Heartbeat
They've been in dozens of gunfights since the world keeled over and shit itself, fighting with tooth and nail and lead, holding onto what they have, defending each and every square inch with every drop of blood in their veins, every breath in their lungs. Every time they come home to the not-quite-mansion in the middle of the forest, Edvin yells at them while he patches them up, telling them they're fucking idiots (he's not all wrong) and that some barren scrap of meadow isn't worth their lives.
Hal listens and he waits until Edvin's shouted himself hoarse and Thorn is about to start and explains exactly why it is.
"People steer clear of madmen," he says, leaning forward in his chair, ignoring the zing of pain that flashes through his shoulder where the bullet grazed him. "And who else would risk life and limb over a barren scrap of meadow?"
The first time he said that he'd just come back from a patrol with Ulf and Wulf. Stig had punched him square in the jaw, called him an idiot, and they hadn't spoken for days — not until Hal had come to ask him if he wanted to come along on the next patrol.
Hal's not all there in the head, Stig's sure of that much. He comes up with goddamn crazy ideas that really shouldn't work (except somehow they do) for problems that definitely shouldn't exist (and yet they do because the world has officially gone to hell, what with the dead rising to walk the earth and all).
But he's kept them alive so far, so Stig is content to let him lead, even if he is insane. He's also not sure how he managed to fall in (it's not love, it's not, the world's too fucked up for that) whatever with this scrawny little idiot, but he's content to let that happen too.
It's another day, another patrol. Incursions on their territory — the border strung up with rope and barbed wire to make it clear — have become a lot less frequent. Occasionally, if it's a lone intruder who's only looking for a couple spare cans, Hal will cave and send them on their way. Somehow, the not-quite-mansion's livestock has managed to survive this long, so food isn't such a problem. Edvin and Lydia have even managed to get a small garden going in the backyard. Most of the time, though, it's an armed party, looking to steal or just plain take over.
The living dead aren't the problem out here. They're numerous and annoyingly fast, but Stefan's a good lookout and they recently got the walkie-talkies working again. No, out here, it's your fellow humans who will gun you down as soon as they see you — and that's if you're lucky. He's heard stories of worse. Lydia and Thorn have seen it firsthand.
Ahead of him, Hal stops walking so suddenly Stig almost runs into him. Stig opens his mouth to ask what the problem is when his (friend?) points through the trees.
Ah. Walkers. Zombies. The living dead. Whatever you wanted to call them, there were suddenly a lot of them in the forest.
They've almost certainly been spotted. There's no way they haven't — zombies might be stupid, but they aren't blind. It's daylight (leaving the not-quite-mansion at night is too risky for even Hal to consider), and they're standing like stunned ducks in the middle of a field with only meager barricades, erected after the first raid nearly got Jesper killed, for cover. The wire-and-wood fence is likely the only thing keeping them back, and that improvised defense won't last forever.
One of the zombies stumbles forward to claw experimentally at the fence. Without a word, Hal hefts the hunting rifle he's carrying to his shoulder and fires off a shot. The zombie falls back, twitches once, and lies still. A perfect kill.
"Nice shot," Stig comments. It's not that impressive, range-wise — the fence isn't more than forty yards away — but Hal had barely bothered to aim. It's just a little...well.
Hal just nods. "We need to get back." There's an edge to his words that makes Stig take a closer look at the forms in the trees. They're too still for zombies, he realizes.
"Goddamnit," he swears, stepping backward on pure instinct. They're not zombies, he realizes — they're actual dead corpses, on display for them to see. The one Hal shot — who knows? (Un)lucky survivor, or genuine zombie, he'll never know, and he doesn't really feel like wandering over there to check, not with a dozen corpses staring at him from those trees.
"Goddamnit," Hal echoes, with a faint quirk of his lips, and the word just doesn't sound right coming out of his mouth because Hal doesn't swear. He just doesn't.
Stig takes one hand off the submachine gun they stole off a dead army private back in the early days of this fuckery and reaches out to grab Hal's shoulder, pulling him back (he isn't moving fast enough, dammit, and he's getting that look on his face that says maybe he wants to go study the goddamn corpses or some stupid shit like that — just because he talks sense doesn't mean he acts sense — )
It only takes a heartbeat.
The bullet slams into Hal, throwing him to the ground with something that might have been a scream under better circumstances. Sniper, something in Stig's mind screams, his fingers tightening like a vise on Hal's shoulder as the smaller man falls, yanking him behind an old truck that's sunk into the ground, ignoring Hal's groans of pain.
Now that they're out of the line of fire, Stig can see the wound in Hal's chest. It's fucking ugly — blood is pooling underneath the smaller boy at a prodigious rate, and the bullet itself hit an inch below the heart. He's already mostly gone, eyes closed and breathing shallow. Stig rips off a piece of his shirt and hastily folds it into a square, pressing it into the wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.
A second shot rings out from the trees, slamming into the barricade. Stig flinches automatically, then risks a brief glance through the dirty glass window of the truck to look for the sniper, but there's nothing to be seen but corpses, corpses, corpses. Even if he could see them, Hal's rifle is lying where he dropped it — five feet out of cover — and Stig's submachine gun isn't accurate enough to hit whoever's shooting at them from the trees. Their only hope is to make it back to the house, but there's too much ground between here and there — they'll be shot down.
But if he doesn't try, Hal will bleed out here and now — if he hasn't already, a snide little voice adds. Stig shoves it forcefully to the side and narrows his eyes, judging distances and intervals as he tries to map a relatively safe path —
A third shot rings out and Stig howls in sudden agony as his ankle shatters and sends him falling backward; bone, muscle, and tendon rip apart as the bullet flies through the minuscule gap beneath the bottom of the truck and the ground, passing all the way through and buries itself in the dirt somewhere. It's enough to make Hal lift his head for a heartbeat before it drops back to his chest — which is suddenly far, far too still.
Wild panic surges up in Stig's chest and he throws himself towards Hal, ignoring the shriek of agony in his ankle, pressing his ear to Hal's chest and searching for a heartbeat that isn't there and never will be again.
It's only a heartbeat, Stig tells himself wildly, tears blurring his vision. It's only a heartbeat, we can still fix this — you can't die, you can't, please don't die, there's so much left —
Rough hands grab him from behind and pull him away, throwing him to the ground. He hits his head against something hard — a rock maybe, or someone's boot — and his vision swims. There's another gunshot, then a thump and the ice that settles over his heart tells him that if Hal wasn't dead already, he was now.
He wants to scream and rage and slaughter whoever these people are — not people, not to him, not anymore — but he can't move, no matter how much he tries. He can only lie there.
The sound of a gunshot echoes in his ears and his heartbeat stops abruptly.