It didn’t seem real. Nothing did. Not the horrific, carnivorous bile-bags that were terrifying and burning the entire town, not the explosions, not the armored vehicles that had spawned along the once-sleepy roads, not Wesley or the blood or the gunfire and<span style="font-style: italic">certainly</span>not the fact that after all that, she was standing just inside the front door of a relatively quiet house owned by a complete stranger that had both saved and risked her life several times in the last hour. At this point, the quiet seemed unnatural, and her hypersensitive ears strained to hear every breath, every drop of sweat hitting the ground, every blink from her fellow survivors.<br/><br/>Amanda put her back to the wall, silently gulping breaths like a fish out of water. She wanted nothing more than to throw up, close her eyes, and slowly sink down until she was sitting (potentially in her own vomit), but she wasn’t alone or even in the company of people she knew. She settled for leaning heavily on the wall beside the door, until her breathing became less desperate.<br/><br/>Miriam.<br/><br/>Her hand fell to her pocket –<span style="font-style: italic">please please please don’t let it be broken please</span>- and she shot a quiet prayer of thanks to whichever god happened to be listening as the phone lit up in her hand. The thankfulness was slightly dampened when she saw the battery life and signal on the old device, but all she really needed at the moment was one thing, and it wouldn’t take very long. She<span style="font-style: italic">had</span>to know that she was okay. She had to hear it from Miri herself.<br/><br/>She speed-dialed the botanist and pressed the phone to her ear with a surprisingly steady hand, uncertainty making gastric mucous rise in her throat again. What if something had happened as far away as the college labs? What if it was already worse there than it was here? What if it had actually<span style="font-style: italic">started</span>there and Miriam was already –<br/><br/>“Mandy?”<br/><br/>Her stomach dropped back to its rightful location and she released the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Her voice sounded extremely husky and exhausted, even to her own ears.<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Yeah, hey.”</span></span><br/><br/>“Don’t you “hey” me! What’s going on? I called Brady and he said that you ran out and he didn’t know where and you weren’t picking up my calls or answering my texts and – are you<span style="font-style: italic">laughing</span>.”<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“A bit,”</span></span>Amanda managed to croak out between her soft chuckles.<br/><br/>“That’s so shitty of you.”<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Sorry.”</span></span>She was not sorry, something made clear by the continuing chuckles.<br/><br/>“Amanda, I was worried sick! Where are you? Are you safe right now?”<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“I think so. I’m near the little garage where Wes works.”</span></span><span style="font-style: italic">Worked.</span>The chuckles abruptly died.<br/><br/>“What? Why?”<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“We can get to that if I have time. Are you safe?”</span></span><br/><br/>“They say we are, since the campus is pretty far away from the worst of it, according to the news. They aren’t letting us leave just yet, but as far as we know they should be escorting us to our homes or at least opening the doors soon.”<br/><br/>Amanda felt a few more knots of tension unwind from her shoulders and she sunk down a little bit, crouching and slumped forward, lower back still pressed against the wall.<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Okay,”</span></span>was all she said, but even a toddler could have heard the<span style="font-style: italic">thank god I’m so relieved I was so scared but it’s fine and thank you thank you oh thank you</span>in the two husky syllables.<br/><br/>“But what about you? What are you - ”<span style="font-style: italic">beep beep beep</span><br/><br/><span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Shit,”</span></span>the ranger said under her breath, pocketing the powerless phone and promptly biting her tongue as she noticed two small children in the immediate area. Well, not<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>small, now that she saw them from her full not-so-towering height, which the girl already had beaten by at least a  solid two inches. Finally taking time to observe the strangers crowded around her, Amanda decided that it could be worse… and it could be better.<br/><br/>The children and two of the men were clearly related, though she was assuming the truck’s driver to be the father based only on reactions. There were several small differences between the two men, the most notable being width; the shorter man was broader, from his jaw down. There was also a young man around the same height (though clearly not from the same family) with blonde hair and several piercings, and a third with a brown goatee and aggressive-looking leather boots. Probably made more so because of all the blood.<br/><br/>Amanda glanced down at her own outfit. She wasn’t in much better shape.<br/><br/>There was so much to consider. She was covered in a lot of substances, the least worrying of which being blood, in a strange house, with strange people, surrounded by guns and in a larger picture, surrounded by armed forces with itchy trigger-fingers. The picture even larger than that, of course, was…<br/><br/>She ran her palm over her face, from forehead to chin, very slowly.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Thanks,”</span></span>she finally murmured in a voice that was somehow, even huskier with mental exhaustion,<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“I’m Amanda.”</span></span>