„Astrid, watch out!"
She whirls around just in time to see the long, dirty fingernails and the black teeth come at her. In a reflex gained only by the need to survive in this post-apocalyptic world that is literally crawling with undead, slowly decaying monsters, she jumps back and swings her axe. The sharp blade already covered in blood and other, less liquid substances slices the arm aiming for her off neatly.
The creature stumbles slightly and shrieks, only thrown off-kilter for a short second, not long enough for Astrid to have time to retreat. Another clawed arm lunges at her and she ducks, barely avoiding the blow. She forcefully kicks at its shin and it falls, and Astrid brings her axe down into its skull. The ugly cracking sound has become music to Astrid's ears.
But she doesn't relish in her victory, because there are more of them. She looks over at Hiccup and her stomach drops when she sees him wrestling one. It tries to sink its teeth into his neck like a vampire, jaw open wide, teeth bared – but Hiccup is faster. He stabs his dagger into its throat, dark blood splattering on his jacket and face. Hiccup jabs at it again, twisting the dagger in the wound, until the beast falls to the ground.
A loud clatter behind them announces the next pack. They managed to tear down a fence, approaching their prey rapidly with inhuman cries and flailing limbs. The prey, however, tries to stay calm. Hiccup's eyes are scanning the vicinity, looking for a way out of the backyard they have inconveniently retreated into when the first pack noticed them.
Astrid attempts counting them, but more and more round the corner, following the sounds of the battle and the promise of live bodies to infect or tear apart. She swears, taking stance and readying her axe, considering pulling out her gun. But she's low on ammunition and wants to save the last bullets for emergencies.
"Over there!" Hiccup shouts and points to a garbage container in front of a chain-link fence in the corner of the yard. In the haste of the battle Astrid hasn't seen it before.
She sprints over to Hiccup, frantically trying to climb the container. If they make it up there, they can pull themselves up the rest of the fence and jump down on the other side.
A few old wooden planks are sticking out of the container, and Astrid uses one to hold onto while pulling herself up on the ledge. The first zombie makes a grab at her and she swings her axe at it, fending it off for a short moment.
She grabs Hiccup's hand and helps him up while another one lunges for his foot. He kicks out, hitting it in the head and sending it flying to the ground. He loses no time and starts climbing the fence, Astrid right on his track. A dozen beasts at least are already on the site, trying everything to get to the two humans so close to escaping them.
One of them gets a hold on her jeans, ripping out a piece of fabric. Astrid jumps and feels a sharp pain shoot through her shin. She doesn't dwell on it and follows Hiccup down to the ground. They take off running, wasting no time in getting away from these things. Only when the shrieks and cries fade into the distance do they slow down, finally making halt at the bank of a river.
Hiccups collapses and lies down on the ground, panting hard. Astrid bends over, hands on her knees, equally out of breath. After several minutes of catching her breath, she flops down next to Hiccup.
"Are you okay?"
He nods, sitting up. "I'm okay. How about y– Astrid, your leg!" He points at the shin where one of the zombies tore off part of her jeans. There's a long gash, blood running down from it into her shoe. Astrid's breath catches in her throat at the sight.
"It- it's just a scratch," she says in an attempt to sound nonchalant, but her shaking voice betrays her.
"A scratch? Astrid, this–"
"There were planks with rusty nails in it," she interrupts him, "I must have scratched my leg when we climbed up the fence."
"While a bunch of zombies were reaching out their claws for you!"
"Hiccup, I'm fine!" She glares at him and takes off her backpack, rummaging through it in search for her tissues and some gauze. While Hiccup frowns at her wordlessly, she dabs at the wound with a tissue, hissing at the contact.
"Here, let me," Hiccup offers, voice softer than before. She lets him take the tissue. He gently puts her shin in his lap and delicately cleans the blood off her leg. Her skin tingles where his fingers brush over it. She looks at him, watches his face scrunch up in concentration, takes in the way his lips press together. When the wound is mostly clean, he takes the gauze and bandages the leg, frown slightly deepening when she winces. He gingerly strokes over it, making sure it's tight enough.
"Thanks," Astrid whispers and takes his hand in hers, interlacing their fingers.
He looks at her with a worried expression. "And you're sure it was a nail?" When Astrid meets his eyes that are full of apprehension and concern, she nods.
"I'm sure." The concern doesn't leave his face as he takes her in for another minute, thoughtful.
"Okay," he says then. "Can you stand? We should better keep going." He stands and helps her up, steadying her when she wobbles slightly. With the adrenaline gone, she can feel the sting of the wound under the bandage. She takes a cautious step and winces only slightly when her leg takes her weight. She walks a few feet, experimenting with the balance on either foot.
"I'm good, let's go." She doesn't wait for him to object as she puts her backpack on, straps the axe to it and marches off, and soon enough, he's walking beside her, occasionally throwing an observing glance her way. Astrid ignores it and takes in the periphery instead.
It's quite a beautiful October morning. Wafts of mist are hanging over the river and the fields surrounding it. Small puffs of air are dancing in front of their mouths. The rising sun puts everything in a fiery glow, including Hiccup's auburn hair. It looks like he has a burning halo around his head. She smiles. It's beautiful.
They walk for hours. Hiccup keeps asking her if her leg is really okay, and every time she rolls her eyes and assures him that she's fine. It doesn't keep him from repeating his question every fifteen minutes.
Around noon, when the fog on the horizon fully clears, the skyline of a huge city appears in the distance. Astrid hears Hiccup sigh in relief, and she feels exactly the same. They have been on the way here for months now, ever since a hoard of zombies has run over and taken their whole village. Because of dumb, stupid luck Hiccup and Astrid haven't been there when it happened, being engaged elsewhere – namely, the small cove in the forest, where they may or may not have been making out for hours on end. When they came back, the sight awaiting them still haunts her nightmares. People were lying dead on the ground, men, women, children. Gnashing wounds were covering their bodies, some insides turned outside. It made Astrid sick to the stomach.
On their desperate search for survivors, they soon stumbled upon the body of a huge man, thick red beard soaked in his own blood. Hiccup just stood there, frozen, unable to take his eyes off his father. It was then that half the village found them, infected wounds still bleeding. Astrid took the gun out of the dead hands of Stoick the Vast, shaking Hiccup out of his shocked state. They barely escaped. And now they're here.
The city of Berk is one of the only safe havens left in this world. On their journey, they met several groups of people who all were on their way there, but since then, they have never met any of them again. Hiccup and Astrid avoid thinking too much about it.
"Finally," Astrid sighs, relief flooding her chest. They are almost there.
"You're limping." Hiccup's voice is unusually icy.
"I told you, I'm fine. Stop worrying!"
"You're fucking limping!" he yells, a look in his eyes she can't quite decipher. "And stop telling me that you're okay, because you're clearly not!"
Astrid stops walking, surprised by his sudden outburst. "What is your problem? I told you that I feel fine. It's not far anymore, and as soon as we're there, I can get this looked at." She gestures at her injury.
"That's too late!" he shouts, waving his hands through the air. "If that wasn't a nail, you can't wait another day!"
"Would you please calm down?" she hisses. "You'll attract every zombie in the vicinity if you keep yelling like that!"
"No, I will not calm down!" He starts pacing, kicking at grass and twigs, fists clenched at his sides. Astrid has never seen him like this. She walks over to him and takes his hands in hers, but he yanks them away and continues pacing.
"Hiccup–" she starts, but he interrupts her with a strangled cry and takes a few steps away from her, hands buried in his hair.
"Show me your leg."
"What?"
"I said show me your leg!" He grabs her arm in a tight fist, shaking it. She winces back, shocked about his behavior. He doesn't wait for her to do something and crouches down, loosening the bandage. He gasps.
The skin around the wound is as red as a heavy sunburn, the edges yellowing.
"Astrid, this isn't nothing!"
"It's just a rash, Hiccup!"
"Oh come on, Astrid, you and I both know it's not supposed to look like that!"
She ignores him, bends down and re-tightens the bandage while he clenches and unclenches his fists. She sends him a glare, daring him to yell again.
He takes a few deep breaths. "Let's just keep going," he says, quieter. When he looks at her, there is a strange rage there, now slowly overshadowed by something like concern and guilt for his outburst. Astrid frowns and follows him when he continues on the way to the borders of Berk.
He stays silent for a long while. Astrid notices the constant creases on his forehead, the way his fists clench now and then, and the occasional kick at a pebble. She tries talking to him a couple times, but he always gives her curt, angry answers, and she gives up trying to get to him, at least until they make stop for a night's rest.
It's already getting dark outside and the fog silently crawls back around their feet, dampening the grass until their shoes are soaked and their noses cold with the sun gone. They reach a lone, abandoned house in-between a few fields, walls covered in vines, a few windows still intact, front door hanging on its hinges. A quick check assures them that the house is empty, and they decide to spend the night here and keep going in the morning. It's always much more dangerous at night. There are zombies who only come out and are strongest and most dangerous when darkness has fallen.
They find the living room, but the couch is propped up on its side against another door. Astrid doesn't want to know what's behind there. The windows aren't broken, though, so they grab what's left of pillows and couch blankets and make a bed on the floor.
"Astrid…" Hiccup tentatively starts, eyes cast down while he unfolds a blanket.
When Astrid looks up, the room suddenly spins, and she scrunches her eyelids together in order to make the dizziness go away.
He's there in an instant.
"Hey… Astrid, what's wrong?"
She wipes her forehead, suddenly drenched in sweat. "It's burning hot in here. Did you turn on the radiator?"
Hiccup frowns at her concerned. "The radiator isn't working, Astrid. It's freezing cold in here."
She stares at him, trying to make out if he's messing with her. Judging from the look in his eyes, he's not. She gulps.
"Let me see it," he says, gently this time. She flinches back when he raises a hand to remove her bandage, bending her leg away from him.
"I already told you, it's just a rash from a scratch." He doesn't buy it. But she doesn't want to look at it, doesn't want their fear to come true – the fear that has been lurking in the corners of her mind all day.
"Please, Astrid." The aggressive tone from earlier is gone, replaced by worry. He slowly reaches towards her, touching the knee close to her injury, and she lets him. She doesn't look when he removes the bandage. He's silent for a while. She's not sure she wants to know why.
"How… How is it?" she asks when he doesn't say anything for several minutes.
"Worse." His voice is barely a hoarse whisper, and she can't take it anymore and looks at it.
The rash has spread, yellow edges a stark contrast to the red parts. She swallows.
"You know what this means," he says quietly. "This could be–"
"It's not," she interjects with a firm voice. "It's not a… It's not. It. Is. Not. It's not… It's… It's not… No…" Her voice trails off and she buries her head in Hiccup's shoulder. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. She doesn't know who's shaking, if it's her or Hiccup, or maybe both. Maybe it's the ground below, the world falling out from under them.
"I'm sorry," he whispers after a while. "For acting like a jerk the whole day. I don't know why I lashed out at you like that."
She brings her own arms around him and hugs him back.
"It's just…" he continues, voice cracking, "we're so close. I can't… I can't bear the thought of losing you now."
"You won't," she says decidedly and takes his chin in her hand, guiding it towards her. "I won't let you."
He just stares at her gravely for a few moments. Then he takes her face in his hands and softly brings down his lips on hers. She leans into the kiss and places her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat sync with hers. They stay like that for a while, hanging onto each other, lips moving more desperately after every time they break apart to breathe. Hiccup brings his forehead to hers, his hands moving down from her face to her shoulders, her arms, and then her hands. Fingers intertwining, he pulls her even closer, until they lie back on the pillows. Astrid puts her head on his shoulder and breathes in his scent. He smells like pines, zombies, and Hiccup.
"Maybe it's blood poisoning."
Hiccup manages a dry chuckle. "I didn't think I'd ever say this, but please, oh please, let it be blood poisoning. I mean, it would be bad, but I could carry you the rest of the way to the city and then they could amputate your leg, if they must."
Astrid swats at him, earning herself a laugh, real this time. She can't help but smile and wonder why it's so easy for Hiccup to take a bit of her fear away by simply… well, being himself. And the fear is unspoken, looming over them like the fog over the landscape, sinking deeper and deeper into their bones.
For the first time in her life, Astrid doesn't know what to do. Either she might die of blood poisoning or turn into a monster over night. And she can't do anything about it, except maybe take her axe and chop off her leg, but then she'd bleed to death. She has no other option than get in a few hours of sleep and limp to the saving city as fast as possible. She curls into Hiccup and thinks of nothing else but him. Him and her, Hiccup and Astrid. Survivors of the apocalypse who have come so far already, the start of their new life together so near.
"I love you," she whispers in the dying light, the meaning of her words reflected in his eyes when he gazes at her softly.
"I love you too," he whispers back, "so much." There are dark circles around his eyes, exhaustion visible on every inch of his face. Times like these past months will do that to you.
He pulls the blankets over them, shivering from the cold, and although Astrid still feels like the room is on fire, she snuggles closer, placing a kiss on the hand holding her own.
They both know that the next morning is uncertain. But it is not just fear and desperation that makes them cling to each other like a lifeline. It is also devotion, commitment, a promise.
No matter what, there will always be a Hiccup and Astrid.
With the dawn of day rises the notion of horror. It comes with the first speck of light on the horizon and lays over the fields and the river nearby like a thick curtain, filling the air with dreadful foreboding.
There is no sound nearby, no fish, no water snakes, no drinking animals disrupting the surface of the water. Not a single bird can be heard singing its tune through the line of trees on the riverside; it's almost like the world is dead to this place.
There's something haunting about the silence, growing with every passing minute.
A few rabbits scamper closer, sniffing the air. Their bodies freeze, the ears stand up, noses twitching. When a cold breeze drifts along from the direction of the abandoned house in front of them, the rabbits turn around and flee.
The atmosphere is frigid, devoid of any notion of hope and life, despite the two people sleeping in the midst of it all, unknowingly creating the source of the horrid tension.
Astrid wakes in cold sweat, back stiff from the night on the floor. Her leg looks terrible, the gash inflamed and purulent. The sight blurs her vision and spins the room in a few circles, the subsequent dizziness making her sick to her stomach. She's trembling and wonders how much time she has left until she turns.
Her head feels like lead. She feels her forehead and finds it hot and drenched in sweat, but at the same time she feels cold, so cold. She shuffles closer to Hiccup.
He's trembling as well, his whole body shaking. His back is to her and he's curled up into a ball. She puts a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezes.
"Hiccup. Wake up."
He doesn't react. She tries again, speaking louder this time, squeezing harder. A strangled sound escapes his throat. He's… whimpering.
"Hiccup? Hey, Hiccup."
He jolts up with a start.
"Hiccup…?"
When he slowly turns around, a hand colder than ice grips her heart. He's white as linen, his bloodshot eyes are black, any traces of his emerald green irises gone. His gaze focuses on her and a deep growl makes her hair stand on end.
"Are… are you okay?" Astrid's voice quivers, full of dread.
A violent shudder rattles through him, his face scrunches up as he cries out in pain.
"Hiccup, this is not funny!"
His cry turns into a gruesome roar, inhuman, animalistic, frightening. Limbs wincing and jerking, he shakes his head as if he's fighting something invisible, something trying to invade his head. Astrid's stomach clenches in fear.
"Hiccup, no!" she shrieks, scrambling back on her hands when he suddenly makes a move towards her. "Stop it! Snap out of it!" This can't be happening. No, no, no…
His jerky movements continue back and forth for a while and Astrid is frozen to the ground, completely unable to move while she watches her partner, her best friend, the love of her life go through the last stages of a terrible transformation.
She can only sit there and watch him lose the battle against the fungus taking over his brain.
He snarls at her, so utterly alien to the person he from this moment on is no more, and lunges. Astrid screams and kicks at him, but he possesses a new strength now that even she can't hold up against.
"Hiccup, no, stop!" she continues shouting hysterically.
He keeps advancing, keeps shrieking. It's cruel to watch and her heart shatters while she's trying to fight him off. But he's stronger.
Her hand moves out of its own accord. She grabs the gun. Points. And, with trembling hands, eyelids scrunched together that stars appear, pulls the trigger.
The shot pierces through her ears. Everything happens in slow motion.
She opens her eyes. Hiccup falls. Hits the ground. Blood pours out of the hole in his forehead. It soaks the wooden floor.
The gun slips out of Astrid's shaking fingers. She can't breathe. The pain in her chest spreads, fills every vein, every muscle, every nerve.
Her eyes are wide, hands pressed on her mouth – but the cries that grow in her lungs come through, nevertheless.
She starts to sob and quiver uncontrollably while what just happened, what she just did, catches up to her.
He's gone. Hiccup's dead. She, Astrid, killed him. Shot him. Ended his life.
There's a part of her that tells her she had no choice, that he was already gone, that she had to do it, that it was self-defense.
But this part gets drowned out by solid horror.
Her sobs turn dry after what feels like hours and she crawls over to where he lies. She shakes him and calls his name repeatedly in a desperate attempt to wake him, bring him back to life. But he stays still. Black, unfamiliar, glassy eyes stare into nothingness.
"Hiccup…" she whispers hoarsely, her own voice strange to her ear. She sniffs, pulls at her hair, presses her fingernails into her hand until they draw blood, anything to distract her from the hollow feeling in her chest.
She goes numb. Sits there. Waits for the silence to envelop, to bury her. She's dead anyway. She's lost everything – her home, her friends, her family, and now Hiccup. She wants her own injury, whether zombie scratch or blood poisoning, to take her, too. Why should she continue to live and breathe if the only reason she made it this far just died at her own hands? From his father's gun, none the less?
Astrid doesn't know how long she sits there without moving, staring at the body in front of her, until she hears them.
She doesn't know who them is. She can barely register the door opening, figures entering, as her world spins and spins and bursts and shatters and breaks apart, two words repeating over and over in her mind.
Hiccup's gone.
It's a starry night. The moon is almost full, less than a quarter left to complete the perfect picture.
The music is loud even outside the barn. Astrid breathes in the mild air of the early summer night while the twins' big birthday party inside goes on without her.
"It's awfully stuffy in there, isn't it," a voice startles her from behind. When she turns around, she finds herself staring into emerald green eyes, the light of the moon dancing in his irises.
She hums in agreement and smiles when Hiccup leans back on the barn's wall next to her. His hands are in the pockets of his light hoodie and his hair is slightly disheveled. Her heart skips a beat when he smiles at her lopsidedly.
They just stand there and look at the sky for a while. It's nice in his presence, and Astrid doesn't know why she's taken so long to realize that.
When the music changes to a song from the eighties or nineties, he holds out his hand. A spark shoots up her arm like electricity when she takes it and lets him pull her closer.
The song is fast and groovy. They twirl around, giggle when they step on each other's toes, lose themselves in the rhythm.
When the song ends, they don't let go of each other yet. The butterflies in Astrid's body keep dancing. She closes her eyes when he leans in, feels her knees become jelly when their lips touch. The sensation explodes in her chest, makes her feel warm and fuzzy everywhere. She has to grab his arms to prevent her legs from giving in as she melts into him.
Right then, right there, standing on her tip-toes to reach Hiccup's lips, she forgets. There are no monsters out there, there's no virus, no life-threatening post-apocalyptic world. Right then, right there, it's only them.
When he breaks the kiss, something changes. His smile fades, his eyes go dead, his face implodes.
The world around them falls apart.
Blood seeps out the gaping hole in his head. It's on her hands, it's on the ground, it's running like a river.
The music is gone, replaced by an ear-piercing scream. Astrid can't tell where or who it comes from. It's everywhere. It rips out her lungs first, then her heart, before it turns into white noise.
Hiccup's gaze is empty. His body crumbles. He disappears before her eyes.
Everything around her goes dark.
And Hiccup's gone.
It was his leg.
The left one, below the knee.
One of the infected they fought the day before must have gotten to it. He hadn't even noticed. Because if he had, he wouldn't have been able to hide it from her. Because she knows him too well. Knew him.
It explains his uncharacteristically aggressive behavior through the day and why he was feeling so cold at night. He's usually a warm cuddler. Was.
When she thinks about him, the past tense only adds salt to the wound – not the one on her shin, that one has healed. She was right. It was blood poisoning.
A group of scouts from Berk found them. They were making their regular check for survivors trying to reach the city. The outskirts of Berk are crawling with zombies, they say.
Astrid doesn't remember much of it. One of them addressed her, cautiously, one hand on the holster strapped to his belt. When she didn't respond, more of them appeared behind him, taking stance.
They saw Hiccup. Astrid remembers yelling at them and lifting her axe when a woman with broad shoulders and a formidable dagger in her hand came forward.
She remembers daring anyone to touch Hiccup or come even one step closer.
Somehow, she ended up in their car. It was an old pickup truck.
She wouldn't leave without Hiccup.
They showed her to a doctor once they entered Berk. He treated her leg, telling her she came not a moment too soon. She scoffed bitterly. The doctor gave her medicine, but she didn't touch any of it.
She was given a room in an overcrowded house where she shared the little personal space she still had with a dozen other refugees who just came to the city.
Berk has a cemetery not far from the city borders where they bury the ones who died from the infection. The regular cemetery is on the other side of the city since people here don't want their loved ones so close to the virus, although the bodies inhabiting it are long dead.
They buried Hiccup there. Astrid comes to visit his grave every day. He even has his own little gravestone with his name on it.
For the first three days, Astrid didn't talk, didn't eat, didn't sleep. People left her alone when she glared at them. She didn't have a reason to fight, or rather nothing worth fighting for. Until they called her into the doctor's office and gave her one, turning her whole world upside down once more.
Now she's sitting on the ground in front of his grave where she just planted new flowers, the first ones since winter ended.
The weather is unusually warm for March in Berk. She feels the sun warm her back as she tells Hiccup about her day.
There hasn't been a day she hasn't come here. Sometimes, she just sits in silence, sometimes she cries. Sometimes she imagines what he'd say. In her mind, she can clearly hear the emotions in his voice and see him wave his arms around while talking.
"You know, for a dead guy you're very talkative," she says after she finished her story about the kitchen counter in her new apartment and knows exactly what he'd answer. She smiles and fingers the ring she's been wearing on a necklace around her head ever since she found it in Hiccup's backpack a few months ago. It's simple and silver, with "H+A" carved in on the inside. She doesn't know where he got it, and neither does she know if it was supposed to be a birthday present, an engagement ring, or maybe just something he wanted to keep for himself. And she never will know the truth.
She absentmindedly strokes her growing belly, face lighting up when she feels a strong kick.
"I think she likes talking to you."
She must get it from her mother, Hiccup says in her mind and she frowns. Not her best impersonation of him. She misses actually talking with him. She misses the way he speaks with his eyes and his hands. Misses his smile, his voice, his laugh. His stubbornness and determination. His ideas. His light touches, and the ones which set her skin on fire.
They always tried to avoid sleeping together, but when they just fought off dozens of zombies and came out unscathed, it was hard not to appreciate everything the other could give them when every new day was uncertain, in contrast to their feelings for each other.
She misses him so much that it constantly hurts. Some nights, it's eating away at her from the inside, like it's a virus on its own. But then the baby – their daughter – reminds her that she hasn't lost him for good. She decided to name her Zephyr, like the west wind – the wind Hiccup and she followed on their journey to Berk, to a new life, a new hope. Now Hiccup's gone, but her hope rekindled when they told her she was pregnant. Ultimately, the lack of protection methods in the post-apocalyptic world ended up being a good thing. This little human being is the only thing she has left of Hiccup apart from the ring and it fills the hole inside her that appeared there when she put one in his head. When he was taken, first by the virus, then by Astrid herself.
She tries to avoid thinking about it, but it haunts her in her nightmares. The people of Berk say he probably slept through most of it, but that doesn't keep the bad dreams away. Sometimes she wakes up with a start and, still caught in the grasp of her dream, she hears a voice. His voice. "Astrid," he says, nothing more. After that, she lies awake for hours, rarely drifting back asleep before dawn.
She still has the gun. It lies hidden under the floorboards in her bedroom. A few times, she has taken it out, looked at it, weighed it in her hand. It gave her a strange feeling containing a mix of power and guilt, flooding her chest until it became unbearable and she put the damn thing away.
No matter what she does, she can't change what happened. Thinking too much about possible what-ifs is a toxic notion that's neither healthy for her nor the baby. She wants to keep Hiccup in her memory the way he truly was, not the twisted, monstrous version he had become that awful, fateful day. Astrid likes to believe he was still in there somewhere, suppressed by the infection.
In the end, though, it's easier said than done. Although he is still right, she thinks as she feels the baby inside her move, that mo matter what, no matter how, there will always be a Hiccup and Astrid, even if not in the way they always thought it would be – the sorrow will still be there with her forever.
Because Hiccup's gone.