A/N: Thank you so much for the warm reception for the first part in the series! The feedback is a joy to read. This next one might be an acquired taste as it deals with an end of the world, supernatural situation. Ste and Brendan are survivors in a world where an infection has turned the population into zombies (think 28 Days Later esque). It's an unusual premise and maybe not for everyone but I hope if you do read you'll enjoy it and if not then the next one will have no zombies in it ;)
Warnings: a bit of gore due to the end of the world situation, it's a little grim and bleak.
Infected
"Are they gone?" Ste looked like a boy, knees hugged to his chest and pupils leaked wide. He wasn't sure why he referred to them as 'they'. It wasn't a 'they' any more.
Brendan sat in the knackered armchair opposite, its leather worn into scruffy patches. It was the best piece of furniture left in the building. He watched Ste in the darkness, shied away from the only circle of natural moonlight. He slid the shotgun under the chair.
"Gone," Brendan said, "For now." He looked on Ste swallow and nod. It was the best they had to hope for: safety in the present. "C'mere. At least let me hold you."
Ste crawled low; across their blood and semen stained mattress, over the exposed floorboards, wrapped his arms around Brendan's neck. They'd stopped talking about tomorrow, about despair, death and desolation. There was no need to mention it; it surrounded them. It choked them in the night when the dreams turned out to be kinder than reality.
Brendan kissed the top of his head, Ste's knees digging into his thighs. He'd become even bonier than when they'd first met. When they had sex now, Brendan could count every rib with his tongue. His cheekbones looked sharp in the dark and Brendan rolled his head to the side to suck on his neck. They connected groin to groin, Brendan's hands sliding up the back of Ste's faded t-shirt and then fingers down into the groove of where his jeans bagged too loose for him now.
Against the world's end, sex made them closer to humanity.
Ste spiked his cheek against Brendan's two day's worth of stubble, the slight burn of it reminded him that he was still real. He pulled himself up, elbows resting on the head of the chair and let Brendan tug down his clothes just enough, legs contorted over the arms of the chair. There wasn't a smile between them and with adrenaline of a kill still thumping around Brendan's body, his cock throbbed hard as he uncovered it.
He held his palm open under Ste's lips. "Spit." And worked the saliva onto his cock, before adding his own to lubricate Ste's hole. Life had become a survival, and sex: a carnal need of pleasure and controlled pain. Flowers had died out. And time, the biggest romance of all, was against them.
Ste squeezed Brendan's face tight to his chest as his walls tightened against the pressure of Brendan's cock. Brendan grunted, lips around Ste's nipple to stop himself getting any louder, and took great fleshy handfuls of Ste's arse to ram in further. He whined a little with the pain, but wound a toxic rhythm with his hips through it until his body could fit Brendan with only the sweetest discomfort. His fingers scratched white up the nape of his neck and into his scalp.
Sometimes it would descend into something so rough and greedy that they'd check each other's pupils just to make sure. But they still had blue in there. Their pupils weren't bloodshot with a ghostly silver. They exchanged I love you's and came like humans.
They licked each other clean for scraps of protein and sanitation. Clean water almost felt like a myth once told by a croaky granny and any bottled stuff they found was to drink and never to wash. Ste got over his taboos that it was dirty and got accustomed to everything smelling like their entwined bodies.
Under the army surplus blankets, ones they'd been loaned back when the military were entrusted with the hope of the country, Ste rolled naked into Brendan's embrace. It was rare to be naked. The cold and the fear of what might come knocking at any moment usually kept them clothed.
"At least the pressure's off, Steven." Brendan's jokes were the only thing that got him through the night. "We're not expected to repopulate the planet."
"You think we could keep trying just to make sure?" Ste asked. "Imagine though, my ears and your moustache. Beautiful babies." He stroked Brendan's facial hair. He'd found a razor on Day 26 and insisted on chiselling the tash out from under the beard growth. Ste had just got used to being fucked by Gandalf – as he put it.
They fell quiet, both keeping afloat the delusion that Declan, Paddy, Leah and Lucas were still out there among the living.
They weren't.
::: :::
The boarded up pub, derelict long before the virus hit, sat along a lonesome stretch on a motorway some fifty miles from Hollyoaks village - where they'd first escaped. The kids had been their first priority, but along with the rest of the country it became impossible to travel anywhere that wasn't by foot. The big cities were quarantined – Manchester and Dublin were no go areas. Brendan had decided on the pub after one of the 'hunts' had lead him to stumble upon it. The group they'd been fighting with and helping to travel soon dissipated through weakness or worse and Brendan took Ste away from them in the quietest hour of the night.
"We can't just leave them!" Ste had cried when they got to the pub for the first time.
"They're not our friends, Steven. One of 'em will catch it and you think they'll look twice before they bite you. I ain't losing you. Not to them, not to that. Not to anything. When the food supply runs out, when people start looking at each other funny, when the men start picking each other off to be king – you wanna be in the mix of that?" Brendan was crouched on the floor with him, holding his face in his hands. "I don't wanna have to kill any more people before they turn into those things. You hear me? Not people you've befriended."
Ste shook with the sob of a child, wiping fists over his eyes. "Just you and me now?"
Brendan toppled forward and kissed his wet mouth. "Like it's always been."
Ste took comfort in him, his protection. "We can get through anything together, me and you,"
Brendan gripped onto him, wishing Ste had worn warmer clothes on that fateful day when they'd had to leave everything and everyone behind. "We're fighters, Steven. Survivors."
The pub was blessed with metal casing across the window. It hadn't been a protection against them – it had been to keep out vandals, but it suited Ste and Brendan. They were also graced with a cellar stocked with a small quantity of tinned food and old Panda Pops drinks in blue and neon pink. That had been the high point of a very low week.
"I used to love these as a kid!" Ste said, his throat burning a little from the fizz. He'd got Brendan's permission to open the miniature bottle; he made the decisions about what happened when – they fell into that pattern naturally. They had one each and Brendan said Sláinte like old times.
Brendan coughed. "How could you like this crap? Tastes like cough syrup." The bottles were five years past their best but the additives would mean they could survive the apocalypse.
"Love em." Ste barely paused for breath and when the bottle was gone he sighed and stuck out a blue tongue.
"Is that an invitation?" Brendan said and they ended up sucking each other's tongues purple in the basement. As Brendan's hands crept over Ste's body and pushed up his hoodie and t-shirt, they didn't think about the blood that splattered it. The blood of a fifteen year old girl with a twitch in her neck and skin starting to split. The twitch was the first sign. They'd been told that in the government distributed pamphlet on Day 7. Seven days too late. Everyone looked like they had a twitch, when you really looked.
When the sugar crashed out of his system, Ste cried again, fighting Brendan off mid-kiss. He hadn't slept properly in days since he drove a bat through Holly Cunningham's skull. He felt guilt at every smile, at every moment of satisfaction under Brendan's hand.
"People are out there dying! And the others they're-" He ran out of words, his hands flailing. "And we're in here-"
Brendan snapped at him now. Ste had the blood of Holly on him, but Brendan had been hunting and its blood massacre had begun rotting him, more than what those creatures could do. "You wanna go out there and share this crap with strangers, Steven, then go ahead. Fuck off. You know what will happen? Eventually some prick bigger than you will feed you to those monsters. Kindness is weakness out there." He took hold of Ste's shoulders. "We hide it out, defend ourselves here, like we talked about, yeah? Then when things get back to normal or the cities open their borders, we grab the kids and then we get ourselves somewhere safer. Right? No good deeds. This is the time to be selfish." He lifted his cheeks up and grinned with a growling wickedness. "You know I like it when you get selfish, Steven." He smoothed down his hair with the tip of his fingers. "Whatever the future, whatever time we have left, let's enjoy each other. Hmm?"
That night, Ste "sorted" dinner – sliced open a tin of beans and a tin of fruit cocktail with a knife. He took it upstairs, shivering as floorboards creaked under his feet.
His face glowed in the dim flicker of a candle Brendan had lit in the centre of an old pool table, covered in a dust sheet. He grinned, the fear dissolving at he stepped closer to the expectant Brendan. "Dead romantic," he said, meaning it more than he'd admit. They dived two forks into the one tin of beans and longed for toast. They didn't dare talk about the food they might never eat again.
Together on a squatter's mattress that first night in the pub, tasting of syrupy peaches and pineapple, they kept each other warm. And it was the first of many times the nightmares haunted Brendan.
In the dream there was no running, no fear. He felt hot, like his skin burnt from the inside out, and bloodshed coloured the walls around him. He strode across Hollyoaks village, wrenching his gaze from side to side, but he wasn't on a hunt. In the dream he didn't question his being there or what had happened to the world. In less time than it took to sprint there, he was in the cellar of the club. It didn't reek of death like reality, like it had when they ran from there. Steven stood there, back to him, lithe and smelling like lust. He wore the tight black uniform he hadn't worn in years and Brendan could see the crease of his arse through them. He stalked him with the intention of fucking him. In the dream he pursued him to the wall like he had done all those years ago and sniffed him out. Fear reflected in Steven's dark eyes but Brendan flooded with adrenaline when he realised this wasn't the same first-time uncertainty and caution in his expression, he knew exactly why he was there and he couldn't stop himself. He choked him until colour bled out of him, but just before the sweet relief of death, exchanged a bloody kiss and watched the infection take hold. Steven twitched, pupils dying black.
Brendan awoke, gasping for breath and turning Ste over in his sleep. He checked him over for all the signs; checked his own skin. They were clean – infection free. Ste murmured in his sleep and Brendan pulled him back against his chest and stayed clamped awake the whole night listening to the world die outside the pub.
::: :::
The first few days in the pub blurred into one. Time only passed by Brendan scoring lines in the chintzy wallpaper. It had been six weeks since the virus started spreading, five weeks since the government had set up a helpline and recruited volunteers for the police and army. Four weeks since most of the population had begun feasting on each other's flesh. Death stopped becoming the slow snail of old age and started outnumbering the living.
They rationed food, looked for tools like knives and glass and matches in the rubble of the pub. They counted bullets. Brendan kept two in his pocket without a word to Ste.
One each.
On the fourth night Brendan heard scratching at the back of the pub. "It'll be a fox," Brendan said, pushing a finger against Ste's lips.
"If it's just a fox, why're you whispering?" Ste's mouth trembled with fear. "Don't go and look. Don't. Please"
Pressing his palms against the side of Ste's face, Brendan spoke firmly. "I need some air. I'm going stir crazy in here. And I wanna kill the fucker. I need to keep you safe." He kissed Ste so hard, Ste's teeth made raw his lip. "And if it's a fox or a rabbit or a grizzly bear then we got dinner."
He picked up the shotgun and unbolted the door before Ste could even claw him back.
He paced, biting what was left of his finger nails and routed around under the bar again where he'd been discovering things like a few worn Jackie Collins novels and The DaVinci Code, board games with missing pieces and a pack of cards. They'd played Connect 4 for hours the previous day until Brendan said he just wanted to sleep and he dozed in the armchair, leaving Ste to lay on the mattress with his eyes shut and imagining life if the world hadn't ended. It kept Ste busy to hold his own form of hunt; Brendan wouldn't let him out the four walls.
When Brendan returned half an hour later, Ste was sat behind the bar counter tiling the floor with old beer mats. He jumped up, brushing himself down and kept his distance whilst scanning Brendan's eyes and skin.
"I'm clean. I'm clean." Brendan's eyes widened in front of Ste, pupils perfect, and he wiped his bloody forearm across his hot head.
"Are you hurt? Are you okay?" Ste took him by the shoulders.
Brendan nodded. "Fine. Just the one. He was weak, I just finished the job." He sniffed as if to regain composure. "On the bright side, I got us Peter Rabbit for dinner."
His hunger stopped him from grimacing. "You better light the fireplace."
::: :::
Brendan taught Ste the entire repertoire of card games he knew, but Ste insisted on many rounds of Go Fish and Brendan grew tired easily. He longed for chess and fine malt. They'd have to move on in a matter of days: supplies were low. Out there he didn't fancy their chances but starving to death wasn't a fight for survival, it was prolonged and miserable.
One night, Ste put down the Jackie Collins and sat up in bed crossed legged and facing Brendan in the chair.
"Read to me." He said, watching Brendan's gaze flicker up in surprise.
He lifted the book in his hand: The Bible. "This?"
"I wanna know what it's all about."
Brendan tensed and then smiled. "You don't want this in your head, Steven. I've got enough of it in me."
Ste accepted it with a brief nod. "Well will you come over 'ere and tell me stories from your head then. Tell me memories – good ones."
Brendan perched the Bible on the seat and climbed into bed beside Ste, sitting at right angles and having Ste lay, legs looped over his. "I ain't got many good ones, not from way back anyway."
Ste took his dry hand and placed it against his cheek. His fingers were scarred and marked with other people's blood. They stroked rough lines on his cheekbones and through the bristling sides of his hair. He was too young to die.
"December." Brendan said after a moment. "The typa cold that seeps right through your clothes but I was warm through. You got the Christmas lights all around –"
Ste grinned tasting brandy pudding on his tongue. "You love all the Christmas lights."
"I do. I do. But I loved them more that year. It felt like a good Christmas the start of a better year. Gut fulla Guinness before midday."
Ste pulled a face. "Yuech."
"Dublin in December…"
"Oh." A smile spread Ste's mouth wide.
Brendan smirked, combing Ste's hair so it stuck up at shaggy angles. "I'd woken up with this bloke next to me. I went and got us breakfast but it only got cold."
"Worth it though." Ste turned his head then, accusatory. "Actually I think you'll find you pigged all the toast before anything happened."
"You definitely got fed."
Ste shook his head with a blush. "Weren't breakfast."
"My kind of breakfast."
Slapping his thigh lightly, Ste ordered Brendan to continue, shutting his eyes to paint technicolour images with Brendan's words.
"Saved the pretty boy from getting crushed by a tram and he repays me by tryina shove me off a pier."
"I was only messing." Ste clamped his eyes shut again. "If I imagine it really hard I can hear the waves you know. Promise me when this is all over we'll go back there." Steven's hope crushed the space inside his chest. What would be left of Dublin, his home, their whirlwind reunion?
Brendan looked up at the ceiling, blinking to clear his head of memories. "Course we will."
Ste laid deadly quiet, feeling the pulse of Brendan's fingers through his cheek. "Even if you don't believe it, just swear we'll go."
"I swear it."
Ste inched his hips off the bed and wriggled off his jeans. They bagged around his rattling bones and slipped off with ease. Brendan spread his palms across his disappearing belly and ached to feed him up, just to see that soft little mound of flesh again.
"Where'd you get the energy from?" Brendan said, pinching his thigh and rubbing his index finger along the underside of Ste's cock. It jerked with life when Brendan squeezed it with a tight o of his fingers.
Ste shrugged and spread his arms out like an angel's wingspan, moaning like one of them on the outside; Brendan had three fingers cupping his balls. He picked himself up, grabbing Ste by the wad of material of his hoodie and pulled him up too, kissing him softly on the lips. There was a slight sting as Ste's sweat-saltiness aggravated the dry cuts inside Brendan's mouth. What he'd give for a bottle of water. He blocked out the niggling twinge and threw Ste forward onto his palms with a soft bounce on the mattress.
He pressed tongue and teeth against Ste's searing hot opening and settled his frustrated writhing with two heavy hands on his hips. If they were in the mood to keep reminiscing Ste would recall Brendan's fingers ploughing deep inside fresh after a shower in the Dublin hotel. Here and now with the light of a few wax-dripping candles, Brendan had him slicked inside out with saliva and loaded tight with two fingers. From behind, Brendan unbuckled and staggered the thickness of his cock against Ste. He reached in front, palming Ste's dick until, with his half cry, cum greased Brendan's fingers. With it, Brendan worked it over the head of his cock and shushed Ste, telling him to wait.
Ste winced for a moment, fingernails scratching the pleats of the mattress and felt the rough of Brendan's tired clothes gyrate, with his hips, against him. It was Brendan's gruff groans that tugged at his senses – he was the only man ever to make him feel so masculine. There was no cooing over him like a doll, there was sweat and mess and heartbeats. Brendan fucked him like they were immortal.
::: :::
Counting again, there was enough food – if they stretched it thin – to starve them over two more days in the pub. But Brendan had better ideas, one that he didn't want Ste a part of.
"I'm not a child, Brendan. Don't treat me like one."
"Well, you're acting like one."
Tiredness didn't begin to broach the levels they were feeling. The walls choked and the stench of death cloyed in the air outside like a smog. The world might be dying without them, but they sure as hell weren't living.
"Fine! Fine!" Brendan's voice flared with anger and he threw Ste the splattered baseball bat and talked through the plan.
Dawn blistered low around seven and they were safer in sunlight. Not because the creatures were nocturnal or afraid of it like some sort of fairytale, they were just slower in it, bemused almost. There'd be no chances, no hangers on. A blow to the head, bullets if desperate and keep on moving. They lived with no sadness, no guilt, no regret.
Brendan kissed him hard on the lips before unbolting the door.
"I love you." He felt for the bullets in his jacket pocket. He closed his eyes for one moment. "Steven if…"
Ste shook his head. "Don't even ask. I won't. I can't."
"I won't ask." Brendan gripped his face. "I'm telling you."
"And you'd do the same, would ya? If it was me – infected – you'd kill me would you?"
He smiled, a little, under the stubble growth; the loaded gun weighed heavy in his hand. He imagined it against his temple. "I'm not going to let that happen."
"That's not what I asked."
They'd walked the stretch of the motorway for two hours solid, passing burnt out petrol stations and bloodied Services. Stocks had been raided long before they'd got there and corpses and abandoned cars wallpapered the tarmac. Stepping over bodies started to become too normal. Heading towards a city seemed futile and in the end they followed a slip road and headed for a small village. They passed a church covered in crucifix graffiti and boards outside carried hastily painted warnings of the end of times, excerpts from the Bible Brendan recognised all too well.
"I don't want to hang around," Ste said, holding onto Brendan's arm.
Brendan read posters on the church noticeboard that begged for healthy volunteers – women especially – and shuddered at the thought of one lone woman circled in by a group of men, insisting this was the only way to ensure a future.
"Let's get out of here."
The village funnelled into a larger town one where dogs roamed free and Ste could barely stomach the sights, the after-gore. Blood and flesh turned brown and grey and the smell twisted acidity straight through to their stomachs.
"They're better off," Brendan told him, weaving a route between the dead, arm around his shoulders, letting him walk with his view protected and pressed against Brendan's chest. "Better they don't see what's become of the world."
They started house by house, looking for things to steal, hoping they weren't the last to forage. There was an unimaginable joy at finding a tube of toothpaste and toilet roll in one house. The elderly woman who'd lived there had passed before the infection had even made the headlines on the newspaper she clutched. She'd been saved that horror.
Her rotting fridge smelt out the whole downstairs, but Ste chuckled as he sprayed himself with perfumed Dove deodorant upstairs in her bedroom. But guilt panged his head as he looked at a photo on her dresser of her with her grandchildren. His thoughts jumped immediately to the blonde of his children, their smiles wider than sun beams. Brendan appeared a moment later, shaking him from his thoughts. He held up two canvas bags just short of a Ta-dah!
"Bags For Life!" he said with a grin, "Good old Mrs Bird". Her name lay printed on the medication that lined her kitchen counter like a pharmacy. They needed something to cart the supplies back to the pub with them and she'd take good care of the bags.
"Can't we just stay here?" Ste pouted, sitting on the edge of the floral bedspread.
"She's got nothing in her cupboards. And the smell, Steven…"
Ste threw him the can of deodorant. Brendan sprayed and sniffed, screwing up his face. "Hm. Feminine." He sat beside him. "We agreed we'd go back to the pub. If we stay here, they'll find us. They're dormant right now, but I'm guessing these houses are crawling."
Pain gnawed at his belly. "I'm so hungry."
"I know you are," Brendan said, kissing him, gritting back that empty ache inside. "Let's just try this street and we'll eat whatever tins we find, then we'll head back I promise."
::: :::
Ste ate Alphabetti Spaghetti with his fingers, knocking back the sauce like it was nectar. The old dear's next door neighbour had a shed full of cash and carry goods. Enough soup cans and Ready Salted multipacks to last weeks, as well as various tinned Heinz knock offs. Brendan pinched squares of tinned ravioli between his fingers and devoured the lot.
They shared greedy grins and tomato flavoured kisses before loading the bags and downing cans of Sprite in almost one gulp. Things were looking up.
Before they left the house, Ste suggested trying the shower, just to see if there was any water left in the pipes. It would freeze, but to be cleaner seemed like the ultimate goal. Brendan let him head up first and the stairs gave an eerie creak in the dimly lit corridor. Ste's heart thumped when he pushed open the bathroom door, it nudged open with a whine, the brackets clicking with rust. He heard a vicious buzzing of flies in the bathtub, like a fluctuating UV strip-light and fresh sweat sprung at the thought of pulling back the curtain on the bath.
The shower door clunked as he opened it and he winced at the noise, leaning forward to turn on the water. Pipes groaned and chalked water spat from the shower head before a trickling stream began. Ste stripped and called for Brendan as he dived under the freezing water. He swilled it around his stale mouth and spat it back into the water flow.
As Brendan opened the door, about to undress and share the water, the curtain surrounding the bath was pulled free. It all happened within seconds. One of the infected leapt from the bath and threw himself at the glass of the shower. It had once been a he, a young one at that, but his blue-ish flesh split at the cheeks and veins looked scaly around the silver-shot eyes. In the time it took for Ste to scream, Brendan launched a bullet into its brain and gore covered the bathroom like a thrown bucket of paint. He oozed and fizzed on the linoleum floor, Brendan's gun still smoking in his palm.
Ste sobbed with shock into the corner of the shower cubicle throwing his arms around Brendan and clinging, shivering into his chest where his clothes grew damp with water. "It's okay. It's okay."
::: :::
Steven didn't react in the way Brendan expected after the events in the house. On the journey home he paced quietly, but not in the soft vulnerable way that made Brendan cower in love for him, but hardened, numb. He had no idea that Ste's mind raced over plans for survival like the fright made him acknowledge the world would never be reset to life before Day Zero. Even if normality changed, if society reformed, scars of these days past would split history into those who survived and those who'd feasted in the shadow of a stronger man.
He wanted to go back to that street and loot to the ground, shoot the fuckers into oblivion if he needed to. He couldn't live in fear. And with enough supplies, he knew they should make plans to regroup with others. Brendan was enough, he was everything, but sometime society would need them and they'd need society. It didn't bode well for the future to alienate themselves.
When they arrived back at the pub, Brendan had other ideas and ones he wouldn't share. They laid out their pilfered goodies like they were setting up camp and rubbed toothpaste around their mouths with grubby fingertips, grinning at each other. It would have been too easy to gorge until they were sick, but they'd learnt patience and rationing the hard way. Food and drink weren't a Tesco away, they'd eat what they had like sparrows, expecting to find nothing in their next forage.
Steven tasted soapy clean when Brendan went down on him. He stood propped against the old pool table and wondered how many love affairs it had seen. Coy looks at the jukebox or first dates at the table or flirtation over a game and an afterhours fuck on the felt top. Brendan's hair plied thick under his fingers and he pressed his knee against his shoulder. The energy had shifted; Brendan's tenderness yielded slow and savouring strokes of his mouth. Brendan acted as if they had all the time in the world.
Before time to sleep approached, Ste coerced Brendan into a game of Connect 4. He whined a little like a child, snuffing his nose against the side of Brendan's hair and curling his tongue across the spreading moustache; he was all limbs in Brendan's lap.
If Brendan agreed Ste made promises, like rimming and first dibs on the next day's food stash.
Brendan stopped him with a hand on his chest, shaking his head. "Steven. We're not going back there."
"What d'you mean?"
"Not together. I'm not putting you in that situation again."
"What situation?" Ste made air quotes, voice pitchy in indignation. "Nothing happened, you shot him."
"And if I hadn't?"
"So what do you want us to do? Sit in 'ere and starve?" Ste was standing now and feeling defensive, Brendan took to his feet.
"No. You'll stay here and I'll go."
Ste scoffed. "No! How is that any better?"
"Because I'll know you're safe."
"By keeping me locked up like some prisoner?!"
"What would you have me do Steven?!"
Ste's fingernails dug into his skull and he paced the floorboards, creating a chasm between them. "I'm suffocating in here! You keep me bolted in, like – like – some caged animal. Like a pet!"
Brendan snarled. The lack of everything drained every sense. "Don't you say that, don't you dare! I've done everything for you to keep you safe. To look after us both."
"We can't keep this up!" Ste said. "Don't you see?! Who knows what's happening out there with other survivors while we're shut away in here. It's not natural. We're shutting ourselves off."
Brendan's voice twisted in anger. "Be my guest Steven. You know where the door is. Walk out there and you be their little experiment, you volunteer and be the big man and watch as they feed you to the dead."
"Don't talk like that!"
"Can you heal the sick? Or make weapons or give birth? That's the only things that'll be any use to the survivors out there. You might as well be bait."
It was only then Brendan realised Ste was raged red with tears and he pushed him away when he attempted to hold him. He shoved and fitted until Brendan could coax him into grip. Then a banging on the boarded windows and doors shook them like the earth's plates were moving. By the sound of them, a crescendo of deathly groans, there was more than one.
Brendan pressed his hand over Ste's mouth and he wheezed through it, eyes streaming and shaking his head, pleading no no no. When Brendan freed him, scrabbling for his gun and bullets, Ste blocked his path, clinging to his clothing like a barricade.
"They'll leave. Don't go out there. Please."
His eyes closed. "I have'ta. I have'ta." It was another time, another place where those words didn't mean throwing yourself into the path of death.
"They can smell us. One way or another they'll get in." Brendan prised Ste's hands from him.
Ste ran for another weapon, eyes wide and hysterical now. "Well I'm coming with you then."
"No."
"You can't leave me locked up in here! I can't breathe!" Ste's throat scratched dry as he screamed and he stumbled as Brendan pushed him away and wrenched open the door, gunning down the darkness and bolting the door from the outside.
Ste rocked under the pool table, sheltered and knees drawn to his chin. He used to hide under the kitchen table like that from Terry on nights when he'd been to the pub and hoped he'd get to Pauline first, who laid alcohol-unconscious on the sofa. He always felt like the wicked child wishing his mother would take the brunt of it before he did, because her smacks hurt less than Terry's and he could cope with hers in the morning when she screamed at him for not protecting her. The gunshots outside sounded like beatings as the groaning diminished.
When the silence fell, Ste couldn't bare it and busied himself making the bed. The blanket didn't feel so rough anymore.
He heard the door unbolting and his heart beat calmed. Wiping his cheeks with his sleeve he began to apologise to Brendan as he finished with the bed.
"I'm sorry. I should never –" He sniffed again. "I didn't mean ta – I love you, you know?"
He heard Brendan breathing ragged behind him and braced himself for seeing him sheened in blood. "I just wanted to protect you, Steven." Brendan spoke strangely, like his mouth was covered in gauze.
Ste looked up and saw the half-moon of silver in Brendan's pupils. His neck twitched and blueing skin split like seams. Coldness flooded him.
Finally, Ste saw the end of the world.
