kara. If she shoots, you just run. That’s all. There’s only one life sign here. You’re stronger than a human, too. Maybe there’s enough soul in you, enough fight… maybe you can fight the programming and fight against it. Not that you’ll need to, because you’ll just run, Kara. You’ll be fine.
Kara peered into the room. An old hospital, it appeared to be. She knew the other was in here, somewhere, but… the radio signal was too loud, like a screeching in her head, and Kara could not hear over it, could not understand her muddled and confused readings. She pulled her sole item – a loose, black jacket, which hung over her black tank top and rather ripped jeans, and walked into the room, rubbing her fingers together anxiously.
Fallon slowly peered out from behind the hospital bed, trying to ignore the dizziness that was beginning to leak into her brain, almost fumbling with her gun as she positioned her finger on the trigger. Her eyes found the figure, a skinny girl with short hair, unarmed and otherwise nonthreatening. She was struck with how odd the other looked; her only items appeared to be the clothes on her body, she held no weapons or any appearance of hostility, she seemed to not be covered in a thin layer of grime. In short, she didn’t look like a survivor, at least not one that Fallon had ever seen before, it was as though the other had stepped from a completely different time.
Slowly raising herself to her feet, Fallon held the gun at her side, confusion more than a feeling of safety making her lower her hostility. For a moment or two she simply stared at the other, trying to spot anything that would denote her to being a child of the horrible world around them. No bruises, no scars, nothing. The woman studied the stranger as though she were a foreign creature, “Hey,” she called out, her voice eerily altered by the infrastructure of the building. She was unsure of how to continue her sentence and for a moment or two she shifted uncomfortably from her wounded leg to her more stable one, “Sorry about the screams,” Fallon finally said.
