#ecollapse

Isaac pressed himself against the wall in the corridor, outside looking in. He had been fed vaguely recently, his arm was healing, although he was tired and filthy there were people who needed the facilities more. The smell though, the smell was making his stomach roll in spite of the way people seemed to be settling right in. The underlying whiff of cheap Hospital cleaning supplies mingled with the smell of infected and the dead, although they had all been cleared away in the days since the others had banded together it lingered. That was the problem with having one failing eye, his other senses picked up the slack in all the wrong ways.

He turned away for a second, pressing his fingers into his temples. It was hard to confront the fact that he would rather have been back at the Church up the steeple on his newly found perch. Isaac turned on the spot, voice small, hesitant and doubtful. 

Isaac’s world had shrunk in the days after the bombings, down to their tiny group and the open road. All he let himself hope for. Now the numbers he saw before him exceeded every expectation he had had. How many more times would their luck hold? The Hospital must have had backup generators, something which made the space so impossibly bright, had him squinting against the clinical fluorescents. The sound however was the most difficult to adjust back to, to the sound of voices and movement from more people than he could count. It overrode his utter hatred of Hospitals as he tried to ground himself.

Somehow he had drifted away from Gwen, from Lori and the others and was quietly trying to gather some semblance of control, trying to stitch up the gaping part of him that had realised he could not see Logan anywhere. He stretched up onto his toes, scanning the people milling about and overbalancing in his eagerness to check again, his slight stumble had the sole of his boots drag across the speckled linoleum, producing that awful squeaking sound that made him flinch. All around him people were tearful, joyous. Reunions of all kinds were occurring within touching distance and Isaac was utterly numb.

Days had passed since they’d moved off the cracked cement of the highway, the rusted remains of cars reminding him eerily of giant metal skeletons strewn across it. He had hated it on that road, it was too open and with nothing for him to climb. The silence had crawled beneath his skin again, just like the first time after he had started the long walk back to Seattle from the border right after the bombs fell. Alone. The sounds of a large group of people living together, over a hundred of them had become synonymous with safety in the last six months and it was gone. All of it was gone. 

At the very least the Church had a steeple, wooden panels that he could find purchase on and drag himself up to keep watch until his legs cramped up and his fingers were stiff with the cold. He had never been religious, never had faith to fall back on and so to him where they had found sanctuary was just another building filled with dust and the things strangers had left behind. 

Isaac slid down the slats of the roof after waiting three hours for the others to return from scouting the area. He had set his jaw, the muscle jumping furiously beneath the skin at the fact that he was being left behind. Instead of arguing he had retreated to his crow’s nest and scanned what he could see through the trees over and over, gun held loosely and mouth sealed shut to the others below. Hitting the floor was difficult, so skewed was his balance by the arm strapped close to his body that shifted his centre of gravity he almost fell but he instantly recovered at the shouts from the opposite side of the building 

In an instant he was sprinting around the side of the church, ice axe in hand, this could not happen again. This wouldn’t happen again. He panted roughly as he skidded to a stop in the soft, overgrown grass to the stunned eyes of more people gathered together than he had seen in over a week. 

                                                              LORI.