Fracking Apocalypse - a ZNation 10K/Tommy Fanfiction

S2E07: Part 1

S2E07: Part 1

10K didn't get better. Instead he had become very quiet and closed off for several weeks after Cassandra's death. He didn't really talk to anybody, mostly he just glared at Murphy and killed Z's. Sometimes while the group walked he'd come up behind Bailey and take her hand weaving their fingers together but other than that he didn't show much affection toward her. She understood, it wasn't just that Cassandra had died it was that he'd been forced to kill her. Bailey kept repeating in her head that Cassandra had been dead for a while and if there had been any piece of her still in there it had been trapped behind the puppet Murphy had turned her into. If she had had any control at all Bailey believed it would have come out when she'd been close to killing 10K. He'd filled her in one night – the only night she'd gotten him to talk or show any emotion at all – after he'd woken up from a nightmare about what he did.

She saw him violently twitch awake and knew he'd had a terrible nightmare, she could see it in the fear in his eyes, in the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He'd been sleeping on one of the couches in the living room of a house they'd found for the night, Bailey was on the other one and Warren was on watch outside, everyone else had bunked upstairs in the bedrooms. Bailey was only awake because she'd just finished her watch shift and she hadn't been able to fall back asleep yet. She'd also been very worried about 10K, he hadn't said a word to anybody, he hadn't even spoken up to claim that couch he was sleeping on, he just dropped his stuff on the floor next to it and collapsed onto the cushions without a word, either staring at the ceiling or glaring at Murphy.

"Are you okay?" she whispered and his head snapped to her like he'd forgotten she was there. He nodded and didn't say anything.

"I know I told you if you don't want to talk then don't, but maybe you should." She said and he continued to stare at her, the look in his eyes closed off, the only thing in them was a stone cold warning like he was telling her not to pry. "You need your sleep to stay sharp so a Z doesn't get you, if this is keeping you from sleeping, you won't be at your best when we need you." She said hoping the survivalist logic would win out. After a long hesitation it did. 10K sat up and bent over resting his elbows on his knees and running his hands through his hair while his goggles hung around his neck. Not being able to keep her distance any longer Bailey got up and sat next to him.

"She made me do it." He whispered with his head in his hands and it tore Bailey apart inside at how broken he sounded. She brought a hand to his back and rubbed up and down trying to soothe him.

"Start with when we left and go from there." She advised, "Maybe if you get it out it won't be able to keep this hold on you."

He was quiet for a long time again, so long she thought maybe he'd fallen asleep bent over like that until he took a deep breath and raised his head folding his hands into one big fist and resting his chin on his knuckles.

"She tried to go after you so I tackled her, but she pushed me off. I didn't want her to go after you guys so I kept her focused on me. It was going pretty well, she'd gotten in some good hits but nothing I couldn't handle. . . until she pushed me off the cliff." He said and her hand stopped rubbing his back for a split second before she composed herself and kept going. He fell from a cliff? He could have broken his back, he could have been paralyzed. Or broken his neck and died, or cracked his skull open like an egg. She shook her head getting those images out of her mind, he was here, he was next to her and he needed her to keep her mind in this moment so she could help him through his emotional pain and guilt.

"The way she looked was just. . . feral. Like the time I ran into a coyote as a kid."

"A coyote?"