No one breathed in the large tension choked room.

Click, click click.

The sharp sound crawled up Summers’s spine to settle in her skull. Close, so very close. Death might as well be outside that door, their skeletal feet flicking against stone as it reaped what remained of the world.

That fear was painted in the children’s wide eyes as they clutched the woman holding the flashlight. With fingers too anxious to shake. Herr partner’s eyes darted across the diner’s wooden floor and the array of fallen tables and chairs.

However, there’d be no clever tactic, no feat of strength to see them through. If found they would die, and she could do nothing but stand and wait.

She stared at the woman who shared this breathless moment. Trembling green eyes met hers, fear buried in the corners of her lips and her brow‘s crease. She was the picture of a scream in the making, and Summer feared she’d break. Yet she hung at terror’s edge and Summer noticed the glare. That pierced through Summer and struck beyond the door.

She recognized it, in Mensha’s apathy, echoed in her determination.

As clicks grew to cracks that trembled up her feet with a force far greater than the sound implied. They stood with crushing pressure that urged, them to move, run, fight, and do something. Yet the chains of deeper instinct and scattered logic held her still.

Sharp staccato percussions beat the earth, with a jaunty pace as dozens died meters away. Then it passed.

The room breathed as silence reclaimed its rule, yet the pressure’s memory pinned them. Strength faded from the other woman’s eyes, replaced by something fragile as her eyes consumed Mensha and Summer.

A child cried, not the shrill scream of one that could afford to be heard, but the low heart-wrenching sobs that flourished when pain and tension outgrew the mind. Motion resumed, and the various children rushed to comfort their youngest member. The woman’s gaze found a new target as her daring attention struggled to find focus.

She took them in

Seven people, one woman, six children thought she could tentatively label the boy who crouched to comfort the crying child a young adult. He pulled gossamer strings from the air and wove small patterns that hovered before the small girl. It didn’t stop the sobs shaking through her, and as the thread fell he wove new patterns to little effect. She tabled that curiosity and returned her attention to the woman.

Her face was a mask of blended emotion and she returned Summers’s attention with burning intensity.

Here she was, and she didn’t know what to do. She glanced at her partner. He smiled but offered no help. She sighed and turned back to the who looked increasingly frustrated. She began but was interrupted.

“What were you thinking! Were you trying to kill us” Her high voice broke with every other forcefully hushed word. Like a creaming kettle, if steam spoke of ill contained anger strewn with desperation.

Gasped breaths shook her and those words seemed to take all her body’s strength yet her anger struck Summer as thoroughly as a punch.

What was there to say, despite her intentions she endangered them. The small woman her hands clenched around that flashlight as she stood in front of the now quiet children. Shoulders high, back curled in aggression, borne to protect.

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“We want to help, to make sure we aren’t the only ones” She smiled sadly and reigned tears that threatened her composure. “We’ve been looking for survivors and you’re the,” She swallowed the memory, she shook her head.

The woman was silent caught between anger and something else.

“You’re not the first, but” she smiled and the room brightened, “I hope I’m not the only one who’s glad to see some friendly faces.”

The woman’s expression roiled through suspicion, concern, and hope before finally falling to the uncertain refrain of someone trying to hold the world together, and breaking. Then her dam broke.

She jumped at Summer, recent experience screamed at her to strike. Yet their beading tears trumped new instincts. Summer caught the woman in an embrace. Uncaring of the bat she dropped to hold the woman that clung like all the world could be made right if she sank deeper into the embrace.

Summer let her tears join this reunion of strangers and returned the embrace. The world warmed if only by a fraction. It was enough.

The moment broke yet she was richer in its passing. The woman stepped back wiping tears and an awkward smile settled on her face. The expression came easily to the pale-skinned woman, though her anger hung cleat in Summers’s mind.

“Ah, sorry I’m Tessa. And these are,” she gestured at the group of six. Their posture relaxed though caution warred with curiosity in their eyes. “Ah, we can do an introduction later, Jess’s ability isn’t perfect.” She said and offered the girl in question a tight smile.

“And what is that precisely,” her partner asked,

“You’ll see I just want to be gone in case that thing comes back.”

Summer luxuriated in the idle chatter. She felt hope, as she watched Tessa fuss over the children to the teens’ annoyance. “So where are we going,” she asked an easy mile in her voice.

“You’re coming with us,”

“Well, we didn’t walk through a thousand shadows to say high did we.” She chuckled, and revelation flickered across Tessa’s eyes.

Tessa shook her head, “No you wouldn’t, Sorry, this is just a surprise for me for us.” She took a calming breath and the furtive ramble that consumed her faded, replaced by a steadier tone. ”Didn’t think we’d meet anyone out here”

Were they expecting people somewhere else she exchanged a glance with Mensha. She began to speak but Tessa opened the door and shushed her.

A veritable field of dark bodies littered the street. Sharp voids against the gloom gloom. Tessa peeked through the door, her head snapping up and down the street. She waved them over and summer settled her cloak as the children walked through the door.

The teen lifted the youngest onto his back and walked passed meeting her as he did. Summer smiled, The others trundled past, Jess and the other helping an older limping girl.

She winced and resisted the urge to pick them up. Mensha’s nose twitched and she noticed his absent cloak.

They stepped through the door and the oppressive dark smothered but failed to kill her joy. “What happened to you cloak.” She whispered as her eyes darted about surveying the shades that had begun traipsing into the massacre.

The attentive shadows surveyed the scene for a moment, then went about their mindless day. In minutes the bodies would be hidden under passing feet. In hours there’d be nothing to remember. Shadows hid far too much for the sting of primal horror, but there was something.

Like watching a field full of tombstones being eaten by nature. Names worn away and graves overgrown.

“I cut it off” Mensha whispered. His ever-calm tone jolted her from the scene. She struggled to remember the question.

“Okay,” she said and struggled to guard her joy from errant considerations. She focused on the footsteps. How they stood against the absolute silence and her steps deadened by her robe. Yet despite the sound and light their procession light. By way of Summer and Tessa, the shade’s attention slipped past them.

Though not completely as the group huddle close under Tessa’s guidance. The shades flowed around them, which made things more confusing. The shades had to be seeing them on some level, otherwise, how could they do that?

She didn’t know and the question burned on her tongue, but she held silent. She glanced at Mensha’s wandering gaze, at least he was perplexed, even if he hid it better.

She glanced at the small girl responsible for this, she looked anxious, yet more like an acute worry. Rather than the bone-deep fear beaten into her ward and hid behind a thin veneer of control.

Questions ran through her head, she could barely, She hoped they get wherever it was soon.