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📻 — PROLOGUE ..

          GRAPES. WHY GRAPES? Hanging heavily in tender hands, a bowl of two green grape bunches was the subject of an elongated pensive observation, mainly blamed on the horrendously long corridor spreading both ahead and behind.

Passing under a dispersing bright stream of light, the nametag clung to the lab coat of the bowl carrier flashed prominence over her name: Dr. WENDY LARSEN.

On a much more colorful note brought to the formality of her presence and stance, hanging around her neck and dangling with each step she took more concentrated on the bowl than on the boring path ahead, a second identification tag held on its plastic cover scribbled a nickname which oftentimes she preferred over most formalities: Winnie. For obvious visual aid, the right corner of her badge was decorated with a Winnie-the-Pooh sticker, all worn out and old as her studies into genetical engineering.

So why grapes?

It was probably their vast ancestry of cultivation going as far back as the Neolithic era that formed an aura of appeal to discovery around them. They teased the daring minds to dream of the possible genetic secrets hidden in their structures.

Or it could be the chromosome changes in the genomes of the most famous type of grapes that LOAM seeks to replicate and clash the wine market with for some eventual significant profit. Then again, they probably wouldn't be funding all their donations into genetically engineering Thompson Seedless Grapes if they wanted to start making ridiculously expensive wines out of a cover-up foundation.

There was also the option that they chose these particular grapes because of the chimpanzees who show a highly educated preference for these fruits, as if they somehow knew their abundance in vitamins, phytonutrients and antioxidants. Even that theory however had a flaw: the volunteering aid of the Animal Rehabilitation Natural Centre in LOAM's final stage of the project had been but a fortunate surprise.

Truth be told, only one thing was clear after Wendy's stomach grumbled in response to her uncanny volume of thoughts and a prickling warm light slithering up ahead through the crack between two metal doors: she was extremely hungry. Certainly more so than the friend she walked all this way to visit; a friend who's been pushing back the termination date of the project for months now.

Stopping before the double doors, Wendy lifted her chin up and looked to the top right corner above it, right into the red blink of a security camera. Noting a second of eye contact with the technicians watching this play from behind their screens sufficient, she looked back ahead with a preparatory roll of her shoulders.

Half an inhale marked the beginning of an extended creak of the heavy doors separating the main facility of the rehabilitation center from its famed natural reservation in which the rescued animals are helped readjusting to wild life. Acres of forest just outside Maribo did wonders for countless marvelous species, however, there was only one resident who knew exactly what that old creak meant.

Embraced by the fresh air combined with a rare sunlight filled with warmth, Wendy stepped slowly into the reservation, let the humidity settled on her skin as the door she came through closed behind. Following protocol for which she wished not be given another notice, even if the rumbling creaks of trees and the calls of her furred friend echoed enthusiastically about, she took her time to look up and locate the two places where security cameras still had her monitored, making sure both were still functional.

From a tree up ahead dropped into the light of the meadow before the facility a young chimpanzee. His belonging to the center was a fortune's strike upon the mammal who, upon a transportation accident out of the Copenhagen Zoo, has had his whole right leg brazed. 'Amputation' had been a word considered at that time, but not after the Maribo center reached out and offered helicopter transport for the emergency. 

They've been hosting Charlie since and he is set, once LOAM completes their project, to be appointed to his climate adaptation exercises in preparation of being moved to a more suitable habitat down to the forest of Central Equatorial Africa. 

"Charlie," Wendy smiled lowering down to get on the level of the rather small specimen who now enthusiastically leaped and skipped his steps to reach her. With a left fist held tightly closed the chimpanzee approached for a hug with plentiful strength, unsurprisingly making the scientist loose her balance almost entirely. 

While the Maribo reservation was filled with animals that at least in Charlie's area, he could not grow bored around, it was obvious that absence of any other primates was taking a toll on his mood in the earlier stages of his rehabilitation. It was observed that he clung to the doctors taking care of him, so it was a commonly humane decision to start accustoming the ape with human play companions. Chimpanzees base mostly all of their social skills on the activity of games: they built trust, relations, build boundaries and rules. 

Before LOAM got there, Charlie has already accustomed with the presence of humans and his friendliness, as much as his species, made him the perfect candidate to help tick off the final tests. 

The joy Charlie exuded upon seeing Wendy was unfathomable. With shivers, with rattling restlessness that hadn't even given her the chance to hug back, or even with desperation hidden in his right handed clutch on her lab coat, it was downright impossible to miss the moving authenticity behind the ape's actions. 

Constantly gibbering, Charlie leant back. There was something so overwhelming human in his eyes as he skimmed over Wendy's face. Curiosity flashed across features which normally should not inspire kinship but more often than most would like to admit, the wisdom behind a chimp's ridges and their chatter were sources of emotion that simply could no longer be attribute to just humans. 

Chimpanzees can laugh. Wendy didn't know that until LOAM started working at the reservation. 

"I missed you too," she giggled at the puffs and heavy breaths Charlie let out while he tugged on her badge hanging around her neck. She watched as astonished as in the first day how the primate flipped her badge around and dragged his finger over the scribble of her name before attempting some more to get a nail's tip under the sticker.

All concept of time has dismantled into thin air, fading into non-existence and encouraging Wendy to make the sensible decision of carrying a conversation with a little being which she was compelled to trust perceived everything and was only slightly limited by a language barrier while talking back. "How was your day?" she inquired softly.  

Charlie's gibberish stopped with a strong halt and, pursing his lips, he let go of the badge, cupping his right hand instead down under his left fist. He brought the hand up to his own eye level and extended it forward. 

Without much of a question to it, Wendy allowed the bowl to rest in her lap, feeling its cold frame push against her abdomen, just so she could extend her hands too, cup them so that Charlie, once opening his left fist, could drop there what he has gathered. 

A pine cone tumbled over and under her palmar creases. 

Heavy breathing fanned over her hands. Charlie dropped his fists to the ground and stared with that sort of gaze filled with expectation one would associate with puzzled children rather than with this particular species of primates. With great satisfaction in the pursing his lips, he leant back as Wendy studied the gift. 

"A pine cone," she named it for him, earning an exalting reaction of Charlie jumping around, making a spin and returning to sit in front of her. His eyes watched, ever filled with intention, while the scientist hid the pine cone in her lab coat. "So you've been visiting outside your territory, huh?" 

Wide almond gaze shone full attention. Charlie begun calming down, controlling his breathing, scratching every once in a while the leg that though was not dragging behind him anymore, still gave him ghost pains in his sleep. 

Taking full advantage of the attention she was given, Wendy buried her chuckle into actions and ever the more words that most people would consider nonsensical blabbering. To Charlie, however, it was the highlight of the day to hear her talk and though project colleagues argued that he simply liked her voice, Wendy liked to believe that deep down in his primate brain, he was retaining all the 'useless' information she distracted him with while she set up the experiment grounds. 

"Pine cones come from pine trees which belong to a prehistoric class of plants named gymnosperms," without stutters, she laid the bowl of grapes in the distance between them, then proceeded to sit down comfortably as well. "Such plants reproduce through something called 'naked seeds', which do not come enclosed in ovaries. Therefore, pine cones are their way to keep the seeds safe."

The exercise was so embedded into their routine that Charlie already knew what he had to do once Wendy's hands were off the bowl. He reached out without any sort of command and began a process of stroking, poking and overall feeling the grapes. His expression scrunched in concentration as eventually, Wendy's voice faded. The only sound present in the meadow was a wind blow rustling leaves and putting motion to grass hairs, accompanying the rapid moving hands of the primate, flinching off single grapes until he eventually gasped.

With enthusiasm, he pulled the second bunch from the bottom of the bowl and begun eating. 

Disappointment read over Wendy's features and she looked down at the bunch remaining in the bowl: texture needs adjustments.

With profoundly alarming confidence for whoever was watching through those security cameras, Wendy reached into the bowl and picked one grape, finally giving in to her initial urges of eating it. Charlie stopped his own eating to gape at her daring action. Sweet, authentic grape taste exploded in Wendy's mouth, but as she chewed, she plucked a second grape.

Charlie leant back, hugging his own organic bunch and looking at the grape she was holding suspiciously. He sniffed it but did not get any closer. 

Finally, Wendy opened her mouth wide and the simplest movement from her wrist made Charlie drop his bunch and take her grape with both his hands, quickly shoveling it in his mouth. 

Hope flickered in the scientist's eyes, in her very posture suddenly inhaling verticality.

Charlie was chewing. He was tilting his head. Taking in the taste and-

He spat the grape on the grass to the side and picked up his chosen bunch again. 

Wendy's defeated sigh concluded that week's first trail and the last one she'd attend for at least two more weeks. 

Taking her bowl back, Wendy sat up. "Enjoy your grapes, Charlie," she controlled her voice away from sounding disappointed and extended her left hand to the primate who met her palm with his own in an overly soft, almost touchless high-five. 

Returning the way she came however reawakened her hunger so, by the time she pressed her badge to the lock and pushed through the door of the lab marked with two names on the paper next to the doorway, she was already halfway through the bunch of grapes, mouth full and barely chewing sufficiently to greet that second name who's watched the experiment and made note of all that needed to be revisited, beginning on the work. Dr. Geneviève Nyame. 

"I don't know what Charlie's on," Wendy spoke muffled, "these grapes taste fine to me."

Only once the bowl hit the table both of them usually worked on did Gen finally look up from the report, a serene smile lighting up her features, "Good thing we listen to the ape and not to you then." 

Wendy shamelessly rolled her eyes, shrugging off the lab coat. "All I am saying is," she pranced with a frown upon her features to the hangers on the wall, only to look back after pinning her coat, "I trust anything that comes out of a lab far more than organic stuff right about now."

"How come you're even still on board with the holiday to America if you're so fired up about the mold infection thing?" With a relaxed, almost amused nature, Gen spun her chair and leant back, finally feeling a long fought yawn creeping up on her.

"First of all, it's epicenter is not in the United States, where I will be going for the holiday, but in South America, which is a very important distinction by the way, because if Pete was somehow in the middle of it, I would insist he comes over instead, with his mother too, 'cause no way I am flying over to inhale some mold."

"And second of all?" Gen's voice seemed almost suave as it followed Wendy's exuberantly paced speech.

"And second of all," Wendy repeated with a long nod, "it's not just a 'thing'. Hospitals are filled with food poisoning cases everywhere in the world. And if that's not enough, we are still talking about an economic disaster that might cause severe shortages in food stocks. Sure, they won't affect everybody, but it will affect those who depend on their weekly groceries, those who cannot afford finding equivalents. In fact, now more than ever, what we are doing here is important, because one thing I know for sure is that mold spreads like a motherfucker... What?"

The more she ranted, the winder Gen's smile got, until even Wendy's seriousness on the matter had to be drained away and tainted with a smile. Her self-awareness wasn't that deeply hidden  for her not to realize that sometimes, she talked a little too much of what was going on in her mind, a little too often. 

"Like, damn," Gen shook her head. "I knew you had a bone to pick with mold in general, but that speech right there? Almost made me wanna vote you for presidency."

The tease had all but vanquished the tension in Wendy's shoulders, now lowering with fatigue. "Shut up...," she playfully trailed off, much quieter than her previously passionate burst. Still next to the wall hangers, she now moved to the side to get her normal coat on, place her beanie on top of her head, taking special effort to pull it down over her painfully sensitive ears, and alas check her bag is not missing anything, in the sense that she won't forget valuables around for the cleaning team to toss to the bin.

"Just get me some postcards, will ya?"

"Sure thing. I am sure Russell Farm has a souvenir section too."

"Now come on," Gen puffed, crossing her arms over her chest, "you ain't telling me you're about to spend two weeks in a ranch helping with the animals." Wendy may have immediately chuckled along, but Gen was determined to keep an apparent concern going, "I am trying to picture you catching chicken or milking cows and it's not working well in my mind, so how about you just promise me you'll at least go visit your old university's campus and bring me back one of those fancy flags."

"Will try my best," all suited up and ready to go, with her badge in hand now, Wendy approached Gen and opened her arms.

"Pass," Gen shook her head coldly. "Don't want your germs on my lab coat, thank you."

"You know...," Wendy hurried to say without dwelling to much on the hug refusal. After all, bottom line, they've known each other for only two years. Very eventful two years, which made them spent almost more than half a day in each other's company, but they were still nothing more than work friends. 

Work friends should know stuff like this, shouldn't they? Wendy asked herself while she was already indulging her social needs and continuing on talking. "When Pete invited me over at his family's farm for the holiday," he hands disappeared in her pockets, badge's colorful band sticking out and swinging against her coat, "he sort of told me there was something he had to tell me." 

Anyone sane would take that for a concerning matter. God knows Gen's heart almost stopped and her eyes widened within the second too.

But that lasted only until she realized that Wendy was, much like all times before, smiling that shy, lovestruck smile of hers that simply hardly ever went away when she was talking about Pete Russell. 

Talking during work times has never been something Gen enjoyed, but damn, was it heartwarming to take in every detail of this relationship Wendy somehow made work despite the distance of an ocean between her and her Texas boy. And to trust that guy enough after only four years of college to know for sure that he ain't cheating was the sort of trust that Gen sought for before engaging in that little side dream she ran in the background of her work focused mind; a dream where she would go back home every night to a family, to cheerful kids waiting for their mommy's return from work. 

"And it's not like he would invite me over for two weeks if he wanted to break up with me," Wendy continued, sheepishly looking up at her friend who, blinking out of the glaze of her dreamy thoughts, finally gasped and stood up.

"No way," Gen breathed out. "You think...?" 

A simple knowing shrug from Wendy was enough to get Gen to hug the breath out of her friend, "If that boy pulls out a ring, I want to get called in the middle of the night, you hear me?" Laughter had spread around them as fast as Wendy has been to answer the hug and reassure her friend that she'd be the first to hear. 

Over Gen's shoulder, Wendy looked at her watch and though she despised it, she broke the hug with a pat on her colleague's back. "I really have to get going if I wanna miss the traffic downtown and especially in Copenhagen. See you in two weeks time."

"Just don't decide to stay there forever," Geneviève pushed Wendy shoulder as she stepped away and finally waved her. Her stomach knotted at the very thought that she had blurted out. Who was she to tell her work colleague not to move in with her husband? Why was she all of a sudden dreading not the idea of seeing Wendy settled down, but rather seeing her away? 

To cover all of that unexpected mess up, though Wendy was already at the door and hardly noticing the change in the mood, Gen added, "Charlie will miss you..." It was loud and clear for herself, in the silence left behind by Wendy's leave that though not entirely false, the truth itself sounded more like: I will miss you.

A two hour drive to the airport in Copenhagen was something Wendy had to prepare herself for with only a single stop in Maribo downtown for an energy drink which should last her the whole night. Her luggage has been waiting in the trunk of her car all day, though it has been packed for at least one week already. Now, with nothing but the blue light framing the buttons in her car and the headlights luminating the highway ahead, through a windy, but clear night in Denmark, some sort of tranquility took over her. 

The vehicle was filled with an artificial scent of berries. Though the steering wheel was coldly freezing her hands, the rest of the car was warm enough to flush her cheeks and make her take the beanie off, discarding it on the seat next to her. Absently listening to the evening news on the radio made for an unimportant background until a certain transition had Wendy feel like she's been driving unconsciously up to that point.

"Now for the international news: Several hospitals have reported maximum capacity at the United States border with Mexico after taking in people affected by the South American products tainted with mold. The Food and Drug Administration continues investigation on the matter and expects large food shortages on all American store shelves. Europe and Asia are expected to suffer the same consequences in the following weeks, as several cases of poisoning have already presented similar symptoms in hospitals from Berlin, London, Rome, Bratislava, București, Moscow and Beijing. 

All exports coming from South American countries have been cancelled making several river transport routes jammed up with cargo ships which have lost their allowance to enter industrial ports. Majors delays have therefore been inflicted on all other international trading schemes. Such a jam has affected the Port of Haydarpaşa, forcing Abdullah Gül to make a public statement earlier this afternoon about the concerns of the public regarding the mold floating so close to their homes. He's urged everyone to remain calm, but several statements of Istanbul residents have come through as people describe visible spores flooding the air above the jammed port. We are awaiting further..."

"Visible spores," Wendy repeated, a frown of disbelief on her face. "Yeah, right." To her knowledge, a common one really, she knew mold did not have visible spores. At least not ones that could be seen with the naked eye. 

Though initially disturbed by the news report, Wendy readjusted her position in her seat after identifying a detail which couldn't possibly be true. Finally, she eased back into the tranquility of a night drive which was nothing but a true strain to the eyes if one was too stressed.

However, her attempt at tranquility ceased as soon as she was about to enter Copenhagen. Peak hour. Not the time you want to be on those streets. Though her initial plan was to make a quick stop at her parents' house to give her sister the chance to give her the birthday gift she's been boasting about all week, Wendy took only one glance at the time and immediately decided to call Miriam instead. 

She put her phone on speaker, replaced the GPS with her phone in the stand and waited just about three seconds before the enthusiasm of a kid's voice broke through. "Are you almost here?"

"Hi, Mira," though Wendy pondered deeply about it, she was well aware there was no nice way of breaking this for either of them. She has missed her sister dearly, though Skype calls were almost a biweekly thing for them. From seeing her little sister every waking moment to spending every holiday she could at home with her while studying abroad, this was a huge downgrade that neither were taking too well. 

Though Wendy loved her parents, she couldn't deny their flaw of carelessness developed over the past two years in which they left a 7 year-old with babysitters almost every night to go "have fun" or "see some sights" around the city. While she understood their need for breaks, she couldn't help but condemn how utterly absent they were attempting to be from Miriam's life, without evening owning up to it and letting her move in Maribo. 

So yes, given the certainty that Miriam was already with a babysitter for the night, Wendy's very heart clenched at the inevitable bad news she was about to give her, "I'm sorry, honey, but I won't be able to make it tonight."

"What? Why?" Mira's voice dragged out, disbelief cracking her vocal chords over sounds quenching on emotion.

"Had a longer than expected day at the lab and the city's crammed. I have never seen traffic like this before really."

"That's because of the blockage in the hospital area-"

"Shut up, Alice!" Miriam shouted at her babysitter's comment with a voice cold enough to probably make that adult take a step back. As soon as she was addressing her sister again though, her tone softened up again, "Are you sure you can't make it?"

"Unfortunately, yeah," Wendy sighed. "There's no way I can make it to the airport in time from our house."

"Alright then..."

"Hey, it's okay!" she exclaimed, gripping the steering wheel. "You can just give me that gift when I get back."

"But that would be so late," Mira complained.

"Better late than never. Time doesn't really change that I am excited to see what you made. And think of it this way, when I come back, I will have a night flight again so I am staying over before heading back to Marigo. Isn't that exciting?"

"It is," Mira attempted to sound happier, as she had come to terms with the impossibility of seeing her sister there and then. "Two weeks," she repeated after a moment of thought. By the muffle of the sound, it was very likely that she was hugging the phone by that point. 

"It's a promise."

The traffic has managed to turn the night into a hell after that; the strike of guilt pressured an emptiness inside Wendy's stomach for not having gone seen Mira before leaving on the holiday and though some overly expensive airport food helped almost as much as a silly convenience buy of a matching beanie for Pete, as soon as she embarked the first flight to London, Heathrow, she had the awful amount of time to ponder in an uncomfortably small leg room. 

A two hour transfer proved to be a challenge as to her surprise, the gigantic airport was filled with noise and more busy than most times she's been there. With her head buzzing, Wendy had no interest in figuring out anything more there than just her next gate. That 26th September sunrise had been an overly yawned one.

On the next ten hour flight Wendy managed to get just about all the duration slept through. However much sleep was pressurized in, the rest was pretty much non existent as she still ended up plunged forth in awakening in Dallas Fort Worth International Airport not refreshed, but very much confused and dazed, like she was meeting the early afternoon with the scorn of someone who's pulled their very first all-nighter. 

Leaning on the escalator as much as on her luggage, Wendy fiddled with her phone to get its luminosity down whilst impatiently waiting for some reception. No messages would come through without signal and she hoped for the sake of her sanity that Pete was still going to make it on time to the airport to pick her up. Coming off the escalator, she let her phone drop in her coat's pocket with a scoff of annoyance, then clutched the paper bag on top of her luggage, to take it off and carry it in her just-freed hand. Dragging along the suitcase, she squinted at the surroundings, at the sporadic people waiting for the return of their family or friends.

His hands were shaking while he fixed the rear-view mirror. One last look at his nervous self. "Get yourself together, Pete," he inhaled sharply, almost in tone with the incoherent country song blasting its last guitar notes on the radio. "It's not like she's forgotten your face or anything." 

Glancing to the side, his heart dropped at a choice of flower he normally knew he shouldn't have doubted, no matter its size. The bouquet staring back at him, from on top a carboard piece, was a single hyacinth tulip in bunches of dark blue flowers, all tied up in an airy, well decorated plastic foil, tied with a white ribbon. 

No matter how small it looked, those were her favorite flowers, one incredibly rare to buy during autumn as they usually blossom in spring. 

Just then, however, Pete only saw their fragile size and had to immediately look back in the mirror. "Just give her the flower," his tone shivered at first, but after each steady breath, he started to regain some reassembly of control. "Tell her you missed her. Come on, you've got this." 

Several nods at himself were necessary before finally exhaling loudly and sealing the deal on his most positive thought that there was nothing to worry about in the happy scenario that he was finally getting the chance to get to hold his girlfriend in his arms again, after almost two years of distance. 

Calls, messages, pictures, they weren't exactly the same as getting a bone crushing hug in or holding her hand. As much as he loved to hear her voice or see all the amazing shit she was up to at the lab in Denmark, Pete missed the goofy smiles, the weird angles from which no human being was supposed to look pretty, but from which he stared at her and fell in love each time ever harder. 

His heart was dancing in his chest with an agony of getting that back and, without meaning too, out of his car, he started a walked run towards the airport, bouquet and placard in hand. Mind rushing to recall the otherworldly sensation of pecking a kiss on the top of her nose had his stomach, a valiant survivor of digging through horse shit that very morning, twist and turn. 

Pete recognized his palms were getting a little sweaty. Maybe he hasn't really recognized properly up until then just how much he missed the color of her hair which was arguably one of the most softest things to begin with, how much he missed her freckles or her beanies, or maybe even the way she clung to him whenever tired- He just missed her. But the veil of impossibility had barely just revealed that the sensation was supposed to have been unbearable thus far.

"I'm sorry, sir." After Pete had made it through quite a bunch of people smoking and chatting right outside the entrance of the airport, without even properly taking in their presence, he was stopped in the extended palm of a security authority, the immovable statue blocking his way. "The airport is currently at maximum capacity and we do not allow further visitors in the waiting area."

Pete leant his head to the side to glance past the gigantic man getting in the way of his dreams right about then. With a glacier tonality and enough cynicism to drown out the freshness from the atmosphere, he sniffed a scrunch on the bridge of his nose and straightened up, "Seems pretty empty in there to me, sir. What is this about?"

"There's new regulations," the answer came flatly, almost robotic. "Please wait outside." Clearly, this guy either knew as much as them, or he was under strict instructions not to tell a word. But whichever version was true, Pete had nothing to do but step aside. As soon as he did, the corner of his eyes caught movement and looking back to the right inside the airport... he saw her.

No sign of Pete and she was nearing the exit. Wendy wasn't exactly concerned, given that the airport overall was dubiously quiet to begin with, but she couldn't deny that she hoped she'd get to see his stupid smile as soon as she got off the plane, as unrealistic as that might be. 

No lockscreen pictures or video calls could have ever really done justice by the criminally adorable expression lines forming around his eyes when Pete did his usual teddy bear smile, where his lips almost vanished and there was nothing left but the innocence of a joy he was well aware to be childish. One look at that and Wendy knew all the flying would have been worth it, that all the stress of preparation would be but water under a bridge. 

And he got happy over the silliest of things too. Bees, cereals, country songs especially... Now, as much as there was a clear bias on her side for adoring his voice, Wendy was firmly convinced Pete had a real talent for hitting all those rough, roasted tones, even though he hasn't put a single cigarette between his lips his whole life. 

A rather childish blush spread across her nose while she was swept into thinking of his lips and how sweetly demanding he was of kisses any chance he got, by pouting away, well aware that doey look was a weakness for her heart and knees. 

Before being absolutely swept into dreams she's been keeping at a minimum for the sake of productivity and distance coping, Wendy was startled to a flinched stop by a knocking noise coming from up ahead. 

With wide eyes, she let go of her luggage and placed the hand over her mouth in shock instead.  

A placard the shape and color of Winnie-the-Pooh, looking as if it had been stolen from the wall of a kindergarten, was pinned against the window next to the entrance, held up by Pete's head peeking from the side.

"Sir," the guard interrupted, alarmed enough to place a hand on Pete's shoulder. "Please do not bang on the window."

"I...," loss of words had taken over Pete when he was forced to look at someone else whilst actively awestruck and unable to contain any gram of excitement which, much like gunpowder, begun exploding the second Wendy was in his line of sight. With every coherent sound muffled from his throat through a gaping mouth seemingly out of air like a fish out of water, Pete glanced back inside only to be stunned to a loud gasp by not seeing his girlfriend there anymore. 

He lowered the sign as sad as a dog forgotten in the rain, though at most it was only windy in Dallas for the rest of the weekend. "Where did she go?" he muttered. 

Before the guard's voice could anchor him back to the reality of an impending need to take a big step back from that window, a much more significant voice shouted from further down, where through C entrance of the airport, Wendy found a less busy exit. "Pete!"

Within the second, the placard was dropped to the ground and Pete ran like his very life depended on it. 

Seconds compressed down to the time measurement of breaths and on that scale, in the span of a single proper breath, his arms wrapped around Wendy in a collision that staggered her back several steps from her luggage. Her arms wrapped around him and she embraced not only him with all her might but the certainty of suffocation as well. What a bliss. 

Shivering emotion, exhilaration beyond measure, those were the blankets of intensity that had wrapped around them until their very worlds got brighter and finally, years apart culminated in the single reward they could have wished for: that very hug.

Tears stung their way into the embrace. Pete felt them bottling up, but only once he heard Wendy's quiet whimper against his chest did he burst into crying too. Every fiber in their bodies was responding to the immeasurable relief of the reunion at that moment of trembling vulnerability in which even considering to step away from each other was perhaps noted down as a proper illegality for their brains.

Though his eyes wanted to shut tightly and they both wished to simply collapse on the cold concrete there and then, Pete's right hand came down between them, placing the bouquet right under Wendy's chin. She inhaled through obstructed nostrils and the top of her head finally left his chest, looking up with tears making her already spectacularly blue eyes shine even brighter in their electric color. 

While they knew they should have said something, words escape their cognizance, leaving all the talking instead on a matter of body language of lavish finesse or rigorous clarity. Gratitude could not be humiliated to the boundaries of speech, not when it shone right off her skin, in the brightness of her smile, in the rivers of tears they both cried. 

What could words do that a kiss filled with resolved longing couldn't? 

How could any phrase ever stand above the concept of action that has driven Wendy to gently place her palms on his cheeks, rub her thumbs in and invite him in for the sweet and sloppy brush of their lips? 

Nothing could compare in significance to that. Pete knew it. Wendy knew it. Even the airport guard who rolled his eyes at the Winnie-the-Pooh smile knew it.

Once glued back together, Wendy and Pete molded into each other as if the separation never happened, as if they have just been revitalized with youth and energy and life and the world's greyscale turned to a lively rainbow spectrum under which they would gladly trade all breath away to remain inside this kiss, inside this moment. 

And it was a long moment indeed, easing them back with the comfort of suave movements of their lips into a life where they exist together. There, in that second when everything seemed to have finally returned to normal, Pete leant back just about enough to lay a kiss on top of her nose. 

His free hand has longed to strongly to cradle the side of her face, to feel her hair on his thumbs to not already be there, living its dream, when her finally helped her look down just an inch so the next kiss laid on her forehead. "Damn, I missed you, Winnie."

As soon as speech got reintroduced to them, everything turned into all that Wendy hoped for. Side hugging each other, they took their sweet time getting to his farm truck, talking about everything and anything they possibly could from the horse shit Pete had to dig in that very morning to the sunrise she barely took a pic of in the London airport. Wendy even ranted her usual rant about the mold infection happening on the news and Pete laughed it off with her, taking a weight off her shoulders unlike anyone ever could.

She kept smelling the hyacinth. 

Kisses were frequent breaks now: before putting the luggage in the back of the car, after doing that, before starting the engine, especially after unpacking the beanie gift and seeing Pete wearing it. A two hours drive orchestrated by background country songs where every red street light was but another chance for them to hope and satiate the need for each other. It was getting dark but neither of them cared in the slightest about anything more than talking and feeling as much as they could, all at once. 

Everything was worth it in the end. The satisfaction was immeasurable. 

"So how's your mum holding up?" Wendy inquired. After slowing down on purpose near Lakewood Harbor for the sake of a sappy romantic line at sunset, Pete was pulling over in the front yard of Russell Farm while the stars have already twinkled their light above. She was watching his parking concentration from a blissed flush across her nose, flaring her freckles. Turned to the side and curled on the seat beside him, her head leant against the rest.

"Stuck to a wheelchair mostly," Pete answered. "She ain't liking it, nor does she believe the doctor when he says she should stay put unless she wants complications." Finally having parked, he turned his head to her, immediately overwhelmed enough about her presence to smile, "You'll probably get inside and see her walking around the kitchen at a snail pace to finish the dinner cooking, while Rosey is looking at her specifically concerned but not in the slightest interested in getting in the way while she's expecting."

Wendy took a deep breath of realization of just how much she loved the liveliness Pete came with in her life. "Then I suppose we should go help." 

Stepping out of the car added to her heavenly sensation: quiet. It was so quiet at the farm. The animals were sleeping and there was no neighbor to worry about for at least a couple of miles. Just them and the fields, without any sense of loneliness however, because with this darkness of a pure night, unspoiled by streetlights came not a pending dread of being watched, but the safety net of warmth that radiated off of Pete himself as he stayed close to her. 

They took special precautions weeks ahead of this holiday in order to not bring up the true elephant in the room on the day of their reunion: Pete's mother had never quite liked Wendy. 

During university, Hellen Russell was convinced Wendy was nothing but a pretentious city girl. After Pete's father died, she called Wendy a distraction, though Pete made sure to remind her she was the only one who held his hand at the funeral, because Hellen herself was too busy holding onto a bottle of whiskey. 

She's quit drinking in the meantime, but she now clung in a chokehold over a scorn that this 'city girl' was keeping her son from talking with pretty much any other girl she knew or liked from Valley Mills, one that would keep him anchored in the family business, otherwise on the brim of collapse now that her health was withering. 

Alas, the biggest argument Hellen could ever verbally hold against Wendy was actually her job: genetic engineering, also seen as the doom of agriculture and farming. It didn't sit right with the conservative brewing inside Hellen's old heart, so Pete and Wendy both decided that they were better off straying away from poking that fire during the two weeks. Or at least attempting not to have it explode in their face on the first night.

However, things were scarcely going according to plan when a mother's determination was at play. Just an hour later, after formalities have gotten them through the dinner in a decent ambiance, only lightly tainted with sarcasm, Hellen puffed out the instigating question. "So where do you work now, girl?"

"At a... rehabilitation center for animals."

"And what do you do there?"

"Mum!" Pete exclaimed, looking up from gathering the plates off the table. "Could you please stop interrogating her? You know what she does."

"Ain't no pain in double checking, son," Hellen raised her voice gradually.

"That's okay," Wendy tried to moderate. "We are currently testing a product's quality at the center."

"Testing on sick animals?"

"It's just grapes," Wendy smiled, but the tension in her jaw told Pete to stop gathering the dishes and just stand by. As much as he loved his mother, he grew to love Wendy a lot more over the years, grew to wish a lot more than what Hellen planned for him... "And the chimp we are working with is not sick. Nor are the grapes dangerous. We are simply trying to see if fruit-eating mammals would be able to tell the difference between our grapes and those already on the market."

"Jack's cow couldn't tell the difference," Hellen narrowed her eyes at the girl sitting across the table. 

Pete rolled his eyes with a sigh so deep it raised  his right hand up to rub the bridge of his nose, "Mom, Jack's cow didn't die because of GMOs."

"Then tell me why," she turned to look at her son and suddenly burst into shouting, "were mushrooms growing out of that poor cow's throat and eyes!"

"Mushrooms?" Wendy furrowed her brows down, the imagery itself making her skin crawl. 

"The whole God damn barn got filled with these nasty smelling spores and poor Jack's been forced to burn the whole lot of bovines he had for the winter," Hellen explained with enough passion that her voice cracked at the end into a fit of coughs. 

Pete patted her back gently, but since the coughs wouldn't bunch, he had to walk to the kitchen to fetch his mother a glass of water. As soon as he was out of range to hear them talk, Hellen cleared her throat and slammed her right elbow down, leaning forward, staring holes into Wendy, who was already rather lost in the second mention of spores she's heard since leaving work. 

"Now, look...," Hellen whispered. "I don't give two shits about Jack's cows, about any of the damn animals or even your stupid ass job that will doom us all. All I need to know that this family's legacy is safe. So can you look me in the eyes and swear to me that you'll be good for my Pete?"

"Ma'am," Wendy looked her in the eyes, "I love your son more than anything."

"Yeah, no shit," Hellen frowned. "And he loves you too and that still had you two sitting on your sorry asses with an ocean between you for two years, so you'll excuse me if that doesn't cut it for me. I need to know you've really got his back, that you ain't just gonna discard of him when I'm gone. So do you? Do you got his back?"

Wendy leant forward too, tilting her head with just a notch closer to a grim seriousness. "I'm not planning on living without him."

Creaking steps from kitchen gave Hellen little time to look Wendy in the eyes after finally hearing a calming statement. She settled back in her chair and eased into some rather convincing coughs once more. Wendy shared a look up over the woman's head meant to reassure Pete at that moment that his mother was actually not as annoying as he had warned her she'd become over time. 

However, the energy by the end of the dinner has stuck with Wendy long after the dinner was over, even after taking a shower to relive the stress, even as she begun drying her hair in the most comfortable of places she could ever phantom -Pete's bed. 

Visible spores... Mushrooms growing out of a cow... And she would actually maybe be able to lower volume at which her thoughts were rushing through if only the phone before he caught signal a little faster already. It's been going on no reception since the airport, no matter how many times she restarted it. 

A single glance at the time had told Wendy it was one minute into her birthday, 27th September, when Rosey decided to run up the stairs and seek out with a sniff her own bed in Pete's room. Rosey, their ranch dog, was pregnant and heavy, but resilient to still help around and run up stairs if it meant keeping the tradition of sleeping there. Wendy smiled at the dog she's known since a pup and, hearing Pete's own steps leaving their distinctive creak, she started talking.

"Hey, do you think I can use your phone to send my sister a message that I got here?" Wendy called. "I would use my own phone but I think it's broken for some reason. It's not been getting any signal since I got..."

The tune of 'happy birthday' had Wendy's own voice fade away as slowly as she slid the towel off her lightly damp hair, discarding it on the bed to sit up. Pete entered the room slowly as to not jeopardize the rather fragile standing of a homemade cake that though messy, looked absolutely magical decorated with twenty five candles. 

Once he was inside the room, singing away, shyness almost choked him out. Not even with all the self control in the world could he have resisted looking up at Wendy and the way the candles reflected light in her eyes, how the auburn dances shapes of her freckles and her smile luminated the whole room. 

Thankfully, his stumble was salvaged by her already being right in front of him and catching the plate from below before the cake got murdered on the ground by gravity. Through the stutter, Pete sneaked a chuckle in to continue singing. He looked down at her and she looked up at him, candles warming the space between them in such a dreamy ambiance that they both decided to completely ignore Rosey jumping from her bed and rushing towards the window to bark at it.

The song was nearing its final notes, now barely whispers as his lips came to linger as ghosts an inch away from hers. The last breath sealed their short kiss and helped Pete rest his forehead on hers, so they both looked down at the cake. 

Rosey's determination kept her barking.

"Happy birthday, Winnie," Pete whispered.

"You made the cake all by yourself?"

"Jack's wife gave me the recipe and I nailed it. I am pretty much a natural cook," Pete boasted with pride. Rosey had not stopped barking yet, so unable to linger in this moment, Pete left a gentle kiss on top of Wendy's head and left the cake in her hands. "Make a wish and be sure to blow all the candles out while I calm Rosey down."

"I love you, Pete," Wendy called, sighing before the cake. She could hear his distant chuckle approaching the window while she stayed put and closed her eyes. A wish... a wish. What could she possibly wish for but that fate allows them to spend the rest of their life together, without any more distance, without any more longing and anguish for each other. She's only been back there for a couple of hours, but she already recalled exactly why she wished this would last forever. 

After a big inhale, she blew out the candles and opened her eyes.

"Hey, can you come over here for a second?" 

Rosey had not stopped barking and despite the initial plan, Pete has found something to look out at too, so he just stood there.

Setting the cake down, Wendy walked over still glazed by joy and unaware of the tension Pete was feeling until she stepped into his side for a hug. 

"Am I seeing things or are you seeing what I am seeing too?" he asked, only after inquiring finally able to unclench himself and wrap an arm around Wendy who straightened up and squinted out the window.

"Is that a fire?" Wendy couldn't exactly make out but there was a bright red-ish light on the horizon.

"Shit," Pete breathed out. "It might be Jack's farm."

"The one with the dead cow?" Wendy stepped back as Pete turned around. 

Rosey did not stop barking at the window. The dog's desperation was growing.

"Yea, he was acting kinda odd after that incident. We have to call-"

Hellen's pitched scream from downstairs was followed by a loud breaking sound which turned Rosey's barks into whimpers. Pete was first to run out of the room, skipping three steps at the time and almost falling over into the hallway. 

The save didn't help him much as he stumbled back, startled by the sight of who looked a lot like Jack being all over his mother on a floor littered by the remnants of her destroyed wheelchair. He was panting, whimpering, screeching.

The front door was open and the night chill had Pete wake up within the second to the violent threat: his mother was gasping for air, trying her best to keep Jack's face, abnormally greyed, away from her.

Hearing faint steps behind him, Pete pointed back at Wendy without looking, "Grab the shotgun from under my bed and lock Rosey in there before you come down. Jack!" Pete stood up and rushed towards the senseless altercation. Jack wasn't exactly hitting Hellen, but his erratic movements were concerning. 

"Man, what the fuck are you doing?" Pete grabbed Jack's shoulder when no answer or acknowledgment came from the man and pulled him off. Or at least tried too at first tug because Jack may have been older, but Pete didn't recall him being this heavy. 

At the second pull, Jack didn't fall back, but simply leant away from Hellen and lifted his face towards Pete, opening a mouth gashing with dark blood. 

The scream was tenebrous. 

The immediate flinch Jack had to bite off Pete's hand had Pete leaping backwards. But almost immediately, in a grunt turning to a growl, Jack followed him, stumbling to get up from all fours. Pete was speechless, backing away toward the 

living room. What happened to Jack's eyes? What happened to his mouth? Why was he covered in blood? Whose blood was that?

"Jack, hey, talk to me, man!" Pete raised his hands up but Jack was running right at him, screaming an ear-bleeding screech, panted between pained breaths. 

"That's not Jack!" Hellen cried out, whimpering in pain on the floor and distracting Pete for only just a second, sufficient for Jack to push Pete into the coffee table. The wood creaked and broke. 

Hellen's scream filled Pete with terror sufficiently strong in boiling his blood that he did not think much from there on: Jack was trying to bite his fucking face off, so Pete put his forearm on his throat and grasped a broken wooden leg from the table, smashing it into the side of his neighbor's head. 

Though his scream of pain added on top of his mothers and the sound of a shotgun unloading a round, Jack didn't budge. Pete his again. And again. Jack fell off him and Pete stood over him and he hit another time to make sure the psycho would stay down. 

A guttural scream remained after Jack's silence was earned and a second shotgun round was fired. Pete turned around to see a woman's body fall off his mother. A puddle of blood was coming from under Hellen. "Mom!" 

Wendy's ears were ringing. Her hands were cold. The chill on her spine slithered and twisted until it locked onto her bones. 

She remembered how to shoot a gun, thanks to Pete's dad, and the moment she saw this stranger ripping a bite into Hellen's torso, Wendy didn't think much before recalling that skill and plastering it over the whole of her reasonable mind.

Now, she barely saw the steps she came down on. Her jaw was trembling, her eyes forgot how to blink and she lowered the 12 gauge aiming at the floor with the pointless goal of going to close the door. 

Her head was spinning and her stomach disapproved deeply with all that just happened and especially with the glance she stole down at Pete, grasping at his mother's deep wound. They were talking. Helen was telling him something, but Wendy couldn't hear it, not in this dazed state, so she looked away, swallowed her sickness and swayed her drunken steps away, towards the living room. 

A man's head was bleeding on the floor there, soaking into the wood.

She still wasn't thinking in the slightest when she approached, when she nudged the corpse with the end of the shotgun's barrel. Only then, when she saw the pronounced veins on Jack's face did Wendy finally regain some of her consciousness. She lowered down and staring into the body's still gaping mouth, studying down its exterior neck, filled with the same pronounced black veins, up to his forehead where the busted head bleeding out actually revealed a sight at the very skull. 

Something stood out straight out of the gashing wound. As thin as a thread, but visible. The thread flinched right before Wendy's eyes and she fell back, dropping the gun and cover her mouth in a quick motion with her right sleeve.

A glass crash from the kitchen turned her head to the right. Two people reached their hands through and their screams and growls filled the night with terror sounds while Wendy was barely even processing the thing she just saw give its last flinches of life. 

Pete ran from his mother's side and picked up the shotgun. "Call an ambulance for mum, tell them we have a home invasion situation," he directed Wendy with a strong pat on her shoulder, then went towards the backdoor being broken through from the kitchen. With heavy breathing and close to pretty much fainting. Wendy stood up and ran back to Hellen and the landline phone. 

"What is wrong with these people?" Pete muttered under his breath, noticing how, as soon as they saw him through those bruised eyes, bloodshot and darkened, they became even more resilient to break through the door. "Last warning!" He aimed the shotgun. "Get the fuck off my property."

Inhumane screeches followed the break of the door and the fall of the weird people through. Pete shot the first in the arm, but that didn't stop the man from crawling towards him and beginning to get up. So he backed away one step and shot again, in the head. The second one was standing when a round went through his open mouth and out the back of his head. 

However, this was far from over. Screams filled the night outside while the shotgun fire echoed and awakened the field.

"Wendy!" Pete called, warily backing away until he was about to step on Jack's body.

"Landline's down," Wendy breathed out, terror cried across her features. "What the fuck is happening, Pete?"

Fuck if I know was the answer he wanted to give, but it was not the answer anyone wished to hear. People needed actions to speak safety so on the spot, he lowered the shotgun and voiced the first plan that came to his mind, "Help me grab mom. We need to get to the car."

"Fuck that!" Hellen shouted from the floor, where she laid, holding onto her gashing abdomen giving the floors and her clothes a scarlet paint. "I'm dead meat and will only drag you down."

"Cut the bullshit!" Pete shouted down at her without any holdbacks. His own hands were shaking, the faces of the people he shot were monstrous prints on his adrenaline struck mind. "Those people out there are fucking insane-!"

"Now you listen here, boy!" Helen released her wound and pointed her bloodstained hand up. However, both Wendy and Pete could only ever look down at the wounds of his mother with the dawning realization that she wouldn't be making it too far with all the moving either way. "As long as I am still-," coughs interrupted her but even with a roughed voice, Hellen struggled to continue, "-breathing... mother and I tell you.... You do as I say! Take the girl and get the fuck out of here. Get to Jimmy in Valley Mills."

"I'm not leaving you here," Pete knelt down, voice cracking as badly as his self control to keep the tears in.

Hellen looked up at Wendy and continued her orders, "Grab Rosey." As much as Wendy knew what was about to happen and what Pete was about to have to go through to a second time, this sounded like a moment in which Hellen wished to get her last words towards her son, so she dashed up the stairs without hesitation.

"Mum...," Pete held tightly onto Hellen's hand, glancing between the wounds and her eyes. Outside, from the back entrance, the screams were getting closer. 

Hellen shook his hand, "You take care of that girl, okay? She loves you. Really does. You were right..."

"Don't do this," Pete whimpered, shaking his head. 

Hellen tugged on his arm hard enough to feel like a slap she could no longer deliver, "Do you think Jack and Diane turned cannibals overnight? There's something unnatural going on here, Pete!" She pulled him closer so she could lower her voice, "So you fucking take care of each other out there. Stick together, no matter what, you hear me?" With a struggle, she lifted her other hand and smeared the blood on the side of Pete's face trying to give him a motherly pat. "I'm gone and I don't want my boy to be alone in this crap."

By the time Wendy came down the stairs with a restless Rosey in her arms, running past a cake long deserted into a life discarded as a long gone memory, Pete has wiped away his tears, armed his mother with a knife and took the two boxes of ammunition from the kitchen counters. 

"Come on," Pete held the shotgun pointing upwards and extended his hand towards Wendy, urging her to hurry up. She couldn't help a look back at Hellen, and to her surprise, Hellen was ready to look back up at her. This was the first time Pete's mother smiled at Wendy.

Pete pretty much dragged Wendy outside, into the front yard surrounded by the dreading noise of screams, of moans of pain and screeches, coming from all directions, crawling and slithering up the hill Russell Farm was on. The second Wendy got to the door of the car, someone wearing a hospital robe launched themselves at her from the field. Across the hood, Pete shot the head of the person off their damn shoulders, making Rosey squirm into Wendy's arms. The latter was petrified. 

"Baby, get in the car, now!"

Two more rounds were fired by Pete before they got in the car and drove over the lunatics running in the road as if jumping on a car in speed would stop it from moving. Wendy's left hand clasped Pete's over the gears in the middle. 

"Pete..." Her voice was broken into shards that knew but the tears claimed by their edges. 

"It's going to be okay," Pete blurted out, turning his hand in order to hold hers while he threw a glance in the rear-view mirror, seeing a portion of his face, painted in blood and a blurred, shaken vision of the house and a pile of bodies in the doorway. "We are going to be okay."

September 27th, 2013.
The day when the world as they knew it died.