Chapter Text
The stench that greeted David through the termite-rotted door was not the musk that heralded a zombie, that uncanny mix of life and death, sweat and rot. It just smelled like death.
This did not mean David was safe, since death-smell had a tendency to camouflage undeath. Even so, David entered the house with empty hands, not even bothering to close the door behind him, not even heeding his old instincts—check the corners, listen for movement, advance slowly. He removed his armor and his machetes, letting them fall to the floor with loud thumps, not caring what heard. He hadn’t realized how much his fever had spiked until the late summer air on his skin made him shiver; the pain, exhaustion, and hunger had drowned out all other sensation.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw a flurry of cockroaches and other insects scurrying away from the light pouring through the doorway, across the stained linoleum and up the moldy drywall. The bulk of the insects scuttled toward the source of the smell. In the living room was a pile of bodies in advanced decay, bones visible through rotted flesh. There were four of them huddled together, including two children ensconced in the adults’ final embrace. Bundles of withered and moldy wildflowers encircled them, some no more than blackened husks, giving the scene the appearance of a long-neglected shrine.
David could hardly believe this was still here. He remembered a young boy who, when his parents explained that these skeletons had been a family once, wanted to add his own flowers. David thought he recognized the remains of the bundle of dandelions the boy had left. That boy was dead now.
David approached the dead family and squatted in front of them, ignoring his gnawing hunger to stare glassy-eyed at them. A fly landed on the tip of David’s nose, but he did not swat it away.
Finally, hunger drove him to stand and shuffle into the kitchen. He was too much of a coward to let himself starve. Too slow, too agonizing. He skirted the pockmarked island and tried the faucet, more out of habit than anything else, and only rust-red droplets came out. Next, he rifled through the cabinets to find they were mostly empty, which was as he remembered. This neighborhood was adjacent to a major highway, and he was far from the only traveler to shelter and forage here. In fact, people had painted, sprayed, and scratched the same symbol on street signs, garage doors, and driveways all over the neighborhood: the symbol of neutrality, meaning no single Family could claim this neighborhood. All the bullet holes and half-buried bodies in this neighborhood attested to the bloodshed that had preceded this truce.
He reached further into a cabinet, feeling behind a bend where the cabinet extended into the corner. There was a broken fragment of a shelf back there, but after pulling it out, David found three cans of fruit in this nook, concealed from raiders and wanderers alike all this time.
With shaking hands, he pried open the first can, spilling juice over his hands and launching a burst of dust from the top of the lid, making him sneeze. He gripped the slippery peach slices in his fingers and sucked them into his mouth with loud slurps. When he finished, he tipped the can back to gulp down the juice, not even bothering to stop it from overflowing onto his beard.
He did stop when the juice dribbled onto his leg. He hissed as he pulled back the torn fabric at his left thigh and inspected his wound, a long gash across the front and side of his thigh, a third of an inch deep at the deepest point. Pus had crusted over the swollen wound, and the acidic juice stung where it contacted exposed flesh.
He was so focused on his injury that he didn’t hear the zombie until it let out a garble only a foot away from him.
He cried out in surprise. Before he could consciously process the situation, he grabbed an empty knife block in front of him and smashed it into the zombie’s head with a sickening crunch. The zombie collided with the kitchen island, then crumpled to the floor with a hiss. Though stunned, it still reached its arms toward David and gnashed its teeth.
David panted, arms shaking from even that simple effort. Instinct and surprise had overridden his conscious desire to let the zombie take him. Oh well. There was still time.
He stared at the zombie, and it stared back. This wasn’t unusual, of course, but zombie stares didn’t normally look so…intense. Not to mention, grounded zombies always scrambled to their feet or scrabbled across the floor. This one just lay there, staring with undisguised, unbridled hunger.
As if hypnotized, David knelt to the ground, wincing as his wound and knees protested. This zombie was once a woman, barely covered by the rags that had once been her clothes.
The zombie opened its mouth, and he flinched back. Coward, fucking coward. One zombie wouldn’t be fast enough. He’d need a whole horde to tear him apart quickly enough.
Then the zombie spoke.
“Help,” it said in a drawn-out wheeze.
David froze. He’d never heard a zombie speak before. He wondered if he was spiking a fever and hallucinating again.
“Ah…hungry…it hurts..”
With a yelp, David grabbed the knife block and brought it down on the zombies head again and again and again, not stopping until he and the kitchen floor were covered with foul muck. He stared at his handiwork for a moment, then let the knife block fall to the floor with a thunk.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
He noted the dirt the zombie had tracked in and followed the trail to the front door. He hesitated for a moment, then closed it. He’d wait for a group of zombies. No need to let in singletons.
He trudged to the living room and sank onto the moth-eaten couch. If you ignored the dead bodies and pervasive decay, it looked similar to the house he used to have just outside Detroit. There was a widescreen TV and everything.
He looked down and saw a remote control on the ground, peeking out from under the sofa. David picked it up and raised it to the TV, pretending the buttons worked. Jesus, when had he last watched TV? Just before the apocalypse, he’d worked long hours, coming home so exhausted that he barely spent any time with his family, let alone anything like those movie nights from when Jessie was younger. Naomi would make popcorn, or even bake cookies if she was in an especially good mood, and David would tuck the blankets and pillows around Jessie in that complicated, specific way she liked. Halfway through the movie, she’d inevitably move those pillows anyway, and end up falling asleep snuggled into David’s or Naomi’s shoulder. He could barely remember what she’d looked like at that age…
He looked up at the pile of skeletons. Society had fallen, whole family lines had been wiped out, children had been torn apart by monsters–and yet, the universe had sought fit to preserve these fucking bones, of all things
In a burst of energy, he threw the remote at them as hard as he could. By the time the skeletons finished falling apart, he’d grabbed the nearest pillow and flung himself onto his right side, listening to the scuttling of the roaches and his own heavy breathing. It was stiflingly humid, his body convulsed with chills, and a beam of light shone through the blinds and right into his eyes. Even so, he clutched the ragged pillow to his chest and didn’t move. Quicker than he thought it would, his breath slowed, and he slipped into sleep.
~~~
David awoke to a pounding in his head. Or was it outside his head?
He sat up with a groan. The light coming in through the windows had mellowed from bright yellow to vibrant orange. He looked at the skeleton family and found that the bones had collapsed on each other completely, making it impossible to tell who was who.
He set the pillow aside and slowly stood, having decided that, while he did have a bad headache, there was definitely a noise coming from outside. Not just what sounded like pots banging together, but the tell-tale moaning of zombies.
When he stepped to the front door and swung it open, the sounds magnified. He couldn’t see the source of the clanging, but he saw a couple of zombies stumbling down the street, one tripping over the bump in the road where tree roots grew under the asphalt. Looking right, David saw several more zombies turning out of his field of view.
David stepped off the doorstep, through the desiccated, overgrown lawn, and into the road. Despite the humidity, he shivered. He kept his distance from the singletons, but his caution seemed unwarranted: they were wholly fixated on the sound. They didn’t even look at him.
Now that he was outside, he heard a voice shouting, too. A man’s voice. Once David got a little way down the road, he could see around the corner.
A figure in full black combat gear stood on the roof of a house on the opposite street. Next to him was a yawning gash where a tree had fallen onto the house. His back was turned to David, showing the number 60 printed between his shoulders. The man was smashing together a pair of rusty cast-iron skillets, and a glass bottle lay at his feet with a rag hanging out the opening.
“C’mon! Come ‘ere, come and get me!” the man bellowed in a reedy voice.
Surrounding the house was a horde of grasping, moaning, hungry zombies. They filled almost the entire front lawn, shoving and grabbing each other, and from what David could tell, they’d crowded the backyard as well. David kept his distance, but even from here, he could smell gasoline, and he saw that many zombies had wet shoes and hems. However, some of the zombies lingered at the edges, standing still, arms at their sides, just watching the roof.
The armored man finally set down the skillets, then sat on the edge of the roof with his boots dangling mere feet above the zombies’ clawing hands. His head swiveled from side to side. David tensed as the man’s helmet turned in his direction, but the man’s gaze slid over him. Perhaps the man thought David was part of the horde. David wouldn’t blame him. He certainly felt half-dead.
The man started throwing rocks at the zombies, singing a song David couldn’t make out. What the hell was this guy doing? Was he suicidal? One of the zombies made a croaking sound that might have been “climb” or “wait” or “aaaugh”, but the man on the roof didn’t seem to hear.
David took a couple tentative steps forward. Here was the perfect chance. He’d have preferred to have a bullet take him out, but he’d used his last one to shoot a zombie a week or two ago, for all the good that did.
The closest zombie, once an old man in tattered red flannel, raised its face to the air, turning this way and that, its glassy eyes finally resting on David.
David’s heart pounded. His vision tunneled, and he clenched his jaw against a spike of nausea. Only a couple more steps…but he couldn’t make himself do it. He looked back up to the roof. The man was climbing back up, not seeming to notice the zombie that had climbed on its neighbors’ shoulders, swinging its free hand and missing the man’s boot by inches.
If only that man wasn’t there. David didn’t want to traumatize the poor guy. Then again, with his cavalier attitude toward zombies, maybe the man was looking for the same thing.
The zombie in red croaked, catching the attention of its neighbors, who swiveled their heads toward David. They stepped toward him. He squeezed his eyes shut…
Glass shattered nearby, and there was a blast of heat, followed by a chorus of shrieks. His eyes snapped open. The zombies were on fire.
Smoke filled the air, snaking upward from the zombies’ skin and clothes. Most writhed in place or collapsed to the ground in a twitching blackening mass. Most of the rest scattered, trailing smoke as they tripped over each other and their own feet in their haste to escape the spreading inferno. They ran mere feet past David without heeding him.
A whoop sounded from the roof, and David looked up. The man was standing, doing a little two-step. He was singing louder, and David could finally make out the words.
“Burn, baby, burn, keep on burning…”
Oh. This guy was a huge dork.
The man turned to lower himself down the hole in the roof, still singing to himself. A few moments later, he appeared in the front window. David shook his head in incredulity.
David looked again at the zombies, squinting his eyes against the heat. He gaped, hardly believing his eyes. Several of them had come out onto the driveway or the road, and had dropped to the ground to roll around. But unlike the agonized thrashings of most of the zombies, these movements looked deliberate, and the zombies’ utterings were grunts rather than shrieks. David watched as the flames on their bodies shrunk then extinguished.
He hadn’t even wrapped his mind around zombies that could stop-drop-and-roll when they started standing up, charred but intact. The one closest to the house grabbed a rock from the landscaping and threw it at the window. The man inside looked frozen in place.
David watched as the cluster of extinguished zombies joined the first in pelting the window, and it didn’t take long for the glass to crack. On cue, the zombies surged forward. A resounding crack echoed through the neighborhood, making David start and cover his ears. A glock, from the sound of it.
Another crack, then another. A couple of the frontmost zombies reeled back, then fell to the ground, black bile oozing from their bullet wounds. But for every zombie the man downed, another came closer to the window until the first breached, falling head-first through the window to the tinkling of glass. Another crack, another zombie inside, until the group was pouring in, crawling over each other to get to the man inside.
Almost of its own will, David’s right foot took a step forward, then his left, again and again until he was shuffling toward the front door. Every shot the armored man took sent a jolt down the full length of David’s body, and the heat of the still-burning blaze seared his skin even from a distance. He kept moving forward.
When he reached the front doorstep, the last zombie was torso-deep in the window, its legs still dangling outside. The crack of the pistol had stopped. The man inside yelped, swore, and struggled, his voice electric with panic.
David jiggled the handle only to find it locked. He turned his back to the door and extended his right foot behind him until his shoe was flat against the door, right next to the lock. Gritting his teeth against the pain radiating from his wound, he kicked back.
The door crackled under the impact, but stood fast. David lost his balance and toppled into the wall. Jesus, it had been so long since he had to kick a door down. What he wouldn’t give for a crowbar right now, or even the little hatchet he kept in his pack—the pack he’d left in the other house.
Breathing hard through his nose, he reset, gripping a column that supported the little overhang that shaded the doorstep. He exhaled once, twice, then kicked with a grunt.
The door gave way. David regained his footing, then wheeled around and ran inside.
Just to his right, a few zombies lay unmoving on the ground, and the zombie in the windowsill dangled uselessly, froth dripping from its mouth. The remaining zombies, however, clustered around the man, who was thrashing and yelling. Two tugged at the man’s gloves, and the other three pulled and twisted the helmet. For just a moment, they pulled the helmet far enough that David could see a sliver of the man’s neck.
David picked up a lamp from an end table, ripping the cord from where it was still plugged into the wall. At this movement, two of the zombies released the man to turn toward David. He swung the lamp to smash it into the first zombie’s head, stunning it and sending it toppling into a recliner. He sidestepped the other to kick it in the back of the knees and send it sprawling forward. The zombie on the recliner stirred, and David swung the lamp into its head again. The lamp shattered on impact, but the zombie’s skull caved in with a squelch. Before the other zombie could get up, David spun around, grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, and crushed its face into the corner of the coffee table.
Panting, David looked up just in time for one of the zombies to detach from the armored man and seize his forearm. There was a moment of struggle where David and the zombie played tug-of-war with his arm, David grunting against scraping of its cracked nails. He’d broken yet another rule: don’t let them grab you. He didn’t understand how something so dead could have such incredible grip strength.
The zombie suddenly let go, sending David staggering back into the wall next to the window. At the moment of his imbalance, the zombie surged forward. David grasped its shoulders, and it bent its neck down, jaw open and slavering, ready to bite the arm. David was ready. He used the zombie’s forward momentum to rotate it toward the windowsill, smashing it face-down onto a shard of broken glass.
He turned back to the armored man, who was still struggling against the two zombies clinging to him. Whenever he kicked or pushed one away, the other one would close in right after.
David kicked the closest one, sending it stumbling. The armored man shoulder-checked the other, then darted to the ground. Meanwhile, the zombie David had kicked swung around and surged toward him. David stepped backward to avoid it, and with a sickening jolt in his stomach, he tripped over the sofa and fell to the ground. With a snarl, the zombie grabbed his ankle and champed its rotten teeth mere inches above his leg.
Its head exploded with a bang. David cried out when a second shot followed right after and scrambled to his feet, ears ringing and nerves frayed nearly to their breaking point.
The armored man stood with his gun in hand, panting almost as hard as David was. All zombies but one were still. Then, with a groan, the zombie that was halfway through the windowsill finally slithered inside and plopped onto the floor next to David. He cried out and gave its head a swift stomp.
“Holy shit,” the armored man panted.
David faced the man. His gun wasn’t pointed at David, but the man looked tense. They stared at each other for a moment, chests heaving in tandem.
“Who the hell are you?” the armored man asked.
David didn’t answer. He turned to go, deciding he didn’t much like being looked at. His whole body trembled, and his skin felt clammier than ever. He limped as the pain in his thigh, ignored for the duration of the fight, came back twofold.
“Whoa, hey, where you going?”
A wave of dizziness suddenly had David bracing his hand against the wall. He coughed, his chest tightening against the smoke that had gathered in the air while they fought. He looked down, and through the haze, he saw that the fabric around his wound had soaked through with blood.
“All right, take it easy now,” the armored man said, stepping forward and reaching a hand toward him. His voice sounded indistinct, as if he was underwater.
David flinched back from the offered hand, but only took one step away before a spike of nausea stopped him. He doubled over and retched. So much for those peaches. At this rate, maybe he really would starve to death.
The armored man muttered to himself while rummaging through his pack. David wanted to crawl away, find some hole to curl up in, but he couldn’t make his body move any direction but down. His vision started to black out.
“Whoa whoa whoa, hey, stay with me, all right?”
The man’s helmet loomed over him, and his voice softened to a croon. David felt arms holding him, and he listened to the cadence of that voice until his vision went dark, and he couldn’t tell the words apart anymore.
Notes:
Art by AyeToast!
https://www.tumblr.com/aye-toast/763989182385389568/smoke-filled-the-air-snaking-upward-from-the?source=share
Chapter 2
Summary:
David meets the armored man.
Chapter Text
David remembered flashes and blurs. Being dragged–or maybe carried?–through an orange haze, then over asphalt and stone, through a house, all the way to a gray-splotched ceiling. Light shining in his eyes, then darkness.
Then he thought he was hallucinating. Hovering over him, illuminated by flickering orange light, was a handsome young man. The sparse beginnings of a beard spread across his chiseled face, and his brows were drawn in concentration, or perhaps concern. A lock of dark hair clung to the sweat on the man’s forehead.
His eyes roved down David’s body and back up to his face, and David felt touch follow where the man’s eyes led. Sometimes it was a damp cloth against his sweat-drenched skin, sometimes the gentle probing of fingertips against his thigh, his abdomen, his wrists, his forehead. The man spoke, but David couldn’t tell if he was talking to himself or not. He just watched the movement of the man’s lips and the bobbing of his Adam’s apple.
Most of all, David remembered pain. Everywhere, really, but especially in his thigh wound. Stinging, throbbing, searing pain.
Suddenly, the man was gone. David heard a man, a woman, and a small boy, all crying out for him to save them, but he looked all around and couldn’t see them. Their cries for help devolved into anguished screams.
Then Naomi was there, prodding him. Wake up, she said, they’re going to get Jessie. David tried to get up, but his limbs were leaden. Naomi was shaking him, screaming, and all he could do was lie there.
David jerked awake. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep.
His first sensation was one of chill, despite being in a bed, covered by a blanket. His second was one of constraint, his limbs spread in ways they never did when he slept. When he tried curling in on himself to get warm, ropes burned his ankles and wrists as they held him in place.
Panting, he laid his head back on the pillow for a moment. While his thoughts raced, he stared at the shadows dancing across the walls and ceiling, trying to make sense of being tied to a bed in a room filled with candlelight.
A quiet groan came from the floor. David’s head snapped up to see the armored man leaning against the side of the bed, stirring and turning toward him with bleary eyes.
“Hey, you okay?” the man said, voice thick with sleep.
The man’s voice was calm, his movements slow, relaxed. David froze, his eyes flicking between the door, the man, and the bedposts he was tied to. He gave his limbs a fruitless tug, and the frame creaked and shifted under him.
“Oh, yeah, sorry about the ropes,” the man said while rubbing his eyes, “but the alternative was stripping you naked to check for bites, and I figured you wouldn’t appreciate that. That said, if you agree to let me examine you, I’d be more than happy to untie you.”
David froze mid-jostle and recoiled. The man chuckled.
“By ‘examine,’ I just mean some simple neurological tests, no nudity required. It’ll be real quick, and then you can go back to sleep. God knows you need it.”
“I don’t have anything,” David said through a tensed jaw.
“What?”
“If you’re planning to make me all better, then extort me afterward, you’re wasting both our time.”
“Why would I do that?”
David hadn’t expected the genuine consternation in the other man’s voice. Over the past few years, he’d learned that any time a stranger offered charity, they were just looking for an excuse to take everything you owned and call it “payment”. Trying to negotiate with these lovely do-gooders had left him with a couple nasty scars. Hell, he’d been the “bad samaritan” himself, in a few desperate moments of need.
David glanced to the floor, looking for any clue to the man’s intentions, and saw the man’s pack, its contents spilling out across the floor. There was a first aid kit, food, and water. All that, and body armor, and ammo? It was possible this guy was from a settlement, or from one of the remaining government-controlled cities, or just really good at scavenging. But this far from a city? That suggested Family. Maybe David was about to be captured, annexed, enlisted, or whatever this Family’s preferred term was.
Then again, Family never traveled alone. That was one of their few universal rules, as far as David knew. Perhaps he was part of a scouting group that ran into trouble?
In any case, he could handle a Family member separated from the pack.
“Fine, go ‘head,” David said, his voice rasping from his dry throat.
“Cool, sure,” the man said. “Let me just–”
He stood up and leaned over David to untie him. David laid perfectly still until the last knot unraveled, then he burst into action. He shoved his shoulder into the man’s midsection, sending him sprawling. David swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, ready to bolt toward the door.
“Agh!”
His head swam, and his thigh wound throbbed with a strange, tight pain.
“Jesus, okay,” the man hissed as he regained his footing.
David only managed to hobble one step before the man put his hands on David’s shoulders. He swung his fist around, but the man dodged his blow.
“Would you just–Hey! I’m trying to help you!”
David thrashed, trying to dislodge the man’s grip, but he was running out of energy fast, and he didn’t have much to start. Still, he finally managed to land a punch square on the man’s nose.
“Gah, shit!” The man shouted as he reeled back, clutching a hand to his face.
Triumphant, David pushed him away and lurched toward the door. He only made it two steps before he collapsed to the ground, clutching his leg and groaning as the room spun around him.
“Okay, so,” the man began, crouching next to David, his voice strangled and his hand still hovering near his nose, “that was my bad. You woke up tied to a bed, and I didn’t even introduce myself. So, let’s start over, shall we? I’m Doctor Stern, but you can call me Sasha. What’s your name?”
David took a couple deep breaths, trying to keep a clear head through the pain. He spat at Dr. Stern’s feet. Next to nothing came out, but hey, it was the gesture that counted.
“‘Kay, fine, I deserved that. Tell you what,” Stern said, reaching back for his pack. “I’ll give you this water if you agree to go back to the bed and stay put until you’re feeling better. How’s that sound?” He brought out a half-empty water bottle and shook it for emphasis.
David licked his lips, and he swallowed, dry and thick. He looked out the door again, then back to the water bottle.
“You really a doctor?” he said with effort.
Stern chuckled.
“Sure am. Went to med school and everything.”
“Yeah, well,” David said between heaving breaths, “your bedside manner is shit.”
Stern threw his head back and laughed. His teeth were straight, and not white, exactly, but very well-kept, considering the dearth of post-apocalyptic dentistry.
“Yeah, not the first time I’ve heard that. There’s a reason I was a pathologist.” Stern offered a hand. “So, what’s the plan? Enjoying the floor, or does a bed sound nicer?”
Even though his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, David laid there for a while, more out of spite than anything else, but Stern didn’t complain or rush him. He just sat there, moving occasionally to stretch or shift position, waiting.
Between the thirst and the suppressed urge to scream, David’s throat burned. He had a brief, wild notion of just asking Stern to kill him, but he dismissed it. Killing people, even those on the verge of turning, screaming as the virus consumed them from the inside, gave him nightmares for weeks. It would be a mortifying favor to ask of a perfect stranger. Besides, based on the past few minutes, David didn’t think this guy would do it anyway. Stern would probably find some way to coerce him into staying alive, all while flashing his stupid smile and looking at David with his stupid cow eyes.
David gritted his teeth, unable to stand the thirst anymore. Whatever. He could live for another day, or another few, however long it took him to shake this guy. Death could wait.
He finally pushed himself up with a groan, swatting away Stern’s offered hand. Once he was on his feet, he released a breath, satisfied he could support his own weight. But, halfway to the bed, he stumbled, falling right into Stern’s waiting arms. Stern propped him up as David limped to the bed and laid down with a groan.
“There we go. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Stern said.
David glared at him, but when Stern brought out the water bottle again, David snatched it, twisted the top, and gulped down the water. It was warm, metallic-tasting, and immensely satisfying.
“I thought you needed that. How do you feel?” Stern asked.
David lifted his hands in a helpless, exasperated gesture, unsure where to begin. Stern snorted.
“Fair enough. Think you can keep down food?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Stern reached into his pack again, brought out a pill and a plastic bag of crackers, and handed them to David. The crumbled crackers looked homemade.
“That’s an antibiotic. I only have one more of those, but I figure it’s better than nothing,” Stern said.
David held the pill between his thumb and index finger. This guy was definitely Family if he had pre-apocalypse medicine this far out from the cities. David thought about stowing it in his pocket to sneak back to Stern later, so that it could help someone who would actually live a week from now, but Stern was watching. He whistled, acting casual, but didn’t take his eyes off David.
David sighed, swallowed it along with the rest of the water, and munched on some crackers. They were stale, bland, and had a lumpy texture, but he soon devoured most of the bag, taking more water when Stern offered it.
“So…” Stern began, sitting on the bed. “I know this didn’t go so well last time, but we gotta talk about it. I’d love to just ask if you’ve been bitten and take your word for it, but y’know, people tend to lie about this sort of thing. I’m more than happy to stick around if you agree to an examination, but you gotta understand, I’m not gonna stay with someone I don’t know for sure is safe.”
David clenched his jaw. The opening was right there, but until he could walk by himself, he would rot in this bed if Stern left, slowly losing his mind to hunger, thirst, and pain.
“What about you?” David grit out, looking at Stern out of the sides of his eyes. “How do I know you’re not bit?”
Stern shrugged.
“Fair point, I guess you don’t. Tell you what, I’ll run the tests on you, and then you can do them on me. They’re real easy, I promise.”
“Sure, fine,” David sighed, “let’s get this over with.”
They took turns poking and prodding each other, performing tests like tapping each other’s knees to test the reflex, or holding candles up to each other’s eyes to check the pupils.
“All right, last test. Push against my hand,” Stern said.
He held out his hand, palm splayed. David’s eyes flicked between Stern’s hand and face, and then he extended his own hand to push his palm against Stern’s. The other man’s skin was dry but clean, making David’s hands look sweaty, gnarled, and dirty in comparison.
“All right, great! Looks like neither of us are symptomatic, but I’ll want to do this again in the morning, just to be safe,” Stern said, withdrawing his hand.
David wiped his hand on the sheet, and Stern laughed.
“Wise man. Can never be too careful about cooties.”
David rolled his eyes.
“My hands are swe–never mind,” he grumbled. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes from Stern, who shook with repressed laughter. He picked up the remaining crackers and resumed eating. “So, uh, you seem to know a thing or two about zombies.”
“Well, apart from telling when someone’s about to zomb out, I don’t know much more than you, I’m afraid. Jesus, med school couldn’t have prepared me for the autopsies I’ve done in the last few years. All I can really do is cut open a dead zombie, poke its organs a bit, and say ‘yep, definitely a zombie’. I mean, it’s not like I have a lab, you know? Not to mention, I’m not an epidemiologist, or immunologist, or virologist, or any other ‘gist’ that could actually do something about anything new we found out. Though, I suppose I could take a crack at it, if the day came. It’s not like I haven’t been outside my speciality this whole time, y’know, ‘cause who else is gonna do it? If I had a nickel for every apocalypse baby I’ve delivered, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but—oh, that reminds me…”
Stern turned and reached for something at the foot of the bed, out of view. With a grunt, he dragged out David’s armor and pack. David had no earthly idea what that had to do with delivering babies, but he set the bag of crackers on his lap and sat up.
“It’s all right, I didn’t take anything. I just didn’t have any gauze, of all things, or even any clean cloth, and I figured I’d look around the neighborhood before I wrapped you up in dirty rags. Found this stuff in a house nearby and figured it was yours.” Stern sat cross-legged on the floor and took David’s chest armor in his hands. It was surprisingly intact, despite how it looked. It was smeared with mud and blood, and the extra padding David had added to the sleeves a while back was coming apart. Stern tried poking the stuffing back into a particularly big hole, but it bounced right back when he took away his finger.
“So, you with a Family?” Stern asked with an arched eyebrow.
David scowled.
“No.”
Stern smiled and held out a pacifying hand.
“Relax, I’m not either,” he said, giving David a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
David raised an eyebrow. He supposed it was plausible. Sure, Stern was alone, but as a doctor, he was no doubt welcome just about everywhere he went.
But then he pictured himself waking up in some Family’s pickup truck, unable to run away. Best-case scenario, wherever they stopped, he’d be forced into Family life, unable to even take a shit outside his “siblings’” supervision. Worst-case, if they happened to be a Family like the Meatfaces, they’d kill him, which wouldn’t be so bad, except they were sadists who loved drawn-out spectacles of bloodshed. If they were the Millers, it’d be much the same, except they’d quote the Bible at him the whole time.
Stern looked innocent enough, but his story didn’t add up. David didn’t plan on being literally crucified because he let a stranger charm him into complacency.
“If you’re not Family, how’d you get all this stuff?” he asked.
Stern smirked.
“It’s really weird, everywhere I go, people just give me things, I don’t know why—“
David rolled his eyes and let his head thump back onto the pillow.
“Sorry, I can’t help myself,“ Stern said with an indulgent chuckle. “To answer your question, it turns out people are willing to part with a lot of stuff if it means they get to live a bit longer. Not that I can always do much, because y’know, it’s hard to treat someone’s diabetes when you can’t find insulin.”
David stared at the ceiling. He’d already guessed as much, but the answer satisfied him for now.
“So, how did you get this stuff?” David sat back up, and Stern was investigating the chest armor again. “Were you one of those militia guys from the early days, raiding armories and stuff?”
“What? God no, I wasn’t one of those fucking morons. That’s mine.”
Stern pressed his lips together with silent laughter, which pissed David off more.
“So when you say this is yours, you mean from before?” Stern held the armor close to his face and squinted to read in the candlelight. “Captain David Allen. I’m guessing that’s you. Which branch, Captain?”
David dragged a hand down his face.
“SWAT, not military,” he grumbled.
Stern flipped the chest armor over.
“DPD? Let me think…Detroit?”
David raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, actually,” he said.
“Really? No shit, me too,” Stern said, beaming, revealing a set of dimples. “I mean the ‘from Detroit’ part, by the way, not the ‘police’ part,” he continued, “though I did try for it before med school. Passed all the tests with flying colors, but they thought I ‘wouldn’t have taken the position seriously,’” he said with air quotes. If he saw David’s unimpressed look, he ignored it.
“Man, this far out from Detroit too, that’s crazy. Yeah, SWAT, that makes sense. ‘Cause think about it from my perspective, right? You’re doing okay, haven’t seen people in days, doing some routine zombie clearing, then they start doing things you’ve never heard of a zombie doing before, the house catches fire, you’re thinking ‘oh god, this is it, I’m dying in Indiana of all places’, then in charges this scruffy twig man, no armor, no weapons, nothing, just punching them and shit…and then you find out the guy that saved your life is from Detroit, and he had the job you once tried for. Crazy, man. Absolutely nuts. Maybe there’s a god after all.
“Speaking of half-dead, how’d you get that, by the way?”
David blinked. He could already tell he’d have trouble following Stern’s trains of thought.
“Huh?”
“Y’know, the big hole in your leg. Can I take a look at it, by the way? Just want to make sure it’s coming along okay.”
“Uh, sure, I guess.”
David propped himself up on his elbows as Stern gave his hands a quick wash, including a scrub under the nails.
“Sorry, out of gloves too. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
Stern knelt by the bed and pulled back the sheet. David noticed that Stern had cut away most of the left pant leg while he was unconscious. Stern gingerly undid a makeshift cloth bandage wrapped around David’s wound, already soaked with blood and pus, and radiating a pungent odor. It was still swollen, but it was stitched shut with neat needlework, and the surrounding area had been cleaned. Stern grabbed a candle holder and held the light to the wound to inspect it, close enough that David could feel the flame’s heat.
“Broken glass,” David finally explained. “Snagged while, uh…”
There had been a zombie, right in his face practically, with more coming. He was still half-inside, slicing his leg open on the windowsill in his haste to get out, so he took the shot. Then he’d tumbled out the window just in time to look up and see the young couple who had paid him to escort them to Chicago. They were running ahead, the man gripping their screaming son against his chest, but zombies were close behind. He slipped on the mud. Heart pounding, David had aimed and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened but a pathetic click. The wife turned around to look, letting out one anguished wail before the zombies got her too. As David ran away, and then for days afterward, the greatest agony wasn’t his leg, but the memory of her face and that awful scream. He wondered if that was how he’d looked, how he’d sounded when…
“Running from zombies, I’m guessing?” Stern supplied as he set the candle down.
David blinked and watched the flame sputter for a moment.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Bastards ate my last bullet.”
“Not like you need those anyway,” Stern said with a chuckle, apparently oblivious to David’s wince. “How long ago was that?”
David shrugged, scratching the side of his beard as he tried to remember.
“I don’t know, a few weeks, I think.”
“Huh, I would have expected the wound to be a lot farther along by now,” Stern said with a frown. “You been walking a lot?”
David nodded.
“Yeah, I’m guessing it’s reopened a couple times,” Stern said. “But the big thing seems to be that you haven’t had a good meal in a long time, from the look of you. That’ll be a fun challenge, considering I don’t have a ton of food and water for myself. We’re not far from Lafayette, so as long as you don’t show any viral symptoms, we could pop over and get some supplies, maybe even some more medicine for that infection…”
David’s hope of a few days’ delay withered. If Stern dragged him to Lafayette, it’d probably be several days before David could reasonably shake him, maybe even more.
David opened his mouth, ready to head him off, but then Stern started undoing the clasps on his chest armor. He pulled it over his head, revealing a dirty white t-shirt underneath, damp with sweat and clinging to his body. It was ragged and frayed at the bottom, and didn’t completely cover him. He pulled off the shirt too, revealing small swaths of hair across his chest and under his navel, and started ripping a strip off the bottom.
David watched Stern while the man worked, tongue poking out slightly in concentration. Not only was Stern free of scars and reasonably well-fed, he had some slight muscle definition as well, which was a minor miracle these days. David could barely remember the days when a combination of regular PT and home-cooked meals had made him lean and muscular. In his twenties and early thirties, he’d even had abs, for Christ’s sake. Now, he could see his ribs sticking out, and on the rare occasion he saw his own reflection, he couldn’t recognize the face looking back at him. Long hair and a scruffy beard after a lifetime of neat grooming. Cracked lips, sun-damaged skin, and sunken cheeks. Eyes utterly devoid of light.
“I might have to tear up this whole shirt to make enough bandages,” Stern said. “Ugh, I’m not looking forward to armor chafe.”
With one last tug, Stern tore the uneven fabric strip completely away.
“Go ahead and lift your leg a little,” he said.
David obeyed. Stern threaded the clammy fabric under the leg and wrapped it around. As he tied a tight knot, his fingertips brushed feather-light against David’s skin. David looked away and tapped his fingers on his chest in an agitated patter.
Stern rocked back on his heels, stood with a groan, and started putting his chest armor back on. Seeing an opportunity, David cleared his throat.
“Look, it’s nice of you to offer to take me to Lafayette, but—“
“Don’t worry about it. It’s on my way anyway,” Stern said, not even looking up from the clasps on his armor.
“I’m, uh, going the other way, actually,” David lied.
Stern finished securing his armor and looked at David with a raised brow.
“You’re going north?” David averted his gaze from Stern’s searching eyes, which somehow looked suspicious and pitying at the same time. “No offense, but you’re in no condition to do anything, let alone go north this close to fall.”
David opened his mouth to make some excuse, but Stern beat him to the punch.
“Look, I’ll tell you what. You come with me to Lafayette, we find a place for you to stay and recuperate, get you some supplies, maybe even a ride north, and then I’m out of your hair. Sound good?”
Stern phrased it like a suggestion, but his tone brooked no argument. David thought about trying to dissuade him anyway, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Despite not being able to leave, he felt his body calming now that he’d slaked his hunger and thirst, and he couldn’t deny that having more food in Lafayette sounded like a welcome reprieve from his weeks-long hunger pangs. Death could wait. He’d just have to keep telling himself that, however long it took for him to be mobile again. Death could wait.
“Sure, whatever,” he said with a sigh and a shrug.
“Great,” Stern said. “We’ll head out whenever you’re ready. It’ll be interesting with your leg, but we’ll figure it out. Maybe I could carry you on my shoulders while you punch zombies for me.”
He boxed with the air, smiling at his own joke. When David didn’t respond, he cleared his throat and mumbled something David couldn’t hear, then turned to sit back against the side of the bed.
David’s eyes traced the 60 on the discarded armor for a while as Stern began a cycle of trickling water on the used bandage, scrubbing the fabric against itself, then wringing it out. Then, David laid his head back on the pillow and watched the shadows flicker across the ceiling, still listening to the quiet whisper of the other man’s breathing.
~~~
David spent most of the next morning lying in bed, still too fatigued to do much but stare at the ceiling. Stern spent that time scavenging the neighborhood, coming back a couple times to check on David, shouting “Honey, I’m home!” each time he came through the front door.
Around midday, he spread all his finds across the bed. He beamed, and in the light of day, David got a proper look at Stern’s face for the first time. He acted like a dumb kid, but judging by his crow’s feet, he had to be at least thirty. David noticed with chagrin that Stern’s nose looked a little swollen and red, contrasting with the splotchy purple under his eyes.
“Look at this stuff,” Stern said. He pointed to a battered, half-full box of tampons and quipped, “Worth their weight in gold. Not that they weigh much, but you know what I mean.” Then he pulled out a dusty, crinkled magazine and plopped it on David’s lap without looking up from his pack.
“I’d normally just sell it, but you can have first dibs, if you want.”
It was porn. David opened it to a random spot and landed on a lurid full-page spread. In just about every way, the woman looked out of place in the apocalypse: her gaudy makeup, her frivolous jewelry, her plush curves, her rosy cheeks, her brazen eyes, her vulnerable nudity. Not to mention the fact that there wasn’t a condom in sight. Stern had mentioned delivering babies, and David couldn’t comprehend how anyone desired sex anymore, even without considering the current state of reproductive care.
He flicked the magazine shut and handed it back to Stern with averted eyes.
“S’fine.”
“Not to your taste, huh?” Stern said as he took it back. “Not a problem, because this is also worth its weight in gold. Oh, and that’s not even the best thing I found!”
He brought out a jar of Vaseline and beamed.
“Get your mind out of the gutter!” Stern said when David gave him a bemused look. “I have very dry hands.”
There was a repeat of last night’s neurological examination, followed by the humiliation that was the bathroom visit. Technically, David could stand and walk on his own, but he still felt exhausted, and the pain of his wound made sweat bead on his forehead with each step. He had to drape an arm around Stern’s shoulders, lean into him, and hobble with him to the bathroom. Once there, he looked in the mirror and saw that his face was surprisingly clean.
“Wasn’t I covered in blood and guts?”
“Yep!” Stern said in a chipper tone. “You don’t remember me cleaning your face? You woke up and everything.”
David remembered Stern’s face haloed by candlelight, how in his haze, he thought he was hallucinating a guardian angel. He said nothing.
What followed was the humiliation of Stern holding him by the shoulders to make sure he didn’t fall down while he pissed. And of course, Stern had to comment on it.
“Phew, smells like we need to get you more water.”
Then there was the bandage change. Stern removed his shirt to tear off some fabric again, which struck David as vanity, like he was revelling in how healthy and youthful he looked. To make things worse, any time Stern touched him, David twitched. He’d had so little touch for so long that it felt alien, suspect, dangerous. Stern had a different interpretation.
“Making you nervous, Captain?” he said with a wink. Bastard even laughed when David huffed and refused to make eye contact after that.
After a bit more food, the last antibiotic, and a fitful midday nap, David had enough energy to stand by himself and walk around a little. When Stern saw, he smiled.
“You’re up! Congratulations!”
David gave Stern an unimpressed look, but Stern’s smile grew, and he clapped David on the shoulder.
“C’mon, this is great! Wait, what are you doing?”
David started donning his armor. He looked down, and instead of padding poking through ragged holes, there was the same careful stitchwork that was now embedded in his thigh.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” he said in an absent voice as he traced the longest stitch with his fingertip.
“Are you sure you’re up to travel?” Stern said. “We have enough food to stay for a while longer.”
David looked up and saw Stern’s brows furrow. He made eye contact just long enough to notice Stern’s eyes were brown.
“I just want to get out of this dump,” he said, looking away and stooping to grab his pack.
“Fair enough,” Stern chuckled.
Chapter 3
Summary:
David and Stern leave for Lafayette. They see something strange on the road, and Stern tells David about himself.
Chapter Text
They headed out almost an hour and a half later, since Stern insisted on one last sweep of the neighborhood, though he didn’t find anything worth keeping. On their way out, they passed the house where they’d encountered each other the previous evening. It was charred and half-collapsed, and the neighboring houses had scorch marks. The lawn was blackened and strewn with zombie corpses, which radiated a stench that made them both gag.
By the time they left the neighborhood, it was even muggier outside than yesterday, with nary a cloud or a breeze to relieve the heat. Whenever possible, they walked under trees, but sometimes there was no shade to be found, especially whenever they crossed a highway, cracked and warped by weather and tree roots. Those times, David felt the road’s heat through his soles, see the air shimmering over the asphalt.
Because David couldn’t walk for long without leaning on Stern, they traveled at a crawl, stopping frequently to sit in the shade and sip water. Stern talked seemingly nonstop, but it took all of David’s energy just to put one foot in front of the other, so Stern’s voice faded into background noise, blending with the blaring cicadas. After receiving a few delayed grunts as responses to questions, Stern at least stopped expecting David to say anything and seemed content to chatter to himself. David only spoke to shush him when he got too excitable and his voice carried too far.
By the time the shadows were getting long, they had turned away from the southern route David knew well onto the less-familiar route to Lafayette. Soon after, they encountered their first zombie, a hunched figure in tattered floral prints, tottering along the roadside with a slack jaw and glassy eyes. They moved downwind of the zombie and gave it a wide berth, walking with soft steps.
“Hey, do you hear that?” Stern whispered.
David listened. In the direction they came from, there was the distant rumble of an engine. He looked, and there was a red pickup and a white box truck approaching a way down the road. He heard rustling behind him and turned back to see Stern scrambling into the undergrowth off the side of the road. David followed.
It had been a while since he’d seen a working vehicle. Generally, if you saw one on the road, it was Family, or maybe a convoy travelling between US-governed cities. Most of the time, they ignored pedestrians, but it was still better to just hide if someone drove by. They might mistake you for a zombie and shoot you, kidnap you and force you to work for them, or kill you just for fun.
David and Stern flattened themselves on the ground as the trucks approached and, to David’s surprise, slowed to a stop. They had the red and yellow symbol of the Taylor Family spray painted on the sides. David hadn’t encountered them much, he knew they had a penchant for pillaging–absorbing, as they’d say–peaceful, isolated settlements. One usually saw them further north, but he’d seen them on this southern road plenty of times.
First, he heard banging sounds and horribly familiar groaning from the back of the box truck. Then, he heard talking inside the red pickup.
“We don’t have room for this one, let’s just go.”
“He specifically asked for ’a variety of demographics’, and I don’t think we got any old people.”
“Fuck’s sake. Fine. But if it takes more than like, five minutes, I’m shooting her and leaving her behind.”
David heard a slap of flesh against glass and a high-pitched snarl, immediately followed by a yelp and an annoyed “Jesus…”
A figure, who appeared to be a woman, stepped out of the passenger side of the truck, dressed in full armor with a patch on the breast depicting a flaming skull. She held a pair of catch poles in her hand.
Beside David, Stern raised his head and sucked in a breath, disturbing the underbrush. The woman whipped her head around. Stern ducked down, and David held his breath, wishing he could smack Stern for being so stupid.
“Watch out, she’s coming around,” shouted the box truck driver out the window.
The woman turned back to face the zombie as it rounded the front of the truck. She stepped up into the truck bed and waited for the zombie to get close. Then, in one swift motion, she looped the snare around the zombie’s neck.
“She’s collared,” the woman said.
The man driving the red truck stepped out and jogged around to where the zombie was. The woman tossed him one of the catch poles, and he started prodding the zombie’s ankles, trying to slip the loop around its ankle as it shifted its feet.
“If you don’t hurry the fuck up, I’m leaving without you.”
“Just give me a damn minute…”
The man finally managed to loop the snare around the zombie’s ankle.
“Got it,” he said.
“All right Mike, we’re ready,” the woman said.
The box truck driver hopped out and pulled something out of the cab. David couldn’t see what it was, but it clattered as it came out. He looked down the road and saw a zombie in the distance, shambling toward all the noise.
There was more clanking, and the man clambered onto the roof of the box truck, pulling a ladder up after him. With much grunting, he lifted and swung the ladder over to form a ramp to the red truck’s bed. Then he opened a hatch in the top of the box truck, releasing the sounds of zombies. What followed was a complicated struggle to lift the old woman zombie into the red truck’s bed, up to the roof of the box truck, and then down into the hatch, all while the humans huffed and swore. The old woman zombie writhed and screamed and gnashed its teeth, and David watched the zombie down the road come closer, followed by a few more.
Finally, they shoved the zombie inside and slammed the hatch door after her. Dusk was upon them by this time. The figures clambered down, climbed back into the truck cabs, and drove off. Once they were out of sight, David and Stern finally stood, brushing dirt, leaves, and ants off of themselves.
David turned to Stern, ready to reprimand him for almost giving them away, or warn them of the approaching zombies, or comment on the strangeness of what they just saw, something. Instead, Stern spoke first, almost to himself.
“The hell are they doing? She never told me about anything like this.”
“What did you just say?”
Stern tensed. David could barely see Stern’s face through the helmet he wore, but he could just imagine a sheepish grimace underneath, with shifty eyes darting back and forth. Stern cleared his throat and gestured over David’s shoulder.
“We should take care of these guys,” he said. He stepped toward the approaching zombies, but David stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“Hold on…”
“Y’know, I thought you’d never ask about my backstory, but I really think we should be more concerned about those guys right now,” Stern said, pointing over David’s shoulder.
Unfortunately, he had a point. David huffed a breath out his nostrils.
“Fine. It’s getting dark, and there are probably more on the way, with all the noise those Taylors made. We should find somewhere to camp. If we keep going, we should be able to stay ahead of them.”
Stern shrugged and saluted.
“Aye aye, Captain.”
They walked until the sun had completely set, leaving them to navigate by moonlight and Stern’s flashlight, using only sound to judge how far behind the zombies were. David shivered in the night air, even as he sweated inside his armor. His muscles and joints ached more than ever, and because they weren’t taking breaks anymore, his throat burned. He grunted in pain with every step he took.
Finally, the trees cleared, and they approached a developed section of road with a strip mall perfect for camping. They entered a department store, and in the back, they found a spiral staircase leading to a hatch marked “Roof Access”. Stern led the way, shoving open the hatch with a grunt. David watched as Stern threw his pack up, hoisted himself up, then extended his hand down. David climbed two steps then slid, banging his bad leg against the rails. He swore and gritted his teeth against the throbbing pain, tuning out whatever encouraging babble Stern spoke to him. He stepped up, took Stern’s hand, and in a moment, he was breathing fresh air.
While Stern slammed the hatch shut, David slumped to the ground and laid on his back. Apart from the occasional, distant growl from below, it was an objectively lovely night. The sky was clear except for a few clouds, gleaming with the silvery full moon. He never saw so many stars living all those years in the city. That frigid first winter after fleeing Detroit, as civilization lost its battle against chaos, he’d marveled at the stars through his car’s sunroof. He’d huddled close to Naomi and Jessie, pointing out the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, any other constellation he recognized. For just a moment, their faces had looked a little less haggard, a little less drawn and sorrowful. But now, after almost five years of them, David didn’t find the night skies particularly impressive anymore.
Even so, he watched the sky, and despite the pain, David drifted into half-consciousness. He had a vague memory of wind blowing, Stern swearing, and something flapping, but he didn’t emerge from his stupor until Stern shook him awake.
“Oh good, you’re not dead,” Stern said. “Sorry to wake you, but I set up the tent, and I figured you’d be more comfortable in there.”
David could only grunt in response.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” Stern said.
David crawled into the tent, propelled half on his own hands and knees, half by Stern dragging him inside.
The tent was frayed and smelled musty, and the flannel blanket lining the bottom barely relieved the hardness of the rooftop concrete, smelling unwashed to boot. David still felt his body relax, just a little, now that he was sheltered.
“All right, I want to look at that wound again, then I’ll take first watch, okay?” Stern said.
David just hummed a sleepy “mmm hmm.”
“Cool,” Stern said. He shifted and cleared his throat. “I, uh, kinda need those pants off.”
David slowly started removing his padded pants, rolling back and forth to try and pull them down his hips while exerting as little energy as possible. After a moment of awkward dawdling, Stern finally helped, pulling the padded pants off the rest of the way while David held secure the thinner pants he wore underneath.
Stern shone his light on the wound, grimacing and inhaling through his teeth. David stared with dull fascination as blood oozed from broken stitches and painted a line down the side of his thigh.
“Oh man,” Stern said, dragging his free hand across his brow. “Did this happen just a little bit ago, when you were coming up those steps? Or did it feel bad before?”
David shrugged and grunted the “I don’t know” cadence. To answer the question, he’d have to think, have to push through the oppressive haze of current and remembered pain.
“Yeah, fair,” Stern said, running his fingers through his hair and shaking his head. He looked at David with cloying, humiliating pity in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, we should never have left the house with you in this condition.”
David wondered how Stern could have possibly kept him in the house against his will. Tying him to the bed again? Pointing a gun at him? Sitting on him? The mental image might have been funny were he not so exhausted.
He watched Stern as he stooped to get a closer look, brow crinkling in concentration, bent close enough to David’s leg that he could feel breath skating across his skin. His leg muscles twitched with the effort to not squirm, all the more because he couldn’t, not without kneeing Stern in the face. It wasn’t just the pain, which was significant, or the physical proximity, which was surreal. It was that this guy was getting under David’s skin, acting all dopey and friendly as if he was supposed to buy that schtick, as if anyone could have survived the last five years acting like that.
“How d’you know the Taylors?” David asked.
To his satisfaction, Stern froze at the question. He winced, sat up, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Ah, right, I forgot that I’d let that slip. I never was good at keeping my damn mouth shut. They said they didn’t want me on missions because, y’know, it’s not a good idea to put your doctor in danger.”
Stern set down the flashlight and leaned out of the tent for a moment. David smelled soap and heard the trickle of water.
“But, I think the real reason they didn’t let me off my leash was because they thought I’d blab all our secrets to other Families, which isn’t totally fair, by the way,” Stern said as he leaned back inside with a grunt. “I only messed up once. I was drunk, I didn’t know she was a Wilson, and it wasn’t even that big of a secret, but god, they never let me forget it.”
David heard rummaging, then saw the light scatter as it reflected off crumpled plastic.
“Here, drink this,” Stern said. David barely had time to grasp the water bottle and take a sip before Stern held out the flashlight and said, “Hold this for me, would you?”
David obeyed, though the heft of the flashlight surprised him. With an aching arm, he held the light steady for Stern.
“Anyway,” Stern began, balling up the bandage and using it to dab pus out of the wound, “to answer your question, my brothers and I were travelling from a camp outside Detroit to…I don’t remember, some camp in The Region, I think. We got stranded on the way, and luckily, the Taylors found us not long after that. Not only did they not try to kill us or steal our stuff, they even offered to help us out. So, y’know, we figured we should join them. They have supplies, they have numbers, they’re not insane; all around, it was a way better situation than trying to live off of what we could scavenge in the winter.”
Stern rinsed the wound with water, then applied some vaseline. When he brought out a needle and fishing line out of his pack, David held out a hand.
“I need a drink before you do that.”
“I don’t think that’s—“
“You have alcohol. I saw you swipe a bottle from downstairs.”
“You’re dehydrated and underfed.”
“Now.”
“Fine,” Stern grumbled. “But I get the first sip.”
Stern reached into his pack and brought out a red-and-green-striped bottle. He twisted it open, took a sip, and immediately gagged. After wiping his lips with his sleeve, he handed the bottle to David.
“I’m sure it will surprise you to know there were a bunch of those still on the shelves downstairs,” he said.
An overbearing mint scent assaulted David’s nose as he brought the bottle to his lips, trying not to think too hard about Stern drinking from the same bottle just moments before. Those thoughts evaporated as the smell collided with the taste of strong, cheap alcohol.
“I know, isn’t it awful?” Stern said, unable to repress laughter.
David coughed. He was already lightheaded and his throat burned, but he took another drink anyway.
“Yeah, that stayed on the shelf for a reason,” he said. He rotated the bottle in his hand and read “Peppermint Schnapps” on a label decorated with images of holly and candy canes. “Tastes like elf piss.”
Stern was silent for a beat, then let out a bark of laughter.
“It wasn’t that funny.”
“I don’t know, it’s pretty funny to learn that ‘elf piss’ is your idea of humor,” Stern said. He took the bottle back and had another sip. “So evocative…yet so correct.”
He cleared his throat, set down the bottle, and began threading the needle, eyes scrunched in concentration.
“Anyway,” he said, huffing out the last of his laughter, “I’m honestly a little surprised you haven’t joined up with a Family. Any of them would shell out all sorts of resources to keep someone as good at killing zombies as you are.”
David made a low noise of disgust and rolled his eyes.
“Fuck the Families,” he growled. “They wouldn’t save a dying child that wasn’t one of theirs. Hell, some of them kill children themselves. They can rot for all I care. No offense,” he added with little remorse.
Stern’s smile dropped. He at least had the decency to look abashed.
“I think that’s the most animated I’ve seen you,” he said with a weak chuckle. “To be fair though, most of them aren’t of the child-killing variety.”
David snorted.
“The rest are pretending to be cops or some shit. Or they’re bandits, like the Taylors.” He paused to give Stern a pointed stare. “Though it wouldn’t surprise me if–gah!”
He inhaled with a hiss as Stern stabbed him in the leg.
“Sorry,” Stern said with a guilty giggle. “I thought it’d be better if I started when you weren’t expecting it.”
Stern finished the first stitch, and David breathed hard through his nose. The wound throbbed, but the strange sensation of the fishing line passing through his skin was almost worse. He took another swig of the schnapps and coughed. Because he was laying down and had only one hand free, the sip was sloppy, half of it trickling into his beard.
“Hey, hold the light still, please,” Stern said. David set down the bottle and used his free arm to help keep the flashlight steady. As Stern started the second stitch, David gritted his teeth against the searing pain and a flash of nausea.
“So, you’re not wrong about the Families,” Stern said as he pulled the line taut, “but if you joined up with one, you probably wouldn’t be…” He paused to wave his free hand up and down David’s body. “...like this. At least the Taylors had resources.”
“Yeah, well,” David began, wiping sweat from his brow and releasing a shaky exhale, “unless they can raise the dead, they don’t have anything I want.”
Stern frowned and gave David a sidelong glance, one that is entirely too knowing for David’s liking.
“I’m sorry,” Stern began. His voice was so low and gentle David was tempted to let it lull him to sleep right then and there, even if it dripped with sickening sentimentality. “I know we’ve all lost–”
“If the Taylors are so great,” David interrupted, wincing at how overly loud his voice came out, “why aren’t you with them?”
Stern huffed a small chuckle.
“Fair enough,” he said. “My brothers are in New Lou, so after Lafayette, I’m going to join back up with them.”
David had been to New Lou several times. A year or two after the apocalypse, a settlement had sprung up just northeast of Louisville on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, and it had grown to be one of the largest neutral, independent cities in the Midwest. Of course, the reason it was so successful is that it was full of Families who’d decided that commerce would serve them better than warfare, at least while inside the city walls.
“You’re not with them?” David slurred.
“We, uh, well,” Stern dithered as he started a third stitch. David splayed his hand on the ground as it heaved underneath him. “When they discovered the extent of the Taylors’...unsavory activities, we didn’t see eye-to-eye on what to do about it. They were adamant about leaving, I was adamant about staying, so that’s what we did.”
“You just let them go?” asked David, incredulous.
“Okay, you’re not doing a good job of keeping the light steady,” Stern said, gently taking the flashlight from David and squeezing it between his neck and shoulder. David jiggled his arm, sighing with relief.
Stern was silent for a moment that felt to David like minutes. He finished the stitch and dabbed away some oozing pus.
“I know how it sounds, but not all Taylors are like that,” he finally said. “There are kids, you know? Kids and grandmas and ordinary people, people who aren’t in the inner circle and aren’t making any of these decisions. What good is it to take a moral stance if it leaves these people without a doctor? One of the women was about to have a baby, for god’s sake.
“But, uh, well,” Stern continued with a rueful chuckle, “as it turned out, it proved a bit difficult to keep pretending I didn’t know what we were doing to get our supplies.”
David watched Stern’s face. He remembered not sleeping after the first time he robbed someone for food, and he remembered Stern this morning, smiling with dark circles under his eyes.
Stern made the fourth stitch, and David let out a drawn-out groan.
“One last time, okay? You’re doing great.”
David breathed hard through his nose during the last stitch. He could feel the sweat rolling off his forehead, and he clenched his jaw shut, focusing all his remaining energy toward not throwing up.
“There we go, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
David turned onto his side and stretched to try and get his head out of the tent, but he didn’t quite manage it. He threw up half in the tent, half out.
“Ope, okay, that’s it, get it out,” Stern said.
David flinched when Stern’s hand came to rest between his shoulder blades, but he didn’t shake him off.
When David’s full-body shivers finally subsided, he rolled back over. He looked at the mess he’d made and hovered his hands over the soiled blanket. His brain was too fuzzy to do anything, but he felt like he should do something .
“Hey, hey, don’t worry about it. Just keep drinking,” Stern said, gesturing to the water bottle still lying next to David. “Trust me, that blanket’s seen worse,” he added with a crooked smile.
Unbidden, images of mud, blood, and other sordid messes crossed David’s mind as he sipped the water. Meanwhile, Stern unbuckled his chest armor.
“Ow, ow, armor chafe,” he hissed.
Stern ripped away another strip of fabric from his already short shirt, leaving him practically with just a neckhole and sleeves. He paused and looked at David, his eyes twinkling.
“What, is this funny to you?” Stern said with furrowed brows and a faux-serious tone, trying and failing to keep a straight face.
David hadn’t even realized he was smiling.
“You look ridiculous,” he said.
“I don’t know, I think I pull it off.”
He flexed and posed, which was lame and not funny at all, but David laughed anyway. It was weak, no more than a chuckle, and he felt out of breath doing it, but he couldn’t stop. God, it felt good. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.
Stern laughed right along with him. He removed what little remained of his shirt, and David’s gaze fell into the dip in Stern’s clavicle where shadows pooled.
Once the laughter faded, he laid his head back and let the world swim away, aware only of Stern beside him, tying the new bandage, and then cleaning the blanket. The last thing he remembered was Stern leaving the tent, leaving a chill breeze to rush into the space he left behind.
GLXYQST on Chapter 1 Thu 26 Sep 2024 07:27AM UTC
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ZeliaTascho on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Oct 2024 09:15PM UTC
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No_One_of_Consequence on Chapter 1 Wed 18 Dec 2024 01:09AM UTC
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No_One_of_Consequence on Chapter 1 Thu 16 Jan 2025 12:38AM UTC
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ToastAye on Chapter 2 Wed 29 Jan 2025 09:50AM UTC
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kathryn_the_crooked on Chapter 2 Wed 29 Jan 2025 01:33PM UTC
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ZeliaTascho on Chapter 2 Wed 29 Jan 2025 10:58AM UTC
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GLXYQST on Chapter 2 Wed 29 Jan 2025 10:33PM UTC
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GLXYQST on Chapter 3 Fri 31 Jan 2025 12:12PM UTC
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ZeliaTascho on Chapter 3 Sat 01 Feb 2025 03:20AM UTC
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CptJH on Chapter 3 Sat 01 Feb 2025 08:39AM UTC
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No_One_of_Consequence on Chapter 3 Sat 01 Feb 2025 02:53PM UTC
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vampyrl0ser on Chapter 3 Sat 08 Feb 2025 06:51AM UTC
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AlecTheWreck on Chapter 3 Wed 17 Sep 2025 03:49AM UTC
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