After a near miss with a group of walkers, the boys had had to take refuge in the nearest house. They'd both used their guns - a stupid move, yes, but they'd take the risk over one of their lives. Dumping their bags in the living room, the two got to work on securing the doors. There were infected everywhere, but the density of the houses in this neighborhood thankfully made the gunshots difficult to pinpoint precisely. It wasn't looking good, that was for sure, but hopefully if they hunkered down and kept quiet they'd be gone by morning if they were lucky. Still, the noise of barricading the door was disconcerting, and it made Connor anxious. Having gone looking for anything they could use to cover the windows, Murphy soon returned to his brother, several blankets tucked under one arm. Nodding at the half-finished door, he broke the silence between them.
"How's it goin'?"
"Still alive - s'all I can say, for now. Almost done here."
He could hear the nerves in his brother's voice, and he couldn't blame him for letting them show a little. Before their first job, Connor had asked Murphy if he'd felt nervous. But, since the world had plummeted into chaos, having the undead wandering around warranted a new kind of anxiety. Setting the blankets and sheets down, Murphy started hanging them up against the window, keeping a close eye on the street outside as he did so.
"You had a chance to see how much food there is?"
"Why do you ask such fuckin' stupid questions? You know I haven't"
"Fuck you – I was just checkin'. We're runnin' out pretty damn fast-"
"Aye, well, at least now I know who to go to when I need someone to tell me the fuckin' obvious."
A snarled curled Murphy's top lip up for a moment, but he let it go for the time being. They were both exhausted, nerves fried – neither of them had ever been any good at keeping from snapping at the other, perhaps because they knew they'd be forgiven within the hour. He finished covering the windows in silence, and once he was finished, he muttered an excuse as he left the room – Connor thought he'd heard him say something about the kitchen, but he hadn't caught it, and didn't feel like asking him to repeat himself. He hadn't meant to bite Murphy's head off, but to be perfectly honest, he was starting to wonder if either of them were really built for this new life. Being on the run from the law, that was one thing. Running from the entire human race was in another ballpark.
Thoughts of their days as the Saints was so far in the back of Connor's mind that it never crossed it. Now wasn't the time to dwell on such things. The lives they'd had before were gone, just as their 'innocence' disappeared the moment those Russians attempted to murder his brother, only now the stakes were even higher. These men and women, these things, they didn't have motivations, they didn't have schemes or thoughts of money and greed... and in many ways their undying quest for more food was even worse. He knew he'd never forget his first encounter with the infected; how Murphy had been the one to put her out of her misery. But it hadn't been mercy driving his brother then – it'd been to save Connors life. It was then that their entire moral code had to be stripped down to basics, reevaluated. Modified.