It shouldn't have been a surprise that they would be two of the last ones left. They were both survivors after all.
It started with bans on large gatherings and non-essential business closures, then mandatory quarantines, then martial law. Banks closed, then bridges, then borders. Everything, one by one. At first there were long lines for horrifically expensive gas and food. But then infrastructure fell apart in seemingly a blink - no power, no electricity, no running water, no food. The snaking long lines got shorter and shorter until looting left nothing left to buy.
Help will come, everyone thought. FEMA or the army. Somebody, anybody. The kids had talked bout Batman and Iron Man swooping in to save the day. You don't need a superhero. Super daddy is here, Dean had said. It was a joke, something to get the kids smiling. But Beth had naively hoped Dean would find a way to save them, to get them out of this. But the greater the pressure, the more Dean faded into the background. His helplessness stung at first, but reality that Beth would have to be the one to save their family, once again, set in quickly.
Help never came. The infection spread too quickly. The sick spilled out of the hospital rooms, into the hallways, onto the streets. Peace grew thin as piles of the infected mixed with victims of the disgruntled mobs. No one could have imagined how much worse everything would become. How could they know what they were watching was the beginning of humanity's downfall. She held it together, for her family, her kids. Beth never understood in movies and TV why people stayed in the face of disaster. But she got it now. She was one of them. There was a whole life, a whole home, a whole family that surrounded her. It wasn't so simple to pick it all up or leave it all behind. We'll get through this, she said, hoping she was right.
Then the infection mutated and the dead became the undead. Then came the day her hands were covered in blood. Dean's blood, the black and thick gore of the zombies. Dean had been bitten, always ignoring her warnings. She knew the instant she saw his stiff legs, jilted steps, stretched arms, and muddy eyes that he was no longer Dean. That was the day she learned exactly where the temporal lobe was, and what it felt like to stab a knife into that part of the skull.
She mourned him quickly, partly because of necessity, partly because their relationship had been over years before. The sense of loss was real, thought, especially for the kids. Beth honored him, buried him in the backyard, using a rock as a makeshift tombstone. They each went around the their small semi-circle and shared their favorite memory of him. The kids retold stories of vacations and playing on a bouncy house and fireworks. Beth paused on her turn, reflecting on their twenty years together. He made me a really nice wooden cabinet, she finally settled on.
From then on, Beth stopped seeing them as people. She had to. It was the only way to kill as many as she needed to and would need to. They were after her flesh, her kids flesh. It didn't matter if it was their old babysitter or bank teller. They had to be stopped. It was strange how they used to be just ordinary people having an ordinary life. Then they became something else entirely.
When the bombs came, to wipe away it all in one fell swoop, no one expected it. Their whole house shook, parts of it crumbled away, but they survived.
It was then that Beth insisted that Annie and Ben come stay with them. They were stronger and safer together, they could pool their resources. Despite an initial few weeks of panic and complaining, it turned out that Annie was a fierce zombie killer. Kill the brain, kill the ghoul, she'd shout right before she plunged a knife into one of their skulls, quoting one of her favorite movies, Night of the Living Dead. She embraced her role, and Beth welcomed her zest for booby traps and makeshift home security. Beth would often find Annie sitting on the front steps, a cigarette in hand, leaning casually back on her elbows as if the world wasn't ending around them. Beth thought about scolding Annie about the the smoking but never did. The warning so superfluous given everything around them. Cigarettes would run out eventually too.
Strangely, life went on. People adjusted to a new normal. Even if it was like a war zone, even if the enemies were undefined. Beth was a planner, that's what she did best, so she came up with a new one. Her new routine was simple but critical. Stay alive. Bad situations were no longer something she talked or wiggled her way out of. Instead, she evaded them, prepared for them, anticipated them. Despite some damage from the bombings, they still had a roof over the heads, the destruction focused on the more dense urban areas of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren City, Sterling Heights.
Food was scarce but Beth had managed to get a stock pile of canned good so no one was starving. Meals consisted of different combinations of peanut butter, rice, and canned vegetables. Gone were the days of elaborately presented lunches but Beth did her best, even if it required a lot of imagination to see a dinosaur in their plates of rice and beans. They had a precious jar of honey they used sparingly, for special occasions only. Like birthdays or the day they found a forgotten package of batteries. The kids alternated turns on what they put it in until that too died.
Once a week, Beth would walk. And walk and walk. It was dangerous to go alone but sacrifice was what being a parent meant. It took an apocalypse for Beth to be thankful for Dean's impulse to buy a gun. She carried it using a cross-body strap, along with a small backpack with ammo, a knife and small bottle of water. Beth started early in the morning, wanting to be back home before it got dark. She didn't really sleep anymore so an early start time was easy. She would look for other survivors, scavenge. The whole neighborhood had been picked through but Beth walked farther and farther out each time, looking for food, medical supplies, anything that would allow them to keep living.
The city had become small regimes of people running their own section of streets, making their own laws. Most were civil. Beth learned who she could trade with, trust. Like the quirky old man who helped Beth make a homemade filtration system using grass, sand and charcoal in exchange for their leaf blower. Rain was their lifeline now and Beth had become so grateful for the cloudy overcast days that signaled a downpour. She also learned who to watch out for, to stay away from the ones that loved the anarchy, that stole the streets for themselves. For whatever reason, to those people, there was something appealing about the end of the world.
Some streets were packed with abandoned cars, hastily left behind when the realization hit that driving was going to get them nowhere. Beth had an odd nostalgia for those days of bumper to bumper traffic, drivers aggressively beeping their horns, people pushing and shoving their way between cars that were stuffed with personal belongings. At least the living outnumbered the dead back then.
Beth always walked by Ruby's old home, visiting as if honoring a memorial. She didn't stay long, it was dangerous to linger. She stayed just long enough to prove that she hadn't forgotten her best the part of her that knew joy and laughter and support was still alive inside her. Stan begged Ruby to leave. Somehow he knew things were worse than they seemed. Being Beth's ride or die was no longer reason enough to stay. They couldn't risk Sarah's life. They had fought so hard for it in the first place. It was in the early days, when they still had a sliver of time to escape, before Detroit Metro Airport shut down. Stan had a distant relative on a German military base. It would take the black market to get the flights, but he could take them in, keep them safe, get them access to Sarah's medication. Beth knew it was the right choice and backed up Stan. Their farewell was sloppy with tears and devestation. They were mostly silent, words about seeing each other again too uncertain, too untrue to say out loud. Instead, they hugged each other tight with an ache to remember each other forever.
The Paper Porcupine was on her route, her pace always quickened when she walked by, sickened by the distant memories of a different life when her biggest worry had been printers and nail polish and plates. She passed her old salon. Beth stopped caring about her hair long before it shut down. She wore it long now, often in a braid, a number of grey strands mixed in with the blonde.
She always made certain to make a specific stop on her way home. Rio's building. It still stood, but barely, a good portion of the bricks crumbled in the obvious pattern of a bomb radius. She never saw him there, unsure if she wanted to, or hoped to or if she was even looking for him. The money, real and fake, that had been so important to them had become so meaningless so quickly. The currency that mattered was food and weapons and self preservation. Their already tenuous partnership had dissolved into thin air, and so had he.
She wondered if he survived. Marcus too. Their last exchange had been brief. The boxes of money had gotten fewer and fewer but there were no threats or anger. That's it?, he asked. All she could do was nod, no explanation necessary. Rio opened one of the boxes as if to count it but instead took out a pile of stacks and left it on the table.You're going to need this, he said, a quiet sadness in his tone, before he turned and walked away. Beth wanted to say something, to not look back on this with acidic regret, but the words didn't come. They never could with him. She never saw him again. She liked to imagine him and Marcus and Rhea together in some luxury bunker, in some remote location surrounded by high end bells and whistles like leather recliners and a greenhouse. Or maybe they were like so many others underground in a root cellar struggling every day to stay alive among the infection, the danger, the fear.
Beth had grown suspicious of banging. Explosions and gunshots and groaning had become the the soundtrack to their lives. But there was something about loud, sudden noises that specified the precursor of danger. So when Beth heard an insistent knocking at her front door she was immediately on alert. It wasn't the undead on the other side. They didn't knock. It couldn't be anyone she knew. Mrs. Karpinski survived, bless her soul. So had Elaine and her family, a few blocks over. But they rarely visited each other, keeping an unspoken distance of polite smiles and friendly waves. No one had food or energy to spare. It was easier to avoid those difficult conversations than deny help. But they agreed to a warning system, each of them keeping a piece of green paper on the front windows signaling all was okay. If they ever saw a red one, well, that meant the opposite.
Thanks to Annie, the door was reinforced with four locks, each with a chain, but still Beth's instincts kicked in.
"I have a gun," Beth shouted, silently signaling everyone to get into the basement. The banging became more urgent. Beth heard the desperation behind the pounding. She peeked through the living room shades, struggling to see around the corner. Her vision was blocked but she saw a glimpse of black, a familiar frame of shoulders that had her running to recklessly open the door.
When Beth saw Rio for the first time since the world ended then came back to life in this devestated version of itself, he looked the same, but different, and uttered just one word.
"Marcus." Rio was cradling him in his arms. His eyes were closed but not in the comfort of a child's sleep. The ashen pallor of his skin gave him away. Was he sick? Bitten? He didn't look like one of them, but maybe it was a fresh bite. It took six minutes for someone to turn. Either way, letting them into her house would be risky, asking for trouble. As if reading her mind, Rio continued.
"It's not that. A fucking looter..." Rio's voice cracked and he paused. He lifted Marcus' shirt and it was then that Beth saw a wound that was too large for such a tiny body.
"Come inside," Beth said urgently, reacting to the unspoken plea in Rio's voice.
They lay Marcus down in her bedroom, and Beth took stock. Gingerly, she peeled off his shirt. The gunshot was on his side, near his waist, big and round and already clotting with dried blood. Beth didn't think there were organs there to be worried about, not that she would entirely know, but there was no exit wound so she did know they had to get the bullet out.
"My first aid kit, under the sink," she said to Rio, nodding to her bathroom. Her supplies were meager but she could make it work. She called for Annie who greeted Rio with a simple nod as if it were totally normal for him to be there, her surprise only coming when she saw Marcus bleeding on the bed. Beth instructed her to get fishing line, clean towels and her sewing kit.
She wished she had something to give Marcus for the pain, what they were about to do would hurt, but hopefully his lack of awareness would compensate. Beth washed her hands, sterilized tweezers and a needle in the flame of a match and the small bottle of alcohol she rationed only for true emergencies. It wasn't lost on Beth that there was less than a quarter of it left.
"Hold him down," Beth said, looking at Rio. "Thread the fishing line through needle," she instructed Annie.
With a deep breath, Beth cleaned the area and probed the tweezers into the wound. Marcus murmured and twisted, but Rio held him firmly. Beth tried again, deeper, until she felt something hard. It took a few tries but she managed to clamp on and pull it out. Holding his skin in place with her fingers, Beth began stitching. She pushed a needed through countless quilts and costumes and clothing, going through skin made her swallow back bile as she focused, tried to hold her shaking hand steady. The finished product wasn't pretty, there would be an ugly scar, but it was clean and secure.
When all there was left to do was wait and see, Beth finally had a moment to look at Rio. He was thinner than usual, but most people were. He was wearing his usual black jeans and black t-shirt with a hoodie and jacket. There was a layer of dust on everything and his t-shirt looked so worn she was afraid it would dissolve under her touch. She had a million questions. Where had he gone? Where was he going? But she asked just one.
"How did you get here?"
Rio dropped his head as if the question weighed heavy on him. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply. When he finally looked up at Beth his expression was imperceptible. But when he started talking the words spilled out. His story was like so many others, not too different from Beth's. Simple but devastating. When he realized the enormity of what was happening it was too late to leave. They tried crossing to Canada, got really close too, but there'd been an outbreak along the border, a bad one and they were forced back. Rhea had gotten separated from them in that fight. He stayed days looking for her but never found her. He liked to think she made it. He returned to his home destroyed by a bomb, his warehouses run over. They'd been staying with Mick and were doing okay, the basics were covered. Rio scolded himself that after all of that it was an ordinary gunshot that he couldn't protect his own son from.
Beth didn't try to console Rio or get him to sleep, knowing he would never rest until his son was okay. He lay next to Marcus on the bed, his long body curled around the smaller version of it in constant vigil. Beth convinced him to have a bite food, gave him some water and his space.
She didn't tell Rio everything was going to be okay because she wasn't sure she believed it. That was proven true the next day when Marcus spiked a fever, sweating and trembling and eyes glazed in unresponsiveness. Rio desperately sponged his son, talked to him, begged him to stay alive.
Beth wanted to offer encouragement but this wasn't the time for platitudes. Determined to make a tiny difference, to keep Marcus from being another blameless victim of this horror, she walked into the bedroom, gun already around her shoulder.
"We're walking," she said, firm and resolute, handing Rio a blade. It was in those miles that she and Rio fell into a familiar rhythm of deals and negotiations. Her regular route of contacts didn't have what she was looking for but JT knew someone who knew someone who might. Be prepared to give up some sweet swag, he cautioned with a smile. Three stops and several miles later, tapping into Rio's own network that still existed in the shadows, though smaller and less connected, they managed to procure amoxicillin in exchange for a bag of coffee, toothpaste and a can of gas in a three way barter. There were only three pills but anything would help. Exhausted, they raced home as fast as their feet would allow, to get them to Marcus. And then they waited.
When Marcus finally turned the corner, the boost of medication fighting off the infection his weak body couldn't on its own, Beth broke down, tears trailing down her cheeks. Rio held her, his own tears dripping onto her, and she buried her face in the curve of his neck. He smelled of sweat and the lye of her handmade soap. Her brain felt too tight, unable to process the moment. That someone had been on the brink of death but survived. That there was still hope in this crazy world.
"It's ok," Rio mumbled against her hair, his grip tightening around her. "It's going to be ok."
Beth closed her eyes. A thought fleeted through her mind to tell him she was fine, she could take care of herself, but she let it go. Instead, she enjoyed the feel of his body, his warmth, his presence. Beth forgot what it was like to be touched and held. It was especially strange coming from Rio who had been so cold and distant with her the last time they were together. A lifetime ago. She couldn't even remember why they hated each other. They stayed like that for a long time, swaying a little bit in the comfort of the rare peaceful moment.
"Thank you," Rio whispered when they seperated. He traced a finger along her face, pushing her hair off her face. The gesture skyrocketed Beth back into the past, into a pool of emotions and attraction she wasn't sure she wanted to run away from or jump into.
"You should get some rest," Beth said, taking a step back from him, from the familiar tension of the pull she always felt around him. Even a zombie apocalypse couldn't weaken it.
Seeing Rio sleeping on her bed, freshly showered as best as their outdoor setup allowed, in clean clothes from Dean's closet, made Beth reflect on who he was, who he'd become in the blur of survival. Was he the same? Still stubborn and dominant and powerful? She wondered if he recognized her, who she'd become. The Beth he knew was gone. But this was not the first time she shed a skin, grew another. Rio had experienced first hand her metamorphasis from housewife to criminal. But she was a world away from the woman who desperately sought power through money and whatever means it took to obtain it. Fault and blame had appealed to her in different ways in her old life. Something she could pass on to others, onto him. Now, though, she embraced it. Had no other choice. Every moment of her family's ability to live was the direct result of her actions. Unlike the looters who celebrated carefree that the end was coming, Beth fully gained her sense of responsibility. It finally settled deep within her. She understood him, finally.
The next day Rio handed her a small nip-sized bottle of bourbon.
"Thank you," he said, almost sheepishly, recognizing the inadequacy of what he was offering in exchange for his son's life.
Beth was speechless, both at the gesture and at the gift. Alcohol of any kind had long ago become an unattainable luxury. People peddled moonshine, tapping into the market opportunity, but real stuff had gone the way of myth and folklore.
"Where did you get this?" Beth held up the small bottle as if looking at the holy grail.
"Don't worry about it."
She poured half in a glass for her and half for him, raising them in a silent toast of smiles.
After that, the color of their lives changed, a new breath of life surged 'd been living in suspended animation, existing with only the barest of vital of functions, keeping everything else dormant. Beth had been controlling everything, trying to at least, since her world imploded onto itself. But she decided to let whatever was happening with Rio just happen. Marcus healed, slowly but surely, the sounds of his footsteps a welcome addition in her home. Rio's too. She started sharing a bed with him, mostly because it was the only way the would all fit. Partly because they wanted to. She started sleeping through the night with him next to her. Slowly daydreams and thoughts of romance and sex weaved in too.
One morning, Beth woke up facing Rio. The soft morning sun slanted through the glass door, light puddling around them. She looked at him as he slept, the sharp angles of his face, the firm counters of his body, the relaxed set of his eyes and mouth. She was so used to seeing him alert, anticipating, same as she. She traced the outline of ink on his neck until he stirred awake. A hint of a smile played at the edges of his lips when he did. Beth laced her fingers through his.
"Stay." Beth tightened her grip just a little. Maybe it had been assumed, maybe never a question, but she was no longer willing to keep words unspoken.
"Stay," he repeated.