<div style="text-align: center">《Rebel and Dan》<br/>
<i>Location: LDS Church<br/>
Addressing: Horses, Ezra</i>​</div><br/>Dan was standing way out in front, casually waiting for the people to do their thing so the group could move on. He turned to look ahead of them, then back at the wagon full of refuges, when he saw Armando jump from the carriage in haste, his focus caught by something in the back that the scout could not see. There were raised voices and a ruckus of some kind, but Dan figured Rebel could handle anything on his end of their tiny caravan.<br/><br/>A moment later one of the horses swivled an ear, his big brown eyes rolling to the side, and then Dan noticed a flinching in their shoulders and their nostrils flaring as if they were about to be stung by bees.<br/><br/>"What the fuck?" he said to himself, stepping forward and peering beyond their massive shoulders. But he didn't have a chance to get a look. The horses snorted, then they were charging, pulling a wagon with a screaming passenger along with them. Dan did what he saw people on TV do – he raised his hands wide, as if creating an invisible wall that could stop those massive draft animals.<br/><br/>"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" his eyes wide, he knew that they would all be in a pile of shit if Hale's beloved horses were hurt, and there was one woman in the carriage who was holding on for dear life.<br/><br/>Those horses weren't stopping. They were gaining speed, and from his perspective it felt like staring down a pair of locomotives. Dan jumped to the side at the last moment, one hand latching onto the silver knobbed thing sticking out of the massive collar strapped around the right beast. He didn't have a sane reason for what he was doing; Dan knew nothing about horses other than they ate hay and made a lot of poop.<br/><br/>He could hear the purple-haired passenger scream as he felt his body slam against that massive wall of muscle and leather straps. The two horses veered away at his sudden weight, skimming the curb until a wagon wheel jumped it and flung the side of the carrier against an old chain linked fence, effectively snagging the wagon and stopping the horses. The one that Dan wasn't holding onto reared, its legs kicking out, and when it came down, it landed on the broken, upright remnants of a broken four-by-four stop signpost at the driveway of an adjacent bus depot.<br/><br/>The sound of that horse's scream would haunt Dan for years to come.<br/><br/>His hands still gripped the uninjured horse. White-knuckled, strained, he couldn't bear to look over and see what had happened to the other horse, but he had to know if it was an injury or an attack. What he saw made him feel sick and cold, the horse that was half-speared by the broken signpost struggling and fighting for its life while inadvertently making its injuries worse. All he could think of was that the sound was going to bring more rotters, and more rotters meant possible death.<br/><br/>Rebel had been in the middle of getting Kennedy to calm down when he was shoved aside, Kennedy's kicking and flailing managing to push Rebel even harder so he hit the asphalt with a skull-numbing smack. He remembered his mother always cautioning him to take his helmet when he rode, but…he wasn't riding a bike. He wasn't, so how did he hit his head on the pavement? He felt nauseous and hot. He blinked his eyes, seeing a blurred image of legs and overgrown grass, and somewhere in the distance a building.<br/><br/>People were shouting. For a moment he wondered if he had been knocked down during a riot or protest. He felt confused, frustrated, and misunderstood.<br/><br/>He struggled to gather his feet beneath him. Rebel's head was spinning, and it felt like the ground would not stop moving. Then he was yanked to his feet, and before the ex-cop could figure out what was going on, he felt blinding pain as someone hauled off and punched him in the jaw.<br/><br/>With pain came a strange sense of clarity. He was still confused and nauseated, but he remembered where they were and what was going on in the world. He hadn't crashed on his motorcycle; he had been escorting a group to the river camp. Rebel swallowed down the bitter bile as Ezra lectured him o what his role was supposed to be, knowing that there was nothing he could say to counter the man's emotions. People like that didn't listen to logic. With a final shove, Rebel found himself back on his ass. Thankfully it didn't involve another punch.<br/><br/>He worked his jaw and squinted, still trying to work out the blurred vision and dizziness he felt. Climbing back to his feet, Rebel checked himself: nothing broken, gun intact, key sill in his pocket, flashlight and knife still where they needed to be. He was okay. He hoped.<br/><br/>Rebel didn't think that he had sent anyone anywhere – he thought he had been telling others to let people make up their own minds. But how he felt right now, he couldn't trust his recollection.<br/><br/><i>"Shit, I feel si –"</i>he thought. Suddenly overcome with the desire to retch he bent over and dry-heaved towards the pavement. Had he eaten breakfast it probably would have come up, but he hadn't eaten anything in almost twenty-four hours. He'd barely drank any water too. Remembering that, he reached for where his flask normally hung, then realized he had forgotten it.<i>"Damn it." </i>Another thing to kick himself for later, though he didn't remember what the first thing was.