When the dim, flickering glow from the lighter filled the room and painted the pale walls and grimy floors, Arthur wanted to double over and scream at what he saw. Arthur and Alfred had both seen equal amounts of horrifying things since the beginning of the outbreak; they had seen people ripped apart, buildings crashing down, and little children being attacked and ravaged on the streets like prized pigs. However, they had both never seen or bore witness to one of their own being the target of one of the attacks. They had never seen one of their own being ripped apart, and lying cold and bloody on the floor.
Elizaveta lay on the ground with one of her hands pressed tight against her throat – blood was spilling through her tightly clenched fingers despite her efforts, seeping into her lovely white blouse and dying it pink in the process. Roderich himself was propped up on his knees, fussing over her and telling her that it was going to be alright; everything would be OK.
It was arguably even worse being an outsider-looking-in than being at the centre of it all.
One of the infected lay with its throat torn out beside Roderich, gasping and clawing at its own throat as if mocking Elizaveta's attempts to stop the bleeding. Under closer inspection of the infected, however, they came to realize that Roderich had clawed the infected's throat out with his own bare hands in the heat of the moment. He had probably done it in a blind rage when he had seen Elizaveta being attacked by the creature.
However, it clearly hadn't done any good as Elizaveta was already harmed beyond repair.
Arthur and Alfred couldn't believe their eyes when they scanned over the infected lying beside Roderich. The creatures had gotten much stronger since the outbreak, and yet Roderich had managed to fend it off – and kill it – with nothing but his bare hands as weapons. Added to that, one of Roderich's arms was broken.
Roderich had expressed true, blind rage.
Arthur immediately ran to the scene, offering his help to Roderich but only garnering a gruff dismissal from the man. He deserved it though; Arthur really deserved the treatment he was getting - and more - from Roderich. Roderich had been suffering, struggling to get used to their new way of life, and he had been nothing but indifferent and cruel to the man up until now. He had cursed at the man, fought with him, and called him down to his lowest because he himself had rage boiling under the surface that he needed to let out. Roderich had been nothing more than their conveniently placed punching bag. Beside that point, by the looks of Elizaveta's waning health, his help wouldn't change anything. He needed to leave Roderich alone with Elizaveta.
He needed to leave Roderich alone.
Arthur sat behind him in silence, bowing his head, partly because he wanted to give the two some semblance of privacy, and also because he didn't want to see Elizaveta die in front of his eyes. He didn't want to see one of his friends dying, that was the last thing he needed - and the fact that she was dying because of one of their own careless mistakes only added insult to injury.
"Come on, Liza, you're going to be OK," Roderich coaxed, trying to put pressure on her throat without suffocating her – the throat was a difficult place to treat properly.
Elizaveta couldn't respond to him as any noise she would try to make was drowned out by the blood filling her severely wounded throat, her vocal chords were almost completely severed from the infected's attack and were completely visible to the naked eye. However, instead of responding to him with words, she mustered all of her remaining energy and lifted her left arm, slowly entwining her fingers with one of the hands trying to soothe her bleeding throat.
It was her way of telling Roderich that it was no use trying to stop the inevitable.
Arthur had heard many desperate screams and cries in his life, but he'd never heard one quite like Roderich's before. It was a whimper, and a blood-curdling scream all rolled into one – it made Arthur's throat clench up and his chest physically tighten. Roderich was hunched over on his knees, grasping Elizaveta's hand like it was the only thing keeping him grounded. They both knew that she wouldn't be able to pull out of the wound on her throat. That was it, there was no way around it. A wound so deep, and in such a vital area, couldn't be treated with anything they had in their first aid kits. And, even if they had the greatest doctors in North America working on the wound, it wouldn't have ended in a success because of just how severe it was. Elizaveta looked up at him, pleading with him to release his hold on her gaping throat.
Arthur had seen many heartbreaking looks in his life, but nothing came close to the exchange he saw between Elizaveta and Roderich. He felt like he was intruding on something intimate just by looking at them.
Roderich, as always, was unable to argue or deny Elizaveta anything, so when she silently asked him to take his hand away from her weeping throat, he did it without question.
As soon as he had taken the hand away from her throat, a fresh track of blood made its way down her milky white skin and pooled around her collar bones. From where Arthur was standing, with the light barely registering, he could see her throat trying to work despite the injury it had sustained. He watched with Roderich and Alfred as her throat worked and worked until it stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun.
Elizaveta was gone, still looking at Roderich like he was the last thing she could have ever hoped to see.
Alfred stood beside Arthur, both of them wearing twin looks of shock and disgust. However, the disgust was not with the scene before them, they were disgusted that it was – in fact – their fault that this had happened to Elizaveta. If they hadn't started fighting with Roderich and hadn't hurt him, their circumstance may have changed; Elizaveta may not have died so cruelly. Even though Roderich had been in the wrong when he had started shouting at Lovino and Antonio, he didn't deserve to have his arm broken, and he certainly didn't deserve to see Elizaveta dying in front of him.
Arthur's hand shot out quickly, ready to grab Roderich's shoulder to tell him they needed to go, but he hesitated when he realized what kind of state Roderich was in. He had just seen the love of his life bleed out on the floor in front of him after having her throat ripped out by an infected monster, and he hadn't even gotten a proper goodbye from her. The only thing that they could do was share a glance, and that was it. Her life was ripped away from her as soon as it was given.
That was their world – their new cruel world – they were lucky if they even got to share a glance with the person they loved before they perished.
Alfred was the one who finally broke the invisible barrier, crashing through it and waking everyone up to the reality of the broken world around them. They didn't have time to mourn and cry for people they cared about, the only thing they could do was keep running - keep running and hope that they would eventually find salvation. "Roderich, Arthur, we need to go OK? I can hear some of them coming, and if we don't get out of this place right now were going to be food for those fucking things."
Arthur nodded his head and started toward the door quickly with Alfred, however the two of them stopped when they saw Roderich's stooped form – it was clear that he wasn't planning on getting up to leave with them. It didn't mean that they wouldn't try to get him to go with them, however.
"Come on, Roderich," Alfred whispered harshly, "they're closing in on us really fast, we need to get the hell out of here before they trap us in here."
Arthur nodded his head in agreement with Alfred, and made his own attempt at coaxing Roderich into coming with them.
He finally turned around to face the two of them, but they weren't going to get the response they wanted from him, that was clear by the determined look he had plastered on his face.
"I'm not just going to leave her here," Roderich said with a wild look in his eyes. "Do you really think I could leave her here just like this? Just what kind of monster do you take me for? Just what kind of monsters are you?"
"God damn it, Roderich, we need to get out of here, let's go!" Alfred shouted, completely disregarding the sound of the footsteps growing closer to them. They didn't have time to discuss past arguments, they needed to leave.
"No," Roderich shouted back, just as loud. "I'm not leaving her here all alone; I'm going to stay with her." Roderich laughed humourlessly in their direction, "and why do you care, anyway? Weren't you the ones who just brutalized me to the point of my not being able to take care of myself anymore to make a stupid point? Just go, I'm staying here with her, it's where I belong. Besides, they'll be so focused on the both of us here that it will buy you some time to get out of here and back to the others."
"Roderi-" Alfred started, but was quickly cut off by Arthur's hand covering his mouth and nudging his ribs with his elbow.
"Let's just go, Al, we don't have any more time to spare."
Alfred scanned Arthur's face cautiously, as if he thought he would find the answer to all of his questions on Arthur's face, and when he seemed like he had found it, he nodded his head slowly. He understood. Roderich had made his mind up, and he wasn't going to change it on their account - they didn't deserve that much from him.
Both Alfred and Arthur turned at the same time and began running, fast, far away from Roderich and Elizaveta. They weren't running from the infected, so much as they were running from what had happened back in the outlet behind them. They didn't stop until their lungs felt like they were shrivelling up and falling apart inside their chests.
They finally came to a stop in the middle of the floor where they were surrounded by bannisters and a considerable drop to the first floor; they were standing directly under the dying light of the skylight, indicating that they had no more time to spare. Night was close to falling, and if they didn't hurry they wouldn't make it to the front of the store in time to avoid the approaching infected.
"We need to get to the first floor," Alfred started, turning to face Arthur from where he stood looking over the bannister.
Arthur seemed to be looking at something curiously.
"What is it," Alfred started, "are there any infected down on that level?"
"No," Arthur said, but he still sounded concerned, "none at all, but that's the problem. There's something that's bothering me about the fact that we haven't seen all that many in a long while."
"How could that possibly be bothering you? It's a damn good thing that there aren't any down there, because we're going to be down there in less than ten minutes." Alfred said, "now come on, let's get the hell away from this crazy fucking place before I fall apart on myself or go batshit insane."
"I don't think so," a voice said, shockingly close behind them.
As soon as the voice had sounded Alfred was ready to turn around and start a fight, but when he felt the cold steel of a gun's barrel pressing into the back of his head, his will to fight dropped tenfold. It wasn't one of their own, that was for sure.
Of all things, as if worrying about the infected attacking them wasn't enough of a problem, now they had to worry about other people causing them harm too. The world just got worse and worse as the days progressed with no decent end in sight.
"I'm going to have to ask the two of you to drop the weapons you're carrying," the man said, "because I'm on a really tight schedule right now, and I don't want to have to kill one of you."
Arthur and Alfred both gave each other a cautious look as they drew the guns out of the makeshift holsters on their hips and dropped them to the floor carelessly. It would be better just to obey the man for the time-being until they knew what his true purpose with them was. Maybe he was the one who "owned" the mall, and if that was truly the case, it would be better to make nice with him. Added to all that, with all the running they had done they didn't have any remaining energy to engage in another fight with someone.
However, from the man's apparent hostility toward the both of them, it was hard to determine if 'making nice' with him was truly worth their time and effort.
The man standing close behind them kicked Alfred hard enough in the ass to send him careening into the bannister on the overlook; he was stronger than the both of them, that had been made visible to them by the force behind the man's kick. If he could send someone like Alfred careening into something with such easy force, then he must have been considerably stronger than the both of them. "Take the knife out of your pants too, idiot. I don't want any funny business, especially from you." The man pointed the barrel of his gun at Alfred's face and made a show of pretending to pull the trigger, "you look like you're going to be a problem for us."
"Us?" Arthur thought nervously.
Alfred spit in the man's direction and slowly slid the knife out of the waistband of his pants, throwing it to the ground directly in front of the hooded man.
"That's right," the man said with a jerky nod. "Now, leave everything behind here, including your duffel bags and all of the stolen goods. You're coming with me whether you like it or not."
"What do you think you are, a cop?" Alfred asked petulantly from where he was still pressed up against the bannister. "If you think I'm going to follow you and leave all our hard work behind like it's nothing, then you are truly fucking insane. Do you know what it's like out there? Do you know what we went through before we got here?"
"I do," he said with a nod, and if his face had been visible then there most certainly would have been a smirk there.
"Wha-" Alfred started.
The man cut him off in enough time for Alfred to forget his train of thought, "there's a reason why I'm in here and not out there."
"Then you know why we're taking goods, because if we want to survive out there we'll need them. You don't need them because it seems to me that you're mostly safe from harm in here," Alfred said.
The man cocked his head, "so you're justifying stealing my goods in order to survive?" The man walked up to Alfred and got directly in his face, revealing dark skin and silky brown hair. "The whole world's crapped out, it's to each their own out there. Which means I have every damn right to stop you from stealing from this place, but hey, if you think you can force me and the rest of us to hand it over, be my guest. There is no law anymore. But if you think for one second that any of the people in this place will back down to a bunch of muscle-heads, a few college kids, a priest, and a fucking nurse then you're the crazy one in this place, not me. We won't stop until were dead."
Alfred cursed under his breath and looked away from the man, unable to hold eye contact with him any longer. However, he still managed to mumble a quick "likewise" under his breath. There was something off about the man, even though he looked like a completely normal person, you could just see that there was something wrong boiling under the surface, just waiting to let itself out. Added to everything else, he somehow knew about all of them.
That spelled trouble for everyone, not just them.
The man laughed at Alfred and turned his back to him, walking away with an air of nonchalance and indifference that shouldn't have existed anymore in their new world. It was that walk, and the implications of what the man had said to him, that had caused Alfred to react in a way that left him shocked in his own actions.
Alfred dove for the knife in front of him and lunged forward, prepared to sink the knife into the back of the man's head without question. However, just as he thought he was home free, the man turned around and grabbed him by the arm before he could deal any serious damage to him.
"I knew you were going to be trouble right from the moment I saw you," he said with a sneer as he backed Alfred closer and closer to the bannister, "and you see, I don't have any time on my hands to deal with trouble makers." Alfred let out a breathless gasp of air when his back collided hard with the bannister.
"Alfred," Arthur called out, running over and trying to pry the man's hands off of Alfred's shoulders. There was no point in trying to make nice with the man anymore, if they wanted to get out of the mall alive then they had to get rid of the man and warn the rest of the group about other possible threats - if they hadn't encountered them already.
The man let out a grunt of distaste when Arthur latched onto him and he used all of his force to knock Arthur away from him. He swung the butt of his gun out from between his arm and clipped Arthur under the jaw hard enough to cause his vision to swim and a black vignette to eat up the corners of his area of sight. He wasn't completely blacked out by the hit, but he also wasn't aware of his surroundings enough to react to anything going on. He might as well have been dead to the world in that moment.
The man got back to the task at hand as soon as he saw that Arthur would be incapacitated long enough to allow him to do what he had wanted to the moment he had seen Alfred's cocky face. He started lifting Alfred bodily off of the floor like a small child, all the while bringing him up until he was dangling over the three-floor drop.
Alfred was too weak to stop him from lifting him, as the man was far older and far more sturdy than he was. Alfred was also completely exhausted from running away from the infected, and Roderich and Elizaveta earlier, so there was no hope for him in stopping the man.
"I don't have the time," the man said as he lifted Alfred even higher over the drop, "for trouble makers like you."
He let go of Alfred without another word, not even bothering to watch over the edge as he fell with a loud shout and landed on the hard plaster tiles below them with an even louder crack.
The crack that Alfred's body made when it collided with the floor was satisfying enough for the man.
Satisfied with his work, the green-hooded man walked back over to where Arthur was still sitting - confused and bloodied - and stooped beside his dazed form.
"Your little friend is dead, can you hear that through that thick skull of yours?" the man emphasized this by tapping his knuckles on Arthur's head. "Now, without any more interruptions from your little friend, you're coming with me."
A/N: Yeah, I know the chapter was really late but it's hard getting back into the game, do you know what I mean? I've been so busy with school and studying that I haven't made any time to write until now.
So, I'm finally done school. It's such a weird feeling knowing that you're done, you're never going to be going back to high school ever again. 12 years of horrible school and you're finally done. Now the only thing left for me to do is accept my diploma and go to prom! (whichi'mnotlookingforwardto)
And then it's off to University! (woohoo?)
On another note, I wanted to tell you guys about this fucking awesome anime/manga called Shingeki no Kyojin, or Attack on Titan if you prefer. I couldn't wait for new episodes to air so I ended up reading the entire manga up to its current chapter (shame of me). But seriously, while you're waiting for next week's chapter, you should all check it out! It's really dark-themed, and the character development and plot is awesome (think the Walking Dead, but with giants.)
See you next week, guys!