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Chapter Three
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The walk to the city takes for-freaking-ever, and while Em would like to think that's because it's far away from Heathrow, he's glumly aware that death has completely fucked up any speed the lot of them might've had when they were still breathing. Never mind, you know, the ability to walk at anything faster than a halfhearted trudge. Even the athletically inclined aren't much better off, and Em has a gut feeling that he wasn't really one of those to begin with.
The boneys are fast enough—scary fast when they want to be—but losing your mind and whatever's left of your morals doesn't appeal to Em enough to make that trade.
So, halfhearted trudging it is.
He's not sure how long it's been, whether they're halfway there or if they just set out five minutes ago, but all of a sudden his gut clenches, something primal in him giving a vicious tug.
He turns to Will and to the others, can tell from their faces that they're feeling it too.
"Foood," Em says, knowing even as he forces the word out that it's not necessary.
Will's too distracted even to give him the 'you're an idiot' look, which probably means he's gone without eating for too long. And this—this is practically a gift, all things considered. Em can't remember when they set out but he can still tell they're nowhere near the city (the real city, the city full of live ones, not this ghost town they're wandering through now), nowhere near close enough to pick off stragglers stupid enough to sneak past their huge walls. This is the old city, the one they all deserted in favor of a fortress hidden by scrap metal, and at this point it's basically just a stop on the way. Sometimes the live ones come out this way for supplies, whatever they think might be left out here, but Em can only guess they're getting better at being self-sufficient because those meals on wheels have been getting less and less frequent. Leaving the safety of the city compound is starting to become more of an act of desperation than anything else, and it's forcing Em and his friends to go longer without eating and closer to the live ones when they do.
Life's getting hard out here for the dead.
So finding live ones in the old city now, shit, that's too good to be true, but Em's starving and he's not about to question it. Maybe later, when he's been fed and the urge to peel off his own skin isn't getting so fucking insistent.
Their feet drag them to a small building with shattered windows and graffiti-covered walls—pretty much par for the course in terms of curb appeal these days—that used to be a pharmacy, Em thinks. Maybe they're running out of meds in the compound?
Doesn't matter. They're in the halls now and it gets like this sometimes, like he can't even pay attention to the second-by-second details, like he's running on a finite amount of energy and all of it needs to be focused on getting more, getting something to eat, something to keep him from literally tearing himself apart—to keep him somewhat close to human for just a little bit longer.
They're at the door; it has a pane of cracked glass set into it, and through that Em can see them. Three men, two women, two of them talking—arguing?—the others gathering bottles and bandages and shoving them into bags, guns at their hips and machetes strapped to their legs, and then—
Oh, hell.
A girl with curly hair looks up, notices them, shouts something as fear spasms across her face, and there's much yelling and grabbing of weaponry, but Em's willing to risk a headshot at this point and apparently Will is too because he shoves at the door and it gives way.
They stagger into the room and their hunger gives them that little extra bit of speed. It's enough.
Well. For some of them, anyway, because a bullet takes out the pale old woman on Em's right the second they're through the door.
Headshot on the first go, Em thinks dimly, impressed even through his hunger-induced haze. He looks up to see who shot her.
And—
You called me friend.
—blue eyes.
Em stops short. Which is not the smartest idea when you're surrounded by people who want to blow your fucking head off, right, get it together Em.
Too late, because the blond man's face has hardened and he's aiming the gun again, aiming to wipe Em off the face of the earth. Em barely gets his faculties in order in time to dodge and as is he feels the bullet rip through his shoulder. There's no pain, but it's still obnoxious. It's never fun to be shot. For a mad second Em has this urge to tell the blond guy so, but he's already moved on to his next target.
The sounds of gunshots and shouts and snarls and everything else, this cacophony that's unique to dead-versus-living battles, is dull and faded to Em's ears (course that might have something to do with my eardrums rotting away, guess that's always a possibility). His gut is clenching again, exerting that weird pull, only he's not sure it's the same thing, and it's dragging him toward the one who just shot him, like there's some kind of magnet pulling them together—
And then he gets shot. Again.
The bullet grazes his temple this time, which is so fucking close to his brain that Em gapes.
He almost died. He almost—fuck, he almost died properly. For real. No do overs, no take backs, no fucking chance of feeling anything ever again or—and it pisses him off, alright? He's not trying to excuse himself for anything, but shit if the lights very nearly going out for good doesn't royally piss him off.
When he turns around she's looking down at him, defiant, still pointing her smoking shotgun from the height of a desk. Dark hair, green eyes, would probably be gorgeous even if Em hasn't only had exposure to dead people for who-knows-how-long, and in that instant none of that matters. All Em can hear is that strange thick ringing in his ears, his own sluggish mind struggling to comprehend that this girl almost wiped out whatever is left of him, and that bubbling hot anger.
Her eyes widen as he rushes her; she's reloading the shotgun, but his speed takes her by surprise and she isn't fast enough to get another shot off before Em rams into the desk she's standing on. She stumbles, but he thinks she might've been able to get her balance back if he didn't grab a denim-clad leg and wrench her down to his level.
She doesn't scream, not when she hits the floor, not when the back of her head connects with the tile and makes a sickening crunching sound.
And Em…Em is so far gone, so fucking hungry, but something in him still hesitates when he gets on his knees next to her, hands on either side of her face, getting slick with blood—when he meets her eyes, blazing and furious but not showing him any hint of fear. There's something else there instead, something he can't pin down in the heat of the moment.
(Later he'll look back on it and think maybe, just maybe, it was relief. But maybe that's just another lie he likes to tell himself.)
It's almost like she's daring him, like this is some kind of challenge—do it, those eyes say. If you're going to do it, then do it.
He wrenches her head to the side and hears her neck snap, sees the light abruptly bleed out of her eyes, leaving them dark, and that just feels wrong somehow. More wrong than anything else.
No time to think on that now. He's got a job to do, the itch under his skin roaring into a fire that's licking him from the inside out, shutting down whatever makes him Em and leaving nothing but the monster he so likes to pretend he isn't, not all the time.
Harder still to remember that when he's smashing a girl's head against a hard floor, over and over again, blood spraying everywhere—he tastes it on his tongue but it's not enough, it's not nearly enough—trying to crack her skull, trying to get to the brain.
Finally he hears something crack, sees white bone shards protruding from the pulpy mass the back of her head has become, and he digs his fingers into the crack with embarrassing eagerness. Pulls, pulls, until they give way and he can rip out a small handful of her brain.
And, see, the thing is he could just ignore it. Nibble off a few pieces of flesh she won't need anymore and leave the brain be, and watch her wake up again as one of his fellow undead. But instead he's gorging himself, moaning around mouthfuls of brain matter and ignoring the blood dripping down his chin—making sure she stays dead. He's not sure which would be considered more of a mercy, and he doesn't care. Because the first high is hitting him, slamming him backwards with the force of it—
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I am ten, and my father is still alive. My real father, the one who actually gave a damn about me. He watches us.
I've found a stick and am playing swords with my cousin. My—
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"Morgana? Morgana!"
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Cousin. I am ten and Arthur is still my pain-in-the-arse cousin, not my pain-in-the-arse baby brother. We're playing knights and princesses, or at least that's what Arthur decides we're playing. Fine, I say, and then when his knight shows up to rescue my princess and slay the invisible dragon, I pick up a sword of my own and fight back.
The dragon is mine, I declare, and you don't get to hurt her.
I hit his stick with mine hard enough that it breaks with an echoing snap. His face scrunches up like he's trying not to cry, because he's two years younger than me and that makes him a baby still.
Morgana, my father says gently.
I frown. But Arthur looks upset that I've broken his sword so I sigh and offer him mine. He shakes his head.
I roll my eyes. It's a perfectly good sword, I tell him. Just take it.
It's not Excalibur, he says stubbornly.
I smack him on the head with my stick and cross my arms while he yelps.
Yes it is, I inform him. Read up on your namesake, why don't you? King Arthur had two swords. Excalibur was the second one.
Really? he asks, looking at my stick like he thinks it's going to bite him.
My first instinct is to bite his head off, but then I remember my father watching. And then I remember that Aunt Igraine's only been dead a few months, and that Arthur's lost his mother, so I should probably give him a break for now. My mother died when I was born so I might not know how losing one feels, but when Gorlois dies later this year Arthur will be the one trying to keep me together—but I don't know about that yet. I am ten and I am trying to look after my cousin the only way I can.
Really, I assure him, and hand over the stick—the sword. He takes it with more gravity than he'll have when he picks up his first machete, his first shotgun, when he kills his first deadwalker; I know, because I will be there for all of those things and then some. And I'll always remember the look on his face right now, like he's accepting the responsibility of ages. Arthur's always been too serious by half, I think, and that's why he needs me around.
Thanks, Morgs, he says with something like a smile. I shrug and search out another good stick.
Don't mention it, I say. Really, don't. You're still an obnoxious little snotrag.
The look on his face is hilarious, and the next thing I know he's charging at me with my own erstwhile weapon. I bring my new one up on instinct, blocking, and our sticks meet with a crack—
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Em is jerked back out of the memory of the dead girl—Morgana, that's right, that's what the boy called her—and it takes him a second to remember where he is. What he is.
If he's being honest with himself (which is something he generally tries to avoid as much as possible), this right here is the reason Em gets up in the morning. He might've ignored the hunger a long time ago without it. He might've ripped off his skin until the only thing left was a skeleton with the barest layer of flesh remaining, a boney, vicious and fierce and not caring at all about anything but the hunger. Given the sheer goddamn hopelessness of it all, he thinks signing out might've been something he'd got around to eventually. It still might be. You never know.
But this—this is why he keeps eating, and it's selfish as hell, he knows, but he can't quit. In eating people's brains like every cliché from every horror movie ever, he gets to experience their memories. Like stepping into a home video—sensations, emotions and all. For a few minutes at a time he gets to feel again.
He gets to remember what it felt like to be human. And it's the only reason he hasn't gone full-on monster yet.
The chaos has settled down in his absence, brief as it was. If Em were just a casual onlooker he'd feel pretty bad for the (not-so-) live ones. It's really, really hard to kill something that's already dead. Sure, half their little group ended up with bullet holes right between the eyes (or in the case of one poor bastard, a head sitting five feet away from the rest of the body), but the other half looks to be feeding pretty well. Will is merrily chomping on the abdomen of a guy built like a tree, which should keep him busy for a while.
Em stashes the rest of the brain matter on his person, wipes his mouth off with his sleeve and looks down at the dead girl one last time. Out of some really badly timed fit of sentimentality he turns her over so the mess he made of the back of her skull isn't quite so obvious; facing the ceiling, she looks almost normal. Pretty. Definitely more at peace than she'd looked just before he'd killed her.
Well. Maybe that's stretching it a bit.
He's about to stand up when he notices something on her wrist. It's a bracelet, even odds on whether it's meant to be jewelry or some weirdly outdated armor, a thick silver band gilded generously with gold. The sight of it nudges something in him—probably the aftereffects of the memory he's just ingested—so he pulls it off her slim white wrist and stows that in his pocket as well.
By the time he hauls himself to his feet and is considering starting the long walk back to Heathrow, Em's almost forgotten about blue-eyes. When he stands up, though, he sees him out cold—slumped on the floor next to the body of another man holding a gun but missing half his face. Blue-eyes is bleeding sluggishly from somewhere in the back of his head.
But not dead.
Em hesitates.
He's alive, the ever-present urge tells him helpfully. You should eat him.
No, he thinks back, I'm thinking that maybe I shouldn't. He's—
But what is he, exactly? Just another trigger-happy live guy who thinks he's so much better than Em just because Em is dead. Well, fuck that. He's working himself up to a proper (if confusing) rage when the other voice kicks in.
Kill him and I will fucking haunt you, you undead bastard.
And that one…that one definitely isn't him. He recognizes that voice, if barely. She was yelling a few minutes ago, after all, and it's hard to forget the details of someone who shot you.
Oh, fuck.
Oh fuck is right, Morgana says waspishly. Now go save my stupid brother.