This is just a warning for some internalised homophobia in this chapter along with mentions of blood and angst. Alec and Magnus will have a feelings-jam and maybe some making out next chapter, but for the moment we got a lottttt of angst.
And this isn't the Main Angst planned for this story. We're not even close to that yet guys B )
Thanks for reading!
Fez.
Whatever her answer would have been, Alec would have started running, knowing only Jace or Izzy—the two main people he cared about—could be hurt but hearing his sister's name made him immediately break into a dead-sprint.
He'd left his little sister behind. The one thing he'd promised his parents he wouldn't do. The monsters were coming for them and what had he done? Run away and made out with a man in a corner.
He didn't even wait for Clary to direct him, he could see a flash of Jace's golden hair peering out from the door to a shop and he fixated on it like a beacon.
Jace saw him and Alec could see how his face crumpled. Something deep inside Alec crumpled too.
"Alec, she- the zombie. Her arm." Alec felt like he was about to be sick. He pushed by Jace, the other boy clinging to the back of his jumper like a lifeline and Alec felt his eyes fill with tears at the sight of Izzy.
"Oh Isabelle." He murmured, close to being a whimper and his younger sister turned her teary eyes up at him. He hadn't called her Isabelle in a long time, not since they were young.
"Hey Alec." She looked far, far too young, swamped in a new leather jacket she had found earlier and holding her hurt arm with her uninjured left arm.
She was the one who first called Alec. As a toddler she'd struggled with his whole 'Alexander' and shortened it to Alec. It had stuck ever since then.
She gestured to her arm, which still had blood pouring out of it and her bottom lip wobbled. Tears were falling from her face and suddenly Alec couldn't move.
He knew what he needed to do: wrap the arm, a tourniquet, hold the arm above her heart, stitch it, put antiseptic on it, they could even amputate to stop the virus spreading and his joke from hours ago, about cutting an arm off for some food left a bitter taste in his mouth but he couldn't move his feet or his arms to pull his bag off his bag.
When the world had ended, Alec never felt like it had really ended. He survived, even as his family dropped around him, and survival seemed natural for a child brought up by ex-military parents, a child who had spent more time in tents, on mountains, in freezing rivers than in an arcade or a cinema.
But now as Izzy wept and her arm flushed with a sickly black— the Zombie infection was setting in—and Jace held onto his shoulders in horror, Alec felt like his world was ending.
"Alec!" Magnus was suddenly by his side. "Give me your bag!" He was tugging Alec's bag from his back and Alec tried to comply numbly. Magnus unzipped the bag quickly and seeing the terror in the shake of his hands Alec finally managed to snap into action.
He knelt alongside Magnus, Jace's hand falling from his back, and tried to peel the sleeve away from Izzy's hand.
"It wasn't even from the horde. I hid in a store and it- it crawled out from under a rack."
Alec grit his teeth as he listened to the hitches in Izzy's voice. She was strong—she'd held the family together when they found Max, and she managed to solider on after Mom and Dad died— but here she was, sobbing as she perched on a stack of crates with a perfect ring of toothmarks stark on her pale arm. The zombie plague was clogging her blood, sticky globs of black mixed in with the flesh and Alec clenched his eyes shut.
He didn't know how he was going to fix this. He wasn't sure if he could… He would. He had to, for Izzy.
"Alec," Izzy says gently, and her free hand came up to cradle his cheek. He hadn't even realised he'd been crying but now his tear-stained cheeks matched hers. "Alec, you're going to be okay."
She was trying to reassure him as she bled out. Even if she died before the zombie virus fully set in, it would keep working until her corpse joined the hordes hunting them down.
"You're going to be too." He held her wrist tightly and she just smiled hopelessly at him. Magnus was working away with a wad of gauze to clean the zombie filth away from her wound.
"This is going to hurt." He murmured, and Izzy's hand trembled against his cheek.
Magnus poured antiseptic over the wound, enough to help her but not enough to waste it. Izzy hissed, and a new wave of tears sprung to her eyes.
Alec's hand tightened on her wrist, his own tears soaking her gentle hand.
"I'm sorry Alec. I wasn't careful enough." Her face was deathly pale, and Alec swore that just for a second, he saw black pulsing up her neck—the next symptom of the zombie virus. He blinked hard and tried to believe it was shadows.
Izzy's face twisted. "Alec." She whimpered, and Alec knew it had not been a trick of the light.
"You're going to be okay—" Alec started again, and Izzy's eyes shifted from his to look over his head.
"Clary…" Izzy whispered, and Alec heard a hitched breath and a sniff behind him but didn't bother turning. He watched Magnus clean the wound and then his hands slow. He had used as much antiseptic as he could, but the black veins were spreading. Magnus rocked back on his heels and Alec caught the look on his face.
"Magnus, why are you stopping?" He asked, his head spinning at the amount of blood soaking his little sister's clothes.
"Alec, I'm not sure…" Magnus said feebly, and his lips were still swollen from Alec's kisses and Alec was losing his grip on the whole situation. He reached for the gauze, pressing it with shaking hands over the wound. He couldn't let Izzy die.
"Izzy, please." Clary whimpered, and Alec was so focused on trying to wrap the gauze around Izzy's arm he wasn't paying attention to the hurried words being exchanged over his head.
He only looked up from his knotting of the bandage at the deliberate cocking of a gun and his head snapped around to stare at Clary.
"Clary, what the fuck-'' Jace was saying, and Alec's view of Clary was clouded by his tears.
"Please take care of my boys." Izzy said in a tired, slurred voice and it was almost lost in the deafening shot of the gun going off. Time slowed as the bullet –one of the few they had left—soared over Alec's head like an avenging angel and hit its mark right on target.
Izzy slumped and her hand, still cradling Alec's cheek, fell limp. A spray of blood from her forehead splattered against Alec and he was covered in his little sister's blood and his little sister was dead.
Jace made some horrible noise that would've torn Alec's heart apart if there was anything left to tear, and Alec turned and launched himself at Clary, knocking her to the ground and the gun to some corner of the room.
"Why? Why the fuck did you kill her?" Alec roared, unheeding of Jace's gasps and Magnus trying to pull him back.
"She wanted it! She told me if she was bitten, she wanted me to kill her because she couldn't become a zombie and she knew you wouldn't hurt her, and she didn't want to hurt you!" Clary was shouting with tears in her eyes and there was blood on her too.
Alec let go of her shirt, numbness spreading through him and Magnus heaved him back as he began to sob. Clary sat up slowly, wiping tears from her eyes and blood from her face and Alec turned his head away from his sister's corpse and into Magnus' chest.
Magnus held him close until Jace coaxed the two of them up, painfully aware that the zombies would come running at the smell of blood and noise.
They stumbled out of the mall, one people missing from their ragtag group and as Alec stared numbly at the endless days and horizon stretching before them without Izzy, he began to think that maybe there was no way out.