Chapter Text

Buddy didn’t look back. No matter who was in her way, there was no way she could have looked back. The vaccine was taken. She was supposed to be safe in some way. It was guaranteed that the withdrawals would stop. She hoped that, at least.

It was easy to maneuver around Brad’s deformed body even when he was inching closer. He groaned just like he did in her visions. But she couldn’t face him. What she was feeling was unlike anything she felt before. Buddy wasn’t ready.

So she ran as far as she could.

The slippery sound of blood against her heels, the constant weight of her knapsack hitting her side as she ran, they were trivial now. As she listened for Brad’s noises growing more faded with each step she took, she hopped over a dip in between the rocky terrain, taking a deep breath. She could feel a hitch in her throat, the cool overcast making her eye water. She glanced back for a second and could see him slowly making his way over to the impasse. She walked now, not wishing to waste her energy.

She walked past the gore of mutated corpses and those previous human beings- the ones she had killed and the ones that had died from causes that were above her or out of her hands. Buddy stopped at a dry spot and sat on the ground. She opened up her knapsack and searched for any extra bandages that she could apply. Buzzo’s blood was drying on the current ones and she didn’t want to get some sort of infection. There was nothing she could use, so she figured she would have to scavenge to find any cleaner bandages.

Her mind was fixated into the distance as her one eye trailed over and caught sight of distant mountains. In Olathe, there was only blood and death. But farther away, she had no idea. This place is the only one she had ever known, the one she had spent so long to conquer. Buddy knew this wasn’t what she really wanted in the long run. This nothingness surrounding her person. Slowly she could feel suppressed thoughts creeping into her mind.

“Maybe,” She thought to herself, “Maybe if I can get past those mountains, I can make it to someplace better.” It was worth a shot, now that no one was really left alive. Going back to Brad was not a viable option. The Joy was slowly edging itself out of her influence and all that was left seemed to be pure intuition.

The day was only half over so it seemed like a good time to start walking again. Buddy paid no mind to the countless bodies. They were shadows of her guilt since the beginning of her deadly ascension. The people she had killed, the ones who must have wanted to control her. She wouldn’t allow them to occupy her mind. But Dustin was still there. Somewhere. His body mangled. She was almost sure she passed over the place where he fell to his death. Going back wasn’t an option anymore for her, she had to press on. Even if the memories tried to catch up to her.

By the time she had reached the supposed end of Olathe, she could see it. A deserted plain. Grass growing a lukewarm brown. A small scattering of trees among it. All she had to do was head down the cliff-side and past the grasslands. Buddy had experience in climbing, so another mountain wasn’t strange. It wouldn’t be impossible to conquer.

Looking over the terrain, she gradually made her way down. Every step was made carefully, even when her eye would blur from focusing too hard. The little rocks that would tumble past her feet at a wrong move would give her a bit of a start. Buddy would walk down onto a short platform and rest in between the climb. She’d stare up at the mountain and wonder what she’d see at the top. Where she would decide to go.

After three hours of this cycle, she was sweating, tired and at the bottom of the cliff. Buddy laid down and felt the soft dirt in her palms. She crumbled the soil in her hands, the moisture accumulating underneath. The stars above her were faint but plentiful. The night was coming, and a part of her was afraid to sleep.

“There’s no one left to hurt me,” She reminded herself quietly. “No one to stab me in my sleep or worse. I’m all alone.”

The possibility of Brad managing to find her while she slept crossed her mind. It was a very small chance, but one she did not wish to overlook. Buddy pushed her tired body off the ground and got to walking once more. Deep in her heart, there was something driving her to keep on going forward. It was more complex than putting off a confrontation with what Brad had become. It was the entirety of Olathe.

And now it was literally all behind her. The only mark of her mistakes, of her guilt. She could set it all aflame if she wanted to but… Even doing that seemed to unsettle her in some indefinite way.

The mountain was large and foreboding. As the grass swayed with the wind at her knees and the sun was going down so quickly, everything was becoming darker. Her eye could still see that darkening shape before her, but the idea of being trapped inside a plain of nothingness added to her worries. She picked up the pace.

It was the familiar feeling of the mountain that brought her back all at once. The rough feeling of sedimentary rock and the ease with which she could grab on and haul herself up. It felt much better to go up than it did to go down. But she was nearly blind in this darkness, her single eye warily looking about with what faint light the horizon could give. Her hands felt over the various places she could climb, her feet squirming to find respite.

At some point, she laid her stomach onto a little hitch on the side of the mountain and rested, not truly sleeping. Her eye closed and in the blacks of it, Buddy could see the images of the day. Her scimitar piercing haphazard flesh, the sorrowful looks of Buzzo, Brad and Dustin. She didn’t want these to be the images she saw, but they were all she had now. Opening her eye meant looking into nothing and maybe picking out little bits of the plains here and there. She was facing away from the moon’s light, so all she could see was in the stars. Buddy rubbed her cheek as it itched and accidentally tore off a piece of her soiled bandages. It wasn’t enough to uncover her empty socket, but it was still irritating.

Sitting up, she felt the ground and towards the walls, finding that this little hitch was larger than she anticipated. She followed where the walls took her, swerving through its passages as if it were a hidden maze of crag. A faint light seemed to shine, the closer she got. Her pace became frantic as she ran closer to the light, half-fearful, half-curious.

All at once, she was captivated by the sight of it. A circular chamber, engulfed in a pulsating barrier of light. A bright blue that hurt Buddy’s eye and made it water. She shielded herself as she looked down upon it. There was no way to be sure if it was even solid, or where it would go, if she was to venture down.

Her heart was beating so loudly, it rang through her ears. As she circled around, she found a lone vine, curled up deeply into the side of the chamber. It seemed thick enough to support her weight, as she tested it out with a good tap of her foot. Buddy clutched onto it and then took a deep breath. Hauling the rest of herself down, she attempted to step down onto the rocky side of this mysterious, light-filled chasm.

Every place she attempted to support herself with was unstable, impossible to give her any kind of good footing.

“It was stupid to think this would even lead anywhere,” She thought, pulling herself up and onto the side of the inner chasm. As her hand hit the flat rock, she felt something tug her back. Swiftly looking over, she saw a bit of the old vine had gotten caught on her knapsack. Buddy didn’t dare breathe as she tried to shake it off, to no avail. She whispered a curse and kicked at the vine in hopes that it would break off.

As she reached for the vine, her feet slipped. Her hand grabbed into the flat rock even more tightly and it pressed into her skin even more. It didn’t hurt, but now she was hanging on by only one hand. She forgot about the vine and reached up to get two hands on the flat rock. The sweat stung her sleepless face, filling in the cracks and cuts as she got her second hand onto the side. Buddy attempted to pull herself up, but the instability of the chasm’s side was lost to her in that one imperfect moment.

She slipped. She fell. She fell deep and down, through that barrier of light and screamed. Through all of her determination, she had made it. But to where, she hadn’t known.

She lost consciousness before she hit the flowerbed. Petals flew throughout the air, dusted lightly with dew. A few bottles in her knapsack leaked out, as that one old vine still clung to it. It was ripped off now, the shine of glucose dripping onto the dirt.

It was the first thoughtless sleep she would have in ages.