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[MethodicalSlacker]

[Don't look at him.]

But there isn't a him to not look at. Not anymore.

Yet there are still reminders. Debris. Clues. Scraps of scalp, some still with hair clinging fruitlessly to their shells. Curtains of red drawn swiftly across the utility metal of the stairwell. The hanging corpse smell in the air, mingling with something salty, pungent, and yet unseen.

There's also his bag.¹⁰⁷

Betty has the knapsack on the floor somewhat aways from the splashed corpse. It's soiled. She has her own deflated knapsack open next to it into which she tosses pickings from the Nate's canvas carcass.

The cruise ship reverberates with renewed activity. Jodi peeks over her shoulder every other can to make sure she isn't being watched. Last night she couldn't find anywhere to sleep. Most of the good places were in the cruise ship. So she just spent the evening and midnight and witching hours walking in circles across the darkened jetty, watching as the sky turned and the moon passed across the sky. She watched it the whole way.

Betty stares into the open corpse from her thirty seventh hour of consecutive waking life. Her eyelids droop depleted above her fingers as spindling they sort through her spoils—uneaten food to replace what she lost on the first day, more water, more medical supplies, scraps of cloth and fabric and weird shit from someone else's movie.

There's also a fish.¹⁰⁸

She pulls him out by the tailfin and holds it under her arm. Now she has something better than a weighted hat to swing at someone. She stands up and takes a few practice swings, scattering the rotting Pike scent thoroughly through the stairwell and loosing bits of ice and chipped flesh from the fish's scales.

The pike goes next to her bag against the wall. It's well past eating. Someone else will catch it to the face, though, and then there'll be much more eating when that came from. All in good time.

Back to the corpse the stowaways go, picking and scavenging from the wreckage of an unknown life, with their backs turned to the cameras and their ears raised for the potential sound of approaching threats.

[+] Footnotes

[107] Betty sees it. Moves towards it.

Down the stairs, coming from the pool.

A morning splashing unchlorinated water on her face. Watching the birds collect like dew on the bows of the forsaken fleet.

She moves with a purpose.

[108] Fresh. Thawed. Green. Not too heavy.

Slippery. Pungent. Sort of squished.

Was this his weapon? Another cruelty.

Still, it was usable. Uneaten. Uncooked. Potentially lifegiving.

And swingable.

But, again, a fish?

Weird.

[The Honeless Beard]

First she heard the chuckle, deep, raspy - an unfortunate, self-serving sound bouncing manically down the walls of this dead place.

Next she saw, through flickering light, another corpse. Like the fish, he was pungent - ripe with ocean spray and salt, mangled hands clasping tightly to a shard of glass. Blood flecked his white tank top, the sides stained yellow with body excrement, sweat, tears, a fluid that was slightly pink that didn't bear examination.

Ivan stepped into view, a walking corpse with an F stamped into his forehead, a ticket to hell already punched. He stopped, a dozen feet away or more, and his eyes - left one slightly adrift, floating of its own volition - fell to the corpse she was currently scavenging.

Carefully, he raised one hand in a wave, the motion making his dead features stretch into an uncomfortable mask.

"Hey."

[MethodicalSlacker]

At the noise Jodi startles and presses her hands down hard into the bag. Her head snaps to attention, first to her right shoulder—

—and not to the left because there he is down the stairs, ragged, sloppy and wasted. Another corpse to loot.

One that can talk. And move. And fight her.

And maybe win.

Her mouth trembles, soundless vowels forming by her tongue for a moment before the air rushes forth and animates them.

A thick field of debris between herself and the intruder. Jodi leans over the bag, hovering her chest above its open maw, protecting her spoils of war.

"...I was just looking!" Jodi squeaks. It comes out louder than expected. Her words ring out in the hollow staircase, bouncing up the metal walls and sliding down simultaneously. Her hands tremble and so does her head, lightly side to side, at about the same frequency. Stillness turns to smothering stagnation in the air, and Jodi feels like she's choking on her own oxygen.

She closes her startled mouth and eyes and clears her dry throat, swallowing her phlegm. When she's done she opens her eyes, already pointed at Ivan.

And she isn't shaking anymore, no.

She's as still as a corpse.

"No..."

She reassesses, scanning him, eyes moving up and down his desiccated body.

"...no, you're just looking," she says dryly.

Now her head moves side to side, slow and smooth and with purpose. She's communicating something to him. The brim of her mustard yellow hat leans forward over her eyes, obscuring them from view, hiding the source of the voice.

"You're looking to mess with me, aren't you."

It isn't a question.

[The Honeless Beard]

As she met his eyes, Ivan-

Is filled with panic at what he's had to do so far. Fuck, his ribs and his body ache but he can't - won't - let Papi see him this way, busted up and broken because he was too fucking dumb and too fucking slow to capitalize on a moment. He can't pick fights that aren't with people who self-identify as a Respect, but here Jodi is, creepy as fuck and making vaguely horror movie statements and he-

held her stare.

"If I say no," Ivan replied, "would you believe me?"

His stance widened slightly.

[The Honeless Beard]

"I guess not," he said into the silence.

Slipping away was easier than he'd thought.

((Continued elsewhere))

[Mini_Help]

Minutes later, the hallways was empty.

((Jodi Hunter continued in Endnotes))