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Chapter Text

30 YEARS POST OUTBREAK DAY

2043

UNKNOWN LOCATION

AUSTRALIA

She sat across the fire from him. 

‘Him’ might not even be the right word for it. Male or female, none of it mattered because Mother Nature couldn’t possibly produce that freak on her own. 

Twenty-six-year-old Sadie Redmond was unequivocally sure of it. A beast watched her, barbarically strapped to the bone and bearing no resemblance to the human race except for its bipedalism. It disgusted her, an uncanny revulsion that originated deeply. 

But there was nothing that Sadie could do, not when he had incapacitated her so easily. He had taken her weapons like he was a parent confiscating goods from their child. She sat with nothing but her bruised knuckles against the beast with a hide as thick as a crocodile. 

The flames crackled amongst the otherwise silence. There wasn’t even a breeze, not there, in that barren landscape with nothing but red dirt as far as the eye could see. The skies were clear, stars twinkled in the thousands upon thousands, and the air was cool. 

It was difficult to discern what the beast’s intentions were. Sadie didn’t like to keep her eyes off of him for long. For almost an entire day, he had held her by the tip of his claw, and he’d yet to evince a single distinguishable motive or behaviour that could be understood or identified.

He provided, though, strangely enough. Sadie had expected to fend for herself, perhaps finding herself lucky to catch a stray animal. She’d thought she was done when the pack of dingos sniffed too close, but the beast had slaughtered one with the blades that sat in the strange device on his right forearm. 

Dingo meat was rare. Sadie didn’t know many who liked to hunt them, and she wouldn’t say she’d acquired a taste for it, either. But when the beast had tossed her some like he was merely feeding an animal, the woman felt she had little choice. It hadn’t been tampered with; she’d watched him prepare it with a watchful gaze that rivalled a skittish bird.

And yet still, Sadie stared with an equal amount of intensity in that moment. The front of her clothes almost burned the tissue off her bones. She scrutinised the beast as he did to her, though a sleek mask hid what the woman assumed was a gnarly face. The slim, angled eyes gave no other impression but an intimidating, watchful anger.

The Outback was lonely tonight. Sadie hadn’t entirely expected any of her friends to even attempt finding her out there, but it didn’t sweeten the sting of disappointment. It wasn’t like anyone even stood a chance against the beast, either. But Sadie knew that, had it been her friend held hostage by him, she would have died trying to save them.

Oh, well. Fuck ‘em, Sadie thought bitterly. They probably just assumed she had been stupid enough to become chow for the dingos or that she’d fallen into a croc-infested lake. Instead, she would die there, at the thick hands of that ugly beast, once he tired of the waiting and silence. 

There was only so much guessing one could take. 

Sadie had pondered, many times since graced with the beast’s presence, that she should simply ask what he intended with her. But it felt cheap, and Sadie thought herself above bargaining and pleasantries. 

Exhaustion weighed the fibres of her muscles; every aching joint begged and pleaded for rest, but rest she did not. Death at the beast’s hand—Sadie expected it, but only if she could help it. Closing even one eye set the hairs on their ends as if the time for the beast to sink his claws into her flesh would be when she slept, her most vulnerable state. 

A headache from the heat that day lingered uncomfortably, exacerbated by the crackling flames. Sadie blinked, her eyelids heavy, and she gave the beast a once-over. If he was even a tiny bit tired, there was no expressing it. 

He had eaten, picked the blood from his claws, and sat there. The beast watched her, too. His mask didn’t give the impression that it saw through Sadie. No, it stared right at her, breaking her down atom by atom, scrutinising every agonising aspect to juice the weakness right out of her.

When life gives you lemons , Sadie mused. Her skin crawled when she likened herself to nothing but a mere fruit, her presence just as sour and unpleasant as a freshly cut lemon. 

At some point, Sadie wished that the beast would fold and tell her what he intended. But when she thought about it, she would be rather disturbed if such an alien creature spoke even broken English to her. How such a twisted impression of Mother Nature could learn human tongue bewildered her, and she had to cleanse her mind of perturbing imagery before it reflected on her face. 

No, it was a battle of will. Sadie would be damned if she lost. She had been through worse; not even the cruellest kinds of torture could crack her mind. She wasn’t porcelain, no. 

You had something to protect, though , Sadie reminded herself. The thought came unwanted, and she almost closed her eyes to flush it away. She couldn’t remind herself of what she was running from. Even though she didn’t have half of what she did then, it shouldn’t soften her resolve. 

It couldn’t.

It wouldn’t . 

The beast was staring. Nothing new, but it felt different. The atmosphere had started to shift, and Sadie squinted slightly. Had she accidentally let something slip, and he’d clocked it? She wanted so badly to put it past him, but the technology strapped to his body spoke of his intelligence. It was an uncomfortable reminder that she wasn’t the only sentient being there, even if she was the only human.

How odd that feeling was. She’d looked animals in the eyes and felt their presence, but this… oh, how heavy did this feel. No words in the entire dictionary (to Sadie’s unsavoury amount of knowledge) could perfectly encapsulate the way it felt to be in the space of an alien knowing it was thinking just as articulately as you were . 

Something else was aflame that night, and it wasn’t just the fire. It prickled and crawled under Sadie’s skin, and she wanted to claw at her flesh until it gathered under her nails. 

Her gaze briefly dropped to the pile of her weapons stacked by the beast. Sadie wasn’t the only one clinging to wakefulness, for she could at least sit with the comfort that he feared a knife in the back once he closed his eyes. And, oh, would Sadie do that within a heartbeat. 

She would slip the blade past his flesh if his crocodile-like skin allowed it, and she would escape into the night with his warm, sticky blood between her fingers. But at least she would be alive, even if no one would believe the tale of an armoured beast who came from the stars—the croc that walked on two feet. 

Alas, dreams were dreams for a reason. Sadie sullenly reminded herself of what she truly stood toe-to-toe with. It wasn’t the same as anything she’d faced before—not even a Bloater, which was an individual infected by the Cordyceps fungus in only its latest, most powerfully evolved stage. 

Sadie pictured one. A Bloater had plates of fungi growing everywhere out of its skin (she had long since stopped associating the infected as past humans), which were oddly durable and made it much more difficult to kill them. She imagined that what ammunition it took to kill a Bloater would be thrice that to pierce the skin of the beast that currently observed her with just as much intelligence.

Questions flitted through Sadie’s mind. A battle of will, yes, but even if she did ask, she doubted the beast would understand. Would he speak back in his own language? What would it sound like? Was there anything in their languages that could have overlapped, providing some kind of foundational understanding?

Did they want to understand each other? 

Sadie was curious, above all else. But she was stubborn and self-important to her core. To protect her dignity, if anything. Of course, it was a falsity, just a mere illusion of control that she could hold onto during her most testing times. But it was something more than this nothing. 

A breath ghosted past her dry lips. Sadie felt she was more at war with herself than what she was with the beast. She observed the way the firelight reflected off his mask. Her brows twitched together, minutely, as a thousand more thoughts flitted by her brain as quickly as a soaring bullet.

The beast tilted his head to the side. It was just an inch, but Sadie blinked in surprise. She was more perturbed by the humanness of the action, and her eyes flicked his rigid body up and down.

A few long, tubular tresses fell over his shoulder. The air between them was growing ever more tense, leading Sadie to further believe he’d clocked something she didn’t realise she was letting off. She visibly swallowed, her throat muscles working, and the beast just continued to watch. 

A growing sense of agitation was nurtured in Sadie’s chest when she realised the balance had, yet again, begun to tip. They had yet to utter a sound towards each other, but the silence spoke louder than what words could possibly convey. How irritating it felt to know that the beast was lasering into her core with just his gaze alone.

The frustration built. It was, perhaps, exacerbated by the days’ worth of heat, loneliness, and, admittedly, a sense of hopelessness after being torn from everything she knew. A battle of wills, yes, but Sadie had never particularly prided herself on a steelset mind.

She curled an upper lip. “What?” Sadie suddenly snapped before she could even stop herself or think. Her voice was hoarse from disuse.

The beast surprised her in more ways than she cared to admit. It tilted its head again before a deep noise resounded from its chest, making his shoulders shake for a second or two. And it wasn’t just the action that shocked her, it was the implication that he’d understood her.

Because he laughed.

Chapter Text

Dust kicked up around Sadie’s face, and she blinked from a shallow sleep, coughing once, twice. Flakes caught in her eyes, and she brought up a hand to wipe them away. The air was scorching and still; a simmering sun beat down on her, causing the towering silhouette to ripple before her gaze.

The beast stood there, his feet disturbing the red dirt beneath him. Sadie became acutely aware of how dry her throat felt, and it took another second or two before she realised she had fallen asleep. She jolted upwards, yanking on her shirt to cool the developing sweat gathering on her skin.

Sadie immediately rose to her feet, glancing at the ruined remains of the fire from the night before. She flicked her gaze up towards the beast, her eyes darkening, before she quickly bent to snatch up her bag, sending even more dust to kick up around them. 

It stuck to the fibres of her bag, and Sadie aggressively wiped it off. The beast silently watched her, the impassive plane of his mask evincing not a singular emotion or feeling. The metal winked under the beating sun, almost blinding Sadie as she moved past him.

The whole cat-and-mouse dynamic developing between their will and mindset had already grown tiring. There was more at play. Sadie had accidentally fallen asleep, and yet here she stood, even awoken by the beast himself. If he wanted her dead, he would have done it by now. So, what did he want?

Sadie stared out at the expanse of nothingness: red dirt and desert brush for as far as the eye could see. The horizon shimmered almost tauntingly. Navigating the Outback had been tolerable with her friends. But, now, here, stuck with a being that came from the stars, it felt awfully desolate and crushing.

The redhead heaved a sigh. At least it was her, not any of her friends. She could handle it, though the notion didn’t make it any less harrowing. Sadie’s shoulders slumped, and she turned to look at the beast, the bag still dangling from one hand.

“What do you want?” Sadie asked. She could feel sweat developing on her upper lip, and her scalp was starting to burn and itch under the morning heat. 

The beast continued to stare. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t understand, though, after laughing at her last night. Sadie attributed it to the mask clipped over his probably hideously alien face, a sort of technology that even the Old World could not have dreamed of developing.

Perhaps he had a translator, but even that was doubly unsettling. Were there more of his kind? 

“You can stand there and pretend to be ignorant. Whatever.” Sadie gestured with her free hand, throwing it out to emphasise her frustration. “But I fucking know there’s a reason you took me. Spit it the fuck out or let me walk away.”

It’s a bluff. Sadie was disoriented; everything looked the same, and she wouldn’t be able to find her camp. Walking away was like taking a shot in the dark. But it didn’t matter, Sadie would rather die from the elements than tag along like a good little prisoner. 

She looked out at the dry land. She swallowed thickly, her nostrils burning from the heat. The expansiveness was admittedly intimidating, though.

The beast stared for a moment longer. He slowly brought up his right arm, the one where a sleek, metallic gauntlet sat snugly around his meaty forearm. He tapped on a small screen that blinked to life under his touch, and a tiny hologram projected from its surface.

Sadie’s breath hitched; she’d never seen anything like it before. She recognised the flickering image, though: a portion of Australia’s map. The beast zoomed in, delicately using two fingers, bringing up a large map of a state she’d avoided like the plague.

The beast then presented his arm out, his shoulders squaring a bit, his cold mask watching her with the attentiveness of a mother observing her newborn.

Sadie could mistake his mannerisms for a human in a tediously crafted suit. She looked him up and down, searching for seams, before she sighed. 

“That’s Sydney.” Sadie shifted her weight to one leg, gesturing at the holographic map. Did she die? Was she dreaming? “If you wanna go there, you’re on your own. Shit’s fucked.”

The beast cocked his head to the side a small bit. Sadie watched his tubular tresses move, randomly adorned with metallic, silver clasps that glinted under the sunlight. 

Oh, so he did understand her. Sadie licked her lips, transitioning her weight to the other leg while the beast shook his head, holding out his arm again. 

“No,” Sadie emphasised. “It’s dead. You’re either born there or you die there.”

It was silent except for Sadie’s small breaths. The beast watched her for a moment before he swiped on the hologram, bringing up another image. The distortion made her squint, but she could discern a diagram of an infected.

Sadie threw out a hand. “That’s a Bloater.” She went to say something else, but realisation struck her, and she scoffed loudly. “Is that what you’re looking for?” And when the beast lowered his arm, Sadie took it as confirmation, and she took a few steps away. “No fucking way, man!”

It was a death sentence. Sydney had been one of the few places that couldn’t handle the weight of the Cordyceps, and it had been a dead zone since the early days of the New World. There weren’t many who were brave enough to try their luck, and there were even fewer who got lucky. 

The infection had thirty years to develop and evolve in that place. There were rumours that a group of people lived there, but only savages could survive.

And Sadie would be incredibly stupid to believe she could brave Sydney, even with a star walker by her side.

The beast idled for a moment before he untucked Sadie’s hunting knife from his belt, hidden in a weathered leather sheath. He held it tauntingly, his head cocked, as if she was a pig and he was dangling a carrot on a stick. 

Sadie’s father had given her that knife.

The redhead slumped. She looked out at the barren landscape again, licking her dry lips. Sadie huffed before she pulled the straps of her bag over her shoulders. It was lighter than before, and she couldn’t forget the sour taste in her mouth when the beast had rummaged through it to remove anything he deemed unfit for her to carry.

Sadie sniffed, pulling the hood of her jacket over her head. She fumbled to stretch the balaclava face mask over her nose, acutely aware that the beast was watching her. It was hot, and it made her insides feel like they were melting, but it was better than dealing with first-degree burns.

“What?” Sadie suddenly snapped before she paused to rein herself in. She looked at the beast, throwing out her hands again, yet controlling her snarky tone. “Are we going or what?”

The beast slowly tucked the hunting knife back into his belt. Sadie felt cheap, bribed by mere sentiment, but she couldn’t help it. She rubbed her hands together, pulling the jacket sleeves lower. Her skin felt overly hot.

Sadie stared at the horizon, doubt and dread clasping hands like old friends. A shaky breath escaped her; what the hell was she doing? She thought she could protect her dignity, but even that was as fragile as delicate human skin folding under the pressure of a sharp blade. 

Death, as it seemed, followed her as closely as a hand of bad luck. Sadie wished she had thick skin because when she blinked, she saw her dad’s face.

Stay strong, he would say. But Sadie had long since blurred the line between strength and cowardice.

Chapter Text

SUMMER.

Mirages danced in the far distance; the horizon shimmered beyond that, and Sadie squinted against the harsh sunlight. It heated her clothes, burning her skin and exacerbating the accumulation of sweat in places she would rather not feel it. 

Tall structures loomed curiously, distorted by the dancing mirages. Sadie stared at them, her breathing restricted by the hot material of her balaclava. She couldn’t even hear the beast behind her; he walked slowly, keeping her in his sight at all times. The only thing that brought Sadie comfort was the fact that if she was struggling with full sun protection, then he would be worse. 

A massive dip in the ground became unmistakable the closer Sadie got. She dragged her feet across the red dirt, kicking dust up around her heels. It stained the bottom half of her blank pants. At first, Sadie had thought the dip was a mere illusion, but now, she suspected they were coming up on a gold mine.

Her group had sourced a map some weeks ago during their travels through the Outback. They knew there was a mine around there somewhere; odd that Sadie stumbled across it now. She had a feeling the beast knew more than he was letting on. Maybe his ship was here, but that still gave way to more questions than answers, and Sadie had exhausted her thoughts and theories.

It felt like they had been walking for hours. Sadie’s head pounded uncomfortably, and her throat felt drier than the desert brush that crunched under her boots. She’d drunk the water from her flask quite restrictively, preparing herself for the very plausible possibility that she could run out and be left for dead.

The idea of dying in the middle of that lonely, barren landscape grew terrifying. Sadie had endured a lot in her life, and though she wanted to retain her dignity by upholding her values and morals, succumbing to the Outback felt wholly degrading. 

For some odd reason, Sadie felt like the beast thought the same.

Death was bleak. People just had to find other reasons to live, and it was time Sadie found another in the wake of losing everything she knew. 

It was some time before they got closer to the dip in the ground, and Sadie’s breath hitched when she realised what it was. “Holy shit,” she said quietly, speeding up, taking care not to run to not expend anymore energy she may need to conserve.

The dip was a massive quarry, pertaining to Sadie’s guess that they were coming up on the gold mine. The redhead exhaled a little shakily, her toes coming up to the edge. It almost gave the effect of being gargantuan, and her body swayed, making her feel diminutive in the face of it.

Right down the bottom sat a hunk of old, abandoned mining vehicles, all weathered and unimpressive with age. They blinked up at her in the sunlight, though even they appeared small amongst the expansiveness of the quarry.

The beast came up behind Sadie, looking down at it, too. The air was uncomfortably still, and it seemed to grow even staler when Sadie realised how close they were. She shifted, though the dizziness the height gave her made her feel as if she would stumble and fall.

Sadie stepped away from the edge before her gaze lifted to inspect everything beyond, including the head frame that rippled under the heat waves. If she squinted, it looked like it stretched on for quite a while. 

There could still be some supplies scattered around, if she were lucky enough. It depended on how many people had stumbled across the mine since the beginning, but Sadie wasn’t entirely keen on the odds being in her favour.

It was also entirely possible that there were infected loitering around. What if the old miners hid out there until they depleted their supplies and died? Or what if the infection somehow made its way there and the mines were infested with Stalkers and Clickers?

Or something worse.

Infected individuals were rare in the Outback. If not for its size, people were rarely brave enough to venture out there. Even so, most towns perished shortly after the beginning of the outbreak; the lack of resources was eventually detrimental. A lot of people were forced to migrate to the coastlines, where the infection was more concentrated. It was a lose-lose.

Sadie did find it hard to imagine miners choosing to stay at the gold mine unless they completely lost access to transportation. 

She started to walk around the edge of the quarry. Every time she looked at the bottom, she became more positive that there was water down there, and it wasn’t just the illusion of a mirage. It made her mouth feel drier, but she didn’t dare even tease the idea of somehow getting down there just to refill her flask. 

The beast followed, turning his attention away from the machinery down below. If he was struggling, he didn’t show it, and that seemed to annoy Sadie more. She refused to look at his face, but she did occasionally glance back to see if he was close to just dropping dead.

An annoyed sigh rolled past her chapped lips every time she saw him walking tall and proud.

It took them fifteen minutes to travel across the edge of the quarry. Sadie looked up at the head frame, her hood at least protecting her eyes from the harsh sunlight. She licked her lips, the ground suddenly feeling unsafe as if it would suddenly collapse beneath her.

Abandoned shells of rusted cars littered here and there, their original colours lost under the oppressive heat and red dust. Sadie walked up to one, peering inside to glimpse the half-burnt leather seats. She didn’t dare touch the car; instead, she leaned back and stepped away.

When she looked all the way to her left, it almost appeared as if there was a big camping area. Sadie tilted her head a bit; portables, perhaps. It was both a good and a bad sign. 

Then, a four-legged creature darted across the red dirt, its fur almost the same colour. A few more followed before disappearing behind a row of portables. It was a pack of dingos, and Sadie almost exhaled in relief. If there were dingos, it meant there should be a viable water source nearby.

She noticed that the beast was staring. Sadie stilled, and her gaze dropped to her father’s hunting knife hilted in his belt. She swallowed thickly before she turned and started to drag her feet towards the camp-looking area.

When they got there, Sadie peered through the dusty windows of the portables, finding dirty and barely furnished rooms. In one of them, she spied an empty suitcase discarded on the geometric cover of an unmade bed. 

Sadie stepped around a broken, plastic chair. She tried the door handle, giving it a good shove a few times to try and pop it open. The beast watched quietly, his head occasionally turning to inspect their surroundings. 

When the door popped open, Sadie saved herself from stumbling. It creaked loudly before bumping into skeletonised remains dressed in casual clothing. She stopped the door from coming back towards her, her hazel eyes inspecting the body, what was left of it.

The skeleton was propped up against a side table, a handwritten note long-since abandoned by its side. Sadie curiously bent to grab it, and she skimmed through the cursive letters, finding it was a goodbye letter to their wife and children.

It felt like Sadie was holding a relic from the Old World. Her heart squeezed when she finished reading it, before she gently placed it back in its original position. A few flies buzzed around the decayed skull, darting up past Sadie’s face, who thwacked them away.

She side-stepped the door and turned back towards the suitcase. There were dirty clothes, a broken watch, a lunchbox with probably an entirely new ecosystem inside, and, to Sadie’s delight, a map.

“Fuck yeah,” Sadie muttered. She picked it up, swiping off a layer of dust before she started to unravel it. 

A shadow loomed over her, and Sadie turned to see the beast lingering in the small doorway. He grabbed the top of it and bent inside to watch as Sadie laid the map out on the bed. She shoved the suitcase to the side, sighing in disbelief at the beast’s insistence to know what she was doing at all times.

Sadie shook her head minutely. They stood in silence for an awkward moment before she gestured. “This is only a map of the Northern Territory,” she said quietly. The beast angled his head to impassively stare right at her. Sadie pretended not to notice. “If we find out which gold mine we’re at, we can plan our route a lot better.”

Her words were met with silence, of course. Sadie tapped the corner. “This is the general direction of where we need to go. We’ll need to do detours for supplies.” She sniffed quietly before folding her arms over her chest, going quiet for a minute. “But it’s gonna be rough. This shit ain’t for the weak.”

The beast watched her for a moment longer before he made a strange noise. The best Sadie could attribute it to was a mixture between a chuff and a snort. He pushed himself off the doorframe and stepped back out of the room, turning to watch the pack of dingos from earlier creep along the shadows of portables across from them.

They panted heavily, crossing between pathways to dart between undercover areas. Sadie also watched them through the dusty window before she folded the map back up. Perhaps there was a sign around the camp somewhere that could tell them the name of the gold mine they were at.

Sadie carried the map in her left hand as she stepped out of the room, almost jumping out of her skin when the beast growled . For a sickening second, she thought he was doing it to her, but then she realised the dingos had crept too close.

The noise scared them off, and they scampered away out of sight. Sadie took a small breath, glancing at the beast’s side profile. What the fuck kind of noise was that? What was this thing?

If there were any lingering doubts that this truly was a human in a suit, they were gone now. He truly was a star walker; a fairytale told to kids in the dead of night. For the umpteenth time in Sadie’s life, she was flabbergasted at the hand of shit luck she’d been dealt with.

She thought before that she would rather it be her than any of her friends. She knew she could handle it. But, still, why her ?!

The beast flicked his head to look at Sadie, his tresses moving with the sudden motion. Sadie realised she’d been caught staring, and she was glad the balaclava hid the reddening of her cheeks. She cleared her throat, her mind working fast to come up with an excuse.

“If we’re really doing this—” Sadie started, her voice cracking from thirst, “—then I’m not staying at this place for long.” She hesitated to justify it, but then chose not to. She didn’t want to give the beast the impression she was giving him any more power over her.

It was silent for a second before the beast dipped his head, an acknowledging nod. It threw Sadie off guard, and she blinked at him before turning away, huffing in frustration and confusion. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Sadie muttered. She shook her head before giving in to her thirst, and she pulled the flask off her belt to take a few sips. Fucking aliens, she thought. 

Chapter Text

Sadie wiped her mouth with her sleeve after sipping some of her water. She screwed the cap back on the flask and reattached it to her belt. The sun was in the middle of the sky, beating down on her with vicious rays of heat that made her insides feel like they were pulsing.

With a heavy, exhausted sigh, Sadie pulled the balaclava back over the bottom half of her face. She looked up and down the row of portables, perhaps trying to glimpse where the dingos went. There should be a body of water or a food source somewhere that attracted them.

Sadie followed the concrete pathway, her boots leaving prints in the dirt that had long since scattered across it. The beast followed, occasionally peering through dusty windows to gauge what was inside. It reached a point where Sadie wondered if she was being babysat or if she was the one doing the babysitting.

It felt like an eternity of wandering before Sadie stumbled upon a larger building about the size of three or four portables together. Above the shackled double doors, weathered, faded letters were barely distinguishable. But if Sadie squinted, she could make out the words ‘Tanami Mess Hall.’

“Oh, shit,” Sadie muttered. She hastened to the porch and spread the map across the wood. She knelt on the steps, tracing a finger across the map of the Northern Territory before she found Tanami. The beast hovered above her, casting a shadow that actually provided a welcome reprieve from the harsh sunlight.

Sadie was silent for a moment. She felt crazy talking to the beast as if she was whispering to her reflection in the glass; he was so unresponsive, so stoic. “We’re here.” Sadie tapped the name of the area they were in. “We need to go… around here.” She dragged her finger to the bottom right corner. 

There was an awkward, tense pause that made Sadie’s skin crawl. She sniffed loudly, subconsciously rubbing the tip of her nose. “Problem is, these are the main roads.” She touched the thick lines running vertically through the middle. “We’re not gonna have a lot of luck.”

Sadie’s group had used the main road to enter the Northern Territory through South Australia. The trip had taken them almost a year from Melbourne. It made Sadie blanch when she thought about it; she was travelling halfway across the country with an alien, if they even survived the Outback.

She looked up, swallowing thickly before she gestured towards the road some distance away. “If we follow this down… we’ll just… figure shit out. I dunno. As long as we stop for water now and then.”

The beast brought his right arm up again, and his fingers deftly moved across the screen on his gauntlet, before another map projected on the glitching orange hologram. A pulsing dot sat in the centre, and when he zoomed out, the screen reset before displaying a basic geographical map within a radius of the dot’s location.

Sadie marvelled before she caught herself. She blinked, shaking her head to herself before she swiped up the physical map and stood. “That thing can track everythin’?” She gestured, hardly expecting an answer, but once again surprised when the beast offered a singular nod. 

That settled that for now. Sadie turned to look at the building they stood in front of. A mess hall; perhaps there was food inside? Food that wouldn’t be rotten, mouldy, or anything that would birth entirely new ecosystems. 

That was a stretch.

The doors were shackled and heavily padlocked. Sadie tugged on one before quickly pulling her hand away, the rusty metal burning her palm. She exhaled through her teeth, her mind racing; had they been protecting something back then or locking something in?

Sadie stepped off the porch, taking in the state of the mess hall. She raked her gaze across the sides, looking at the windows tinted by dark wire. Pebbles crunched under her boots as she walked up to one of the windows and peered inside.

The sunlight that filtered through highlighted the spores locked inside. “Fuck,” Sadie whispered. She couldn’t see through them; she couldn’t identify what infected individuals were inside. Shapes were indistinguishable beyond the dusty table that sat inside, just below the window.

There was a loud bang. 

Sadie almost jumped out of her skin, and her hand instinctively went to her thigh holster before she remembered that the beast was in possession of her weapons. She took several steps away from the mess hall, her heart racing, before she hurried back to the front, ensuring she put distance between herself and the spores.

The beast had broken the lock and chains, and he had thrown open the front doors. Sadie held her breath, her eyes wide, as the familiar and distinct screeching of Clickers originated from the mess hall and reverberated between the portables. 

Before Sadie could even blink, small humanoid shapes came darting out, making terrible noises through broken jaws, with their arms flailing wildly. The beast paused, almost as if he was… not expecting something like this. 

There was a metallic shing, and the wrist-blades Sadie had seen before popped out again from the gauntlet around the beast’s right forearm. Unsurprisingly, he moved faster than the Clickers did, and with a few strong swings of his arm, all three of the infected were beheaded. The distinct thumps of their heads rolling down the small steps sickened Sadie, and she watched pools of crimson red develop underneath their fungal-infested bodies.

Sadie didn’t even realise she’d been holding her thigh holster during the ordeal, as if her weapons would magically spawn back. She swallowed thickly when the beast slowly turned to look at her, his wrist-blades dripping wetly, and his mask speckled with droplets of blood. She watched a drop curve over the arch of the mask’s brow before dripping over the eye. 

There was really nothing to say. The beast wasn’t even breathing hard; it was as if he’d just flicked his wrist and swatted a fly. All Sadie could think was: why the hell did he not kill me?

The beast had every opportunity to slaughter her; he’d proven more than adept. But he’d kept her alive, and that little show made Sadie feel like deadweight. 

She took a small step back, looking past the beast into the spore-filled mess hall. Through the glare of the sun, she could still barely make out what was inside. Her mouth grew progressively drier the more she tried to think of something to say.

“I’m not going in there without my knife, at least,” Sadie eventually settled on. Perhaps she could try to bargain with him; perhaps the Clickers were a wake-up call for the beast, who would realise that he would have to carry the weight of both of them. 

But, instead of even taking a second to consider what Sadie said, the beast made that noise again—halfway between a chuff and a snort. He quickly turned his back, almost like he was emphasising his point, and Sadie blinked, offence pinching her chest.

“Fucking asshole,” she muttered as the beast stepped into the mess hall, and she prayed that his mask didn’t have a filter so that he would get infected, that karma would be on her side for once. 

But karma usually wasn’t agreeable to Sadie.