𝙵𝙻𝙴𝚂𝙷 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙱𝙾𝙽𝙴 | 𝚃. 𝙾𝚃𝚃𝙾 𐂃

Chapter 55

Cristine planted her palm against either side of the sink, bend over and sighed deeply. She absently stared at the disposable gloves and mask she threw in there and clinched her jaw. She had a brief break from the day on the vehement begging of Alicia, Hailey, and Jake. She'd never lost so many people under her watch and didn't think she would ever have to since she wasn't a surgeon in the old world. She just researched diseases and helped her mentor with potential monsters in the laboratory. If a disease had to be surgically removed, she just had to forward her patients to an actual doctor in the field. Cristine shut her eyes, feeling helpless as the faces of the now deceased flashed through her mind and ironically remembered their names. Ella, Hank, Nate, Karla, Joseph, Laura, Esther, Samuel, Sam, Clifford, Nelly, Riley, Molly, Kat, Bonnie... the list went on.

"How bad is it?" Opening her eyes again, Cristine looked over her shoulder to see Troy standing at the entrance of her tiny bathroom. He was still in his uniform and casually leaned against the frame. Callousness oozed from him, but at the same time there was a tired anger that shrouded his whole body. The militia buried a lot of bodies today and did double time patrolling. They were spread thin now, given that this attack was one aimed at the militia.

Cristine shook her head silently, not wanting to talk about their dead. "How did it go?" She asked, referring to her request he and her father talk. It was desperate, but anything would do at this point. Seeing Troy bit on his lip and shake his head afterwards, made Cristine just rub the bridge of her nose. Her father was useless. "How are the defenses?" Cristine her voice was soft. It felt weird to talk to Troy again after their many fallouts. This being the biggest one as of yet. It was always death and violence from their enemies that made them approach each come to her to vent.

"Gone to shit. Me, Coop, a some green horns and a handful of young and old is what's left." Troy bared his teeth, the anger finally seemed to burst now that he was momentarily off duty and didn't have to act the part of a leader, but a Ranch member. "That asshole Walker needs to pay! The militia I get, we're fighters, but the others are helpless."

"Nineteen... we lost nineteen people so far and the only thing we could do was give them antibiotics and watch them fight. Never felt so useless." Cristine stared into the mirror, a weary replica copied every shift, twitch of the face. "They didn't deserve this."

"What happened today was on the Indians. Get yourself together and help me pick up the pieces." Troy pushed his body from its slanted pose and stood straight. Much to his dismay Cristine shook her head as response to his demands.

"I already told you, I can't fight with you and patch up people at the same time," she argued and with a damp towel wiped the blood from her neck.

"A quarter of our people are dead and you did what you could. You have Alicia and Hailey, hell even Jake. Let Dave have some responsibility in the infirmary, he's a doctor too," Troy demanded.

Cristine tore her eyes from the mirror and looked as if Troy just made a bad joke. "Dave's a vet."

"He can handle it, just like Jake is. I'm sure that brain of yours came up with something to at least slow the Nation down. That bargaining chip Alicia mentioned sounds crazier by the day." Having caught the unhidden streak of his anger and didn't bother masking it, Cristine stood straight again with narrowed eyes. "What? If we can't come up with anything, we'll end up negotiating again like some cowards and I'm not having that. A lot of ours were poisoned, can't we do something like that in return? Now's a really good time to put some of that knowledge of your previous occupation to use."

It was odd how, even through his anger and their conflict, Troy was always on the same wavelength as her in way. Of course she had thought of a way to get back at the Nation. They were all too busy with the sick, wounded and thinned out security to even bother with a planned retaliation just yet. That's why she hoped that maybe her father had something up his sleeve with Troy. But when she thought of the people they lost to the poisoning and came back as mindless ghouls, Cristine had one possible tactic they could use. It wasn't hard to collect, as it outnumbered the living at least 5000:1. She'd seen the virus up close and knew how it worked too, Troy's experiments as futile as they were, had merit when he ranted about his documentation to her in his mad excitement. "We can poison them back with-" the words tumbled from Cristine's mouth before she knew it until she paused midway and hesitated. Much to Troy's impatience by her disclination to share, he closed the distance between them and gripped both her arms, the pressure mild and controlled. He towered over her form.