The Slow Burn, Chapter 6

6.
Fiona: Newer Grief

Fiona was deep inside a large bay in the cargo container, searching for food stashes, when the chaos started. She didn’t even know that anything had occurred until the frenzied shouting, including voices that had been absent for hours, grew loud enough to reach her through the walls. She emerged into the middle of a furious donnybrook.

Johns and Fry were dragging Riddick’s prone, unconscious body into the crash ship. For one horrible moment, Fiona thought he might be dead.

“Just kill him,” Shazza screamed. “Why the fuck won’t you just kill him?”

The Imam, his expression inscrutable, was attempting to restrain her with very little luck. She broke free, darted forward, and kicked at Riddick’s ribs. He groaned softly but did not regain consciousness. Fiona sidled over to Jack.

“What happened?”

“Riddick killed Zeke,” Jack hissed, her eyes never leaving the chaos.

“What? How?”

“Cut him up or something, out by the graves.”

Fry and Johns emerged from the ship, arguing. From what Fiona could overhear, Fry was asking why, in the light of how Zeke had died, there was no blood on Riddick’s knife or clothing.

Good question, she thought to herself. It deserves some answers. Soon.

First, however, Shazza needed comforting. She vaguely remembered that it was Shazza who had held her during the worst of her grief. However Zeke had died, whoever or whatever had killed him, the woman needed the same comfort in return.

The debate swirled around for several minutes. Paris and Shazza wanted Riddick killed immediately. Imam and his boys retreated from the fray altogether, leaving Riddick’s defense to Jack, Fry and — oddly enough — Johns. Holding Shazza in her arms, Fiona didn’t feel able to speak up for Riddick, as much as she inexplicably wanted to. Not that she could muster anything specific to say in his defense. Just a general feeling that everyone was becoming far too trigger-happy.

Finally Fry stalked off, muttering that she was going to question the man. A moment later, Jack sneaked after her. Fiona found herself simply holding Shazza while all of the male survivors watched them in an uneasy silence.

Having grown up on New Ireland, a colony world that her father had always claimed had brought the best and most egalitarian elements of Earth’s cultural past with it, this was Fiona’s first encounter with men who were so… utterly useless in the face of grief and suffering. Did none of them know what to do?

Riddick would, the thought came unbidden. She wasn’t sure what, in their brief interaction, made her believe this exactly… but she did believe. God, maybe I am crazy.

Jack returned first, looking disgruntled. Fry emerged from the hold a few minutes later, her expression deeply disturbed.

“We’re going to find Zeke’s body,” she snarled at Johns when he began to question her.

Shazza stiffened in Fiona’s arms, then broke free and followed Fry. Fiona followed alongside as Fry led them to the cargo container to fetch a long coil of rope. When the group headed for Zeke’s burial ground, though, she found herself hanging back. Her family’s graves were there, and she wasn’t ready to face that. Maybe she could get other answers, instead, while she waited.

Like why she kept having an impulse to trust a man that the newsfeeds had called a “remorseless killer.”

They had also claimed he was a “pure psychopath,” using a term her mother had snapped was centuries out of date in all but the worst publications, and maybe that was it— psychopaths were supposed to be charming. But it was also supposed to be a superficial charm, and Fiona had the strange feeling that she had detected the opposite: genuine concern for her and others carefully hidden behind a façade of cavalier detachment.

Shazza had used up Fiona’s astringent and moist wipes earlier, but she could improvise. She found what she was looking for almost immediately, in Paris’ locker — a bottle of unflavored vodka. It would have to do. From her sister’s locker, she fished out one last packet of cotton cosmetic pads, then carried her finds back over to the crash ship. In the distance, she could see the others clustering around a large hole where, she assumed, Zeke had died.

Riddick had been restrained differently this time. The chains ran through one of the ship’s ladders and looped around some of the other bulkheads, forcing his arms wide. Oddly enough, he almost looked like he was sitting on a throne rather than imprisoned. She took a moment to examine him in the filtered light. No blood. Plenty of new scrapes and bruises that he hadn’t had the last time they spoke, but no blood.

How to even ask about that, though? After all of the accusations that had already been thrown at him, would he even want to talk to her about it? She tried to imagine what her father would say in this moment. Something dry, and droll, and a little silly. Something to put a person at ease. Could she even do that?

Maybe.

“I didn’t realize you’d studied to be a tepanyaki chef,” she told him, after coming up with and discarding a dozen different lines.

His head came up with a quizzical frown. “Say what?”

“Well, that’s the only way I can think of that you could have filleted somebody in less than a minute without getting a drop of blood anywhere on you.” It was hard to speak so casually about Zeke’s brutal death, but the layer of numbness over all of her emotions helped. “That takes talent, not to mention training. I didn’t know they offered those courses in the prison system.”

A sly smile spread across his face as some of the tension left his shoulders. “What can I say? I have more talents than even I know about.”

“You didn’t kill him.” She wasn’t asking; she knew.

“No,” he replied softly, a new look of respect dawning on his dark features. “I didn’t.”

“So who did, then?” Had another survivor seen Zeke kill the man by the cargo container and targeted him for vengeance? That made no sense. But maybe he had seen something from his brief vantage point in Paris’s chair.

“Not who, lady. What.”

She had no idea what to say to that. The others were convinced that the planet was barren. Dead. But he was saying that it wasn’t. That they weren’t alone here, and that whatever else was here, it wasn’t friendly. Her whole spirit reflexively shuddered back from the idea.

“Something very, very fast,” he continued after a moment, his expression pensive. “Something much more dangerous than I’ve ever been.”

She believed him, she realized, as much as part of her didn’t want to. It wasn’t just that he hadn’t killed Zeke… he was worried about what had. Whatever had actually killed Shazza’s husband was a genuine danger to everyone, including him. For a moment she felt an impulse to run from the ship, over to the graves, and warn everyone.

But just because she believed him didn’t mean that they would. They were only just coming to terms with the threats they already knew about; more would be overwhelming, and their minds would shy away from the idea the way hers had tried to. Most of them thought she was out of her mind, anyway. She wasn’t even sure they were wrong, but it did mean that she had very little credibility, especially when it came to believing the warnings of someone they were already refusing to listen to. It wasn’t as if she had a tangible threat in mind, anyway. Everything she knew, they already knew, too. They just didn’t believe… yet.

As much as it twisted at her insides, she was going to have to let them find out for themselves what could make a man like Riddick feel fear.

Still, she didn’t have to be completely useless while she waited. Fiona stepped closer, walking over to his side.