As Phil watched the orange sun slowly make its way past the mountainous horizon, turning the clouds pink and orange and blue with shadows and light, he could almost believe that everything was normal. He could almost believe, if he focused on nothing else, that he was back in London with Dan, watching the sun sink past the tall buildings and thick clouds- he could almost believe he was safe.
But this wasn't London, and they weren't safe. The only familiarity in this place was Dan's warm hand, clutched between both of Phil's, and the sound of Dan's breathing sending puffs of white into the cold air. Pulling his knees further against his chest and shuffling closer to Dan on the smooth, soft grass of their hill, Phil wondered how the world had turned so shitty so fast. Less than two months ago, he'd have been snuggled on the couch with his boyfriend, watching Friends reruns and enjoying the sense of home, of comfort.
Now, everything was on its head.
Just over a month ago, news of a volatile new brain parasite began to spread across the globe. First dismissed as rumours from the Internet blown out of proportion, it quickly moved up the priority scale to a global epidemic. Those infected turned vicious and unstable, attacking anything that was alive and in their immediate vicinity. The disease seemed to be spread through saliva, each bite infecting a new victim.
The 'zombies' grew in number, ripping through towns and forming hunting packs. The Internet was no longer working, and countries across the world were in anarchy, the structures of society in ruins.
When the pandemic began, Dan and Phil were on holiday in America- when international travel was prohibited, they were trapped. They were currently stuck in a small town in Alabama- Monroeville, Phil thought it was called. The town was mostly empty now, the residents killed or Turned.
Phil was ripped from his memories by Dan shaking his shoulder and pointing to a copse of trees behind them, from which an awful, familiar gurgle was being emitted. By the noise, Phil estimated there were around four, maybe five. Dan scrambled up and reached down to help Phil rise to his hole-filled-Converse clad feet.
Phil fumbled with the gun stuck through his belt and loaded it, pointing it at the trees. He heard clicks as Dan did the same. Although they weren't the zombie-fighting dream team- they were two nerdy boys from London, for christ's sake- they'd quickly learned how to work a gun.
After a minute of painful waiting, four bedraggled, emaciated people stumbled out of the trees with a rustle. Their faces were grotesque, empty eyes with their separated pupils like drops of oil in water, grey complexions and lank hair, blood staining their hands, clothes and mouths.
Before Phil reacted, there was a bang from beside him as Dan fired at the closest, a middle-aged man with his right cheek half ripped away, exposing teeth and rotting gums. It fell with a scream, then lay still on the ground. His companions glanced briefly at their fallen packmate, before looking back up at the boys. A silent signal passed between the trio, and they charged.
But something was wrong.
Usually the zombies were slow and lumbering, their limbs stuff and unresponsive. These ones tore across the twenty metres separating them with a shriek, shocking both Phil and Dan into stillness for a millisecond.
How were they so fast?
Another shriek from a female zombie snapped him from his trance and he shot her in the face as she was about to launch herself at him. She crumpled soundlessly to the grass. He glanced to the side to see Dan with the remaining two monsters flanking him, readying themselves to spring. He aimed his weapon at the one nearest him, hesitating for fear of hitting Dan. The zombie took the opportunity to jump, lunging at Phil's boyfriend as he was occupied with the other. As the thing reached Dan, Phil fired and it dropped like a stone, its sore-covered, bald head thumping onto the dirt.
As Phil refocused on Dan, he felt all his organs drop through the ground and into the core of the earth, his throat and mouth drying instantly. Dan's zombie had managed to get past the bullets being hurled at it and had his boyfriend on the ground, pinning his arms with its own and crouching on his chest to leer at him with its cracked yellow teeth and black gums. It stared down at him for another second, Phil standing paralysed and useless to the side- hating himself for every millisecond he spent rigid- before it snarled and whipped its head down towards Dan's throat to take a bite.
Suddenly Phil's muscles responded to his desperate efforts to move and he raised the gun, ignoring the panicked part of his brain warning him that he could hit Dan if he missed and squeezing the trigger. There was a bang and the infected corpse flew from Dan's chest with an angry scream. Phil shot it again and it slumped like the others. He ran to his groaning boyfriend, relief flooding through him.
The relief was quickly replaced again with devastation and panic. Two opposite crescent-shaped marks marred the skin of Dan's neck. Tendrils of greenish black spread under the pale skin from the wound, the virus working its way through his boyfriend's system. Phil could hear more zombies making their way through the trees, probably having heard the gunshots and screams of their brethren.
Phil squinted at a nearby cottage with bars over the windows, trying to see if anyone was there. It looked empty and the door was solid, so he decided to opt for that. With a grunt he grabbed Dan by the armpits and pulled him up as gently as possible while hurrying- the shuffling and moaning in the trees was getting louder every second and it seemed to Phil like it was a bigger group this time, maybe ten or fifteen.
As he helped the taller boy arrange his arm around Phil's shoulder and place his feet on the ground, the groaning increased and Phil's estimate of ten changed to twenty. He quickly began to half-carry, half-drag Dan towards the low stone building at least ten metres from them. He tried not to worry about the possibility of Dan changing and leaving Phil alone in this hellhole. Most people didn't Turn from a single bite, and that was all Dan had gotten. Maybe he'd be lucky.
They reached the cottage, its cheerful red door unlocked and slightly ajar. Phil toed it further open and rushed inside, twisting the deadbolt and the lock. He decided the best thing would be to look for somewhere to lie Dan down, a bedroom or couch. An intricately carved archway led to a dark, cold room. Phil headed there to check for a sofa or an armchair or something- Dan was becoming limp and pale, sweat beading on his forehead.
He leaned Dan against the wall and went through the arch, immediately feeling bile rise in his throat at the horror in front of him.
Blood stained the floors, walls and furniture. The sofa was ripped to shreds, and what looked like a young child's hand peeked out from under the coffee table. Phil diverted his gaze away from it. The body of a man was shoved into the fireplace, his neck bent at a wrong angle and his legs stretching up to rest on his shoulders. A young woman lay on the ground, her body impaled with at least four fire pokers pinning her to the carpet like a taxidermy butterfly. Abruptly Phil turned and emptied his stomach into a potted plant by the barred window. Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his jumper, he staggered back to the hallway, grabbing Dan the same way as before and advancing through the house, trying not to let the image of the child's hand consume his thoughts.
As Phil looked for a bedroom, he was startled by a harsh, hacking cough racking his boyfriend's body with tremors, his mouth beginning to foam, eyes rolling back into his skull.
How could this be happening? Phil was sure you couldn't change from just one bite, he'd seen plenty of people get bit once and be fine, back when they were with PJ and Chris and the rest- before they'd been split up. He wasn't sure what had happened to the rest of their group except that Chris and Peej had left together, the same as Dan and Phil had.
He quickly found the master bedroom, its pastel curtains, floral wallpaper and neat bedspread contrasting sharply with the devastating scene in the living room. Phil arranged Dan against the pillows as he spasmed and whimpered, his dark hair drenched with sweat. Trying to comfort his unresponsive boyfriend, Phil stroked his hair and pulled him onto his lap, rocking back and forth as though he was holding a three-month-old baby rather than a twenty-three-year-old man.
Dan let out a rattling gasp and gripped Phil's jumper in one hand, seeming to be trying to talk through the coughs and foaming. Phil looked down at him eagerly, thinking that his ordeal might be over, that he was starting to improve. His hope drained away as he saw the glazed look in Dan's chocolatey eyes, his pupils dilating and beginning to split apart. Dan coughed again, then spoke in a ragged, desperate rasp, as though it was the last thing he'd ever say. Phil refused to think about the fact that it might well be.
"Phil. Phil, I need you to listen to me. It's going to happen, I can feel it. I guess my brilliant luck is carrying on through the apocalypse..."
Dan let out a low, mirthless chuckle.
"I know this is hard, and I know I'm a selfish dick for asking this, because it will destroy you, but-"
Phil opened his mouth to say something, but he was shushed.
"Phil, I need you to kill me."
"No." The words were out before Phil knew they were in his head.
"If you ever loved me, Phil, please. I don't want to become one of them."
Anger suddenly flooded Phil- anger towards the creature that had destroyed Dan; anger at himself for letting it happen, for standing there useless with a gun in his hand as his boyfriend was attacked; anger at Dan for giving up so easily. Anger at the world, for becoming what it was.
But he knew that he couldn't forgive himself for letting Dan suffer, descending into madness as his last tiny particle of sanity screamed at himself to stop, to not hurt anyone. Taking a shaky, icy cold breath, he steeled himself.
"Okay."
With a bitter tang in his mouth he realised they couldn't even kiss goodbye without spreading the disease to Phil. Another set of spasms coursed through Dan's lanky form and they intertwined their cold fingers as Phil pulled his gun from the waist of his jeans. Dan was muttering things to him- his curly brown hair mixing with Phil's black-with-ginger-roots- telling him that he was going to miss him; he wasn't angry; he loved him, he loved him, he loved him. The words changed nothing.
Lifting the gun to Dan's temple, Phil closed his eyes.
Bang.
After a full two minutes of cradling Dan's body with tears leaking in a stream from under Phil's tightly shut eyelids, he cracked his eyes open. A fresh sob burst from Phil's chest at the sight of Dan's hobbity dark hair matted with blood, his eyes vacant and stained with the dark green sludge previously making its way through his circulatory system. Gently he waved a hand over his boyfriend's eyes to shut the lids, the lavender-webbed veils masking his blank, cold stare. Closing his eyes again, Phil clutched Dan to him, his skin still soft and warm, still Dan. But not. Dan was dead.
A small voice spoke in his head. Dan's dead, it told him. I know. Phil replied.
There's a corpse in this bed, and you put it there.
I know.
The voice carried on relentlessly, reminding Phil that if he hadn't have just stood there while the zombie attacked, Dan would still be alive and with him, not a pale and still body laid on someone else's bed. When Phil was ready to scream out loud at the voice to stop, to just shut up, a soft rustling came from the door to what Phil guessed was an ensuite bathroom. He knows he should be scared, but right now he feels numb. He looks away from the door and curls into the blankets, sick of dealing with the world.
A minute passes before he hears a click and a creak as the door opens. Then there was silence before a deranged chuckle floated through the still air of the room. Phil almost smiled; the laugh almost sounded like Chris' did. The floorboards creak as footsteps come towards him, then a peculiar dragging noise, like someone was pulling a duffel bag full of potatoes across the floor with them. Phil decides that he needs to look and rolls over.
A young guy in his twenties with dull brown hair- swept to the side like Phil's- stood about four metres from the bed. His eyes looked as if they'd once been a pretty olive green, but now they were partially obscured by a milky haze. A dribble of black blood trickled from his mouth as he continued to grin. His skin is grey and flakey, his lips chapped, but Phil knows who it is.
It's Chris.
Phil made a harsh choking noise as he recognised his friend, feeling like he needed to throw up again. Had Chris done that to the family in the living room? Was he the only zombie in the house, or were there more? How did he get in? He looked past Chris into the ensuite bathroom. The small window was smashed and smudged with black blood- he'd crawled through the only unbarred window in the house, apparently. The towels were spread on the floor to create a sort of seemed Chris had been living in this house for a pretty long time.
Chris laughed again and moved closer, that dragging noise coming again. Phil looked at Chris' feet- maybe he had a branch or a bag in his hand- and a little cry escaped him. Chris wasn't holding a duffel bag with potatoes in it at all.
PJ.
PJ was slumped on the floor, his right wrist gripped tightly in Chris' hand like a small child might hold a teddy bear. The wrist was bruised badly and looked broken, flopping uselessly in Chris' grip. Phil held out some hope that PJ was alive, maybe just passed out. His hope quickly died when Chris pulled him up a little further and his head flopped back to reveal a shredded throat, old blood dried messily across his shirt and neck. Phil vomited over the side of the bed, retching up bile and the last of his stomach contents.
Chris cocked his head at Phil, his ever-present smile, once a welcome beam of hope in the festering hellhole that was the world, was now a grotesque caricature of human happiness on a creature that no longer knew what emotion was. With his milky green eyes still locked on Phil's blue ones, Chris crouched down and gently placed PJ's bruise-blackened arm on the floor and ran a bloody, shaky hand through his curly hair, almost lovingly. Then he straightened to look at Phil and advanced.
Phil quickly reached for the gun that was still sitting on the bedcovers from earlier, aiming it at his friend's head and, wincing, pulled the trigger. There was a hollow click as he realised that there were no bullets left. Hurriedly he shoved his hand into the back pocket of his jeans, trying to reach the box of ammunition. Chris took another step, then tensed to spring, wriggling himself like a puppy wrestling with its owner. Phil looked past Dan's pale body to the doorway and saw the small box lying there innocently on the ground. As he was halfway through a string of mental insults targeted at himself for being as stupid as to drop the freaking ammo, he felt Chris' weight on him and he fell back, his head on Dan's still chest.
Above him, Chris pinned him down with his knees on Phil's legs and his hands on his shoulders. He produced another deranged chuckle that was so similar to his old one and lunged for his throat, looking to tear it out as he had PJ's. Phil couldn't find it in him to squirm, to get away. He was just so tired. Dan was gone, the world was dying, he was alone in a country that wasn't his own. He saw Chris coming closer, felt his cold, wet mouth over his throat, and a searing pain accompanied with a wet tearing. Then he was choking, blood flowing from his mouth and nose.
Darkness enveloped him like an embrace.
Days later, two grey-skinned, slouching Infecteds could be seen shuffling through the deserted streets of Mornoeville, one with cloudy eyes that had once been a deep green, the other's a pale, startling blue, glazed over with the vacancy of death.
Behind them, dragging from the hands of the Infecteds by limp wrists, were two more boys. The first had dried blood soaked down the front of his neck and white button down, his throat shredded. Meanwhile, the other was held by the blue-eyed Infected. Dan's head was half blown away, his skull split open. Grey and red mixed across what was left of his face, but his eyes were closed peacefully, his mouth relaxed, as though he was content with the world.