20,000 Miles To An Oasis

by WGSarah

"Paige, Paige, damn it, please."

"She's not going to answer you."

He shoots me a glare like I don't know what I'm talking about.

Its the same every night, she hasn't said anything yet.

~~*~~

"I can't."

"What did you say, chica?"

"I can't. Don't make me. Stop it."

"We can't stop now, Paige. We gotta keep going. Just a little while."

"No. Make him stop. Momma, make Sam stop teasing me."

"Whu? Paige? Shit, Paige!?"

~~*~~

I don't know where here is. Not sure how we got here, either. Just woke up one morning and knew something was different.

Me and Paige. We couldn't find anyone else.

~~*~~

"Paige, can you say something?"

~~*~~

He's not our Jono. He has a mouth, for one thing.

He saw us, one morning.

After.

It's fucked. He's like ours, mostly. Different accent.

I don't think the countries are the same where he's from.

~~*~~

"Angelo!"

"Here. I'm right here."

"I had another one."

"Shh. It's okay."

"Emma. She was, she was .... Bobby was *freezing* her. He was breaking off her *fingers*."

"It was just a dream. Emma's fine."

"How can you be sure?"

~~*~~

I'm not sure if she's my Paige.

Never asked. Just assumed she was.

We didn't know about the others then.

~~*~~

"Paige?"

"Yeah, Ange?"

"Forget it."

"What?"

"Nothing."

~~*~~

The first one we ran across was a McCoy. Grey, not blue.

He was living under some kind of shelter, broken doors and those old TVs, the ones that look like furniture, stacked together for walls.He kept demanding that we come down and see his lab. We thought he was harmless. But he grabbed Paige's arm and wouldn't let go. Kept trying to drag her into the shelter. She kept saying no, but he wouldn't leave her alone. And he was still pretty strong, even if he did look like he was half-starved. So I stopped him.

It was just supposed to be for a little while so we could get away from him. But then, when we looked in, we saw the other girls. The dead ones.

I took care of that.

We saw some others after that. Summerses, Cassidys, Rasputins. We kept our distance. The only one we stopped for was Jono. Because she insisted.

~~*~~

She just collapsed. One minute she was okay, the next she was yelling at Sam, then next she was gone.

~~*~~

"Ange. Hey, Ange. Wake up."

It takes me a minute. The British accent throws me every time.

"Yeah?"

"Over there. There's something coming toward us."

There is, too. I can't really describe it. Like a tornado or a hurricane, some really big fucking storm, but it's not. But you can see it sweeping across the landscape. Changing things.

"Ange. Ange."

He's pulling on my arm.

"Ange, we gotta get Paige and go."

I shake him off. He doesn't stop, so I punch him.

He slumps to the ground.

We kept walking because as long as we did, we could believe we were going to get somewhere.

I'm done walking.

back to WGSarah's stories | Shadowlands archive | comicfic.net