By the time Lewis and Daniel returned to The Farm, Alan was waiting outside with Flint, though Lewis noted the absence of Katherine almost immediately.
“Where’s Katherine gone?”
Alan looked a little saddened when he spoke. “I think she went to talk to Josef. She realised that even if we got the cure, that red bottle of his would make it obsolete.”
The revelation hit Lewis like a ton of bricks. “Ah shit, how the fuck did I miss that?”
“Bad wowdsies.”
Alan chuckled at the little unicorn in his hands. “Guys, this is Flint, as I understand he’s already met you Daniel.”
“Aye, wee yin was about tae toss himself off a bridge tiww I foond him. Daein better noo ain’t ya?”
“Fwint happy tu see Daniew gain, nyo hab chance tu find speciaw-fwiend gain. Miss Moss su mush.”
“Well dinnae ye worry wee-yin, we’ll help ya.”
Lewis nodded. “Agreed, and the sooner Katherine gets back the sooner…”
“No need, I’m here.”
The three men turned to see Katherine approaching them, Spike carried in her arms.
“I figured we’d need Spike sooner than later, might as well have him close by.”
“Spike sad to weave speciaw-fwiend awone, bu knyo Spike need tu find bruddas an sissy fiwst.”
Katherine placed Spike on the ground, Alan did the same with Flint, allowing the two Fluffies to approach each other.
“Hewwo, am Fwint. Big Fwuffy smeww wike Moss.”
“Moss am Spike wittew brudda, how Fwint knyo Moss?”
“Moss am Fwint’s speciaw-fwiend, nu see Moss in many fowebas, bu stiww wub him, wan hewp find him, sabe him fwom meanie Chiwwi.”
Spike’s face dropped. “Yu meet Chiwwi?”
Flint nodded wiped a tear from his eye. “Chiwwi teww Fwint he gib foweba sweepies, dat Fwint make Moss bad Fwuffy fow wikin stawwions. It nu twue, Fwint an Moss wub eech udda.”
Spike could see the little unicorn starting to tear up, he felt it himself as well. No wonder Moss was so sullen in those last weeks before he left, he was so scared to tell his family the truth, most likely Chilli had bullied him into thinking they’d disown him.
Truthfully, Spike did find it weird that Moss like stallions, since Fluffies were programmed for breeding and you couldn’t do that with two males, but it wouldn’t have made him love his brother any less.
Taking Flint under his arms, Spike cuddled the young stallion and let him cry out, softly stroking his mane. “It ok Fwint, Spike happy yu wan hewp. Bu yu need undastan, Chiwwi am dangewous Fwuffy, he am babbeh of biggesh meanie eba, an Moss mite be in twoubew.”
Flint gasped. “NU! Need sabe Moss nyo.”
“Nu su fast. Chiwwi mite hab finkie-pwace sickies, if su den Moss mite hab dem tuu. Need find Moss bu be cawefew, nu wan Fwint git huwties.”
Flint sniffled and nodded. “Ok, Fwint be cawefew, stay wiv Spike tiww Moss safe.”
Spike felt Flint pull him in closer with his hug. “Sowwy, Spike jus smeww wike Moss a wittew bit, jus wan stay hewe wittew wonga.”
“It ok Fwint, nu need tu wush.”
As the two Fluffies hugged each other, Lewis turned to Alan and Katherine. “Daniel’s friend Samuel has a Fluffy himself, Caesar, he specialises in hunting lost Fluffies. I’ll take Spike and Flint over to his place tomorrow, with the three of them we might actually have a chance.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Alan said with worry clear in his voice. “I mean you heard Spike, Chilli likely has F.A.07 himself, do we really want to put three Fluffies at risk of infection.”
“Dinnae worry Al, Caesar’s use tae wee bastards, they won’t be an issue.”
“They might be.” Katherine spoke with heavy indentation. “I don’t know if Alan told you but I went to speak to Josef, ask him about that red bottle of his.”
Lewis nodded. “He did, what Josef say?”
“He said if we gave him all three foals alive, then we could have both solutions. But he only did that because… because I’m pregnant.”
The silence that hit all three men could be heard for miles, Alan was the one who finally broke it.
“Jesus.”
“Exactly, he doesn’t want anything to do with me or our child but I think parts of him are breaking through, which is making the virus fight stronger. I don’t know what remains of the Josef I knew, if anything does at all, but I’ve finally realised how dangerous he is.”
Daniel scoffed. “Took ye long enough.”
“Judge me if you want Danny, but how would you feel if someone told you that Lewis was losing his mind, that he was turning psychotic. Would you believe that straight away, or would you hold out hope that the person you loved was still in there, looking for a way out? I know you all hate Josef and I don’t blame you for it, but he and I went through too much together for me to just accept he’d gone that far off the deep end. When he threaten our baby I knew the man I loved was gone, so I did the something I should’ve done ages ago.”
Katherine took a deep breath, thinking about how hard it was for her to make the choice.
“I called the cops on him.”
Josef was tying a wet cloth and an ice-bag to his skull, placed over his missing eye. He’d woken up about 20 minutes ago having been unconscious for a couple hours, he might’ve been out longer had the searing pain in his face not woke him up.
Most of the dried blood had been washed off his face but he still looked like beaten shit, and he could already see a faint speck of yellow forming in his remaining eye. He sighed and looked over at Crimson, the vision sitting patiently, watching his master.
“Suppose that explains why I can still see you.”
“Daddeh hab sickies in bwoodstweem nyo, nu can escape Cwimson.”
“Tell me about it.”
Josef returned to tying off the cloth when he heard the sharp knock at the door.
“Mr Mongola? This is the police, are you there?”
Josef looked sharply at Crimson. “Stay there and shut up.”
The Crimson Vision vanished just as Josef made his way to the door, he opened it to see two male police officers on the other side, one was mid-40s, white and balding, the other looked to be mid-20s, slightly Latino looking. Both of them were taken aback by the make-shift eyepatch Josef was wearing.
The older cop spoke first. “Mr Mongola, my name is DCI Bechler, this is DI Monroe. We’re sorry to bother you but we were asked to do a wellness check, make sure everything’s alright. Is everything alright sir?”
Josef felt a simmering fury building up in him, but he caught it just in time to suppress it down and smile at the officers. “Of course, sorry you must’ve been contacted by Katherine. Silly girl’s so worried about me, even more now that she’s pregnant.”
Bechler laughed. “Yeah, broads do tend to overreact to things.”
Monroe however, was not as quick to dismiss the claims. “Judging by your eye there Mr Mongola, I’d say she was right to worry about you.”
“Oh this, this is nothing. My own damn fault, we’ve been having some trouble with feral Fluffies so I was building some extra protection for the fence, and in my infinite wisdom I wasn’t wearing my safety goggles when I cutting some wire down to size. The thing gave out, slashed me in the face and now I’ve got a big fuck-off scar where my eye use to be.”
Bechler whistled. “Ouch, sounds painful.”
“It was, worst part I was on the phone to Katherine at the time, she’s already on edge because of how wound up I’ve been because of these shitrats, so when I got the Snake Plissken Experience, she heard every scream and swear that burst out of my mouth. Probably frightened the life out of her, which is when she called you.”
Josef saw that Monroe still wasn’t buying his lies, so he decided to go for a sneakier tactic. “Look, I’ll admit it, I’ve not been a great partner, I’ve been distant, me and Katherine have been arguing a lot and honestly, heading to the basement to beat the shit out of some wood and metal has calmed me down quite a bit. But it’s come back to bite me on the ass, and now – ironically – I can see where I went wrong, I don’t think Katherine should’ve bothered you both with this, but I’m touched that she put the effort in. Thank you for putting the effort in to check on me, but I promise you, other than my eye I’m absolutely fine.”
Before Monroe could say anything, Bechler bumped in and shook Josef’s hand. “Of course Mr Mongola, sorry for bothering you, we’ll put in the report that everything’s ok here.”
Josef put a hand on Bechler’s shoulder and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Danke mein freund.”
Bechler looked at Josef for a moment, before smiling and nodding his head, satisfied that their job was done, Bechler led Monroe back to their squad car. Josef watched them leave before rolling his eye at how easy it was to trick them, as soon as he saw the middle-aged skinhead with a Germanic surname, he knew he was safe, nobody like that was going to touch the son of Fitzgerald Mongola.
“Stupid fucking skinheads.” He scoffed, and went back inside.
Monroe looked up as he heard the door shut, and glared at his partner. “That didn’t exactly feel by the book.”
“Kid, when you’ve been around as long as I have you learn who you can fuck with, and who you can’t. That right there, is a man you don’t fuck with.”
Monroe still wasn’t convinced and felt off about the whole thing, but he was still young on the force and didn’t want to rock the boat too much, so he decided to leave it.
How much damage could one man do anyhow?
That night, Daniel found Lewis in bed, still wide awake. “You ok?”
“Been thinking, has all this stress made us blind to the obvious or are we just dumber now?”
“How you mean?”
“I mean we knew that Josef had both a cure and an anti-cure but it took us till today to realise just how dangerous that was. We could’ve called the police on him at anytime but it’s only now that we even try that route.”
“From what I can see, it didnae really work.”
“Yes, but we didn’t know it wouldn’t work, we just never bothered to try.”
Daniel sat down next to Lewis and put his arm over his shoulder. “Ye worry tae much Lou. Yer in a shite situation and I dinnae blame ye fir gitten worked up over it. But understand, it’s no you feeling like an eejit, it’s that fooking heed of yers messing wae ye. We didnae think of the red bottle cause we were tae fucked off by Spike killing his da, we didnae call the cops cause we didnae want tae put the wee-yins in danger if it fucked over on us. We’re no making bad choices, we’ve just got tae much shite to focus on right now tae know whit the best choice actually is. I mean between The Farm, the missing foals, worrying about whatever the fuck Josef’s daein and what fucking mess Katherine is getting herself intae, I’m not surprised ye’ve frazzled yet heed.”
Lewis chuckled, enjoying Daniel’s simplistic but refreshingly upbeat way of looking at things. “You know this changes nothing right.”
“I didnae expect it tae, I just want ye tae stop beating yerself up about this shite. Dinnae worry about The Farm until Josef becomes a problem, dinnae worry about Josef until ye find the foals, and dinnae worry about the foals until the morning. Get a decent fucking sleep and we’ll deal with it in the morning.”
Lewis rolled his eyes. “You are unbearably optimistic.”
“I’m actually a moody git, but since you’re sitting there wae a face like a slapped trout I figured one of us had tae be a wee bit happier.”
The two men laughed before sharing a kiss and turning in for the night, Lewis didn’t fall to sleep immediately but he took Daniel’s advice and tried to ignore the stress until the morning.
Emphasis on ‘Tried’.
Short little breather chapter here, wanted to fit in some final things before moving on as well as touch upon some things people have brought up in regards to plot development and the lack thereof.
Not so much a response to criticism, more a canonical acknowledgement that means I don’t have to admit I haven’t thought this all the way through.