"fuck, fuck, fuck," says stuhlinger. anything he tries to say comes out strangled and broken, twisted and warped and always the same fragile mantra. of all the possible outcomes of their toil, though he's thought of this particular one often, he didn't expect this to be as hard as it is. he wants to say something, anything, else; maybe get on with it, maybe serves her right, maybe fuck that girl, but none of that comes out. "fuck, fuck, fuck."
"johnson," says russman. his voice and his expression are carefully controlled, a seasoned and worn mask, but he knows that if he doesn't have it together now, none of them will. the greater good may be painful and bloody and not a whole lot better than what they have now, but he has to reach anyway. he holds the olympia in his hands steady. "johnson. we're running out of time."
misty kneels on the dusty ground, still as stone, hard as rock. she's always been so proud and now isn't any different, but her hands are shaking and it's obvious she's terrified, no matter how solid her expression. blood runs down her arm from the large open bite on her shoulder and the color drains from her face in sync, don't look at her face, her eyes are a little too blue. she exhales, her lip quivers - whatever happened to being solid? - and her voice is quiet. "do it."
marlton can't see past the shaking barrel of the executioner in his hand or the fog in his glasses, but he doesn't need to in order to know she doesn't want to die. none of them do, wasn't that the point - was there ever a point to this - whatever happened to doing something, anything - he can't do this. his finger twitches on the trigger but all he can think about is her smile and her laugh and not the way her voice kind of echoes now, or how her scars are starting to rot or how she's never going to smile again.
he drops the gun. it lands with a clatter that makes all of them jump, and misty makes a growling sound that isn't completely human. marlton's fingers pull through his hair and he tries hard not to sob; whether or not he succeeds is really a matter of opinion. he takes a step back, then another, as if distance from the problem would make it any better. but this wasn't a problem, was it; this was one of the last humans on the entire planet getting bitten and sentenced to execution. not just any human either - this was misty, his comrade, his friend, his…
"i can't do this," he says, thickly and shakily. misty sighs - maybe in relief, maybe in exasperation.
everyone seems to move at once. russman steps in, gun cocked and expression detached and cold as ice; misty reaches for the executioner on the ground with a mumble that sounds like "fine, i'll do it myself;" stuhlinger lurches forward and kicks the gun out of her reach and into a rock with a loud bang that drowns out his cry of protest; marlton turns around and throws up again. in the silence that follows the awkward wake comes the distant cries of the undead, echoing off the buildings and caverns of the underground town.
"what the hell, stuhlinger?" misty snarls, leaning towards the group as they all take a step back. her hand is gripping her arm below the bite like a tourniquet, but her skin slides underneath her fingers with an awful squelch that makes marlton queasy again.
stuhlinger is breathing rough through his nose, panicked as always but at least twice as scared, looking like a horse spooked by a rattlesnake. "no way i'm letting you get a gun," he says, voice as wild and ragged as his breath, "zombie freak—"
misty and marlton wince at the same time from the harsh words, but misty gets angry where marlton just gets that dull anguish again. misty snaps, "funny coming from you, mister flesh—"
"enough!" yells russman. they immediately fall into silence, though they've far from backed down; stuhlinger looks a little paler, misty looks a little deader, but they still glare at each other with burning intensity. russman surveys them with a severe expression, but it turns softer and more defeated and he sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose, says, "look, i know this is… hard, for all of us—"
"no shit, russman!" marlton shouts, all but shrieking, and everyone cringes away from the shrill sound. he tries to continue, but the words get hung on the lump in his throat and come tumbling out as a strangled sob. he looks over at misty again, though he knows it won't make it any easier, but her head is bowed and her eyes concealed by the bill of her hat. he looks away and tries again. "this is misty, not some random corpse on the side of the street!" he runs his hand through his hair again, knocking his glasses askew in the process. (his vision was already blurry with the tears, though.) "we know her," he says, "she's… she's important. to us."
stuhlinger makes a quiet noise, as if he tried to say "to you," but couldn't quite go through with it. russman's expression becomes detached and far away again, and marlton can't decide if it's from the military training or if he's just a terrible person. misty is shockingly quiet as well; her grunts of pain have disappeared, which is quite terrifying given the circumstances. but she looks up - eyebrows scrunched in anger and in effort - and meets marlton's horrified gaze and says harshly, "don't talk about me like i'm not here, i'm not dead yet."
russman, with all his cold reality, replies, "yes, you are."
marlton throws up again.
/
the hours that they spent arguing were left uncounted and lost, but by the time they stopped, misty had started screaming. medically, marlton had examined enough postmortem subjects to recount what was happening inside her body; muscles seizing and contracting, blood cells dying and clotting in her arteries, heart and brain slowly breaking down. emotionally, he didn't want to think about it, but her cries of pain were so loud and near and since he refused to leave her side, he had to endure it. he hadn't the heart - nor the stomach - so russman ended up being the one that dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the jail and locked her up. she writhes there on the floor, gasping and groaning into the dirt, trying very hard to tough it out. you can't quite tough out dying, though.
she just wishes marlton wasn't there to see her like this. "what are you waiting for," she growls.
she glances up between the bars to where marlton is sitting, knees to chest and arms wrapped around, just in front of the cell door. the kap-40 on the floor beside him is purely for self defense in case of zombie attack, which is the only excuse he could tell himself to justify bringing it in there - misty snidely commenting "in case of misty-zombie attack?" in one of her calm moments earlier had not made it any easier. marlton's foot drags a track through the dirt and he replies honestly, "a miracle." misty snorts.
perhaps it was naive, but at that point, marlton had thought that maybe they'd all make it out alive. of course, no one would be able to outlive the nuclear apocalypse. or the zombies. but for a while there, after all they'd been through, he'd allowed himself to honestly believe that they would pull through to whatever future that was promised to them by the germans, whispering commands and instructions as if it could fix the decaying earth. maybe this was just his comeuppance for being so blindly irresponsible, but it feels much too malicious for that. nothing could bring the planet back to its former glory, nor into the scientific future promised by the wonder weapons, and it was irrational to think otherwise.
just why misty was being punished for it instead was beyond him; he curses karmic destiny when she starts keening again.
misty props herself up on the makeshift table, clutching at her chest, face contorted with pain; the sight sends the same shock of sorrow through marlton's heart that first seeing her bite and her bewildered, terrified face had, hours ago. she claws at her flaking skin, not so much as wincing as she tears off bits and pieces, and that's where marlton stops watching, lest he vomit for at least the fourth time. he doesn't know whether watching her suffer while she turns is more painful than shooting her at the beginning would have been, but he could never do that to her, he thinks. even if that means watching her die and come back as a monster. maybe he should just not think about it.
misty observes marlton quietly. if she wasn't so preoccupied with dying, she would probably be berating him with teasing remarks, trying desperately to lift that hopeless expression from his face. she doesn't feel so hopeful right now, though, so she doesn't even try; she pulls herself across the floor to rest her shoulder against the bars, colder than her skin but only by a slim margin. "this could be over so quick," she mumbles, kicking the steel bars with her dirty, bloody boot. when marlton doesn't respond, not even daring to meet her gaze anymore, she pauses. "i don't want to be one of them," she says, quieter than she's ever been, "please. just shoot me."
"i can't," marlton chokes out, "i love you too much."
misty can't think of a good response to that. she tries to, for a while, and cycles through some emotions to match; a smug one, a sad one, even one of extreme disgust - marlton can't help but snicker quietly at the way she scrunches up her nose and pouts - but her expression turns neutral at the end when she can't figure out exactly what it is she should be feeling. she says shortly, "that's stupid as shit," and slides her hand through the bars. her gloves are crusty and covered in her own drying blood, but marlton slowly reaches out and curls his fingers around hers anyway. it's disgusting, and it makes him want to puke again, but so does everything nowadays. he can pretend their hands are clean for once.
for a little while, he can pretend a lot of things; he can pretend misty isn't dying, or that the world around them isn't either. that maybe there is a cure out there, somewhere, or that by some mathematically impossible miracle, they'll be transported to an alien planet that is exactly like earth. with a soft smile, he thinks about how stuhlinger would react to the proven existence of aliens - whether or not he'd try to rub it in misty's face, whether or not he'd be so scared that he'd shit his pants - and that makes him laugh aloud. he recounts these ideas to misty, even when she stops responding. he can pretend she's still listening, though.
he can pretend that her fingers haven't gone limp around his, that her breath is still there, it's just very quiet - that maybe she's just asleep. that maybe, just maybe, she'd pull through it for the better. that she'll be okay. he pretends for a long, silent time.
marlton barely has enough time to pull his hand away before teeth come flying at the bars in a shower of saliva and dead blood.
/
the creature formerly known as misty gnashes its jaws and claws at the ground beyond the cell door, inhuman screams bouncing off the walls and slicing through marlton's brain. russman had managed to take out its legs earlier with fragmentation grenades, so at least it wasn't jumping all over the bars anymore, but there was something so much more depressing - and achingly familiar - about seeing the empty carcass writhe about on the floor as it tried to reach the humans beyond its cage. the trucker hat, splattered with blood, had been thrown off and left in a solitary corner as the zombie mindlessly tries to force its way through the bars, and a sleeve had become undone and ripped in the excursions. it doesn't even look like misty anymore, marlton tries to convince himself as he watches it, feeling rather hollow inside.
stuhlinger was the only one not present; through all his fierce words and harsh tongue, he hadn't been able to bear watching it like the other two hardly could. his only rationalization for it was "dumb bitch got what she, what she, fuck, fuck, fuck" as he retreated in the direction of juggernog. russman's expression hadn't shifted from careful indifference since he came running after hearing the zombie's screams of hunger and bloodlust and marlton's screams of terror and anguish. he runs his thumb over the trigger of his fal, not yet taking aim but ready to at any time. he glances at marlton from the corner of his eye and says quietly, "any last words?"
marlton cries. plain, unabashed, sobs and tears and all. in any other circumstance he would have thought himself pathetic for allowing himself to openly weep like a recently widowed housewife, but that's very much what he's feeling like. he grabs his hair, his shirt, his tie, his skin - anything to keep him grounded. "i'm sorry, i'm sorry," he whispers, not entirely aware of himself. his back presses against the old wood of the wall and he loses his footing, sliding down to the ground where he sits, shaking and clutching his head. "i'm so sorry, i'm sorry, i'm so fucking sorry."
russman lets him be. he turns his attention to the zombie, rotting skin and glowing eyes, and tries to not see the young girl he'd been traveling with for months. it isn't hard; the zombie shrieks and tries to rip its way out of the cell by its fingernails, losing a few in the dirt and dislocating its shoulder on the bars as it tries to squirm out. russman knows zombies, and they will not stop if there's a tasty meal in front of them, sitting on the floor and sobbing uncontrollably, and he knows it'll probably get out of that cell eventually, even if it has to leave a few limbs behind. he takes a steadying breath and then takes aim, pointing his rifle at the monster's head. his expression slips for the tiniest second and he frowns, says sadly, "sorry, baby girl."
he pulls the trigger.