Two days later, Franka was on the march again, this time to inspect the crash site and look for possible survivors. She was also going to pass on her latest news to the sorry replacement of postal service the surviving communities had established with the help of carrier pigeons and brave human messengers. After another night in her hammock, clammy and still feeling stiff and cold despite a thirty minute climb up the Drachenfels, at dawn, she knocked at Bennie's door. He lived in a hut he had built into the ruins of Burg Drachenfels, and was one of the unlikelier candidates who had made it this long. A former computer game addict and severely obese, he had gradually shrunk into the shape of a lean, muscular man, with only loose folds of skin to tell he had not always been in shape.<br/><br/>Unchanged were his messiness and a tendency to form compulsive habits. He was now as obsessed about carrier pigeons as he had been about WoW. Minutes later, they were sitting in his cluttered cabin over cups of stale, weak tea, and Bennie had been told the story of Franka's excursion - minus mention of her finding contraceptives, an information of no use to him, and none of his business, either. The speaking infected was what mattered, as Benny had already seen and 'reported' the pane. "What did you do, then?" He asked when she had arrived at the point where the infected had stood in the marketplace. Franka shrugged. "Smashed its head in and left, what else? Was lucky enough no other stinkers had come out." Bennie pondered this, noisily slurping the too hot tea. She could tell he had burned his tongue, but didn't comment. He asked. "What now?" She shrugged again. "Let's hope it was a hallucination, right? For if it wasn't..."<br/><br/>He was nonplussed, so she added. "That's a rather complex task for a brain, produce speech, right, speech that makes sense. Would we want them to be that smart?" Bennie's eyes widened. "But how is that possible? I mean, they're as dumb as it gets, near brain-dead, right, all of them." She looked as helpless as he did. Bennie stared at her for a minute or so, in silence. "How...?" Franka knew what was the missing part of his question. She looked straight at him. "Someone who seemed immune at first? Maybe it changes gradually, then, brain function lost little by little, with a rest of conscience and all still there, right until the end?"<br/><br/>"Shite! Like - us, you and me? I mean, people who've been bitten and then...? Oh, shit, shit, shit!" Frank didn't let her own feelings out, she had stored them away on her way back to her people, had represented the facts and, stayed clear of all emotions ever since. She couldn't afford any, couldn't take one tiny bit more. If she accepted that the infected she had seen, had heard speak, was what she would become herself sooner or later, how could she ever fight to survive again, what should she fight for, or any of them, they'd all be lost, then, anyway. "Well, yeah, let's hope I hallucinated." He asked. "Couldn't he just have been a shithead who didn't know what to do to show he was okay?"<br/><br/>"With red eyes?" That didn't stop him a second. "Albino! Could've been an Albino. An Albino freak idiot." She groaned. "Their eyes aren't really red, Bennie, when they've got too little melanin, they can look pinkish, but not that red." Ten seconds silence, then a humpf. He calmed down, sipped tea, thinking hard, then looked up and said, very slowly. "What if he was an albino, and slow to react to the infection?" Now it was her who was stunned. Tried to suppress hope. Post-thinking-process-Bennie usually came up with decent theories. He went on. "Heard of that. Seen it, too, once. Instead of minutes, it takes hours, days. The eyes show it right away, one or both, but it doesn't break out till much later. Maybe that's what happened."<br/><br/>"Maybe." She mused. She wanted it to be true, the theory was good, really good, whether the guy had been an albino or not, the infection had been recent, very recent. So, it made sense. "right." She said, drained her tea, got up, stretched. "I'll head down to that plane, see whether there's someone left, if I can find out what they're doing here." He got up, too, opened the door for her. "Come back and let me know." She went out. "Good. Take care, Bennie, thanks for the tea and all." He nodded, gave a wave, watched her leave, to make sure, she thought, she'd shut the iron gate properly. The sun was warm now, and by the time she reached the foot of the Drachenfels, she felt uncomfortably hot again. For a change, she smelled of shampoo and soap, though, and she liked it.<br/><br/>Shortly after midday, she neared the crash site. There were signs of activity here, corpses among the trees, trampled leaves, broken branches, fresh mud. Most of the stinkers and a few freshly infected had been shot. The fresh ones were soldiers. She nudged them over with her feet, searched what was left of them for identifications, anything that could tell her why they were here, and useful stuff they might have on them. All she found out about their sorry remains was that two were from 'Blackwater' and one had been a 'U.S. Marine'. Dogs had been here, too, and wild boars, eating the leftovers. But now, the area was abandoned. Since there was meat left, it made her suspicious.<br/><br/>What she saw when she reached the edge of the forest was a soldier, sitting on top of the plane, smoking. It looked surreal, like a scene from an old horror film: The hero sits on the plane in the sun under a clear blue sky, all alone but cool as a cucumber, while the armies of decaying undead - cross that, some infected start to creep - cross that, run at him at top speed, moaning - cross that, too, shouting and screaming in pure rage, undiluted bloodlust, sheer hunger. Well, in this version of events, with Franka cautiously stepping out into the sun, there was no screaming and running. Yet. Infected could be under the plane already, or in the nearby bushes, waiting for him to come down.<br/><br/>Or, if he was anything like the soldiers in most films, he'd start making a hell of a noise, shooting or shouting at her, something idiotic like that. Shite, so, why did she have to promise she'd try to talk to whoever might have survived that crash? Because she had thought she was as good as dead, nope, worse, condemned to mutate into a stinker, gradually, knowingly. No surprise a quick death had been preferable, before she had talked to Bennie. But now that she knew better, why not lie, claim she had found dead bodies and infected? Because... She slowly pulled the cardboard sign out of her rucksack and held it up for him with one arm. Could he read it? Should work, with those giant letters. She waited a little, then turned it.<br/><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 13pt;"><strong>DANGER!  -&gt; NO  NOISE!<br/><br/>SLOWLY  RAISE...</strong></span><br/><br/><br/><br/>*turn*<br/><br/><br/><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 13pt;"><strong>... ONE  ARM  IF<br/><br/>I  CAN  APPROACH</strong></span></div>