TITLE: "ALL THE KING'S MEN"

SERIES: THE DICHOTOMY SERIES

CHAPTER: 9. Sequel to "ALL THE KING'S HORSES"

FANDOM: "FIREFLY"

AUTHOR: Alison M. DOBELL

PAIRING: Zoe/Wash

RATING: P-G-13

SUMMARY: "With folk disappearing it is disturbing

when they turn up in the last place they want to be.

Meanwhile Book is reluctant to tell them what he

knows and Inara is alarmed by a revelation about

Patience."

"ALL THE KING'S MEN"

A "Firefly" Story

Written by Alison M. DOBELL

* * * * *

He tried to push down the wall of panic threatening to engulf him. The dark pitiless place he found himself in was like to devour him a cruel mouthful at a time but that was not gonna happen. Not if he had anything to say about it.

If this was some kind of nightmare he had to find a way to wake up. If it was real then permaybehaps he had already lost and what he was experiencing was the dying of his gorram brain. Life was nothing if not creative. Defiant. Full of all manner of redundancy in a body's DNA for just such a scenario. Ready to offer a lifeline, however fleeting or tenuous, to escape that end of days.

Something sluggish stirred he knew not where. Was it within or without? Imagination or reality? Dream or rutting waking? There was no way to tell and try as he might Malcolm Reynolds was unable to connect with any of his senses. The pitch darkness was unrelenting, soundless and without any kind of motion to it. If this was *diyu* where was the Devil hiding? Just then the pain hit and he had his gorram answer. This really was the not so shiny sphincter of Hell and he was shoved many gorram miles up it.

* * * * *

Kaylee couldn't stop crying. Zoe did not have the words or heart to comfort her, trying as best she could to cope with her own not inconsiderable grief. Oddly enough it was the stranger in the eye watering shirt who took the tim