Chasing Faith

It was too dark outside to see anything. All you could do was hear. The footsteps, the heavy breathing, the panic as the duo ran for their lives. Darkness was preferred -- light meant flashlights, and that meant that the very people they were running from were catching up to them. They knew not where they were running to, just who and what they were running from.

After too long a time spent making their lungs bleed and legs beg for death, the pair saw no flashlight and heard no voice. Without a word needed, they slowed their pace, and eventually came to a stop, praising their lucky stars they were around each other.

They wanted absolute quiet so that they could listen to see if they were still followed by a stealthy stalker, but their breathing overshadowed their attempt to scan the surrounding darkness for an auditory clue. In the darkness, they could barely make out each other's faces.

Chase was the first to be able to speak, after a long time spent breathing. "I need to sit down."

Faith, still unable to talk, simply nodded, and the two collapsed where they were. Chase fell onto the ground and lay down, while Faith sat herself up against a tree.

"Do... you think... we could just... stay here for the night?" Faith panted.

No." Chase sat up, running his hand along the ground. "We must press on and find a safer place before we sleep." His hand came up from the grass and he rubbed his fingers together. "The grass is short. Cut. It's being maintained by people. Wherever we are right now, it's not somewhere people can't reach."

Faith was finally able to stop panting. Instead she let out a groan. "Fuck," she muttered. "Okay. Just, please give me a few minutes first."

"A few minutes," Chase repeated. He looked in both directions, attempting to see something, anything in the darkness that would give him any more information than he had. "Do you know how long we were running? I think I might know the direction."

"I wasn't exactly counting the seconds, no," Faith told him, half sternly, half playfully. "I was too busy running for my damn life."

"I was there too, I can recall," Chase replied flatly, still looking off.

"They were going to kill us," Faith softly said aloud, mournfully.

"They still could," Chase replied. "Especially if we keep talking and stop moving."

Faith sighed. "Yeah," she mumbled. She stood up, and tapped Chase's shoulder to get him to follow suit. Wordlessly, the pair got up and scanned their surroundings for a few more seconds before Chase pointed in a direction and the two began to walk again.

Their first hour of walking was silent, until Chase piped up.

"Are you feeling well?"

Faith chuckled sadly. "No worse than usual," she told him. "I thought we would make progress by now."

"We're two individuals running from an organized system hell-bent on preventing individuals from running from it," he replied. "Us... existing, that's progress, and every day we remain here and alive is progress more."

"Poet," Faith teased him. She had always accused him of 'talking more like a poet than a human being,' and for some reason being called a poet was one of the few things that actually got under Chase's skin, so of course she was sure to call him one often.

He shot her a look as they continued walking. She saw his expression and playfully mirrored it. At this point the sun was rising and the two could see decently around them, though they had no actual idea what time it was. They couldn't risk wearing watches, in case they had something trackable inside them. At this point, time was an irrelevant concept anyway. 'Man invented time, and what was left of man took time away from us,' or so Chase had said.

"There's a house up ahead," Faith pointed out a few minutes later. "We could rest somewhere inconspicuous near there."

"That brings us closer to people that could turn us in," Chase rebutted with a stern expression.

Faith shook her head. "The authorities will be looking in places like fields and caves for us. They know we're on the run now. They're not going to check every single home, as long as we're smart about it."

"That sounds like we're gambling on knowing the intentions of the enemy." Chase replied, and Faith shrugged and smiled slightly, not arguing with that point at all. With a huff, Chase silently agreed, and the two scouted the rural property, finding the most dusty, untouched and unseen area outside the house to turn in for a quick rest.

As luck would have it, the house belonged to what looked like some former hoarders -- there was a barn on the property, one that had a room so dusty and overrun that it was clear no human had been there in years. As stealthily as possible, the pair made themselves at home inside, accompanied by the morning light coming in through the dusty, warped window.

Faith stared out the window, glancing at the countryside, the morning sunlight hitting her face. The sunlight made her Native American skin glow, at least to Chase. He knew that a mild-to-moderate manmade apocalypse wasn't the time to develop feelings for anyone, but he couldn't help what he felt for his fellow survivor. He put on a tough facade for her, but he knew that his heart jumped every moment her brown, bold, vivacious eyes rested on his. Every time her smile, blessed with a slight overbite showing her beautiful teeth with the slightest parting of her lips, showed the world its presence. The way her eyelids relaxed when she was truly content. Her freckles, each one representing another point on a list of reasons she should be adored. It would be irresponsible of him to show it, but she truly was his sunlight.

He knew he couldn't compare, but genetics hadn't exactly been unkind to him either. While his black hair had gotten a bit shaggier than his usual modest look given his last haircut was a while ago, it still framed his face well, and complemented his hazel eyes, the kind with a light brown that made people stop and stare at them.

He found himself wishing, from time to time, that Faith would be one of those people to stare into them, for her to be like one of those girls from back home that fell in love with him purely due to his eyes. He'd take a shallow love over an unrequited one, any day, had their situation only been different.

He was staring at her again. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts as her gaze turned away from the morning sun. "I used to love sunrises," Faith mumbled, almost to herself.

"You can still love them," Chase pointed out. "Perhaps now more than ever. Loving what we love and allowing our humanity to shine is perhaps what separates us from them."

"Poet."

"I'm just saying..." Chase followed up with an exasperated sigh. He looked around the room. "We should be able to sleep there behind the table. Even if someone were to come in, they'd have to be actively looking for us to notice."

"Which they could do." Faith replied uneasily. "Do you really think these guys don't have access to heat-seeking satellites or something?"

"I wouldn't want to overestimate just how much of a nuisance we are to them," Chase replied, the two of them making themselves comfortable on the ground. "Besides, if they decided to resort to that, they would have used them already."

The two shed their outer clothing, used to being in a modest amount of clothing around each other. They used their clothes as bedding when they could. Any comfort was a welcome one to them, given the situations they found themselves in.

"What do you think they are prepared to do?" Faith suddenly asked.

"How do you mean?" Chase asked, staring up at the ceiling.

"The men last night... I'm ninety-nine percent sure they had guns," Faith replied.

"If they did, they would have used them. Same point I made earlier." Chase shifted to look at Faith. "Are you scared?"

Faith scowled and laughed at Chase. "Am I scared? Bit fucking late to ask that, I've been scared for weeks. Now I'm just... numb."

"Sounds like you're not scared then." Chase shifted back to look at the ceiling. He felt a bit bad being so callous towards her, but he was doing what he could to make sure 'callous' was the only impression she got from him.

"Y'know, for a poet, you're really unemotional," Faith told him, huffing.

"I'm not planning to publish my anthology anytime soon," Chase simply replied.

Faith chuckled. "Yeah," she mumbled. Silence filled the air. "If I'm bothering you or something, we could always go our separate ways."

"What?! No!" Chase sat up. "We're safer together. We don't know who the hell else we can trust, we -- there's no way of telling who else could be on our side, or if anyone else is on our side in the first place!"

Faith gave a cocky smile. "Hey look, emotion," she teased. "See? It's not that hard to care."

Chase said nothing for a bit. Eventually, he got up and walked over to the other side of the room, facing away from her and folding his arms.

Faith chuckled awkwardly. "I mean,,, really?" she asked clumsily. "I'm just saying, a-"

"I know what you're saying," Chase replied seriously, without looking at her.

Faith swallowed nervously. "You know, I was kidding, but this is kind of convincing me maybe we should go our-"

"I'm not upset."

"Well, in traditional Chase fashion, it's hard for me to read your feelings," she replied softly. She got up and followed him, walking past him and looking him in the face, folding her arms to mimic him. "I can look after myself, you know."

"Both of us are better off being assisted by the other."

"Yeah, but..." Faith stared him in the eyes for a bit.

"I'm listening." Chase replied.

Eventually, her soft expression turned into another scowl. "God, you really do have to be this hard-hearted stiff," she scoffed. "You know, you don't have to be an emotionless field marshall robot just to convince me you're reliable. You could also act like a freaking human being from time to time."

"I'm scared of guns too, is that what you wanted to hear?" he asked her, unfolding his arms.

"No! Believe it or not, no. I want to hear how you took a drama class or cried when your first pet fish died or some kind of proof you're more human than the ones we're trying to avoid."

"We can't possibly speculate on the humanity of-"

"Oh, shut up, poet." Faith shot him a death glare and paced around him. "Do you think this is a video game stealth op mission? What could possibly be the reason for hiding your emotions in front of me? What do you gain from being seen as this emotionless cold war-torn man? Does it make this any easier? Does it give you pleasure? What?"

"Faith, where the hell is this coming from?"

Faith was trying to remain cool, but clearly something was going on below the surface. Whether it was something hidden in her words or a hatred of confrontation, Chase could see the beginnings of tears in her eyes. "It's just... it's just weird, you know? We're supposed to be partners and it feels like you're becoming more emotionless every day. So maybe I try to talk about more emotional stuff, and you just clam up, more and more. And how can we trust each other with our lives if we can't trust each other with our feelings? Fuck, Chase... you don't... god dammit..." She wiped the tears from her eyes. "I know it's silly, and you're gonna call it hysterics from our situation or something, but I swear, you don't even look me in the eyes anymore..."

Faith was stopping to hide her tears at this point. Even Chase let emotion cloud his face. "Faith..."

"Just... tell me I'm imagining it. Tell me you... still care. We're only getting to sleep by breaking and entering. We're running for our lives and calling it a Tuesday. If we're running together, I can't run alongside someone who doesn't care."

"It looks like this is hitting you harder than-"

"Yes! Guilty!" Faith cried out in desperation. "What, are you the only one allowed to hide your feelings? I haven't been okay in a long while, Chase! I'm not okay! I just want this to stop."

Faith rubbed her arm along her eyes a few times. "Could I get a hug?"

"Absolutely." Chase awkwardly held his arms out, and Faith eagerly entered them, the two sharing a soft, quiet hug, the only sounds that of Faith's muffled sobbing. "I understand how you feel. It's okay."

"No you don't," Faith said in between sobs. "You're a rock, I'm a puddle." She sobbed some more. "How's that for poetry?" she mumbled into his chest.

"You assume having an outburst like this is the only way of mishandling your emotions," Chase said, feeling Faith's warmth on him. He'd been doing well at avoiding her before this, but he realized only now he was doing too good of a job. She had felt neglected, and it was all his fault. His attempt to remain without emotional compromise and emotionally compromised her.

Chase could feel his emotionless facade melt away as the woman he was infatuated with held him tightly, and lifted her head to look him in the eyes. Her bold brown eyes met his, albeit with a layer of tears shielding hers. "What do you mean?" she timidly asked him.

Even her scent brought Chase closer to her, closer to heaven, than he felt comfortable being. He felt like his closeness to his sunlight was burning him -- the same feeling that made him look away or respond with ice whenever he felt any kind of connection with her. But that kind of choice caused his sunlight pain, and he'd be damned if he was to be the raincloud that vanquished his own beloved sunlight from his earth. "I-"

"Is someone there?" an innocent voice called out to the barn from outside. The two immediately broke off the hug and made a mad dash for their clothes, too scared to even speak. Not long after they hastily got their clothes on, the door opened and a pudgy blank-faced man stared into the room. "What's going on here?" he asked flatly.

Faith wasted no time. She grabbed a wooden pole positioned against the wall and broke the window, trying to get as much of the glass as possible. Chase followed her lead only a second after, grabbing an axe and doing away with the wooden grill of the window. The man could only watch in bewilderment as the two madly destroyed the window and jumped out of it, with Chase going first and then helping Faith through it after.

"Which direction?" she asked frantically as soon as she was through.

"This direction. Move!" Chase pointed and the two began running, the man left behind no doubt calling the authorities by now. Faith couldn't help but start to cry again as she ran, her emotions overwhelmed at this point. Chase dared not look at her, knowing that watching his sunlight cry too much more would push him to his own breaking point, a point he had been barricading to avoid and did not want to meet anytime soon.

The barn, and any sign of civilization, was out of sight by the time they stopped running again. "I'm gonna vomit," Faith panted. "We can't keep running like this." She braced herself against the nearest tree as Chase collapsed to the ground, unable to say anything.

"Are we safe here, do you think?" Faith asked.

"Who cares?" Chase found himself saying. An hour or so ago he wouldn't have expected himself to say something like that, but given the circumstances, he gave himself permission to break.

Chase didn't say much after that point. Time passed as it always did, and Faith disappeared once or twice to scrounge for any local flora that could be edible. Even if she found anything, Chase refused to eat.

"Not eating makes you a liability," Faith insisted, showing her spoils in his face.

"I'm thinking," Chase replied, turning his head away. Faith wanted to make a rebuttal to that, but thought better of it and turned her hand away.

After a while she opened up her mouth again. "Speaking of 'thinking,' what's the game plan here?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are we aiming to just avoid these agents forever, or are we waiting for a specific moment when they give up the chase? Are we looking to integrate back into society, if there even is one, or is this just Zombie Movie rules?"

"Zombie movie rules..?"

"You know, they run from the zombies whenever zombies are around. In Dawn of the Dead -- the remake -- I think they escape to try to get to some island, because I guess zombies can't swim, or drive boats." Faith looked down thoughtfully. "I guess at least some of these agents might have boating licenses. I mean, if we have a big enough target on our heads, they might even send helicopters. You know, the ones with the big searchlights." She put her hands in front of her mouth to distort her voice. "Do not move. You are under arrest."

Chase didn't reply and turned away. "Well, at least I think I'm funny," Faith mumbled to herself.

"You're funny, Faith," Chase grumbled. "I'm just thinking. I don't think I have an answer."

"An answer to what?" Faith asked, blank-faced.

"...Your question?"

"My question? Wha- oh, right. So I guess it's Zombie Movie rules until told otherwise, huh?"

"We can't be the only dissenters. If we travel enough, we might find other people resisting the change," Chase thoughtfully pointed out.

"Oh, no way," Faith instinctively replied. "If we're talking about zombie movies, I know it's a show, but ever seen The Walking Dead? More people means more opportunities to be betrayed, plus we know it's not the white good-looking guy that's gonna be stabbed in the back first by the new stranger to our posse."

Chase slowly turned to look at her, a smile creeping across his face. "'Good-looking'?" he asked amusedly.

Faith opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Her mouth shut as her face got redder. In her flattest voice, she announced, "I am... gonna go look for more things to eat. Byyyyye!" With that, she took off and ran into the woods.

On the outside, Chase was still the calm one, still by choice. On the inside, his heart was probably racing as fast as hers. That was clearly something she hadn't meant to say, he reasoned to himself. Or maybe it was and she was hinting at him?

She took longer than usual to return, especially given the little amount of food she came back with (not to mention Chase, the pickiest eater he knew before The Event happened, would question everything she claimed to bring as 'food'). It was pretty clear she didn't take so long because she was busy finding food. When she sat back down she did everything she could to avoid eye contact with him, from studying the food to looking up at the sky to scratching the back of her neck to even playing, 'Hey, what's that over there?'

Chase, however, was not being so modest. If she was looking at him less, he was looking at her more. Way more. Was this what it was like when he avoided eye contact with her? Was this how it felt? More importantly, was she avoiding eye contact with him for the same reason...?

Well, if this was the effect he had on her, he could understand her snapping, especially given this was only a couple of minutes as opposed to him... probably since he found her attractive, which, go figure, was a fair bit longer than a few minutes.

Internally, he worked up the courage to go forward and actually address her, before sighing confidently. "So, are we going to talk about it or not?"

"Huh?" Faith snapped to attention as if she'd forgotten he was there. "Talk about what?"

"You call me good-looking, seemingly by accident, then when I make a remark about it, you leave, claiming for an unrelated reason. When you come back, you do everything you can to prevent yourself from looking at me."

"So?" Faith immediately retorted. "Didn't we just have a conversation about how you don't look me in the eye? Maybe now you know what it's like."

"We did, and I just want to hear why you're avoiding eye contact with me, since I know my own reason why I avoided it with you." Chase replied, his expression even.