Under Her Touch (All Of Me Shudders)

You slide the door open, muscles burning (burning burning) with effort, sweat dripping down your face, tickling your skin.

Light is flooding into the room and you are frozen. Dina, still a little sad and a little unsteady and very very tired, is standing next to you, blinking and looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

Something big (something huge something monstrous), makes an unmistakable noise, like thunder coming out of a sore throat and a primal dread is freezing your blood in your veins. Your whole body goes stiff.

(You are tired and you are scared and you are lost so lost so lost).

You pant and you gasp and you breathe hot air into your raw throat, but you can't get enough air and you feel like choking. Your hands are trembling and the handle of your ax is slippery in your weak fingers. Your knees are shaking, buckling, too weak to carry your own weight and a single tear (of exhaustion and of fear and of anger) rolls down your cheek.

(You grip Dina's hand gets harder harder harder, till you're squeezing her cold fingers with unimaginable strength, making her slightly squeal at the force of your grip).

Blood is running down your face from a former cut that you can't remember how you got. (Blood is running down your chest from a cut you remember all too well how you got). Red streaks down your right hand and your fingers are clumsy and sticky and trembling. You're smearing blood on Dina's hand and on the wooden handle of your ax, like some kind of an unholy offering to bloodthirsty ancient god and

(You don't believe in gods).

Another roar erupts the crumbling walls of the old building and you curl back your lips, baring your teeth like an animal. You clench your fists. You squeeze Dina's fingers in yours and you bite so hard, teeth grinding against teeth, that pain shoots through your jaw right to your nose and eyeballs, so much pain you're afraid you might have cracked something.

(You catch a glimpse of Dina's face and she is stricken, pale and scared and staring, chewing on her bottom lip).

Then the creature makes another sound and you have never heard anything like it before.

The floor under your feet is shaking, moving, vibrating, and you wonder briefly what will happen if the whole damn thing will come tumbling down.

(Will you be buried under hundred tones of stone and concrete? Will you die fast? Will you be fast enough to push Dina out of harm's way?)

It takes everything you have to stay upright. You're numb and weak and heavy and your hands and legs and lungs hurt they hurt they hurt.

The building is wobbling like jelly, all dark walls, and bright pink light and a swimming mess of garbage and splinters and old open cans with sharp sharp edges.

Your heart is thudding in your chest but you can hardly hear it above the roar of the monster on the other side of the wall. Your breath is caught in your throat and you clutch Dina's hand like it's something important.

"Ellie. Come on. We have to get the fuck out of here." Dina's voice is low, full of panic and emergency and

(You can't make yourself move).

"Ellie?" Dina tugs lightly on your hand, the one's cupping her palm. She's moaning, gasping, gripping your fingers. The roars are loud and scary and she shakes your hand.

"Hmm?" You can't take your eyes off the wall. You can't talk. You can't move.

"We have to turn back".

"Hmm".

"I mean, right now," her eyes are bulging and her voice is a strange, shrieking whisper. "Now. Before this thing decides we'll make a fine dinner".

"Hmm".

"Are you hurt?"

"No".

"Can you move?"

"Yeah".

"Then fucking move! Please!"

You're about to answer. You're about to turn around and make your steady exit, with Dina's hand tugging meaningful tugs at your clammy one when another one of the thundering roars booms through the halls of the building and you let out a frightened "Motherfucker!" just as Dina gives a high, loud, wordless shriek.

The thing on the other side of the door is round and slow and looks like a monster from the darkest, scariest fairytales. It has more than three heads which grow fungus above open, screaming mouths. It has something that looks like pockets full of neon-colored liquid all over its body, and dozens of arms and legs and teeth and it moves towards you.

"What – " you say and Dina cuts you with a shrill that shoots to your aching head.

"The fuck is that!"

The huge monster makes a sound, deep and scary from within its numerous throats, like something from the deep ocean (like something from the outer space).

(Like something from hell).

Your ears are ringing and your skin is cold with sweat. The pain grips your limbs burns them through. The taste is fierce and salty and metallic in your mouth. Your world is danger and fear and Dina's cold cold fingers, clutched securely in yours.

There is a clicking sound about the monster in front of you. a clicking sound, and a flattering. Something thuds in the distance make your heart jump and your stomach drops and you are already running.

It's dark and you can barely see anything, but you see enough. The pulse is so loud behind your ears it drowns almost everything else out.

You catch Dina's arm and drag her into the next room, legs clumsy and shaking. You run and fall and slide between the forgotten furniture, between tables and couches and counters, as you slip and cough and run and run and run.

The air in your nose is uncomfortable. Bad. Your eyes are filled with horrified tears and you're panting. Your feet against the concrete floor are loud and Dina is breathing heavy on your neck. She's screaming something, but her voice is disturbed by the effort of her breathing and you're not paying attention, because you're too focused on running.

Something metallic scattering across the floors behind you when you fly through rooms, a clashing and clanging and crashing and booming.

Heat shoots through your veins, and the violent hatred nearly chocking you.

Dina's foot slips and she goes tumbling on the floor. A high shrill pierces your ears and pulses in your head. The sound scraps at your throat and you realize it's you who's screaming.

"Dina!"

You help her up, tripping on her outstretched legs, nearly falling yourself. You pull her, nothing fancy or pretty, just a quick jerk, and you're running again.

Ahead there is a feeble stream of light, coming from a broken window. Shining at the end of the hall. It's not a flat wall or a locked door. It's a dead-end you were scared to find an elevator shaft. It's abandoned and deep and condemned, like the building and like the city and like the monster behind you.

"Stop stop stopstopstop!" Dina is scrambling to a halt, pulling you away. Her voice is desperate. She's clutching your hand, her fingers dig into your arm, under your armpit, strong and painful and full of intention.

"We're not jumping!"

Your breaths are hissing and wheezing as you turn a corner, slapping doors behind you, your footsteps echoing from the walls. You and Dina run, hand in hand, not letting go. You burst through doors into dark staircases, you drop chairs and tables behind you like it will slow down the monster chasing you. You close doors, you move shelves, you jump through broken windows separating rooms.

(You run and run and run).

The monster is roaring behind you, puffing something toxic into the air, shaking the floor with its legs, like an earthquake of one.

Anger and fear flash through you as you run, hot and wild. You gasp, blood pulses through your neck, pounding in your ears, tightening your fists and heating your cheeks.

"Run!" Dina yells. "Run! This way!"

You gasp when something catches your head. Dina grabs you by the elbow and swings you into the next room. You descending through the stairs, jumping, closing doors behind you, knowing full well nothing will hold the multiheaded, evolved infected away.

You leap through open doors, trying not to leave a path the monster can follow. You're not sure what the thing can understand, but it sure can see paths of destruction. It sure can recognize the tittered furniture and the broken glass.

(It sure can smell your panic, your terror, your complete desperation to get away).

"Fuck!" you scream. "Fuck!"

You are dragged by Dina, now. There are lights ahead, faint and distant, but they are there. You are running through a huge hall, covered with tall grass. The doors are closed and locked on a huge chain, but someone broke the windows to the left, and you flung through them, panting and coughing and choking.

"Don't stop! Run! Run! Run!" Dina is hissing at you. There are no more sad smiles and no more soft words and no more gentle hands. She has a vise grip on your wrist and her fingers dig painfully into your skin and she's pushing her legs harder, her breathing is a heavy, low grunting thing.

"Fuck!" your blood is boiling in your veins, hot.

"Fuck!" your chest is heaving, painfully.

"Fuck!" your hands are shaking, badly.

You stumble behind Dina, the wailing of the monster behind you, just outside of reach but close enough to keep you running. Keep you pushing. Keep you stumbling and screeching and fleeing.

And you are fleeing. Your legs tremble with great effort, slapping against the floor in an angry rhythm. Your thoughts are wild and scared and angry and you stumble. Cold wetness cover your forehead, the hollow sound is ringing in your ears. Nausea and fear are making you dizzy. Clumsy. Everything that is not safe and focused and running.

"Come on! Come on!" Dina is gritting her teeth, pulling you faster. She doesn't seem tired. She looks so fierce and so determined and so strong you're afraid she might keep on going forever.

"Right behind you!" you gasp, panic and sickness stealing the volume from your rasping voice.

Dina is running like the wind, fast and unapologetic. You duck down a corner, slid in filth, going over in piles of dirt and garbage and stinking water. You scramble up again, Dina's hand never leaving yours.

You plunge past rooms, through a rammed corridor, and on and on and on. You flung yourself desperately in any direction, at doors you know are locked (they are locked locked locked!). You run through rooms with sagging ceilings and dissolving rugs. You run drunk. You run scared.

(You run for your life).

The stench is horrible, toxic, and sharp and you are coughing, choking on the smell of the infected and the clouds of poison the monster behind you is spreading.

"We have to find a way to get the hell out of here!"

"An open window!"

And then, together, you say: "The street!"

You jump and fall. There are holes in the floor, there are broken tiles and flies crawling and buzzing in every corner. There are old corpses who don't look human any longer, just bones and rags and grinning mean skulls. There are pools of dried blood, of dried piss, of dried puke.

The creature is bringing down walls, smashing into them because it cannot fit in door frames. The building is shaking and you scream and scream and scream as dust and small stones and pieces of concrete and rotten iron come falling on your head.

"For fuck's sake! Out! Out! Out!"

Your hands are bleeding. Dina's fingers are stained red, and you feel your grip on her slacken. You clutch her harder, afraid to let go. She has a strong grip on your hand as well, and you're flying, legs kicking the floor, wind smacks your faces.

Then she kicks down a rotten door that has wooden boards nailed to it, and you are almost stumbling together to a rainy street.

The screams and shouts and wails and screeches are still behind you and you don't stop your mad fleeting even as you burst into the open air. Your slapping feet are echoing through the street as you keep running you keep running you keep running.

You run, together, not letting go. Dina's fingers are folded around your wrist in an iron grip that will probably leave a nasty mark on your skin. You run and every muscle in your body is aching. Your lungs are on fire. your throat is clogged.

You don't look back, but you imagine the huge murky figure, the monster made of smaller monsters, somewhere behind you.

Your shoes are making angry sounds against the cobbles. You turn, you run, your breath crawling in your throat. You turn a corner and fly through small bushes. When you are turning another corner, into a different street, and the roars and moans of the creature has drowned somewhere behind you, far (if not exactly far enough) you make your legs stop, slowly slowly coming to a halt.

Dina is breathing heavy heavy breaths by your side. She is bent over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath, making gagging sounds you can't say you don't understand because your own lungs feel like spilling from your throat.

You are endlessly cold. Endlessly hungry. Endlessly scared. Dina's presence is the only thing keeping you on your feet and you feel like crying. The constant nagging ache of fear is very very sharp at the back of your head and you're not sure if you made enough distance to be safe from whatever it was you managed to awake in that apartment complex.

(You feel like crying but you don't cry. You can't afford yourself the privilege. First, you need to make sure both of you will stay alive long enough to feel sorry for yourselves. Then you'll cry).

You take a deep breath.

"Alive?" you check with Dina. You are sitting on your toes, arms dangling over your knees.

Your heartbeat is thud thud thudding in your ears. Your fingers are hooking, playing, twitching. Dina is watching you, silent and careful, under her furrowed brows and you feel like if she doesn't answer soon, you will spring out and run.

(She doesn't say anything, just keeps on looking at you like you are someone she doesn't know, or like you might turn into something dangerous).

(You hate this look in her eyes).

"Dina?" you aim for soft but you're too breathless and you sound impatient.

"Alive." She says, and her voice is raw and strange and nothing like her usual lovely low voice you love so much.

You try not to focus on her tone. "Nothing's broken?"

Dina pats herself, first arms, then chest, then legs. You do the same, poke and pat and tap and pinch, looking for injuries you might have missed in your haste to get out of the building alive.

"Everything seems fine. How about you?"

"Same?"

Dina steps close. She's hesitant but the look in her eyes makes you shudder. (Strong, you think. So strong. You don't think you know someone stronger than Dina and the usual urge to kiss her rises in you).

"Now," she says and she's growling, low and dirty and very very hot, in your ear. "Let's get the fuck out of here".

Your skin burns where it meets Dina's and her hand in your bloody one is better than good. Your chest aches with something warm and something scary and something that feels like home.

The blood is pumping in your veins for all kinds of different reasons. Your stomach flatters. Your heart punches against your ribs, just like pain (just like pleasure).

"What?" Dina asks, her eyes are searching yours (her eyes are always searching yours and if she wasn't her, you'd think she's looking for signs you don't actually want her. But she's Dina. She's this confident, happy, strong woman and you find it hard to believe she isn't sure about your loud loud loud feelings).

Your heart throbs when you meet her dark beautiful eyes. You can feel her hot breath on your cheek and suddenly, you don't know what you wanted to say. You don't know if you can and you shake your head, face burning bright red.

"Ellie?" her voice is different now. Slow and intimate

You take her hand, scared this time like you haven't just held hands while running for your lives.

(It feels different now. Good but scary).

When you touch her, you feel like flames are flowing from her fingertips and penetrate your sensitive skin. Her fingers tighten around your palm.

"What is it?" she's a little scared too. You feel the shift in the air. Dina tries to catch your eyes but you refuse to look at her.

"I dunno. I just…"

"Oh, Ellie – " she sighs in your ear and pulls your face to hers.

There are flames in her palms and in her lips and on her tongue. She kisses you fierce and blistering and you've kissed before but somehow it feels special now. More special than usual.

Dina's hands are in your hair and your heart is thudding so painfully against your chest you're afraid it's about to combust. You can't breathe but you don't want to and you angle your head and kiss her back.

"Dina," you breath and try to pull away, or deepen the kiss (you're not sure) and she pulls away and looks at you with something like fear and something like horror and something like realization (like love).

Dina's hands paint your cheeks with fire. she strokes her thumb against your face, smoothly and slowly and lovingly and it leaves burning paths on your burning flesh.

You're searching her face and for a second, anger flashes through her beautiful bold features and it makes her look dangerous. More dangerous than you've ever seen her before. You never thought Dina could look this scary. This wild.

An abrupt panic, like a warning premonition, makes your lower lip quiver.

"I…" you start but Dina doesn't let you finish. The flash of anger is gone and she looks like herself again, a confident crease arching her dark brows, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

She laughs a warm laugh like you haven't almost got killed by a scary scary scary thing that once was an infected and now is a huge monster that doesn't make any sense.

She leans forward and presses her mouth to yours.

"Let's not think about anything right now, okay?" she says softly and you find yourself nodding, a little disappointed and a little relieved.