Till Death Do Us Part

(Time skipping is fine. 20 questions is awesome, but it would get kinda stale after a while xD)

Eventually they hit the town (hallelujah) and almost immediately Leon could tell something was a little off. He couldn't tell exactly what yet, but it was different. It was strange.
Last he had checked, this town had been a lot busier; fewer people were walking the streets now, and those who were looked to be in a hurry.
Odd.
He didn't say anything to Dale, watching to see if the Scout would notice anything on his own. Instead he pulled into the mechanic's and got out, stretching himself before walking to the door.
"I'm just gonna get her tuned up while we're doing our stuff," the Sniper explained, craning his neck to look back at the Scout. "She's a bit rusty, as you can probably tell. I haven't driven her since... God, I don't even know when. It's been long, I can tell you that."
But when he got to the door, the CLOSED sign was much more visible. A small explanation said that the owner was sick and would be back as soon as possible; it appeared to be a cold, but you never could tell with these things. Until then, they'd just have to wait.
It was weird.
"Well, scratch that."

As it was to be expected, Dale did not notice anything strange around the city. People were giving the two outsiders strange, sideways glances, but the scout just assumed that was because they were checking him out. And who could blame them! "Well, I guess we could come back again next week," Dale said in regards to the closed shop. He didn't really care about the repairs - but it'd give him chance to pick up issue #104 of the Saxton Hale comic.

Dale made a beeline for the newsagency, and then directly to the comic book section. If he'd lingered at the newspaper stands for just one moment, he would've found out a little bit more about the situation. There was only one thing on his mind - where the hell was the comic? It wasn't on the shelves. It should've come in several days ago. Surely, they hadn't sold out! "Hey!" the scout called across to the woman sitting at the counter. She wore her hair up in a tight bun, and overalls covered her plaid work-shirt. She looked up over her magazine. "Where's the new Saxton Hale?"

"Sorry kid, shipment is late. I can hold a copy for yer, if ye'd like, hun." Dale grumbled and returned to Leon. There was no point if he was unable to come back to town to pick it up.

Leon had been caught up at the newsstand, reading the headlines of one of the newspapers.

MASSIVE FLU VIRUS SWEEPS THE NATION more on page 6.

Slowly, Leon flipped the pages to the story, his green eyes sliding down the page as he got a grasp of the story. Several phrases caught his attention.
Pandemic.
U.S. has never seen this kind of virus before.
Other countries experiencing similar problems.
CDC boggled.
Already several thousand fatalities.
The paper then went on to explain the symptoms of the 'flu': burning fever, averaging between 105 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit; rasping cough; coma; and eventually death.
Leon was so caught up in the story that he didn't see Dale come back over to ask if they could come back, instead reading and rereading the story several times, just to see if there was something he had missed, like 'just kidding' or 'there's a cure, don't worry'.
There wasn't.

As he returned to to Leon's side, Dale didn't pick up on his obvious uncomfortableness. He pouted, fuming over the lack of a comic. "They don't have it," he grumbled. Did Leon even hear him - he seemed pretty engrossed in that newspaper. Man only losers read newspapers. They were so wordy and boring, and the comics in them usually weren't very good. "I'm gonna head to the booze shop. If I can grab some beer, this trip won't have been a complete waste of time."

Dale continued to the shop. Leon could follow in his own time. Somewhere in Dale's subconscious, he was beginning to feel the chill of the place. He just wanted to leave. As he expected, there were plenty of beer on the shelves. Dale wasn't a picky drinker - and picked up a case of their cheapest crap. The old Jew was sitting at the counter, widdling away some wood while he distrustfully watched the Scout through his thick glasses. Dale plonked the case and money up on the counter. Without exchanging a single word, the storekeeper took the money and continued to glare at the Scout until he left.

"Alright, I got it!" He said with a little more cheer in his voice. "Anything else you wanna do while here?"

Leon had just finished paying for the paper and was rolling it up and tucking it in one of the inside pockets of his vest, along with a pack of cigarettes. He wasn't a heavy smoker but somehow he felt that he was going to need them soon enough.
"They have supplies in the garage at the base, I can just fix up the camper there. Let's just go," Leon replied, his paranoia starting to kick in. If they dawdled here too much he was afraid one of them was going to end up dead with this nasty old 'flu' floating around, and although Dale could be a bit annoying sometimes, he didn't want that to happen to either of them.
He thanked the lady at the cashier and silently walked back to the camper, his sharp eyes scanning the surrounding area for anything suspicious; now that he was looking more closely, he was seeing more evidence of something insane going down. There were flyers on the sides of buildings and on telephone poles instructing citizens to head to the nearest hospital if they started coming down with flu-like symptoms, others asking people to practice normal hygiene, as if that would stop the spread of such a monstrous virus. Other shops were closed entirely, a few even boarded up.
The most noticeable thing was the lack of people. Apparently they were all busy in the hospital or locking themselves at home.
Leon climbed into the driver's seat of the camper, closing the door behind him, as if he could block out the world around him just by closing the door. He pulled the newspaper and his cigarettes out, tossing the newspaper on Dale's lap when he got in and lighting a cigarette with an old lighter he kept in the camper.
"Read that for me," Leon requested simply, gesturing at the headline and the story that went with it, wincing slightly as the camper sputtered and shuddered back awake. "Don't complain- please, just read it."

Dale let out a long groan as the Sniper passed the paper across to him. He wasn't going to complain, but he certainly wasn't going to enjoy it. Reading the article took far longer than it should have - partially due to the bouncing of the car over the pothole riddled road, and partially because had to carefully sound out any word longer than six letters long. "I don't think we gotta worry about that," Dale said, dropping the newspaper into the footwell. And stretched, focusing his eyes to the miles and miles of flat desert. "I mean, the medic has a gun which shoots life. I'm pretty sure if we catch a cold he can just zap us with that thing. He'd probably even enjoy it. He'd actually be useful for once, and not feel like a big weenie that doesn't even use real guns."

Dale couldn't even imagine the possibility that this could be serious. Just a bunch of folk being worried about nothing. "Hey, can I have one of those," he asked Leon when the Sniper lit up a cigarette. If Rémi was good for anything, it was giving him cigarettes. It'd be good to have someone else to mooch cigarettes off. "Hmm, if we can find a place where the shrubbery ain't so thick, we can pull over and try swinging the bat around."

Leon nodded slightly at Dale's verdict; this was very true. He didn't know if the Mediguns worked on sicknesses, though. They worked great on wounds, but would they work on something inside of you? He hoped so, although he sort of doubted it.
An eyebrow was raised as Dale asked for a cigarette, glancing in the young Scout's direction critically. "How old are you?" he asked once more, not willing to give Dale a cigarette unless he was over twenty-one, which seemed like a long shot. He had also gotten beer, too, if he was underage... He sighed slightly, looking back at the road. Dale was a good kid, but good Lord, he was going to kill Leon one of these days.
"You know what, I'm not even sure if I want to know. Here's a good spot," he replied, changing the subject and pulling over, by now getting used to the pops and squeaks and rattles and bangs of the camper. He shifted into park and climbed out of the driver's seat to the back of the camper, grabbing a quiver of arrows and bow from one of the back corners. He then climbed out the side door and stretched, looking around and waiting for Dale. He wanted to get his mind off this whole flu thing; shooting and making a fool of himself with a bat would help with that.
Maybe if he just kept telling himself he was being paranoid, it would be true.

Man, Leon was stingy with the cigarettes. When the van had come to a stop, Dale got out, following not far behind Leon. He dragged his messenger bag along the bush grass a few paces, before swinging it over his shoulder. The metal bat concealed within clanked against the several baseballs he'd also brought along.

"Whatcha what to do first," Dale said as he dropped the bag down between them, unzipping it to reveal the sports equipment inside. The Scout honestly didn't mind. He hadn't played baseball in a long time. These days, it was a real treat. He reached in and grabbed the bat. It was the same one he used at work, and had seen better days - it had been dented and discoloured from the fighting. Maybe he'd ask his ma' for a new one for Christmas.

"Or we could both have a beer, that'd actually give us some bottles to shoot at," he said with a laugh.

"I don't mind what we do first. I'd like to save the beers for the base, though- there are no cops at the base that could potentially pull us over and arrest the both of us for DUIs or suspected underage drinking," he pointed out with a glance at Dale, leaning the Huntsman against the side of a scraggly tree and heading back to the camper for a moment. "I think I have some cans in here somewhere."

He resurfaced a few minutes later with a couple of old cans from one of his past camping trips. There weren't many- if they wanted more they'd have to eat something- but it was enough for a decent target practice. "It might be better to start off with shooting first, just to warm up. I'd probably end up spraining some muscle of some kind if I tried to go swing a bat at this point." The Sniper arched his back in a stretch, popping some of the vertebra in his back with a sigh. "You fine with that?"

"Yeah 'course that's fine by me," Dale beamed. He dumped his bag and took the cans from Leon. He scanned the area, looking for a good place to set them up. He finally settled on a large rock. They were probably a little too low, but with the absence of a fence or fallen tree, it would have to suffice.

He then took the bow, grasping it in uneasy hands. All of a sudden (and perhaps for the first time in his life) he realised he knew nothing. Not even how to nock an arrow. "Don't worry, I got this," he blatantly lied. He held the arrow awkwardly in one hand, and the bow in the other.

Leon watched as the Scout struggled to even nock the arrow, waiting a minute or two before saying, "Here, let me show you first. Watch." If he had asked the Scout if he'd needed help he probably would've said no, thus why he was taking charge in such a manner. Just looking at an arrow wouldn't make it shoot, after all.

He gently took the bow and arrow from Dale's hands, shifting his foot so he was somewhat parallel with the cans. "You wanna try to get sideways first- you don't always have to, and if you're shooting in a hurry you may not have the time, but it helps with the accuracy of your shot. Now, you need to support the arrow- otherwise it's going to fall or it won't fire straight and will hit the ground instead. You take these fingers-" he held the bow up so Dale could see better- "and you just keep them under the arrow. This helps with stability and accuracy; if you feel so inclined you can put one finger on top of the arrow and the other underneath when you draw back the string to give the arrow more power when it flies, it doesn't matter, so long as the arrow is supported. The string draws back to about your shoulder, so draw it back all the way." He did so to demonstrate, squinting down at the cans. "Then you just take a breath, hold it, aim, and release."

He let the arrow fly, skewering one of the cans and knocking it back off the rock. He pulled another arrow out of the quiver and offered the it along with the bow to Dale. "Now you try."