Boot met flesh with a crunch that sent Otsana scraping to the splintered bridge ledge. Radio crumpled, skull striking the planks.

True's boot came down on the other side of Radio's limp body. Guarding it. Their nail-studded fence plank levelled at Otsana while she crawled back to her feet. Both—empty—hands flat on the splintered wood. Fuck, where was the knife?

They chanced a look down. Found it. Laying in a pool of ruby red beside Radio, blood seeped onto the grey wood.

Otsana grinned as the bridge swayed and sent a tremor through True. Her glassy eyes tracked the waver of their makeshift weapon.

Frigid metal dented the bare skin of their neck and Jonesy's heavy breathing skirted their cold ears.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could they have forgotten that gun?

Gravel crunched behind them, some factioneer coming back from the death pit parking garage that Otsana clearly ached to send them to.

"What are you going to do now?" Otsana asked.

"Bite me." Their voice was impossibly tight. Choppy waves smacked the legs of the bridge, grey sky reflected on greyer waters. Sweat and rain dripped down their spine, leaving chills in their wake. Radio was too, too still beneath them.

Get up, Radio, get up.

The gravel crunching ended with an abrupt thud and a gut-deep loss of air from Jonesy. The pressure vanished from True's neck.

"I'll tell you what you're gonna do," Cal said, a faint twang in his voice that True had never noticed before. "You're gonna back up." He punctuated his instruction with the click of a safety. The muzzle of a gun, held steady, preceded him past True.

Reluctantly, Otsana inched backwards.

The instant Cal was between them and Otsana, True dropped. Throwing the plank of the bridge, their hands found Radio. One to the stab wound, staunching the blood. One sliding under its neck and shoulder. Cold, scarred skin against trembling fingertips. They lifted it to press their ear to its chest.

"Please, Radio," they whispered, the patter of rain drowning out their plea, "please, please, please."

A heartbeat, weak and slow. Calloused fingers wrapped around their wrist, Radio's eyes screwed open, sharp with pain. It curled around its injury, like a black hole had opened in its ribcage to suck it into oblivion.

"How we going back there, True?" Cal asked.

"We're fine, we're fine." They weren't sure if they repeated it to convince him, or themself. It wasn't working either way. They had to stop this bleeding, they had to get off this bridge. They pressed the injury harder. Hot blood poured between their fingers, the only warm thing about Radio.

Cal glanced at them, mouth curved downwards. Turning back to Otsana, he motioned with the handgun. "Go on now, go hide in your hole," he said.

"That thing isn't even loaded," Otsana snarled, moving neither towards them nor away. Without missing a beat, Cal tightened his trigger finger.

"You wanna find out? Ain't wasting a bullet on a warning shot."

True scooped Radio's limp, wet body into their arms and retreated to the safety of the solid ground.

Slowly, slowly, Otsana's hand came up in mock surrender and she walked backwards to the safety of the other factioneers at the end of the bridge. The commotion had drawn a curious crowd, but the threat of gunfire held them back. Distance and rain turned Otsana into a blur looming under the rusted arch of the fishery doors. True could feel her glare burning holes into them.

Cal waited for her to disappear beyond the weathered fishery wall before shoving the gun into his waistband.

"Come on," he said, taking True by the shoulders, "before she comes back with friends."

They escaped as far as the treeline and put the largest closest tree between them and the fishery. They scrambled through their pockets for something to help. Fishing line, a spork, old pen, half a set of rusty lock picks, lighter. The bottle of azithro pills rattled as it hit the ground. Those were only going to be useful if Radio lived to get an infection. They shoved the pills back in their pocket and grabbed the lighter. Sparked it, held it to the zip ties until the plastic snapped, then put the flame to the metal handle of the spork.

Radio caught on, peeling layers and rolling up the hem of its blood-soaked shirt. Red painted skin and scar all the same shade, the knife had left a ragged tear, half a finger length long and hemorrhaging.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Cal asked, crouching to get a better look at the injury. "Look where it is, if that's as deep as it looks—"

"I know!" True snapped. "Deep breath," they told Radio, then pressed the white-hot handle to the injury.

It gasped, writhed. Face contorting in a silent scream. And True pressed the hissing instrument harder into its wound, grateful that they couldn't smell the burning flesh. Its foot pistoned into their shin and knocked them on their ass. The spork bounced off a tree root and into the underbrush to sizzle unhappily, a neon angry mark blistered on Radio's ribcage.

"Gonna live?" True asked.

It flopped its head back against the tree, drawn and exhausted and shivering, and pushed the back of its hand outward.

"You look really alive for a dead person."

It flipped them the bird.

At least it was alive enough to do that.

Hauling themself to their feet, True offered their hand to Radio. The sooner they put distance between them and the fishery, the better.

It hadn't recovered the body heat it had dumped out on the bridge, but it managed to get its legs under it. Wavering while it gripped their hand through a wave of something that blanched all the blood from its face.

They made it out of the woods, down the street. Slow, but steady. Fog rolled in off the unsettled ocean to nip at their heels. Radio listed and stumbled into them, its eyelids drooped down to the sidewalk. Its weight made their muscles shake. True doused their worry in all the annoyance they could muster.

A week ago, carrying Radio would have been nothing. They didn't even have their pack weighing them down.

A week ago, they hadn't been shot.

Whatever, they just had to make it to the caravan and then they could both sit.

Their dreams of rest evaporated when Valdivia appeared at the head of the last street, staff in hand. With their pack trapped in the warehouse, they needed back in that caravan, with Valdivia's permission or without it. And Radio was staying with them.

It just sucked that it was ramping up to be a fight.

Two silhouettes prowled half a block behind her. Between brain fog and real fog, True almost mistook the shapes for back-up. Except one was mini-sized and the other towered.

"Mu, buddy, what are you doing out here?" Cal breezed past them. Valdivia glanced over her shoulder, then pivoted a hell of a lot faster, the butt of her staff smacking on the road.

Huh, guess she hadn't known those two were back there.

Gravel scraped behind True, a pebble bounced off their calf.

"Damn it," they hissed out a groan that they felt all the way down in their toes.

A horde of factioneers peaked the hill up the street. Okay, fine, maybe it wasn't a horde, but it was three people too many hellbent on True and Radio.

True cast about for a weapon. Something to pry from the neglected buildings. They should have held on to o that nail board, but they'd needed both hands for Radio. A broken basement window called to them. That would have to do. Propping Radio on the wall, they crouched by the window and tore a strip from their dirty shirt to wrap around the end of a jagged glass shard to wield it like a knife. It wouldn't last long but it would have to do until they got to their pack.

A body plowed into them. Broken glass crunched under them. Swiping blindly with the shard, they caught themself on the window seal. Dust and broken window shards showered on the basement floor below. Great thing to land on. The factioneer pried True's hand from the frame. They jabbed, shard struck torso and stuck. Then snapped, useless. Just their luck, the asshole wore a leather vest.

Radio slashed a knife across his neck. Another strip of leather fell from him. Of course he'd thought to protect his throat. At least someone in this apocalypse had a brain. Too bad it belonged to the enemy.

True kicked hard, snapping the factioneer's legs out from under him before he could take advantage of not being dead. Radio recovered quick, veering to chase the man's descent. Its knife flipped in the air, its eyes bright and sharp. The factioneer hit the gravel. Radio buried the knife in his bared throat.

Blood sprayed, foamy red bubbles forming at the gap where hilt met flesh. Whole body heaving, on its knees, Radio curled over to catch its breath. It wiped at the sweat and blood spatter soaking it forehead while True extricated themself from the shattered window.

"Have you had that knife the whole time?" they asked, brushing glass from their hair. Sea salt and sweat stung in their eyes.

In answer, Radio plucked the knife from the factioneer's throat, wiped the gore off, and slit it into a sheath around its ankle.

"And you didn't gut Jonesy with it?" Irritation set an edge to their tone. Shaking its head, Radio aimed an imaginary gun at its head, the jabbed its thumb at True. Speaking of guns, they grabbed a new glass shard from the debris. It hadn't worked too well last time, but their options had expanded either. One factioneer down, two to go.

A shrill cry and a shout rent the street. True turned to face Cal, scraping himself off the ground with a squashed-bug-splatter bloodstain beneath him, the broken bottom half of a fire escape ladder tangled over his ankles. A second factioneer wrestled Little Valdivia up the shuddering fire escape. The third factioneer fended Big Valdivia off, dancing around her with a metal bat, sneaking blows in on the tail end of her swiping staff.

Radio lurched to its feet, a strange look washed over its face. It blinked fast, lips compressed. Dipping its head, it pressed a hand hard to its chest.

"Listen, I have to get my pack, but you don't owe these people, you don't owe me, and your hurt." True said.

It gripped their shoulder and jabbed at the building next to the one Little Val was being dragged up, at the fire escape. The narrow gap between the two buildings was wall within jumping distance. Radio gave them an insistent shake. Great, they were playing rescuer for other people's kids again.

Ivy vines and tall nettles padded the brick walls and looped around the rungs of a ladder that had seen better days, maybe twenty years ago.

The kid screamed. True snapped toward the sound. Vertigo shoved them a few extra steps to the left. They caught themself on the wall exhaling through a wave of seething ache. Oh, that did not feel good.

They seized a rung and hauled themself up. A second heart pulsed under their gunshot wound While they climbed, the fight between Big Val and the factioneer ended with an abrupt crack. The ladder groaned. A rust-laden rung snapped. True's chin smacked the fire-escape grate. Cursing, the scrambled onto the ledge and squeezed their eyes shut. Tried not to notice how long it took for the metal rung to clang off the concrete.

Little Val's sobs came from far above, and True threw themself recklessly upwards. Up to the roof. Don't think, just make the leap.

A gunshot shattered the air.

They hit the other roof skidding and rolled to a stop on their hands and knees. The factioneer wavered, Little Val nowhere to be seen and True could taste iron in the air. They put their head down and barrelled into the factioneer, flinging her wobbling body off the ledge.

The factioneer hit the concrete the same time that True's knees cracked the ledge, their fingers grasping the roof as they teetered hard. Their throat spasmed shut as they rocked back onto solid ground. A million miles below, Big Valdivia peered up at them from the trigger end of a familiar handgun.

There went their last bullet.

Forcing air past clenched teeth, they reached down and heaved Little Valdivia from the ricket ancient fire escape onto the ledge. They had to work fast, there was no gas left in their tank and they were about one too-long glance down away from turning into a pile of jelly and joining that dead factioneer on the blacktop. None too gently they got the kid onto stable ground and guided her to a jutting pile of air intakes where Little Valdivia mostly sobbed, and True mostly sat with their face buried in their arm and did not think about how they were perched on an ancient-ass falling apart lump of brick held up by expired hopes and wishes.

Big Valdivia and Mu retrieved the two of them, eventually.

A purpling welt stretch from the corner of Big Valdivia's eye into her hairline, she bundled her mini-me into her arms in a flurry of touching and squeezing and a hundred soothing parental murmurs. True slid from the scene and wobbled away.

They paused at the crumpled body of the fallen factioneer. Nudged her onto her back. Crouching, they flitted their hands over her wrists and neck and ears. Into pockets. She'd landed on her face and smashed her teeth in, so they forewent checking in the mouth. They came up empty-handed. Not even a broken watch.

Only old habit had driven them to check in the first place. They couldn't help but go through the motions that had kept them alive for years. And an odd calm came with falling back into a familiar pattern. A dance they knew all the steps to, in the midst of an otherwise hectic disco.

Next step: dig the grave.

A wash of lightheadedness fell through them. After they were done here they were going to crash for a good long time.

That building with the broken window would be an okay place to hole up for a couple hours. It was a little close to this disaster zone, but they were a lot ready to sit. Their side felt like a volcanic cave-in. They had half a mind to give Radio a shake for sending them up that deathtrap ladder.

Wheezing dragged them out of the haze. They looked up to see Radio its lips blue under a sheen of sweat. It clawed at its chest as it hobbled toward them.

Something was wrong.

Its legs buckled beneath it. True lurched to catch it before it cracked its head on the ground.

It hit them with a thud, all its weight at once. Its chest rose and fell too quick, too shallow, too wrong. Suffocating in front of them. It grappled at their coat, clumsy fingers dipping into one of the pockets.

"What do you need?" they asked, skimming the street up and down, as if looking would make medical supplies or their pack magically appear. All they spotted were Cal and Mu, making their way towards True. Even the dead medic at their feet didn't have anything useful.

It scraped the old pen out of their pocket and hit their chest.

Air, it needed air.

They sprang to action. Snapping the top off the pen, they emptied its content out into the fog as fast as they could with numb fingers.

Radio pulled its knife from its ankle sheath, fingers slipping on the handle. It plunged the blade into its own chest and jammed the pen tub into the freshly re-opened stab would. Blood spurted from the tube, hitting Cal square. He reeled back, sputtering. Radio gasped a single full breath, and collapsed, unconscious.

True's hand flew to the pen, holding it steady. Deep red blood drooled out the end of the makeshift chest tube. It needed a doctor, a doctor willing to help a shadow dweller, and the only doctor in this city who would do that listened to exactly one person. Throwing a look to Cal, they said, "Take me to Eliza."

Cal's hesitation lasted a thousand years, and they wanted to scream. Radio Silent was dying. Wiping the blood from his cheek, he gave a curt nod.

"Mu, Suni needs help with the kid."

Their head was full of nothing but panic panic panic.

"But—"

Cal cut him off with a wave. "I can't be everywhere at once. Go."

Taking some of Radio's dead weight, he aimed them back the way they had come and started walking.

In the back of their mind, a little thought-insect crowed that they were going to be paying back the trade to come for the rest of their life, but all they could bring themself to care about was Radio's blood warming their cold fingers.