(7)
On the first day of the end of the world, and the dead rise up from the earth in tatters, starving and hungry and mad, and everything turns upside down and rightside up in unison.
(6)
On the second day, Kamishiro Ryouga disappears.
(5)
It's the third day since the sky turned red, since people stopped truly dying at all, and Rio is tired. Her skirt is ripped in a few places and the scrapes beneath her steady but rushed bandage job are aching. This one is probably going to scar, she thinks, picking at the raised, scabbing flesh underneath the edge of the gauze around her arm in her moment of respite, backing against the wall of the makeshift shelter in an abandoned highrise. She's alive though, which is definitely better than the hoards that writhe in the streets, better than she's been before too, when the doctors weren't sure she would ever wake up again, but still infinitely frustrating when alive doesn't equal actually living. Especially when...
'Ryouga...' she mutters, frustratedly, balling up her hand into a fist. Of all the times for him to be gone, he had to pick the apocalypse. When she finds him she's going to punch him. When, of course, not if, because nothing has ever really been able to stop Kamishiro Rio when she tries, and she has to believe that. It's just a little harder to breathe though, without her brother around. Not just because of the pervasive smog and the smell of charred bodies and rot and gore, though it doesn't help and Rio can feel her lungs rattle, still weak even after months of not being attached to tubes and wired to machines. She wonders if this must have been how it was for him, back then, but she shakes her head. There's no time for idle thought, not when the world is ending. Maybe if she were a zombie, she'd have time to be lazy. It must be nice, she thinks, hearing a noise to her left.
The footsteps are too clean to be inhuman and Rio raises her gun, not quite practiced, but enough to fool others into thinking she knows what she's doing. She can't bluff zombies, but she can maim scavengers at least. The door opens and she fires a warning shot at the frame before she can even see who it is. She's not sure she cares by now, unless it's Ryouga. The living and the dead are all the same.
'Just where do you think you're aiming?' Thomas Arclight asks, an easy smile on his lips, but Rio can see the way his fingers tremble from the shock of the blast. She saves that information for later and doesn't lower her gun.
'My, and just why are you here, Thomas?' He looks about the same as she remembers, from the fire, and with the red sky echoing behind them through the broken windows the way the light plays on his face takes her back. She doesn't blame him, not like Ryouga did, but they have never been particularly friendly in the aftermath. There's something about his face, the way he plasters on that grin, that makes her want to pull the trigger again, to see it splatter, those perfect teeth scattered along the floorboards. She won't though, not yet, she's not a monster.
'Didn't I tell you, Rio, it's IV.' There's a hand axe in his belt and Rio follows his eyes to it, but he doesn't move. Smart, she can aim and shoot faster than he could swing it. They stay there, at a standstill for a while, Rio's gun growing heavier in her hand, the sounds of the broken city behind them.
IV breaks first, drawing back to lean against the doorway, a bullet hole just inches from where he places his head, holding his hands up, relaxed in a show of mock ease. His uniform is bloodstained and smeared brown at the wrists.
'I'm not here to fight you today, sorry if that ruins your plans.' he says as she lowers her gun, breathing in deeply like she hadn't seen the way his breaths had come panicked and shorter.
'Is that so? Then whyever did you follow me? I don't suppose you're planning on setting this building on fire too.' Rio jabs, but it's nothing they haven't said before, back when the sky was still as blue as her brother's eyes.
'It's such a shame I didn't bring my matches then, I see you're still as cold as ever.' His shoulders droop a bit though, face more serious and he goes to say something else before he stops himself, almost lost. What comes out is: 'I'm looking for Ryouga.'
Rio grits her teeth and flips her hair, slipping her gun back in to the holster. 'You'll have to look a bit harder, or is that too much work for you. He's not here.'
'Hmm? Aren't the two of you so inseparable that it's disgusting?' IV asks, though his smile has slipped more.
'I'll just need to find him, then, won't I.' Rio says, picking up her bag and hoisting it over one shoulder, heavy with bullets pilfered from the long dead police. She's rested long enough, there's still a whole city to turn upside down, and her words are a promise. But, there is one thing she should do first.
She turns to face him, just a haggard but still refined, in all her wounded, mussed glory.
'If you're so keen on finding him, why don't you join me?'
She's sure Ryouga would appreciate the company.
(4)
The morning of the forth day they're ambushed by a hoard on their way to gather supplies. It's hard to tell the time of day anymore, with the way the sky keeps looking like it's about to burst open and fester, but it's still safer than the deepness of the night.
It's not more than Rio has had to deal with on her own, but there's something easy about having someone at her back, no matter the company. Her guns aren't as good at close range as she would like, and IV keeps them at bay for her while she watches, sights trained on their heads. She doesn't have bullets enough to miss if she wants to keep this up.
It's a comfort too, to know that she could kill him any time, with just a click, the way he turns his back to her, so trusting and almost innocent.
Still, it's almost a show at this point, the rough way IV dispatches them, hitting his axe in hard enough to splatter, soaking himself in rotting blood and grease and grey, like he's enjoying every moment of the fight. A true bit of service, with the wet squelch of metal into a spine, sticking hard with the squeeze of vertebrae and vacuum of blood until he pulls it free, sickeningly.
She wonders just who he had to kill to be like that, and whether he regrets it.
Rio doesn't regret anything.
She waits to twist her gun and kill one, right behind him, just to see him startle.
(3)
On the fifth day Rio is bitten. She feels the zombie's teeth push deep into her skin and down to the very bone, dragging up and across, pulling the sinews sickly away from her body, and she thinks she expected it to hurt more than it does, and she wonders if it's because of the apocalypse that she's become so numb, or if this was her all along. She doesn't scream, she doesn't even flinch, she merely takes her gun from the loose holster at her side, points it at the former human's temple, and pulls the trigger, just once, and doesn't stop to watch it fall.
IV stares at her, and she understands the look in his eyes, the way his hands are clenched so tightly around his axe that the muscles might just snap and the bones will pull through the skin. This really is a mess.
'Do you have any string?' she asks him, with a tilt of her head, and his eyes snap away from her arm and the blood that runs down it as she lowers it to hang limply at her side, up to her face.
'What the hell.' he says, and he looks the most out of place she's ever seen him, it makes laughter bubble like nitrogen in her veins. Oh how much he cares about things that don't even matter anymore.
'I know you make puppets, surely you must have some sort of cord or wire on you.' Rio states, holding out her useful hand to gesture. 'The flesh is separated too badly, it won't be able to close on it's own. I'll need to sew it.'
'Hey, hey, Rio, what do you think you're saying.' IV shows all of his teeth, flat and white and non-threatening. 'You should know what happens to people who get bitten, it doesn't matter how much you try and patch yourself up.'
Rio sighs and taps her foot. Her arm is starting to feel hot and sharp from blood loss, a deep, bone chilling sting. 'Naturally I am aware, Thomas. Of what happens to humans, at least. Now, that string.'
He catches on quickly though, she can tell. That's good, she wouldn't want to have to fight him in her condition, even though she knows she could win; she wouldn't be able to get through without great penalty. He's still hesitating though, torn between taking the hand axe to her skull and scattering shards into her brain now or waiting to hear her out before he does.
'And you are?' he drawls, twirling the axe in his hands, unnatural and clumsy despite himself.
'I'm...' Rio's voice halts, catching. She was prepared to explain but on the spot she's not entirely sure, and she wonders if she even wants to know. But these are memories she's had to guard for a long time, after Ryouga had forced himself to forget, and she must accept them. So she remembers the experiments and the hunger and they way she couldn't look at people for too long without wanting to destroy, remembers they way she and Ryouga would lick eachother's blood and wounds, and how now she doesn't feel whole without him. She remembers seeing that same hunger in the monsters. But-
Isn't all that just nonsense?
'I'm Kamishiro Rio.' Kamishiro Rio says, bringing her bloody hand up to smear and stain above her heart, because that's something she does know.
IV stares at her before throwing his head back and laughing, loud and grotesque and echoing through the empty streets. He drags a hands through his hair as he quiets down, looking older than he should, messier, more tired.
'If it's like that, then how am I to argue anyway. Right, Kamishiro Rio?' He crumples back against the wall, reaching into his pack to pull out a doll. For good luck, he had told her, when she had had questioned it before, and she hadn't argued then, if he'd needed it. Rio doesn't believe in anything she can't make for herself.
He coils the strings on the control tightly, so that they cut into his skin, blood running down the wire before he cute it loose with his axe with a sharp twang, the puppet losing more life with every one he cuts until he has a web of them hanging from his fingers. He holds them out to her, and she walks over to take them, watching his hand stay in the air for just a second too long.
'Ryouga... That guy's the same way, isn't he.' IV asks, when she's finished up one side of the wound, pulling deeply with a shard of bone. It's not really a question.
'My brother wouldn't die without telling me.' Rio states, dragging the string just a little too quickly. 'I'm sure he will be just fine.'
(2)
Kamishiro Ryouga can't remember the last time he's slept, on the sixth day after the end of the world. He curls in on himself, eyelids veined and drooping, and his legs protest the cramped stillness. Maybe just for a few minutes, just until the day is over, just until the world stops being so messed up, maybe that would be okay.
Yuuma moans from the other side of the room and Ryouga forces himself to snap his eyes open. He shouldn't even think about sleeping, not when Yuuma can't anymore. Besides, it's about time, he thinks, as Yuuma writhes in his ropes. He's hungry again, just like he's always hungry, just like he's been hungry for days, and Ryouga is just tired. He's been hunting for so long, trying to get enough to keep Yuuma from rotting, to keep the flies from burrowing in and laying their eggs into his flesh, to keep Yuuma looking like Yuuma, but he's sure by now all the easy prey has left their poor excuse for a city.
He's sure by now he's too exhausted to feed Yuuma another bright face that looks at him like they trust him. Like Yuuma had, before.
It's almost silly, how Yuuma had been infected protecting Ryouga. Protecting him, of all the people in the world. Ryouga thinks he's the last person anyone should have cared about, but he knows by now he would have only done the same. Ryouga thought he could afford to lose here, but Yuuma was always the one who believed in him despite everything. They're both fools, really, and look where it got them.
Ryouga stands up on wobbling legs and walks over to Yuuma and thinks he probably should have done this a long time ago.
There's no recollection in Yuuma's eyes and they're rotted yellow, a thin film of filth clouding them, absorbing the light, but when Ryouga waves his hand in front of Yuuma his teeth gnash, brown around the edges with putrid blood. Ryouga doesn't move away, and they tear at the first joints of his pointer and index finger, too sharp, severing them with a bloody pop, swallowing the flesh and bones and nails whole.
Ryouga screams, and he wants to drag his hand back, but Yuuma needs more than that, and Ryouga muffles himself with his other hand to his own mouth, teeth just as sharp, digging in just as easily. He swallows down blood before he can help himself. Even here, they're the same.
Yuuma pulls up, looking for more, and Ryouga lets him, the bitter sound of bones chipping against teeth and blood oozing and spurting echoing through the room.
It's not enough, Ryouga knows, and for not the first time he wishes he could join Yuuma like this.
(1)
On the seventh day they find Ryouga, crouched low in front of Yuuma's already flyblown, writhing body, in a corner of the city far removed from the bustle of the town. There are dirty rags around the rough stump of his arm, bone peaking through them, sharp and tooth-marked, and it takes Rio only seconds to figure out what happened here. Really, her brother is such a handful sometimes.
'You never did answer my calls, Ryouga.' She says, stepping over a picked skeleton. 'The phone lines are still up, so you really should have had the decency to reply.'
'What are you doing here, Rio?' Ryouga asks, and his voice is a strained growl, hoarse, like he's been screaming. Or crying. Probably both, Rio thinks, looking from his bloodshot eyes to the thing on the ground.
'Now, now, that's not any way to talk to your sister, is it. And after I spent such a long time looking for you when you left in such a hurry.' She crosses the room to stand over him, bending low to look him in the eye. 'You seem to have done quite the number on yourself without me.'
'You don't look much better.' Ryouga gestures to her arm with a nod, limbs too shaky to move properly.
'It's nothing that won't heal.' She huffs, crossing her arms, but it's an old gesture, and right now everything in her body is buzzing just by being here, so much so that it's distracting. She wonders if he feels it too. He must. 'Surely you must have realized by now that it's the same for you. If you... take care of yourself that is.'
He flinches.
'Rio...' and it's a warning, but since when has she ever listened to those.
She kneels down and loosens her arms to wrap around him, feeling his head fall back against her lips.
'Don't worry, Ryouga, I'll take care of everything. You should rely on your little sister more, honestly.' She breathes into his ear, taking out her gun. There are two bullets left, just enough. Ryouga only looks up again when he hears the safety release and by then she already has it aimed, balancing against his shoulder.
Tsukumo Yuuma isn't really Tsukumo Yuuma anymore, and it's a shame because if there was anyone Rio would have trusted with her brother, it would have been him. She watches the bullet enter his head, the skin soft and peeling, the sound sharp in their ears, and Ryouga shakes her off to clatter against the floor.
'Why the fuck did you do that!?' He rasps, staring at her in horror, and Rio doesn't have time to answer before IV retches from the doorway, revulsion at the smell of death in the room, at the two of them.
'What the hell is going on here.' IV gasps out, and Ryouga shakes in growing realization before he can even think to say anything.
Rio smiles, wide and sharp, every tooth designed to tear and kill.
'Look Ryouga, I brought you lunch. By now you must be starving, am I right.'
(0)
The eighth day after the world is reborn anew, Ryouga doesn't even look at her, doesn't look anywhere but the blood stains on his shoes and the ragged bandages on his regrowing arm, and Rio thinks this is okay. They have until forever.