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lambtotheslaughterr · 19 days

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Rise : Chapter Thirteen

A Rafe Cameron Series

[THIS STORY WILL CONTAIN THEMES OF NON-CON/DUB-CON, MENTAL-EMOTIONAL-PHYSICAL ABUSE, ETC. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. 18+. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT]

WC: 2.8k

Dividers provided by @firefly-graphics

CHAPTER TWELVE | MASTERLIST | CHAPTER FOURTEEN

personal note* @bunnycvnts bby honey love i am SO sorry! i incorrectly placed you under the taglist for only I Burn updates & not Rafe Cameron updates as a whole. i apologize wholeheartedly, my love. from now on, you will be properly tagged in all future RC fics.

118 days since the world ended

Your world was spinning. Maddeningly so.

Days bled into one another, weeks passed you by without a thought. You had no control over your mind, constantly free-falling somewhere between conscious autonomy & other-worldly helplessness.

Sometimes you spoke but you never knew what you were saying, if you were saying anything at all, really. You were completely numb, mindless, isolated from who you once were. And you had Rafe concerned.

In the weeks that he kept you holed up in your new room, he would come in with lines of coke, forcing you to snort them or if you were too immobile to do so yourself he would rub the powder on your gumlines. He didn’t enjoy seeing you like this, like a zombie, but he thought it the only way to protect you from the trauma of what you had done. Of course, he felt no guilt in his part of it. He felt he was a necessary evil in the new world, & that you were just slow to adapt. But you would adapt. He would make sure of that.

After the events at the cabin, Rafe ransacked the cabin, taking what would be needed for the next move. He instructed Matt & Robbie to take Sayyed’s wrangler & bring it along as another reliable vehicle. Then he led everyone north to the closest city of Asheboro. There, on the north end of the city in the industrial district, he found an abandoned mill that had been shut down long before the world ended, but did serve as a home for the houseless. Fortunately, there were plenty of necessities to make a living.

In a long & wide spacious space, there were a plethora of overturned cots & worn through mattresses, metal tables that would work for food, pallets & dusty blankets, & a few empty oil barrels that were once used to build fires. It being summer, fires wouldn’t be needed, but they would come in handy in the winter months. Rafe was quick to set roles for everyone, that is except for you & Bear. He moved you into a small private corner room on the second floor of the building, & Bear to a nearly identical one on the opposite end. He didn’t want you two interacting until you both got with the ways of his world.

And so as everyone got to their tasks daily & life in the mill began to function decently, Rafe finally turned his attention to you. Even without the coke, you were quiet, displaced from yourself. He needed you to be alert, aware & paying attention to him. And that was when he started bringing you coke. It had worked the first time you fucked in the woods. And the second time when he had to coerce you to have sex with him. It would surely work a third time.

But much to his disappointment, you hardly reacted to the coke in the first couple days. If anything, it had the opposite effects of his intended wants. You weren’t awake, alert. You became drowsier, your speech slurred. Rafe had never really seen anyone respond to coke like you had in those first couple days. So, he quit. But then your behaviour changed again.

You became violent, erratic, dangerous—not to others but to yourself. You were so far gone in your mind that you would find ways to hurt yourself. First it was you clawing at your skin, leaving deep, long bloody marks down the sides of your thighs. So he cut your nails & kept them short. Then you stopped eating. Your weight dropped drastically. He took it upon himself to force feed you & make sure you got your share of the food day in & night out. The final straw is when you attacked him. Him! Of all people. He knew it wasn’t really your doing, your intention to really want to harm him, but he couldn’t have you out for his blood, nor could he put you down. That’s when he finally brought on another pair of hands to help him. The only pair he trusted.

In the first two weeks of living on the edge of Asheboro, Anna had built quite the stockpile of medical supplies & equipment. Much to Rafe’s chagrin, Anna told him that he was the sole problem to your bipolar & violent tendencies. You were suffering from coke withdrawal at the height of a traumatic experience. And supplying you with more coke in an attempt to wake you up only made it worse. Then when he took it away yet again, your behavioral symptoms adapted to the change in a violent way.

So, it was her duty to get you back to a clean & safe mind. But you would fight her. Not even consciously. Anna had told Rafe that it was as if your own mind wouldn’t allow you to come back, to live with what you had done. But Rafe wouldn’t have it. He would have you back whether you wanted to be there or not.

While Anna tended to you the next couple weeks, Rafe focused on the way of life at the mill. Shortly after Anna took over his role for caring of you, there had been a meaningful event. People.

There was five of them who appeared, claiming to have thought the building abandoned & that didn’t want any trouble. But Rafe didn’t see trouble, he saw power. More people to keep under his thumb. After all, he knew how dangerous he could be, how lethal—he could only imagine who else out in the world was like him. And with survival being key in this world, the more bodies he had the better, virus be damned.

Anna cleared four of them to assimilate to the group. The one she didn’t clear showed symptoms of the virus & was effectively removed. Permanently. The remaining four did not put up a fight to protect the one, a sign they would be easy to maintain. After the removal of fifth body, the four—Vic, Maddy, Barry, & Enzo—were quarantined on the third floor of the building for a week before they were allowed to begin pulling their weight. And much to Rafe’s delight, they followed directions well & meshed well with the others. Rafe could see the world falling together perfectly before him.

On the fourth week at the mill, Anna came to Rafe with news. Good news. You were awake. Alert like he wanted. He immediately wanted to see it for himself, to hear your voice, to have him alone time with you, but Anna was quick to squash it.

“Her mind is still fragile, Rafe.” She told him firmly, stopping him from heading to the second floor to see you, “You may trigger her. And then all that progress will be lost & I can’t guarantee getting her back again after that.”

Rafe was frustrated. Since when had you been fragile? You were always a force to be reckoned with. You were loud, bold, a dominating personality, a lot like him. It was what always drew him to you in that first year of college. And it was why he loathed your relationship with Sayyed even more. He always thought the two of you would be a short fling, but soon that fling turned into a relationship, into meeting each other’s parents on breaks from schools to traveling with each other during the summer, always returning back to school closer than ever. He had been angry, but he knew his time would come. But now that it was here & he was being told to stay away from you, Rafe thought he himself would lose his mind next.

But, as much as he hated to, he listened to Anna, & kept his distance. For the next week, he would stand outside your room, listening as Anna spoke to you as she brought you food & updated you how life at the mill functioned. Rafe noted how she made it a point to rarely say his name, if ever. It bothered him to no end, but he wouldn’t risk losing you again.

Rafe thought ahead then. He knew that when you were ready, truly ready, to be let out & to assimilate with the rest of them, that you would need a face you could rely on. Without speaking to Anna about it, because he didn’t need her permission, Rafe finally made his first visit to Bear. Unlike you, Bear was very aware.

Rafe entered the room & Bear stood on business, prepared for the worst if he knew it was Rafe coming in.

“Calm down, buddy.” Rafe scoffed, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. But Bear didn’t calm down. He stood stiff & ready opposite of him.

“Can’t imagine it’s a ton of fun in here. You’d get more food if you pulled your weight.” Rafe told him.

“I wouldn’t help you if my life depended on it.” Bear seethed, “You should’ve just killed me.”

Rafe agreed. He should’ve. But Bear was his only leverage against you. As much as he hated it, Rafe needed Bear to keep you in line, otherwise you’d be as against him as you had the first time the group split.

“As much as I’d enjoy that,” Rafe started, glaring at Bear, “you’re much more useful alive.”

“Like I said—”

“Like I’m saying.” Rafe cut him off, “If you & _____ want to live, you’ll work with me, not against me.”

Bear softened at that, “Where is she?”

“She’s fine.” Bear didn’t need to know the whole truth, Rafe decided, “But she does need a friend. And it seems you’re the only one she has here until she makes more.”

Bear shook his head, “You know that’ll never happen after what you did.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Rafe warned, “That’ll make you both disposable. I know you don’t care about dying, but you care about her dying. You go down, she goes down with you.”

Bear quieted at that, angry but quiet.

“So, you ready to come out & play nice?”

Bear glowered, weighing his options, but even he knew he had little to no change against Rafe & the others. If Bear was going to be there for you, he needed to play along. For now.

The first time Rafe saw you was in the courtyard garden. It wasn’t a garden to begin with, but Maddy with her green thumb, managed to turn it into one. He saw you through the windows, on your knees before the metal watering bed, your hands covered in soil as you helped the new girl plant more seeds. It took everything in him to not go out there & gather you in his arms, to run his hands through your hair, to press his chest to yours. His mouth watered at having you to himself again.

Anna joined him at the window, staring out at you, “She’s almost ready. I want her to acclimate to roles here before she sees you again.”

“How long?” He fumed, his nostrils flared as images of you flooded his mind. You were so close, yet so far.

“A day or two.” Anna shrugged, “I’m not a psychologist. I do nurse shit. But better safe than sorry.”

Rafe’s spine stiffened & relaxed at the same time. It was bittersweet. A day or two more wasn’t really all that long, but in this world, it felt like ages. He would have to make do.

And he did, but he would often keep you in sight. In the mess hall—the spacious room—he would watch you sit with the others on pallets & ate silently alongside them while they all talked amongst themselves. Bear was there, too. But he wasn’t as sociable with the others, though he did keep near you. Rafe would have to keep an eye on that. As much as he thought having Bear would help you adapt, he also worried about it also influencing you.

Rafe did well to keep himself distracted until the last two days passed before he saw you face-to-face again. On the day before he would see you, he approached Micah in the gravel lot outside the mill. Micah was in charge of scavenging. He, Matt, & Robbie, were gone long & often as they cleared surrounding smaller towns of goods & necessities.

“Micah.” Rafe hollered when he went outside, seeing Micah standing in the bed of his truck as he passed off crates to Matt & Robbie.

Micah nodded at him, telling the other two to take over as he hopped over the side of the truck before walking towards Rafe, “What’s up?”

“_____ is out.” Micah’s demeanor changed in an instance at the sound of your name. It was no secret that Micah loathed you, wished you dead. Honestly, Rafe thought it pathetic. He knew it wasn’t your fault that Millie died, but he needed Micah angry, needed him ready to point & shoot at whoever Rafe told him to. If blaming you for his girlfriend’s death is what kept that anger alive, that’s all that mattered. But he also needed to remind Micah of one thing.

“You go nowhere near her.” Rafe stared hard at his longest & oldest friend from college.

Micah’s nose crinkled with distaste, his own eyes darkening.

“I mean it.” Rafe stepped closer to him, his voice firm but filled with warning, “I see you even look at her wrong, & you won’t have a place here anymore.”

Micah’s nostrils flared, “You’re gonna pick her over me?”

“I’d like to keep you both.” Rafe smirked but it wasn’t friendly, “So, don’t make me choose. Understand?”

Micah shook his head in disbelief, “And if she comes at me?”

“She won’t. You know she won’t. And if she does, I’ll take care of it.” Rafe shrugged.

“Your dick isn’t some magical stick, ya know.”

“Watch it.” Rafe lowered his voice, “Just stay away from her. Do your job. Got it?”

Inhaling sharply, Micah shook his head once, “You’re the boss.”

Rafe gave a closed-lip smile at that, gripping Micah’s shoulder, “That’s right.”

It was time.

Rafe woke early & dressed quickly. He looked around his functionable room, reminding himself to get one of the guys to tidy it up. After all, it would very soon become your room. But he would get to that later. What he needed to get to now was you.

As if she knew Rafe would be gunning for you, Anna was waiting outside your room, having just brought you your breakfast for the day. Rafe didn’t slow down though as he saw Anna give him a concerned look.

“Rafe.”

“What?” He snapped.

“Are you sure?” She questioned.

“Am I sure about what?” Anna’s eyes flashed to the door to your room. Rafe rolled his eyes, “You said two days, it’s been two fucking days.”

“I just don’t want you to regret it.”

Anna was funny to him. She was always the tough girl, took no shit & gave it back ten times more. But it was amusing how the end of the world quickly turned her into a pawn. Rafe knew her tough exterior was just that, an exterior. She was as easy to control as the others.

“It’s not your job to worry.” Rafe told her sardonically.

Anna crossed her arms at that, “Then why is it always me cleaning up your messes?”

Rafe licked his teeth, smiling down at her, “You got a problem, Anna?”

She sniffled, straightening her spine, the tough exterior coming out, “No. Just don’t want you to lose focus because of her.”

“Like I said.” Rafe repeated, “Don’t worry about it.”

It was clear she wanted to say more but didn’t, just stiffly nodded.

Rafe was eager to enter your room, but just as he placed his hand on the knob, he paused, turning once more to Anna, “Get your man to clean up my room. Then relax. You can take the day off.”

“He’s not my man.” Anna gritted out. Though she was a sexually open woman, she refused to admit being tied down to a man. But her & Matt had been screwing ever since the two men joined their group nearly three months.

“Just get him. And quit being stubborn.” Rafe’s smile dropped, shifting his face to one of impatience.

“Whatever.” With that, Anna stomped away.

Rafe was finally alone. Mostly. After all, you were just a door slab & a few feet away from him. Rafe’s heartbeat erratically within his chest. He had been waiting much too long for this.

Twisting the knob, the door moaned quietly as it cracked open. And Rafe stepped inside.

okay, so hey! glad to be back after a great vacay & a sickly recovery lmao. that being said, it is a shorter chapter to kind of summarize the way of life 3-4 weeks later. i also wanted to change it up & kind of tell the story from rafe's POV to give reader a break. but next chapter will be from reader's POV.

as always, please share your thoughts via comments, reblogs w reviews, talking to me in the ask box. i am greatly deprived since i have been gone. teehee.

thank you for reading!

beau<3

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