After hours of insistence, Reid finally did as he was told and grabbed a bedroll. But he fought Laurence on it, oh did he fight. Stubborn shit. For two days not once had Laurence seen Reid close his eyes. It took nearly passing out to finally get the damn medic to sleep.

Laurence sighed and tried to stifle his own yawn as the night settled in around them. He took the next watch over their prisoner and despite Reid's predictions, sense, or experience, Cazalla was still alive. She lay beside him barely making a sound between her slow and steady breaths. Bitten, bleeding, but breathing. Such a small person, a small thing to cause so much trouble.

Laurence looked around the campfire to the sleeping faces. Not a one stirred, and the fire a dozen or so feet away looked just as still. He fumbled in his jacket and retrieved his flask.

The firewater slid down his throat, old, stale, but strong as hell. It’d been a mix of whatever he could find before shipping out on the hunt; some whiskey, some scotch, a thimble full of gin he could still taste. The swill burned and was foul but it did the trick. After a few long drags on the dented flask, he replaced it in his coat.

Cazalla stirred beside him, rolling on to her back, and he put out his leg to stop her. He tipped her back on her side. Couldn’t risk her choking on her sick in the night, would ruin their plans. Even if she was healing unnaturally fast, even if she wasn’t succumbing to infection like hell was something as mundane as choking going to get in his way. He'd feel damn stupid with all those people depending on them.

And there was that reward.

Pulling the crumpled paper from his pocket Laurence looked down at the worn and weathered page. It seemed silly, like something from the old spaghetti westerns he'd loved as a kid. A piece of a world so fucking far gone. But this one, it didn’t have that kind of charm. No block jail-house lettering, no artists rendition of the outlaw scowling from the page. The one he held had a strangely sterile feeling to it. Clinical. That's the word.

A still shot from a surveillance camera blazed in thick black ink. Laurence looked from the girl to the picture. The likeness was accurate. Her eyes were looking away, a sense of urgency in the snapshot, but he couldn’t tell anything else from it. Just the girl in a crowd.

He’d burned her features into his mind for over a year. He’d stared at the posters, had more than one. He memorized every line, freckle, and curve. Ashley Cazalla. Her name scrawled across the bottom, all caps, block letters. Memorable. Hell, he couldn’t imagine ever seeing a page like it before in his life. Not outside the pictures, anyways.

“Wanted for the commission, participation, and facilitation of terrorist activity. Required ALIVE. Reward: 20 Million US Dollars and Safe Transport out of the Infected Zone,” the flier read.

MAD Wendigo. Laurence couldn’t remember when he first heard the name, or if it was about the infection, about her. But there, in strange handwriting, it was pressed into the page. He didn’t write it and he’d never seen someone else write the words, but they accompanied her picture, the poster, nearly every warning about infection Laurence had ever seen.

MAD Wendigo… He took another drink. People nicknamed it the “wendigo virus” pretty quick on account of people eating people. Probably wasn’t long after that the name came out. It stuck with him. It stuck with everyone.

“Downright tragic to get bit by your own weapon.” He looked over her shoulder and shook his head in answer. A smug but tired smirk graced his lips and he dared another drink.

During the day when the others were awake, he didn't talk to her. What's it called... composure or some bullshit like that. Don't let them see the wrinkles, the toll it takes. Given the chance, many would kill her rather than trade her in. Hard work to keep yourself alive, let alone some other asshole. If he was honest, he didn't feel all that different. One-shot, nice and clean. A simple death, far better than those she’d brought about.

But Laurence played it cool. Collected himself when the rest were around and awake.

“I lost my wife.” His eyes wandered on the darkness where he knew the group of women and children were sleeping. Something about all those people made him think of her. Of his Natalia.

“She was working as a nurse.” He rubbed the empty ring finger. “We separated for three months because I wanted her to quit and come home.” The flask slid to the ground with a tine-y clink. “She wouldn't hear of it, not my Natalia.”

Saying her name wasn’t hard, it was hearing it. His own voice. The soft echo of her name in the dark.

Laurence leaned down and picked up the flask and tilted it in another deep drink.

“It was a kid. Not a wendigo, just some scared kid, but it ain’t hard to put it together. People saw a bite and…” His eyes closed and he imagined her face. Round with full lips and sharp brown eyes. When she smiled, she’d narrow one eye and her lips leaned to one side. The scar on her chin, he remembered when she told him how she got it but the details were masked by time and the drink. But those eyes, smiling, suggestive, and goddamn strong, he could picture them as clear as the woman at his feet.

“You know how it goes don't you.” When he opened his eyes, his vision blurred. He tried to wipe it away until his eyes ached. “Doesn't matter if you've got it or not, does it?”

He’d watched it happen to others. The paranoia, the fear. The mania that spread like wildfire.

Laurence never saw his wife after that. Not the smiles, the sultry eyes, nor the way she twisted her fingers in her hair. He even missed the fights. It burned him to know the look she’d have seen at the end, the wildfire stares. The fear and manic self-preservation.

“I thought that when I found you I'd want to know why.” Another deep drink wet his lips. “But I don't care.” He half chuckled, shaking the empty flask. “Not anymore.”

Cazalla coughed and shivered. He pulled the small blanket back up over her shoulders.

“So keep breathing, sweetheart. Just a little longer now.” Then it’ll all be over.

A light scuffle of a tin can broke the silence and Laurence stumbled to his feet. It was pitch black, the sky hanging low like draping blankets. The highway lights had run out of power shortly after the outbreak and the fire's embers lit little beyond the circle.

But sound carried. It carried too damn well among the cars, bounding off metal. It confused the ears, and as he thought he heard the sound by where the kids slept, he couldn’t be sure.

A low groan sounded behind him. Laurence spun with a speed that his size belied. His hand went to his side, shotgun poised and ready. Heart racing, eyes darting from car to car, he bit his lip hard. Keep quiet. Keep low.

It happened again, a little louder, a little closer. Squinting through the dark he spied a shape on the ground rustling under a coat.

His heart began to steady and he rubbed his eyes hard. “Goddamn it, Shannon.”

The twenty-something fool lay on the ground, tossing and turning under his jacket. Shannon had fallen off the car seat he’d been sleeping in and knocked one of the tins in Tish's bag. The bastard even groans like a wendigo.

Laurence picked up another car seat and propped it against the body of an overturned SUV. After he sat back with a grunt, his eyes steeled on the embers. Shivering in the chill, he pulled his coat closer and closed his eyes to remember his wife's face. If only for just a moment.

“Hello?”

“Laurence. It’s me.”

“Natalia? It’s… two in the morning-”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just-”

“Why are you calling- I mean, uh, it’s real good to hear from you. I know we haven’t talked much since-”

“I’m sorry. I just… I didn’t know who else to call. Can you… can you come get me?”

“Get you? Uh, sure. Where are you?”

A loud thud from the other end of the line drowned out her voice.

“Nat? What the hell was that?”

“I’m at the hospital. Fairview. Can you get here? Soon?”

“Jesus Christ, Natalia. Why the fuck are you there? Have you not seen the goddamn news? There's those infected people! It's not safe. This is exactly what I was talking about. You should be home right not working in some godforsaken-”

“Laurence,” she whispered. “Please, not now. Can you just come and get me. I need to get out of here.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Another loud thud. Natalia shuddered out a breath.

“What is that?”

“I'm fine Laurence, I'm okay. I just… this kid got scared and - it was just an accident and I’m fine. I’m not bleeding or anything. The bite’s small, really. But his mother freaked out and… it’s insane here and I need… I need you.”

“Okay, Nat.”

“I need you to come pick me up.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen.”

Another thud and Natalia swore. “Please hurry.”

The line went dead. The dial tone hummed a single note.