Dying. Nick knew he was dying. In the past two years it was something he had thought about a lot, not wanting to die of course, but just death itself. He was surrounded by it, the world had been consumed by it in what felt like a flash. One day he and Luke had been trying to fix up some old beater, Nick doing the majority of the work and teasing his friend for being "some kinda arsty fartsy pretty boy", with Luke acting annoyed but grinning in that way he had. Then came the whispers on the news, the talk of some sort of fever, comparable to a strain of rabies perhaps, but nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about quickly turned to: worry! Worry now! The dam had broke and the population of diseased people roaming the streets bloomed and exploded so quickly even the military had been unable to stop it. If it hadn't been for Pete, Nick, his mother, and Luke would never had made it out of the city alive. He'd come chugging up the driveway in his old pickup armed to the teeth, and he shouted for them to come, and they went, and they couldn't stop for anyone. Pete...
It was hard to think about, painful, and so he tried not to. He needed to stay focused on the present, but everything felt sickeningly fast and slow at the same time, like when you're driving and you focus on the ground closest to the vehicle as you move. He blinked rapidly several times, trying to listen to Luke.
"... up. Please, c'mon, hush now," he hears his friend plead. He was knelt in front of Sarah and the young girl was completely shutting down. Nick hadn't seen her clam up like this in a long time, not since they had left Carver's that first time, and it didn't look like she was going to move anytime soon.
She was curled up with her knees drawn tightly to her chest and Nick thinks dumbly of a frightened caterpillar, the way they roll up in a ball and how you can't pry them apart without hurting them. Her glasses had fallen off somewhere, probably in the woods. The way she had been tearing through the brush, it had been a miracle she hadn't put out an eye or fallen and broken a limb. Twigs were sticking out of her hair and there was a decaying, wet leaf, stuck to her neck but she didn't seem to notice. She just kept her body tucked in a little ball and looked on ahead crying to herself, wailing at times.
"... girl. It's alright, we're gonna be alright, hear me? But you've gotta quiet down. Please," Luke continued in a low voice. He looked up to the doorway where Nick was leaning and clutching his shoulder, unable to support himself properly. Blood was seeping steadily through his fingers. "Jesus, Nick, you're..." Whatever Luke was going to say, he seemed to think better of it. "Just sit down and try to take it easy."
"I'm good. I'm good," Nick said, but adrenaline was making his voice jump and waver. He shrugged himself off the wall to illustrate his good health and glanced behind him to the window. "Them things are getting closer."
"Yeah, yeah-" a sharp cry from Sarah cut Luke off and he raises his voice to speak. "We have to get to the museum, there's no way the others are gonna think to find us here. And- and I don't know how long they're willing to wait around so we really," this word came out sharply and he gave a meaningful look to the distraught Sarah before continuing. "We really, really, gotta get up and go. C'mon!"
Luke's nerves were slowly but surely turning his words of encouragement into demands and he was getting increasingly desperate. He reached out to Sarah to take her by the shoulder and haul her up, causing the young girl to yelp.
"No! Nonono, don't!" she screams. She jerked away from Luke and drew her knees even closer to her chest. She continued to sob and though before she was looking up, seemingly through Luke, she now refused to even look at the man. Her eyes remained downcast and swimming with tears and her breath catches in her throat. Her sobbing had increased tenfold and Luke looked back up to Nick, seeming helpless.
"Shit," Nick swore under his breath. He had no idea what to do. That was Luke's job, Luke always knew what to do, he could figure anything out. But that look he was giving him said otherwise. And that scared him. "Shit, ohoho, shit," he said louder as a wave of vertigo overtakes him.
He slouched against the door frame again and wiped at his slick forehead with his free hand, pushing his hat up on his head. He quickly readjusted it, pressing it down from the top of the bill until it rested in its usual position. The hand clutching his chest was sticky and warm with blood and it was still coming steadily despite the pressure he was trying to put on it.
Luke was on his feet now, pacing about the room. He stopped at the bedroom window and peered through the boards and let out a small hiss of frustration between his teeth. "They're not gonna be able to find us," he murmured. "Not with us waiting 'round here, they're not gonna... We need to move, and soon. Real damn soon. We need to move."
The dead outside were swarming closer and closer to the small trailer the trio were shut up inside, drawn by Sarah's sobbing. They were mindless, mindless and hungry, but they seemed to understand where there was noise, there was food. Luke took a step from the window and puts a hand briefly on his machete's hilt before letting go of it and bringing a hand to his face.
"No, no, that ain't gonna work," he groaned.
"What are we gonna do?" Nick asked, sounding faint. He drew a large, laboured breath and forced himself to meet Luke's eyes. "Think we can carry her?" He nodded his head to Sarah.
Luke shook his head, drumming his fingers nervously on the windowsill. "You can hardly walk, and I can't even get a hold of her without her freaking the fuck out."
Nick falls quiet for a beat, hushed by Luke's increasingly aggravated tone. He was clearly feeling trapped, trapped and fed up, but mostly afraid. "We can't just stay here," he announced, his voice raising over Sarah's loud sobs. It was obvious, it was ugly, it was the elephant in the room. "We can't just leave her... Right? Not alone."
"Suppose not," Luke grunted, but his shoulders tensed visibly at the notion. They could leave right now, before the dead closed around them. He and Nick could get away. Get Nick some proper bandages and try to stop the bleeding, meet back up with the others. But Sarah... Would there even be anything to come back to if they left? "But we have to get back to the others, I think Mike's got some medical supplies. We need to get you seen to proper, before..." he stopped talking and a muscle in his jaw twitched. "You're bleeding a lot."
"Aw, well. I don't feel too bad, all things considered," he lied. In truth he was feeling increasingly weak. Weak and cold, really cold. The tips of his fingers were numb and he could hardly move his toes inside his boots. "I don't think the bullet got anything too important, I'm still pretty and all that." He pushed himself off the wall again and did his best to look normal. Determined.
"I got a plan," he said, trying to steady the sickly waver in his voice. "I got a crazy dumb plan, but it's a plan. I'm gonna leave and-"
"Leave? Nick, goddamn! Man! You can hardly stand!" Luke interjected. Nick had expected as much and gave his friend an exasperated look.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" he exclaimed. "The others aren't gonna find us alone- you said so yourself! But listen, alright? I can go flag 'em down before those things outside get too close. There's too many for just us, but if we get some other people we can clear the way, get Sarah out of here. And if it's me that goes, I can get patched up. The woods ain't too far from here, meaning the others can't be too far neither. But I gotta go now, 'cause soon no one's gonna be able to get out of here."
Luke doesn't appear convinced. He took a step toward Nick and studied him closely, the trailer silent other than Sarah's crying and the growing moans of the dead outside. The trailer is dim but Nick can make out the glint of Luke's eyes as they dart around. "Alright," Luke said finally. "Alright. Go on. Go on then and be careful. Don't let them things see you."
"Same to you, man," Nick clapped Luke on the shoulder and gave it a small shake, forcing a grin. He was met with a similarly pained smile from Luke before he let go and set out through the trailer door.
Nick was still unsteady on his feet and he remained stunned on the trailer's deck, swaying slightly. The dead were coming from the side of the trailer, where the bedroom was and the sight of them stumbling towards him sets him in motion. He kept one hand clutched firmly to his chest and gripped the railing with the other as he walked down the steps. There were only five stairs but he clenched the railing so hard his fist trembled.
The others couldn't be too far, but that had only been half the reason he had left. He couldn't stay there in the trailer, not with Sarah and Luke, not when he was like this. Realistically, he knew he would more than likely not find them, and realistically he knew he was going to collapse soon. But he'd be damned if he collapsed in there, damned if he would force Luke to do what had been done to his mother.
To kill someone who was turned, someone you cared for was a jarring experience, no matter how much you tried to rationalize that they weren't the same person. Pete had told him time and time again that it hadn't been his mother that had launched herself at him, that there was no trace of her left in that corpse. That feral rage he had seen in her eyes hadn't been a rage he had seen in her before, but it had undeniably been her blue eyes glaring at him, had been her fingers and painted nails clawing out at him...
He had never been able to believe Pete, and had disregarded his advice on that matter as he did on so many other subjects. Pete had always spoken so sternly, so certainly, as though his word was law and him saying so made things so. It had always irked Nick. Advice he had never asked for and never wanted always seemed to pour from Pete; even when he was young Pete was there laying down discipline. At the time he had seen his uncle as a dictator, some kind of fascist, but it hadn't been until he was older that he realised the trouble Pete had steered him from. No matter how hard his words had been, they had been effective and what Nick had needed to grow as a person. Guidance, unwavering guidance, and Nick had never been able to thank him properly, he'd always been too prideful. Bull-headed, Pete had called him.
Taking those slow steps to the gate he saw before him, he can't help but think of Pete now and he can't help but wish he was still alive. There was a small hole perforating the chain linked fence and Nick wrapped his fingers through the links, bracing himself. The dead hadn't noticed him yet and with any luck he would be able to slip through. His vision swam before refocusing with a sharp, almost dreamlike clarity and he sees his own hand, every tendon taunt against the skin as he grips the fence, his knuckles white underneath the fine layer of grime. With a sharp grunt he pulled himself toward the fence's impromptu exit, lifting his left leg through the hole and using his arm to propel himself. The leg of his pants became snagged and he stayed, dangling there for a moment like bait on a fishing line, still clutching the fence.
Nick let go of his tight hold on the fence and allowed himself to fall backwards, landing harshly on his elbows. His hat dropped off his head, a sharp pain jolted up through his shoulders, and a white hot stab went through the bullet wound. He stayed on the ground on his back with one leg still up through the fence, staring up at the clouding winter sky. There wasn't much sun. It was grey, it was all grey, and the air carried a fresh chill that made him strangely nostalgic for home. His body wracked itself with a painful cough in an attempt to clear his throat and he closed his eyes for a moment. It would be easier to not get up. He was tired, so tired. He could hear more groaning and Sarah's continued cries behind him and he was tired.
The easy way isn't always the best way.
Pete's words spring into his mind unwillingly and they stayed there, rattling around until Nick pushed his free foot into the dirt and scuttled slowly backwards, sliding on his back. His trapped leg dropped free and he propped himself up on his uninjured side. The hat, the one he hadn't been seen without for years, was beside him in the dust and he picked it up, brushing a hand over its bill before securing it onto his head.
"I can do it, I got it, I got it," he muttered to himself. He crawled toward the fence on one hand and two knees and reached up, pulling himself up the fence with a loud rattle. A gray fog clouded his vision and he leaned his head on the fence, panting and trying to hold onto consciousness.
The chain links were cold against his cheek and for some reason it pops it his head not to lick them, because that one time when they were kids Luke, Nick had got his tongue stuck to a pole and ripped the skin right off it. Blood had poured from his mouth and Luke seemed sure he had no tongue left, and Nick could remember looking at those little bits of skin stuck to the metal, pale without any blood left underneath before running off to a neighbour's house for help. His hands looked like that now. Pale, like they were already dead. Not enough blood left in them. And like that winter all those years ago, he needed to go as fast as he could to go get help but he was hardly thinking straight.
Help, go get help. Or at least get as far away, go far as you can so you can't hurt no one, he thought. He put an arm through the fence, and then the other, no longer concerned with stopping the bleeding. It was too late for him, and he didn't want to hurt anyone, he just had to get away. The rattling fence had caught the attention of two nearby dead and they raised their dumb heads in his direction before beginning a slow shuffle over.
This encouraged Nick to go even faster, and he tried to move his leg through the hole but his leg didn't seem to want to budge. His eyelids felt heavy and it was hard to hear anything, there was a fog clouding his senses. He was too heavy to move, to even stay up, and he tumbled forward and his chest caught roughly on the fence's hole and he dangled there, head drooped to the ground. His hat began to slowly inch off his head. The world turned upside down and he was hearing underwater, seeing underwater, couldn't move. The hat flopped unceremoniously onto the ground and out of reaction he reaches out for it, but it's too far away. Frustrating.
The dead are moaning, crying- no, that's Sarah crying, but they're coming closer to the fence. Tangled, merely feet away from the trailer. He didn't get far. Luke could have gotten far, Pete could have, but he couldn't do it. Hearing the dead approaching, hearing the rattling breath, he closed his eyes and tried to let go, let go of the instinct to start kicking and screaming for help, because he knew Luke would be out there in a heartbeat. He'd get him out of the fence despite any personal risk. Nick wouldn't have to die in such horror with his weak but rapid heartbeat pounding in his skull and the groans of the dead filling his ears. He draws his mouth into a grim line and bites down sharply on his own lip, using the pain to subdue the shout bubbling up in his chest. That would be the easy way. And the easy way isn't always the best way.