Time frame: February
Rating: T
Description: Fire!
"Shit." Nick muttered, having stepped out in the middle of the night for a smoke, only to see the night glowing like it was still daytime.
He made his way around the corner of the building and located the culprit of the light. The far end of the zone was engulfed in flames and it was spreading fast, climbing onto the residential building across the way. The supply shed was already surrounded.
Nick knocked on the closest door to the corner he was at, knowing full-well who he was waking up.
"Nick? What's going on, buddy? It's late-" Keith started, rubbing his eyes.
Nick wasted no time pulling him out of the room by his shirt.
"Listen, Stubbs. The zone is burning down. Get Ellis, and get him out of here. Understand?"
Keith's eyes widened and he instantly started to panic.
"I don't do good with fire-" He started.
"Hey! Look at me-I know. Do what I said, mkay? Go." Nick instructed.
Keith made to leave before Nick pulled him back, looking into his eyes.
"If anything happens to him, Stubbs… anything. You hear me?" Nick grunted, waiting until Keith nodded before letting him go. He ran in one direction and Nick headed toward the fire, knocking on every door he passed.
"WAKE UP!" He yelled, continuing to wake up as many people as he could.
Goddamn it. Fucking figures. I'm gonna end up getting killed in a fire trying to save people I don't even like.
Keith made his way to the room Nick shared with Ellis, disregarding a polite knock. It was an emergency and the mechanic was already terrified, not wanting to be burned again. He didn't think he could deal with fire destroying 90% of his body a third time.
"Ellis! Wake up, man!" Keith called, shaking his sleeping friend awake.
"Keith?" Ellis stared at his friend, confused and tired.
"Yea. Listen, we need to move it, buddy. The zone is burning down." Keith was already pulling his best friend to his feet, grabbing random clothing items around the room and pushing them into Ellis's hands.
"Hurry! Get dressed!" Keith shouted as Ellis struggled to pull his pants and shoes on while Keith forced his coat on, struggling with the younger man's busy arms.
As soon as Ellis had enough clothes on to be considered decent, Keith pulled him out the door and passed his own door.
Against his judgment, he left Ellis outside for only a moment to get his own coat, and wake Jared up. His coat was sitting in the room where he'd left it, but Jared was gone. He must have been awake, joining Nick to help people out of the fire.
By the time he left his room, the fire was now emitting smoke that was almost completely blinding, and in the haze, he could no longer see Ellis.
"Ellis!" He called, running around like a psycho, coughing up a storm and trying to find the idiot he'd lost.
He could hear a voice calling for Nick, and it had to be Ellis, so he followed it, locating his friend in the smoke.
"El, we don't have time for this. We need to leave!" Keith was already pulling at the younger man's coat.
"No! I gotta find Nick!" Ellis was frantic, squinting his eyes, trying to see through the smoke.
"NICK!" He yelled again, coughing and sputtering.
"We gotta go, come on!" Keith pulled more firmly.
"Keith, goddamn it, no!" Ellis pulled back, struggling.
"We're gonna die here!" Keith tried to reason, now yanking hard at the arm he held.
The two struggled with one another until the struggle led to anger, and Ellis got himself into a bold stance, preparing himself for a fist fight.
"I gotta find him, Keith. Let me go."
Keith scoffed.
"Don't make me hit you, El. Because to keep you alive, I will." Keith replied, hands down and not prepared for a fight.
"Yeah, you gonna?" Ellis taunted, leaning closer.
The younger man swung a quick jab, which Keith easily avoided, pulling back a few inches. He was much faster, and for having only half a right fist, was stronger than Ellis.
Once Ellis pulled his fist back from his missed jab, Keith took the opportunity to deliver three punches, one right after the other, to his best friend's face before literally dragging the now very dizzy young man as far from the fire as he could.
After a minute, Ellis regained his thoughts and participated, running from the fire with Keith. They ran until they were nearly two miles from their zone before they stopped, watching the smoke continue to rise.
"We gotta find a safe-house." Keith mentioned, pulling a now silent and bleeding Ellis along with him until he found a tiny, abandoned donut shop.
The front windows were broken, but the bathrooms were still intact. Keith decided that this was as good a location as any other and pulled Ellis into the surprisingly clean men's bathroom with him, before locking the door.
Exhausted, he sank against the wall to catch his breath. He watched Ellis pace the room by the light of the moon as he sat and composed himself.
Shit. We're on the run again. The zone burned up. How did this happen? Where was everyone? Did anybody get out alive?
"You broke my nose." Ellis stated.
"You didn't fucking listen, El. What was I supposed to do?" Keith shot back.
"You didn't HAVE to break my nose, man." Ellis answered, angry. His face continued to drip blood onto the floor.
"You swung first." Came a heavy reply. That was the truth. Keith would have never punched Ellis if he didn't feel that he had to. It was either punching him in the face, or letting him die of smoke inhalation.
Keith sighed, pulling himself to his feet. He crossed the room, taking Ellis by the shoulders so that he'd stop pacing.
"I'm sorry, buddy. I didn't want to hit ya." Keith started, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a pair of socks he didn't have time to wear. He bunched one sock up and pressed it to the other man's nose in an attempt to catch the blood.
Ellis didn't answer. His eyes were damp and Keith wasn't sure if it was due to the pain in his face or due to sadness. He didn't want to know.
"Hey. Nick told me to get you out of the zone." Keith tried to explain, not feeling that his actions were justified. He thought it would help push down some of the guilt he was feeling, but it didn't.
"You saw Nick?" Ellis was hopeful.
"I did. He woke me up, told me to save you and then he took off."
"He took off? Where?" Ellis demanded.
"I don't fuckin' know. I was more concerned with making sure my best friend don't get cooked like I did." Keith answered, speaking quieter now, trying not to be so harsh.
Ellis was silent, staring at the floor as his friend pressed the now bloody sock harder into his face.
"He's gonna be okay, El." Keith assured, trying to sound convincing.
It was possible, right? The entire zone couldn't have gone up in smoke.
"We'll search tomorrow, okay? When it's daylight." Keith tried to be reassuring.
The older of the two, having waited long enough for a reply that never came, started trying to make himself comfortable on the floor, propping himself into a semi-seated position in the corner.
"Get some sleep, El." He advised, but said nothing else when the younger man paced for several more minutes before sitting in the adjacent corner.
"Wake up, Keith."
The redhead's eyes slid open, and Ellis was standing over him.
The kid looked like hell. He had a bit of dried blood under his nose remaining and his upper lip and under his eyes were both bruised. The bridge of his nose was a tad crooked and swollen.
"You gonna clean up first?" Keith asked, motioning to the blood.
"I did the best I could. It hurts a bit."
Keith didn't argue. He'd been down that road before. Having a broken nose sucked. It made him realize just how sensitive a nose really was.
Ellis reached down, offering his friend a hand up and he was practically pulling him out of the bathroom and out the donut shop's entrance.
The sun was barely above the horizon, and it couldn't have been more than 5:30 or 6:00 in the AM.
"Slow down, El." Keith started, putting a bit of resistance on his friend's tugging.
Ellis huffed.
"Hear me out. We took off outta that place like a bat out of hell. We got no food, no water, no first aid and no weapons. If we run into any zombies, we are gonna have to find some way to defend ourselves."
Keith wasn't wrong. The two of them were completely defenseless, save for the coats they were wearing. The coldest part of the winter had passed and it was now February. The cold was still pretty unbearable at night, and even wearing a thick coat didn't help keep the cold out 100%.
"The sooner we get to the zone, the sooner we can look for some stuff that we might be able to salvage." Ellis insisted.
"Well until then, we need to be quiet."
The two continued in silence, making the two-mile trek back to the burnt husk of their zone. Keith didn't mention it out loud, but he was terrified. He didn't want to go back to this place, for fear of coming across the burnt remains of his friends. Where was Jared? Where was Nick? Hell, how did the fire start in the first place?
When they reached the gates and made their way into the zone, the fire was already burned out. The zone was practically gone, save for some of the metal structures that held food and supplies. The ground was full of ash and broken down wood. Some of the trees caught fire, but with it being so cold and damp outside this time of year, the tree fires burned out before they could spread.
"This looks like a controlled burn." Ellis whispered, heading over to the burnt husk of the building that he used to live in.
"I'm gonna go see if any of the supplies made it." Keith was trying to find a reason not to go and discover the dead with his best friend.
He made his way over to the shipping container that once held supplies. It was closed at the time of the fire, but was open now. Most of the items that remained inside were undamaged. What wasn't missing, that is. The guns were gone. But there was food and some jugs of water.
After scavenging what he could, he decided to slowly make his way over to where Ellis was, at the adjacent building, the same building Nick ran toward the previous night.
"Find anything?" He asked, all too soon.
Ellis was standing over the charred body of a person. The burning was so bad that the face was not recognizable. The clothing had been burned away.
"Do you know who it is?" Keith asked, placing a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder.
Ellis shook his head, then crouched down on the floor, examining the corpse's hands without touching them. After a few seconds, he heaved a sigh of relief.
"It's not Nick. Nick's rings wouldn't have melted. And this poor guy doesn't have any rings on." He sounded like he felt a little better, but his voice was still sad.
"How do ya know it's a man?" Keith wondered aloud.
"The body is tall. None of the girls are that tall."
"Are there…any others?" Keith didn't really want to know the answer.
"No, this is the only one I found. But I couldn't search the upstairs rooms." Ellis carried a heavy burden in his voice.
He stood, finding a charred stick and began etching into the cleanest chunk of wall.
"Nick, Keith and I made it. We are at the donut shop, 2 mi that way -. We will wait for you. -Ellis"
"Let's just get all this stuff back. We can look for them along the way." Ellis started heading back the direction they'd come.
That night, the two of them shared a can of green beans and crackers outside, before retreating to the men's bathroom and locking themselves in after the sunset and the sounds of the night took over.
Ellis sat shivering in his corner, trying desperately to let sleep come, even with being so uncomfortable.
"Come over here." Keith whispered, patting the floor beside the corner he sat in.
"Why?"
"Because it's cold, buddy." Keith offered.
Satisfied with that answer, Ellis slid himself across the floor until he was seated beside the older of the two, curling into Keith's side without needing to be told to.
Ellis had always been the kind of guy that enjoyed simple touch. He liked physical contact with other people almost as much as being with them and bonding emotionally.
He couldn't help but find the warmth and closeness comforting. As far as he knew, the man he spent almost a year with was dead and the fact that his best friend was trying to be there for him truly did make him feel safe. He missed Nick, though. Sleeping beside Keith was not the same as sleeping beside Nick.
Keith's arms around him were not like Nick's. The feelings weren't the same, being that when Nick held him, it was after they'd made love and they'd fall asleep in the afterglow. He wasn't sure he'd ever feel that again. But that wasn't Keith's fault. He was trying to help, and not being bitterly cold was a small comfort.
Keith sat awake long after Ellis lost consciousness. He couldn't remember the last time the two shared closeness like this.
Wait, yes he did. The last time was the night they kissed. They shared the same bed many times in the past, but never snuggled together for warmth since that fateful day.
"Nick…" Ellis grunted in his sleep, tightening his grip at Keith's waist.
"Shh, El" The older man soothed, holding Ellis tighter than he'd been, "Just a bad dream, buddy."
Just a long. Bad. Dream.