Okay, you're all going to get a weird story right now. Post LK, Tracy centered, weird, weird story. This is sort of graphic, in that Tracy throws up a couple times (but come on! She's had a rough day!)

Survivors (1/1)

By: Cousin Mary (Jenkins) 1-99

Tracy woke up in pain. She was laying on something cold and hard, it was dark and she was naked. Never a good way to start your day.

There was something over her head, a blanket or something. She tore it away and looked around. Didn't do any good, it was still pitch black. She moved her hands, she felt a hard pad beneath her, it ended abruptly and dropped off. She was on a cot.

Tracy sat up, her head was throbbing and her stomach was doing cartwheels inside her. Her mouth began to water, she turned her head and vomited off the side of her little hard bed. As she sat up again, she wiped her mouth and tried to remember what had happened.

Last thing she remembered was being at the station. She'd been… Her eyes clouded over, she couldn't quite remember, everything was a blur. She decided to try and get up.

Choosing the side she hadn't thrown up on, Tracy lowered her feet to a freezing tile floor. She grabbed the blanket off the cot and wrapped it around herself. Then, she began looking for the light switch, or preferably, the door. She stumbled forward and her searching hands fell on another cot. Frowning, she let her hands travel across the starched blanket and discovered what felt like someone laying beneath it. The blanket was covering his face. It was a corpse.

Tracy suddenly noticed how cold it was. She was in a cooler.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So?"

"So, I was thinking of writing it up as such and maybe logging off early for the night "Captain, I... I feel something coming on."

"Okay. Sure. The flu _is_ going around. Tell you what. Go home, get some rest, get in bed."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tracy gasped, her fragmented memory calling up images she didn't really recognize. Sick? Tracy moved away from the body, bumping back into another cot, she didn't check, but guessed that one was occupied too. She was in a cooler, a morgue, or the room in a hospital they stored the bodies in for transfer.

Had she passed out? Did they think she was dead? "Well I'm not!" She mumbled past cracked, dry lips.

Tracy moved past what she realized now were gurneys, she found the wall and began groping her way all it's cool length. At last she found a switch, flipping it, harsh fluorescent lights flickered on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"No!"

Tracy flinched as the echoes of her barely remembered past screamed in her skull. The precinct, she'd been in the precinct. A prisoner, Dawkins, had gotten loose. She'd found him in the locker room, Nick had come in, tried to talk him down. The lights had come on… then. Then.

Tracy groaned, she couldn't remember! Her eyes swept around the room, she noticed two doors, one was slightly ajar and looked like it led to a room with a wall of lockers. Weaving her way towards it, she found she was breathing heavily by the time she crossed the room. She felt something wet and warm trickling down her back. Raising her fingers, she found a cut scrapped across the base of her scalp.

It was blood flowing down her back. She brought the edge of her blanket up and blotted at the sluggishly oozing wound, eventually it stopped, though she could tell her hair was matted with gore. "Great, just great."

She tried to remember how that had happened, but couldn't seem to call anything up. She pushed her way into the locker room. There, she wrenched open the nearest locker, surprised to see the steel door give beneath her shaking hand. She knew that was wrong, but shook her head, she could worry about that later.

Inside, she found a pair of light green scrubs, she pulled them on quickly. As she was doing that, she noticed the dark pink splotch on her slightly rounded abdomen. It looked sort of like a burn, but not quite. Sweeping her cold fingers over it, she flinched.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tracy's head snapped up, she'd been shot! Shot, through the belly, by who? Dawkins, had to be. So why couldn't she remember?

Tracy pulled on a worn pair of sneakers she found sitting on top of the locker bank. She sat down heavily on a bench then, burying her head in her hands. She had to get out of here.

Surging to her feet, ignoring the way her head swam this time, Tracy made her way to the door that hopefully led to the hall. It did. She slipped out, trying to keep her back, and the sight of her blood matted head, out of view of the few people walking the hospital's sterile white halls. The janitor gave her a strange look, but for the most part, no one seemed to give her a second glance.

When she reached the end of the hall, Tracy found a fire exit. Not caring if the alarm went off or not, Tracy pushed it open and rushed into the parking lot. She gulped greedily at the cool night air, marching off towards the rows of cars just because she needed to move. She needed to get away from the hospital, the smell of death and memory of anything that had happened there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tracy's hands came up to either side of her face, covering her ears as if to stop the flow of voices singing to her through the thick mist that seemed to slow her thoughts. She stumbled to a bush and retched again, bile and blood coming up and spewing across the plant and curb.

"Got to get out of here, got to get home," Tracy mumbled, hugging her arms around herself and rocking gently as she crouched at the bumper of a Buick. "Everything will be okay once I get home."

With that thought in her still muddled mind, Tracy stood and stumbled to a car. It was a Taurus, not hers, but that didn't really seem to matter. With the sudden jerk of her fist, she smashed the side window, then opened the door. She brushed the broken glass off the seat and calmly hot-wired the car, pleased to see that she could still remember what Bruce had taught her.

As the car roared to life, Tracy glanced down at her hand. It was bleeding, heavily. She brought it to her lips, tasting the salty liquid as it shot into her mouth. A few moments passed and the wound closed over, she stared at it, "Wrong, wrong, wrong."

She shook her head, shifting into reverse and pulling out of the parking lot. This was not right, this was very, very wrong. She noticed the radio was on, how long had it been playing? She hadn't turned it on, so it must have started when the car had. She just hadn't noticed until now.

"Tonight our topic is your love life. Are you happy? Lonely? Fulfilled? Empty?" Some nameless, faceless DJ asked her.

"What happened to the Nightcrawler?" A caller demanded.

"He said it was time to move on." The DJ said, then continued, "I want to hear from all of you lonely hearts out there. I know there's a lot of you so get on the phone and call me."

The DJ droned on, Tracy ignored her as long as she could, then went to turn off the radio. When her first attempt didn't succeed, she ripped it from the dash and flung it out the window.

Tracy started when she realized what she'd just done, "Wrong, wrong, wrong."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tracy shook her head, unable to fit that piece into the puzzle. Voices, no images. Didn't make sense.

She drove almost by sheer instinct to her building. Looking up at her third story window she could she the lights were on. The silhouette of her father talking to someone she could see shone through the curtains.

She couldn't deal with him now. She shifted out of park and drove to the next place her Swiss cheese mind suggested. The church.

She left the car running out front, tripping over her own feet as she stumbled up the steps. She hoped the car would be stolen again, then by some strange logic it wouldn't be her fault anymore.

She pulled open the door and practically fell into the welcoming darkness. Stars swam before her eyes, she half walked half crawled up the aisle. She paused at the stain where Vachon had died. Her memory offered up conflicting images. Her staking her lover, Vachon leaving and the strangest of all, that creep the Nightcrawler staking her. "Wrong, wrong, wrong."

She struggled down the steps to the basement, barely staying up-right before falling into Vachon's musty bed. Once there, she cocooned herself in the blankets that smelled of them both.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Nick..."

"You could have trusted me."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tracy whimpered, closing her eyes as tightly as she could against the images in her head. Nick- a vampire. Vachon- dead at her hand. Lacroix- killing her. Someone else…

Her hands went to her middle, there, the comforting roundness of her belly calmed her. Her baby was all right. Vachon's baby.

"Everything will be okay baby," Tracy curled up into a tight ball, "You'll see, I'll take care of you. We'll survive. We have to."

>>>>>>>>>>

Told you it was weird. Comments to anteros@juno.com