F I V E
The body-dump made a surprisingly good cushion, and the limp wrist Phil had in his hands made a surprisingly good distraction. Whenever a scary thought came into his head, he bit into it, shutting his mind up. I don't know what to do. Chomp.
I don't know what to do. Chomp.
Over, and over, and over again.
Because he didn't know what to do. He'd run for a week, and now the road was done. It was like driving across a bridge, and only realising it had broken in the middle when it was too late to stop.
But he could stop.
If he wanted to.
Mixed in with all of that was his longing for Dan, so real, so true it felt like a knife digging into his guts. Phil was desperate to see him. For all he knew, that head wound had killed Dan.
He shook his head hard and stuffed the last of the food in his mouth. He'd eaten so much of that fresh human he had an actual bulge in his stomach.
I could die happy like this, you know. With a full stomach. All he'd need to do was throw away the lighter. One hard overarm throw, like he was playing rounders. No effort at all, really.
Phil screwed up his eyes against the ash and peered at the sky. It was getting to the darker grey of four, five o'clock. It'd be properly night soon.
If he'd counted the days right, then it was July or August. Summer.
When he was little, summer nights lasted 'till half-nine, sometimes even later. Phil would lie on his belly on the cooling grass, and read his books with dustflies dancing over his head, yellow in the setting sun.
Where was the sun now?
The lighter arched through the air, dull against the grey ash-smoke clouds, and broke apart on the ground. Phil didn't see where it landed.
He lay down on the corpse-pile, brushing the leftover bones down into the street, turning it to a mattress. It was soft.
And he closed his eyes, aching to finally, finally get some sleep.
The night surrounded him, coating everything in dark, almost seeming alive. Dan held up his lamp, making sure to always keep his feet and hands in the light.
It was impossible to see anything beyond the lamp, except dim silhouettes.
He wouldn't have been walking this long if everything had gone to plan, but oh, no. Apparently the world just hadn't screwed him over enough when it made sure some absolute bastard closed up Mosley Street. Worse, judging from how rusted the barbed wire over the fence was, it had been a long time ago. Which meant Dan didn't have anyone to blame, and had resorted to taking out his anger on the chunks of rubble in his path, kicking them out of the way.
Why the hell did everything look the same in the dark? Why did it seem like he was walking in circles?
Perhaps the radiation was finally getting to his brain. Perhaps Dan Howell was finally going mad.
He was so busy thinking about it, in fact, he didn't notice when he walked out into a big, open space. He didn't notice until he tripped over a fallen bollard, smashing his knees into the ground, juddering his head so hard he heaved with the pain.
When Dan finished shaking, swearing, he looked up. Above him was a huge dark shape. A wheel.
He let out a breath and walked towards it, moving his lamp around in a wide arc. There was a weird smell hanging around, too. A strange, lumpy pile was at the wheel's base.
The light glinted off a pair of familiar glasses.
Relief flooded him, so heady and powerful it was like getting drunk.
Dan ran to the body-dump and put down the lantern beside the sleeping zombie. Sticky blood was all over the bottom half of his face, smudges of it on his nose.
You've eaten. Thank God, thank God…
`Phil,' he whispered, shaking his shoulder. `Wake up.'
Phil mumbled something under his breath. A name, maybe. Dan didn't wait to work it out; they were running out of time; so filled his lungs and yelled, `PHIL!', so loud it echoed.
Phil bolted upright, still half-asleep, crouched down and got ready to leap at the thing that woke him up. Dan shielded himself with his hands.
`Don't! It's me.'
Slow realisation spread across his face. `Dan?' His face dropped, pure misery cracking across it. `You're dead too?'
It was such a surprise, Dan laughed until his stomach ached. `No,' he managed to choke, `you absolute nutter. Why would we be dead? And why were you in the dark? Sheree gave you a lamp, didn't she?'
`Um- I-'
A shadow suddenly detached itself from the pile of bodies. It stumbled away, no longer masked by the smell of the rotting corpses. Dan's breath got a little faster. He prayed the night air would stay still…
`There's a colony for you,' he said finally, shaking himself out of the distraction. `By the coast. It's called Grange-over-Sands.'
Phil stopped peering over his shoulder. `I remember that town. Are you sure there's colonies there?'
`No. Obviously. But we weren't sure about Manchester, either.' Dan didn't need to say the next few words: and look where we are now. A spark began to dance in Phil's eyes, little gold dots.
`Leap of faith?' He asked, with the air of someone who knows completely what the answer will be.
Dan smiled, a proper grin. `Hell yes.' At that moment, he decided that the hope he felt and his excitement for the future, was pure happiness. It would be a feeling to remember, one to go back to whenever everything seemed dark.
The whole night long, eyes watched them- from ruined, collapsing roofs- from under cars- from dim, foul-smelling alleyways. Every one of those creatures came stalking out from its hiding place.
One creature was a little smaller than the others.
It was on top of a car, cross-legged, looking at the two shapes curled up together in the light of the lamp. There was a tiny breath of wind. It's scarf lifted, tugging at it's crushed throat.
It watched them until the ash turned from black to flakes of grey and the shadows began to fade.
Dan started as he saw something clambering off the roof of a car.
Beside him, Phil mumbled, `what-is-it?' all the words squashing together.
`Don't worry,' he said after a moment, watching it stumble out of sight. `Just one of. You know.'
`Oh,' Phil said, and then his breath slowed again. Dan's soon followed.
Aaliyah dropped down onto the road, landing like a sack of flour. She ended up spread out on the floor, feeling like her body wasn't quite a part of her, like she was floating above it and looking at it sprawled out. She was different now. So slow, so clumsy.
She missed how nimble she was in life.
Alongside the hundreds of other dead, Aaliyah stumbled back to the dark, her eyes glowing red as blood, as car tail-lights, as the sun, rising behind those impenetrable clouds of ash.
It was dawn.