Notes: I owe an endless amount of thanks to Sonja for helping throughout every stage of this story. The title and summary are taken from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."
I hope that everyone enjoys this. Feedback is always appreciated.
Rating: NC-17 for sex and violence
Warnings: This story features violence and blood. Rape and cannibalism are mentioned but not depicted.
Breeding lilacs out of the dead land
Brittany was the first to go, eternally optimistic Brittany. She held on to her hope and her love of humanity right up to the end, when an untreated infection left her too weak and compromised to understand what was happening in the world around her. She had cut her leg on what was left of a car they found, a few rusting pieces of jagged metal and a steering wheel. The rest had been likely stolen long ago. They had no supplies to treat her with — bandages and disinfectant, like so many other things, were hard to find. The infection had been enough to take her. Santana stayed with her until long after she had taken her last breath, pushing the hair off her face and placing a kiss on her forehead before leaving her body there.
Quinn was next, killed by one of the members of a gang that had attacked them in the middle of the night. The man was wild and unshaven, with thick arms and a deep voice that rang out clearly in the silence of the forest they were in. He grabbed Quinn by the hair and swung her against a tree headfirst. She went limp as a ragdoll, blood gushing from her nose, but he didn't stop. He slammed her head against the tree again and Santana heard the sound of bones cracking and breaking. He repeated the action so many times that Quinn's face was unrecognizable by the time he dropped her body to the ground. Santana didn't stay to find out what he did to Quinn after that; she didn't want to know.
Kurt was the last one to leave her, taken by the sickness that had been taking them all since they woke up at the end of the world. Kurt grew weaker every day until he finally collapsed just outside of yet another empty and forgotten town. It took all of Santana's strength to drag him into the first house she saw and hoist him onto the busted sofa. She covered him with a blanket as he lay sweating, his legs twitching and his eyes heavy. Kurt told her to leave him, but she stayed until Kurt stopped breathing and his hand went limp in her grasp.
And then she was alone.
Well, almost. She knew that she wasn't the last person on earth; there were others, of course. But so many of them seemed to be monsters, the leftover boogeymen of childhood nightmares long past. There were ever-present groups that she knew would just as soon eat her alive as they would rape her. She had run into them more times than she could count. And they were like her, she knew, looking for food that had already been taken and supplies that didn't exist anymore, and dying the same slow diseased death that was taking her, too.
Santana pushed open the front door of another house that was missing its owners and sighed. Another empty house in another town. She started to pick through the debris that littered the foyer, figuring that she wouldn't find anything but willing to try anyway. She kicked at a few pieces of melted plastic and heard the clattering of metal in response. She paused and waited. The noise came again, the sound of pots and pans banging reaching her ears.
She pulled the long knife from her belt, holding it in front of her as she slid silently along the wall towards the kitchen door. She likely had the advantage, as knives were next to impossible to find. She was lucky to stumble across it when she had and it had served her well up to this point. She had lost people along the way but she was still living.
Unfortunately, she was wrong. As she moved to peer into the kitchen, Santana found herself staring down the barrel of a gun, a semi-automatic pistol no less. It was a rarer and more deadly prize than her knife. At the other end of the barrel stood a small girl who didn't look much older than Santana, if she was at all. She was thin and dirty, her tattered clothes covered in dirt and mud, and her long hair was a tangled mess that she had pulled back into a ponytail and tied with a bit of string. She glared at Santana.
"Get out," she said coldly.
Santana regarded her calmly. The girl had a gun but she looked no better off than Santana, which probably meant that she hadn't been using it on anyone. If that were the case, she probably wasn't going to use it on Santana, either. Who knew? Maybe Santana could take this girl with her. A gun would be a good weapon to have nearby, if only to scare off the scavengers who might pick their teeth with Santana's bones.
She looked around quickly. The girl didn't appear to have a backpack, no visible supplies. Nothing but a gun. If she played her cards right, Santana could walk out of here with a new companion and a good weapon.
Santana made a big show of putting her knife back into her belt — she could pull it out quick enough if she needed to — and raising her empty hands, palms facing the other girl. "Relax," she said slowly. "I'm not a threat to you."
The girl made a similarly big show of pulling back the pistol's hammer until it was cocked. "I know."
Santana pressed on unperturbed. "Listen, I've got food. You've got a gun. We can make a deal here."
"Or I could kill you and take your food."
Santana bit back the urge to roll her eyes. "Yeah, you could," she agreed. "But you'd be killing one of the only people left who's not a psycho or a cannibal. Or both," she said. "We can work together, help each other out or whatever. It'll be like we're part of humanity again."
It sounded stupidly cliche to her ears, but when the girl said nothing, Santana knew she had her. Stretched her hand out. "I'm Santana," she said.
After a long moment, the girl finally lowered her gun, slipping the hammer back into its resting position and flicking the safety switch. "Rachel," she responded, taking Santana's hand in hers and shaking it weakly.
They ended up sitting next to one another on the floor of the living room, shoulder-to-shoulder, their backs against the wall behind them. Rachel pulled her legs up to her chest, bending them at the knees and wrapping her arms around them.
Santana's legs lay straight out in front of her, pushing aside debris — paper and the occasional broken knick-knack, the lost treasures of someone likely long dead. She crossed her legs at the ankle and grabbed her backpack, unzipping it and digging around inside of it for a few moments, pushing around her own treasures. Santana could feel Rachel's eyes on her, watching her intently, the pistol sitting on the floor next to her bent legs. It was close enough that Rachel could easily grab it if she was so inclined and they both knew it.
Eventually Santana pulled out a partially dented can of fruit and a can opener that had seen much better days. The manual crank was so rusted that it barely turned and the gears rattled uncomfortably with every turn, but the blade was clean and the opener still did its job. She opened the can and flung the lid off to the side, letting it join the rest of the trash in the house. Santana then passed the open can to Rachel, who took it eagerly and regarded Santana with gratitude, a small smile on her face.
Rachel made a move to grab at the peaches in the can with her bony fingers, but Santana stopped her. "Hold up," she said. "We're not fucking animals. I have a spoon somewhere," she told Rachel, opening one of the small pockets on the front of her backpack. The zipper on the smallest pocket had come off and she held it together with several pieces of string strung through a series of holes she'd cut through the fabric. It worked like a drawstring and had been one of the first things she'd repaired on her own; it was simple but she was still proud of her work, so much so that she put her few prized possessions in that pocket just so she could remember her achievement.
"Got it," she said finally, producing her only spoon and handing it to Rachel.
Rachel took it gently, reverently, and dipped it into the can of peaches. "I haven't seen in a spoon in a long time."
Santana nodded. "Yeah, I know," she replied. "I haven't seen one in at least a year. So don't even think of stealing that one or I will hunt you down," she added.
"And what?" Rachel asked through a mouth full of peaches, a little of the sweet syrup running down her chin. "Get shot to death over a spoon?"
Santana narrowed her eyes at Rachel, reaching out with her hand open until Rachel passed her the can and the spoon. "Do you even know how to use that thing?"
Rachel looked impossibly small sitting next to her, her clothes a few sizes to big for her, either because they'd been found that big or because Rachel hadn't been getting enough to eat. Santana knew that she didn't look much better. "You just pull the trigger," Rachel said quietly. "That's all it takes."
Santana had nothing to say to that so she didn't bother to say anything, letting the silence sit with them instead. She scooped a peach out of the can she was holding and ate it, chewing slowly. It was the last can of peaches she had and she wanted to enjoy it. She took another peach into her mouth and passed the can back to Rachel before picking up the worn plastic jug sitting next to her stretched out leg.
The jug had once held a gallon of milk but now it held less than a half gallon of water collected from a stream somewhere a few dozen miles back. The label was peeling off — it was always one corner away from falling off completely — and Santana pushed it back into place as she always did. She screwed the top off and took just a few sips. The water tasted good and clean, even though it wasn't, and her body ached for more, always just a little bit more, but she stopped herself after only a couple of sips. Her body protested but she did her best to ignore it; she didn't know when she'd find drinkable water again.
"How long have you been here?" Santana asked after a while. In the beginning, it had been common to ask where people were from, but there weren't many places left with proper names that people knew so Santana always asked how long they had been wherever she met them. Usually it was no more than a few days. Brittany had been the longest in the little city where Santana met her and she had only been there for a couple of weeks.
"I've always been here," Rachel said simply. "My family has lived here since I was a little girl."
"Here? Here in this house?"
Rachel shook her head. "Not in this house. Our house is gone. But I grew up in this town."
"Jesus," Santana muttered. Rachel was probably going to be like Quinn, imprisoned in some dark basement for years, taken out every so often to be used and abused by her captors. Quinn had only told her what it was like once, when they were a little drunk on a half-bottle of wine they'd found in a dead man's duffel bag. Quinn said that the threat of being kept alive was worse than the threat of death. Death meant that there was end; the living could go on forever.
Santana thought of asking what they did to Rachel, whoever kept her in this town, but decided that she didn't want to know. It was always easier to ignore the ghosts that haunted the steps of those she walked with. She didn't ask and Rachel didn't answer and that was okay because it meant that Rachel didn't ask about her ghosts either.
Rachel passed her the can again, half a peach still left inside it, and Santana finished it off, tossing it somewhere across the living room. She licked the spoon a few times, cleaning the sticky peach syrup off with her tongue, and then wiped it off with the tattered remains of a hand towel she'd been carrying for months. Santana handed her water jug to Rachel, who took a few sips. Her lips were cracked and she let a bit of water slip over them.
"So listen," Santana said, adopting an air of not caring. "I've shared my food and water with you, let you use my spoon. We're practically related now. You gonna come with or not?"
Rachel didn't say anything at first, just slid her hands down her legs, rubbing the worn fabric of the sweatpants she wore. "Okay," she said finally. "But it's starting to get dark outside and I don't —" she paused.
"I don't travel at night," Santana told her, leaning forward to look out the busted window at the front of the house. "Too much shit happens when it gets dark," she said. "Are there any, you know, bodies in this house?" she asked.
Rachel shook her head.
Santana stood, stretching out her limbs. They protested against every move that she made. Santana shouldered her backpack and grabbed her water before holding out a hand to Rachel, who took it gingerly. She hoisted Rachel up to her feet. "Then lets find some beds to sleep in."
Rachel reached down to grab her gun, slipping it into her pocket, and nodded. She followed Santana upstairs silently.
All of the beds in the house had been stripped of their mattresses, which was no big surprise, but one of them had a box spring still in place in the bed frame. Santana dug a blanket out of her bag. "I've only got one," she said. "But I'll share."
Rachel nodded. "That's fine," she replied, tugging on the wooden chair she took from a different bedroom and wedging it under the doorknob. "It won't stop anyone who really wants to get in, but it should give us enough time to escape."
"Or kick their asses," Santana suggested. She waited for Rachel to lie on the bed and then joined her, lowering her blanket over both of them. It was thin and the ends were fraying but it was better than nothing. They had no pillows.
Rachel pulled out her pistol and set it on the broken nightstand next to her. Santana fingered the handle of the knife in her belt before pulling it out and setting it on the floor. They were low enough to the ground that she could roll over and grab it easily enough.
The sun dipped below the horizon, a few lazy streaks of orange and pink painting the sky outside the broken window before slowly disappearing. Eventually they did disappear, taking their only source of light and shrouding Santana and Rachel in darkness.
She could see nothing but she could feel Rachel's leg resting against hers and she could hear the soft sounds of Rachel inhaling and exhaling slowly. She waited for Rachel's breathing to even out, indicating that she was asleep, but it never did. And so Santana didn't sleep either. She waited for a gunshot to the head or a hand slipping into hers, but neither came.
The next morning, they found Rachel a backpack in a neighboring house, a pink monstrosity that Santana hated. She'd looked desperately for something a little more inconspicuous but nothing had turned up and she'd been forced to let Rachel use it; not that they really had much of a choice, for Rachel seemed strangely attached to the pinkness of it and they needed the extra space for the few cans of food and spare blanket they'd managed to find. It wasn't much, the haul they collected, but it was more than what Santana usually found in the deserted towns she came across. And it was infinitely better than what she found in the non-deserted towns and homes she stumbled upon. She shuddered.
"What is it?"
Santana blinked and looked at Rachel, who was walking beside her. They were following what had once been a highway, two lanes on either side of a grassy median, deserted but for the occasional leftover car or SUV. They stuck to the trees and thick overgrowth next to the road; it was slow going but it was safer than being out in the open.
"What's what?" Santana asked. She absentmindedly switched her gallon jug from one hand to the other. The water inside it sloshed pitifully.
"You shivered for a second," Rachel said, thin fingers holding on the pink straps of her backpack. "Almost like a convulsion. Is — is it a symptom, do you think?"
"Can be. Depends on the person," Santana answered. "Have you really never been outside of that town?"
Rachel's fingers twitched and she blinked as a harsh beam of sunlight broke through the stand of bushes they were wading through. "It's true. I —" she paused for a moment. "I was always with my dad. We moved around the town a lot and sometimes he went out, scouting for supplies, but I always stayed behind. He said it was safer that way."
Santana waited for her to continue, but after a few minutes, it became apparent that Rachel wasn't going to say any more. At least she hadn't been locked in some dank cellar somewhere, only pulled out in the light for things better left unseen and unsaid. "What happened to him?" she eventually asked, waiting for any number of the likely answers to her question.
"He went out one day," Rachel said calmly. "And he never came back."
"Do you think he will?"
"No."
They walked in silence for a while, the world quiet but for the sound of their shoes hitting the dirt as they walked. The silence had once been unsettling, unnatural for a place so used to the noise of people and cars and airplanes, loudspeakers in grocery stores and police car sirens, but the silence was now safer than the alternative. Noise usually meant that someone was coming and that was very rarely a good thing.
Rachel was the first to speak again. She glanced behind them, looking at the road stretched out behind them, and then looked ahead at the road stretched out in front of them. The way ahead didn't look very different from the way behind. "Where are we going?"
Santana shrugged and made a vague gesture in front of her. "That way," she said.
"Is there anything that way?"
A fallen tree lay in front of them and Santana threw one leg over it and then the other, pausing on the other side to sit down. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, tired and annoyed. They had only been walking for a couple of hours and already she could feel exhaustion creeping up on her. "I don't know," she said. "Probably not. But I came from the other way and I'm not going back."
Rachel followed her over the tree, sliding a bit further down until she was sitting on the ground in front of the log, one bony shoulder poking the side of Santana's leg. "I didn't leave because my dad told me not to," she said quietly, responding to an assertion that Santana hadn't made. "I stayed because I was afraid, afraid of what I might find out here."
Santana pulled herself up. "How long has it been since the first outbreak? Eight — nine years?" she wondered. "It's worse than you imagined."
Rachel followed her, standing up slowly. She looked impossibly small standing amid the trees and bushes they were in, dwarfed by the over-sized clothes she wore and the dirty pink backpack on her back. "So far I've only come across trees and road. And you."
"Just wait," Santana replied. "It always gets worse than you think it will."
"Maybe it won't."
"It will."
It didn't get worse, not at first, not while there was still food to be eaten and the weather was still warm enough that they could roll the bottoms of their pants up and feel the breeze on their bare calves. They talked little, to save energy and themselves, for Santana was always worried that they would accidentally draw attention and get killed, especially when Rachel insisted on humming songs and tunes that the rest of the world had forgotten. They fought sometimes too. Santana would threaten to leave Rachel and Rachel would threaten to shoot Santana, but they always ended up under the same set of blankets at night, huddled together to fight off the nightly chill, and that's what counted.
The days blended together, each one full of bushes and trees and the occasional broken town off the highway, empty and broken gas stations and fast food places leading to more empty and forgotten houses; sometimes, a few cans of food that weren't too far past their expiration date, and maybe a bit of rope, which was rarely used but kept, like most things, just in case.
"I always wanted to be a singer when I grew up," Rachel said one day, kneeling next to Santana at a small stream. The water was dirty, clouded with bacteria and probably chemicals, but the plastic gallon jug they shared was empty and even a dirty something was better than nothing.
Santana was holding the jug in the water, letting it fill. She grimaced at the sight of it, wondering if there was enough diluted gas left in her lighter to start a fire. They would need to boil this water before they could drink it, only for a couple of minutes, but a fire was risky, even one that burned for a short time. She looked up at Rachel across the water. "What kind of music?"
Rachel smiled. "All kinds of music. I used to love to sing," she gushed. Her face was flush from either the excitement or the heat, or maybe both. "I was particularly adept at performing songs from Broadway musicals. My father entered me in singing competitions at a very early age and I always won."
Santana rolled her eyes and capped the gallon jug, cloudy water swishing against the sides. "Broadway? Of course."
Rachel nodded. "I was very talented. If one were so inclined, one could probably say that I'm still very talented, despite the fact that my companion continually silences me."
They rose at the same time and Santana held a hand out, balancing Rachel as she stepped over the slowly meandering stream of water. "If I didn't shut you up, you'd have everything out here on us, and I don't know about you, but I really don't want to give the crazies and rabid animals a free show before they kill us."
Rachel brushed against her when she reached her side of the stream and gave her hand a squeeze before she let go. "Perhaps they would be so moved by my performance that they would drop their arms and vow to protect me," she said with a flourish.
"But not your companion?" Santana asked, smiling a bit despite herself.
"Only if my companion sings with me," Rachel grinned.
"Yeah, okay," Santana said. "If we run into any Broadway-loving wild men, we'll try it."
Rachel clapped her hands together, the noise too loud for Santana's ears. "Excellent. We'll have to start rehearsing immediately."
"That's so not going to happen," Santana muttered. She waited a beat, then added, "I'm so awesome that I don't need rehearsal."
This time it was Rachel who rolled her eyes, still smiling. "What did you want to be when you grew up?"
"A Broadway singer," Santana deadpanned.
"I'm serious."
Santana didn't say anything immediately. She stepped through a patch of weeds quietly, thinking that there were hardly ever proper flowers anymore; there were only weeds. What happened to the flowers? And the clean water? And the people?
"I don't know," she said finally. "But it wasn't this."
Rachel's fingers were soft when they brushed over her wrist, stroking it gently for a moment. "No one wanted this," she replied, "but it's what we got. Let's just — let's just keep going, okay?"
Santana met Rachel's fingers with her own for just a second, enough to feel the warmth of Rachel's skin, sticky with sweat and so very alive. She nodded.
We'll die soon enough, she thought.