Chapter Text
The wind whistled sharply as it whipped past.
”My children.”
Tree branches slapped harshly against exposed skin.
”The First Seal has been opened.”
Laboured breathing - hard and heavy.
”Tell everyone: the Reaping is upon us!”
A panicked cry. A series of muted thuds.
”Only the Pure will be admitted into the Garden of Eden."
Rook went flying down the side of the mountain, smacking into rocks and trees alike as she struggled to right herself in the madness.
"Take these sinners away.”
By some miracle, she did and she was off again.
Blood, hot and wet and sickly sweet, dripped from her fresh wounds. Rook’s whole body ached but she kept moving. Because if she stopped - if she dared stop - she would die.
Inside her lizard brain, that part sequestered deep in her subconscious, so tightly knitted into her DNA it made her breathe without thinking, a voice screamed to move.
And she did.
Her ankle throbbed every time she pressed it against the soft soil of the forest floor. With every wheezy inhale, her bruised ribs flashed with pain.
Rook took another step and her leg gave out, sending her sprawling into a heap. The pain rushed through her whole body - it blacked out her vision. Her scream froze in her throat. She released a wet gasp.
A steady, low ringing kept her from hearing anything else. The drumbeat of her heart numbed her to any other sensation.
And then her vision swam back into focus. Her cheek was pressed into the mossy soil. The vibration of heavy feet approaching told her it was over.
No.
No, it couldn’t be over.
Rook forced herself back up. Her body’s protests muted against the oppressive, instinctual need for survival.
She continued her mad dash through the woods. The sounds of the Peggies and their guns and their promises of death - they only drove her to move faster, disregard everything and anything. Rook scaled a hillock, her hands scraping against the dirt for leverage and then she caught sight of lights.
Her radio went off.
“Hello?” A voice crackled, “This is Marshal Burke. If anyone can hear me, I’m in the cabin to the West of the Henbane River. Please. Anyone.”
Rook moved.
”But bring the Junior Deputy back alive and unharmed. No matter how many of you it takes.”
~ * ~
Rook stared listlessly into the river.
Advanced thought escaped her, the mounting exhaustion limiting her cerebral functions until only the most basic parts were firing off instructions. Instructions she wasn’t listening to.
It was such a clean blue - like something out of a movie or one of those picture adverts for some remote island in the Bahamas. Even the blood that turned it momentarily pink couldn’t detract from its beauty.
Rook could see all the way to the bottom. To the silty riverbed and the occasional dark rock littered here and there, she could see the flash of scales as tiny Smallmouths and Rock Bass swam by, paying her little mind.
She lifted her hands out of the water and stared at them. At the rivulets of bloody water tracing pathways through the folds and contours and crevices of her skin. At the callouses that had formed on her palms from the rough hold of the bow string and the pistol she had been using. It put her in a hypnotic trance of some sort - tracking the route the water took as it meandered down her skin.
It was shiny, a dark, primal part of her mind said, pretty and shiny. And bad.
So much had changed in - what had it been? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? More? When did she last sleep?
Too long, her body throbbed back, a dull ache shooting through all of her joints and seizing her muscles. The cold water didn’t help.
Was any of this even real anymore?
One moment she was being harassed by Staci’s awful, nervous jokes. The next she was stuck deep in the county with no backup and both feet stuck deep in matters she had no interest in involving herself in.
Dutch had blamed her but it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t. Earl had told the Marshal to leave well enough alone. And not just in the church - before it as well. While they were in the chopper too. If it was anyone’s fault, it was the Marshal’s.
Not that blaming him helped anyone at that point. Not when he was in desperate need of help.
Rook grimaced and lowered herself into the water. The rushing water and the rhythmic thumping of her heart calmed her and her violent, intrusive thoughts. It grounded her.
Those thoughts had led her astray once. She wouldn’t let them do it again.
With a gasp, Rook rose out of the water, her spirits renewed. A shiver wracked through her body as the chilly wind blew at her wet skin, her hair, her clothes but Rook relished in it. It only served to strengthen the newfound resolve a dip in the river had provided.
Her very own baptism of sorts.
The Seeds were hunting for her, Rook understood that. And she had to raise as much hell as possible - Dutch’s orders. She also had to build a team. She was going against an army, after all. Well, she had cleared his island, but if Dutch wanted the Seeds to face Hell, Rook would bring it to them, arm-in-arm with her future rag-tag crew.
And she knew just who to start with.
~ * ~
“Yo, that shit was awesome man, like seriously. Wicked cool. The way you forward rolled and slammed into that Angel, dude - like, and then you shot and your bullet hit? The other Angel? In the face? Like dude! How that was proper badass lemme tell you. You know, for an officer who upholds fairly restrictive laws, you’re really awesome, I gotta tell you.”
Rook wiped the streak of blood off of her face with the back of her hand. Her shirt was positively drenched with blood - and really it was only because she used that Angel as a human shield when the turret trucks had shown up. But Boshaw was impressed and hopefully that was all she would need to convince him.
“Thanks,” She said, “Before we go any further, you do know we’ve met before, right? I’d feel like I was cheating you if I didn’t let you know that I have seen you without your pants on.”
“Most people have, Deputy,” Sharky said with unsettling nonchalance, “But yeah, I think I remember you. You were with Staci Pratt, weren’t you? Hey, I heard about the helicopter crash, man. Major bummer. He get out okay?”
It was something Rook hadn’t actively been thinking about. Staci, Earl, Hudson, hell, even the Marshal. Whether they were alive or dead didn’t matter, Rook couldn’t help them just then, and she filed it away as a problem to deal with in the future.
Rook just shrugged, “I don’t know. But I’m hoping to find out. The real question is if you’re going to help me or what? I’m planning on taking down the Cult and I wouldn’t mind having an extra pair of hands helping me.”
“Aw, shit son!” He whooped, “Hell yeah, I’ll join! Disco inferno for life! Dude, we’re going to be like Tango and Cash - only I wanna Tango.”
“Yeah, you can be Sylvester Stallone.”
“For real?”
This was easier than she thought.
Rook grinned, “Yeah. For real.”
Sharky was practically vibrating where he stood, “Aw, dude, this is gonna be the shit. We’re totally gonna be roastin’ Peggy ass and takin’ Peggy name. I’m so excited, man, like - look at me, look at me, I’m shaking, man. I’m shaking.”
Sharky shoved his hand in front of Rook and he was, indeed, shaking. Rook wondered if maybe this was a bad idea. But from the way Sharky happily louped over towards her ‘borrowed’ truck, she also knew she wouldn’t have the heart to call it off.
They settled in, Sharky refused to wear a seatbelt, and Rook opened up her map to check out where to go next. Dutch had circled some spots with potential recruits and Sharky leaned over to look at the map. He pointed at a place just North of where they were in the trailer park, near the Whitetails.
“That’s where Peaches is. She’s vicious, man. One time, she bit off a dude’s arm cause he tried to touch her. And then she ate it. Man, I threw up so much that day.”
Rook looked at him, horror-stricken. Just who did Dutch want to join her crew?
“Is Peaches…?”
“A cougar? Yup.”
“Oh.” That was a slight comfort, “Is she wild?”
“Peaches? Nah, she’s as domesticated as a cat can get. Don’t give her too many belly rubs and she won’t rip your face off.” Sharky peered closer at the map. He poked another place on the map, “Hey, that’s where my Uncle Hurk lives.”
Any relative of Sharky’s was sure to be… interesting. Did Dutch circle some of these as a joke?
“Is he any good with a gun?”
“He’ll shoot your head clean off if you try to take it away from him.”
Rook considered that, “How likely do you think it is that he’d join us?”
“Well, and I don’t mean any offense by this, Dep, lemme just start by saying that, cause I think you are freaking awesome and that we are going to be the best of friends but Uncle Hurk already hates you.”
Rook raised her brows at that, “Oh really? And why does he already hate me, despite having never met me?”
“It’s because you’re a person. See, Uncle Hurk may seem like a sexist racist gun-toting old geezer - and he is all that - but he also hates every human being equally. If he could be the only person on the planet, that’d still be too many people, ya get me?”
“Not exactly. But look, would he join our team?”
“Honestly? No. But you do know who would join us? My cousin Hurk Junior. He’s great and he loves adventures and I haven’t seen him in a while and I’d kinda really like to go road-tripping with him.”
“Sharky,” Rook said slowly, “We are taking down the Cult, not going on a vacation.”
“You’ll find most contemporary word definitions don’t usually sail the same way with me. You call it public indecency, I call it a fun way to spend my afternoon.”
“Are you going to be naked a lot while we work together?”
“That is something you might have to accustom yourself to, yes.”
Rook keyed the car into life and reversed it out of the trailer park.
“Great,” she muttered under her breath, “A nudist pyromaniac. Why not?”