It was hard to run, especially with a leg rotting in on itself with the imminent threat of contaminated blood trying to run through the tight tourniquet tied just below his knee. They had managed to outrun most of them, but they were never safe, and right now it was either give in to virus or find something to chop the now useless limb off.
Jack opened the door of what seemed to be an old hardware store, half-dragging Hiccup inside and sitting him down on the floor behind a shelf. He groaned and tried to resist the urge to clutch at his leg; his hands and arms were covered in cuts and the mixed blood would definitely end any chance he still had.
It had been a moment of distraction, a simple turning of the head in the last second when one of the zombies had crawled towards him, it's lower half missing, and chomped down on his left leg. Hiccup had had half a second to scream before Jack pulled him away, shooting the living corpse in the forehead and held him to get away before more came their way. There was at least a dozen following their trail, no doubt they would be there in a thing of minutes, and their only escape was the back door, if they managed to 'fix' Hiccup's leg.
"Don't worry" Jack had said, walking around the isles, looking for something he could use, an ax or saw, or anything. "We'll-we'll fix this and we can be on our way"
Hiccup cringed at a sudden sharp pain in his knee and held back the groan in his throat. "Jack" He called, but the albino wasn't listening, muttering to himself about antisepsis."JACK!" That got his attention, enough for him to stop rambling and actually look at him. "Just...just forget it. Go away while you can, I'll hold you back anyway"
"Fuck no" Jack was having none of that, kneeling to Hiccup's right, a hand on the brunet's shoulder. "We're in this together, you go down, I follow" Hiccup felt him squeeze a bit too hard. "But we have to try, ok?" Jack held his hand, staring at him with hard but slightly glossy eyes. Hiccup stared back for a second before nodding once, slowly. "Great. Stay here"
"Sure, because I have so many places to go today. The Queen wants to have tea, I can't leave her hanging!" Jack chuckled and ruffled his hair before going back to wandering the shop. Hiccup let himself hiss at the cold pain bubbling up his limb. If Jack wanted him to get alive out of this, he'd better hurry, or he'd have to literally rip his entire leg from it's socket.
It took some minutes but Jack came back, a white box under his arm and—Hiccup swallowed—a sparkling new ax in his hand. Jack didn't seem to be accepting the idea either, why would he, really, but it had to be done. Hiccup wondered if telling Jack once more to go away without him would be easier now with the menacing glint of the sharp edge drilling both their minds.
"Okay" Jack knelt down again, in front of him this time, and put everything down. The white box had a big red cross painted in the middle; a first aid kit. He must have gone to the back store to fetch it. "We...we need to find something for you to bite on"
"Well, how hard can it be, it's a hardware store, there might even be a rubber chicken somewhere" Hiccup laughed weakly, a quiver in his voice as his eyes followed Jack's hands as he took out of the kit whatever he would need, but never losing sight of the ax half-hidden behind the albino.
"-ccup, Hiccup!"
"Ah—what, sorry, I just-" He tried to find the words but the cold hand back on his shoulders yanked him back to reality.
"Hey, it's okay, I would be zoning out too in your position" Jack smiled as best as he could in the present situation and diverted his eyes to the problem at hand. "How does it feel?"
Hiccup kept silent for a moment. "It's...bubbling" He cringed when, as soon as he said the word, the disgusting feeling of his blood boiling in his veins returned. "Ugh, I think it's moving faster"
Jack nodded and put on a pair of latex gloves from a box in the kit, carefully handling the infected limb to lay sideways, Hiccup trying to turn any scream into a loud hiss of pain. The fabric of his trousers was cut with a pair of scissors and they both gasped at the state of the wound.
The entire calf was a disgusting mixture of green and black, the bite mark around the ankle pouring a yellowish-green pus that bubbled over the rotting skin, fizzling in contact with the air. The leg was practically completely dead by now, and it was a wonder Hiccup didn't feel anything else besides the venom in his blood.
Jack's hand shoot back on instinct, hanging high over his chest as his eyes took in the horrible sight, not noticing how Hiccup started hyperventilating until a hand slapped repeatedly at his shoulder.
"Come on, come on we don't have time for this" Hiccup said, almost breathless, eyes darting between the leg to the front doors. "They'll be here any moment, just fucking do it!"
"Fuck, alright" He rummaged through the kit for something for Hiccup to bite on, finally handling him a small bottle of hand sanitizer. "It's the hardest thing there is, it'll have to do"
As soon as Hiccup bit on the flat end of the bottle and gave Jack the 'go on', the albino made for the scissors, cutting more of the fabric as fast as he could without taking off the tourniquet, trying to find the spot where it would be safe to act on. It was just below the knee, right at the same level the right boot started. He looked at Hiccup and saw him with his eyes closed, nose scrunching hardly in his effort to not see what was about to happen.
Jack reached for the bottle in his mouth and gently took it out, making the brunet open his eyes in time with Jack leaning forward to connect their lips in a soft kiss that was shorter than what any of them would want, but it was reassuring in a way, to know there was still something like that in a damned world like this.
"I love you" Jack mumble against his mouth, blue eyes never leaving green ones as his hand swept the floor to grip the wooden handle once more.
"Love you too" Hiccup whispered back, a small smile twitching at the corner of his lip. "When this is all over we'll have time for everything we want, okay?" His voice was soft, like that of a teacher talking to a distraught kid. "Now, we have something to do, let's not make it longer"
Jack sniffled as a couple of tears slid down his cheeks, and carefully handled the tool in his hands, bringing it closer t the imaginary line he had to follow. He brought the head down and the sharp edge touched skin lightly, a drop of red blood surfacing. It was safe, and for a moment Jack thought that maybe this wouldn't be so hard to fix. He lowered the rest of the edge to round the rest of the circumference of the leg, marking the line just over the skin, a trail of blood following its path.
Hiccup hissed at the burning feeling of air against the wound, but kept as still as he could, not wanting Jack to accidentally slip towards the infected area and mix infected and clean blood. He would shoot himself before he posed any threat to Jack.
"I'll go deeper now, hang on there" He breathed deeply, rearranging the ax in his hand and slowly sinking it in the tense flesh, managing a clean cut at the beginning of the incision-
-Only to stop when the sound of glass shattering in thousands of pieces caught their attention, both wiping their heads towards the entrance of the shop where the door have come down by the hoard of zombies approaching them, dragging their dead limbs behind them as guttural noises escaped their rumbling throats.
Hiccup panicked and tried to get up, but the strain in both wounds sent him back down, howling in pain as Jack shoved the ax into his arms and took out his gun, shooting at the closest ones to have some time to recharge.
Some of the zombies that couldn't walk properly dropped to the ground and dragged themselves across the floor towards Hiccup, who managed to keep them at bay smacking them with the ax in the middle of the forehead, rendering the tool useless to its original purpose, but who knew if they could continue after this sudden attack.
The numbers were slowly decreasing, some of the ones that were shot still moved and Jack had to do them in again until he was sure they were done for. When it winded down there was a bunch of corpses in the floor and Jack hurried to lift Hiccup off the floor and onto the top of the shelf, sitting him carefully to avoid strain in the injured leg.
"It's like they can smell us" Jack huffed, his breath ragged after the shock of adrenaline coursing through his body. "We should go roll in mud or something" Hiccup laughed breathlessly as well, sweeping his bangs away from his face, his skin covered in the sweat that broke from the pain of the wound being handled roughly when moving around during the attack.
A movement caught his attention again, a short, spasm-like movement from Jack himself. Hiccup cocked his head, staring at Jack's face in worry. He had gone pale, paler than usual, his eyes wide and terrified, mouth set in a thin line, and was looking straight back at Hiccup as if he was just told the place would explode the next second.
Hiccup was about to ask what was wrong when Jack swayed a bit, a something caught a ray of light and glinted between them, making him look down.
The metallic tip protruding from Jack's chest stared menacingly back at him, a pool of blood steadily growing around it. It was sideways, right in the area where his heart should be, and he heard Jack say his name once more through the fog filling his mind, right before the albino dropped like a rock to the ground, body spasming and life slowly escaping from his eyes. He could practically feel him getting colder by the second.
The moment he fell, Hiccup could see one of the Walkers, a small child that probably went unnoticed in the slaughter, that must've walked behind Jack and stabbed him while he wasn't paying attention. Where zombies even capable of using weapons? Where this fucks evolving or something?
Hiccup could feel his throat closing, his mind felt like a piece of liquified jelly covered in mud, as he stared at the lifeless body of his best friend and lover while pushing himself off the shelf. Landing on his bad leg wasn't registered by his brain as he moved towards Jack, carefully moving him around until he found the gun in his jacket, taking a moment to close his eyes and stroke his face a last time before falling with his back against the shelf, just like when they'd arrived.
The zombie-child hadn't moved, strangely enough, just stared at him with dead, worm-ridden eyes. Hiccup then heard something heavy dragging it's feet over the broken glass of the entrance. So more were coming, great.
He opened the cylinder of the gun and looked inside: there were three bullets left, he couldn't do anything with that and a bad leg. Closing it, he raised it to the air and pointed to the child, shooting it almost carelessly square between the eyes, watching it drop to the ground like a sack of rocks, and kicked it away from Jack's body. He hesitated for a moment before repeating the treatment in Jack, securing him from having to come back to life as an infected decaying body, tears cascading down his face as he did so.
He stared at the albino one last time, eyes never leaving his form while the barrel was pointed to the side of his own head.
"You go down, I follow" He said, his finger over the trigger as firm as ever.
The sound of the gun going off for the last time was heard by nobody.