A/N: This chapter was really a lot of fun to write. Google maps pretty much has my heart and soul now for being such a massive help. The real reason why I've never written anything quite like this before, is because the section of my brain that's required to plan things that I'm not actually a part of/will probably never have to do doesn't work very well at all. What would I do in the event of a zombie invasion? Probably freak out and play it all by ear (and end up getting eaten somewhere along the way). This chapter forced me to lay out an actual plan, but more than that, I had to come up with an interesting storyline and keep the energy moving. I'm rather new at it all and I hope I did a good job at it.
A few thank you's are in order for everyone who reviewed! Thank you to FlurryDivider, yumeniai, Living in a fantasy (who, I believe, is WammyGirl on MB), Maddasahatter, Ashastana, angellovedark, Shinra'sCrazyTurk, Ms. Bloody Death, xXJeevas-sonXDXx, and Blondie-love. Full thank you's will be in the final author's notes. And, of course, thank you to Striped-tabby and Melissa for their help and support!
On another note, this chapter contains what is probably my most beloved original character to date. Cat loves him to pieces and did a quick little sketch on my Mangabullet as well. Art for the story should be coming up soon, but things are quite hectic now as school draws nearer and nearer.
Anyhoo, enjoy chapter 2 and remember to read and review!

Disclaimer: Death Note belongs to Ohba and Obata. Various literary allusions belong to their respective creators.

"Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone." - Octavio Paz

Chapter 2 - Genesis

The entrance to the convenience store on the corner was sealed with a lock and chain around the front doors. They didn't bother to risk running around to the back door to check there, since they imagined it would be similarly locked. All the windows were covered with heavy, metal shutters. The glass on the doors were boarded up with panels.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Matt swore with a biting breath. He ran a hand through his hair, pacing awkwardly. He would take a quick step forward, and then turn to do the same in the opposite direction. Shotgun in one hand, he started groping around inside his pockets. His hand landed on his key ring attached to his wallet chain.

Mello's fingers tightened around his handgun, feeling the grooves of the engraved cross pressing into his palm. As he was, standing off to the side, he was completely useless, while Matt tried to divide his attention between the lock and his surroundings.

The blond stepped forward as Matt knelt down in front of the doors to examine the lock in what little light a sliver of moon could provide. His key ring was pulled halfway from his back pocket, fingers feeling over a line of picks and tensions wrenches sandwiched between keys and tiny screwdrivers, as if he were trying to decide which to use on the sturdy looking padlock.

"Give me the gun," he ordered, stretching his hand out.

"Mello, I can handle this."

"I'm not a bloody invalid, Matt! Now either give me the gun or get out of my way."

"You want to be the look out?" Matt scoffed quietly, sliding the tension wrench and pick off the key ring, not even bothering to look up. "You can't be serious."

Mello's right eye twitched, imperceptible in the darkness.

"Give me the picks and get out of the fucking way, now."

The redhead stilled at the chillingly serious tone in Mello's voice. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the hand that hovered close to his face flexing menacingly.

Farther down the road, a trash can crashed against the concrete sidewalk.

A moment of horrified silence followed.

"Shit!" Matt swore, finally pressing the picks into Mello's hand. He got to his feet, pivoting rapidly. He could hear stealthy scurrying, nothing more than whispers of feet that he strained to hear over the clicking of Mello picking the lock beside him. One moment, it would be on the ground, but then it snaked upwards, climbing, Matt following the sound with the shotgun. It weaved from side to side, up and down, and he could almost imagine it crawling across the front of buildings, shoulders low and set, like a wild cat on a nature documentary.

It wasn't sniffing them out anymore, it was stalking.

"Mello," he said slowly, taking careful steps back until he was pressed close to the building. "We need to hurry."

Beside him, Mello bit back an irritated noise. "I'm going as fast as I can," he said. He raked the pins again, feeling all but one cylinder set. He realized with frustration that his hands were shaking, threatening to release the pressure on the cylinders he had set. He took one breath to try and calm himself.

Nothing. His fingers still trembled and he felt his grip on the tension wrench starting to slip.

"Mello-"

"I know, alright?!" he snapped, a little louder than he intended. He shifted the pick just slightly and...click. The lock opened with an easy tug. He smiled despite himself and let out a pleased breath. "Got it."

BANG!

The shotgun went off behind him. Something sprang from the darkness. Matt shot again, catching it in the shoulder. It's flight path faltered, but that was it. It hit Matt heavily in the chest, limbs flailing, catching the redhead in it's grip and dragging him down to the ground. They landed in a thrashing heap, the creature scrabbling viciously at his body.

For a moment, Mello thought it was the end, that Matt was a goner, that he was zombie chow. But then-

"Fucking hell, Mello! Shoot it!"

Matt was far from dead. He was keeping the creature, a woman Mello suddenly realized with a sickening lurch, at bay with the shotgun in his hands. The firearm pressed upwards against the woman's throat. Her right arm rested on the ground, twitching and useless, blood slowly dripping from her wounded shoulder. The other arm alternated between attacking and balancing her weight as she gnashed her teeth at the prey pinned beneath her.

One quick swipe caught Matt on the cheek, drawing thin lines of oozing red just below his eye. "Come on! Just shoot it!" Matt exclaimed as Mello took unsteady aim, balancing himself on his knees.

He pulled the trigger once. It caught the woman in the face, far from the blond's intended target, sending chunks of skin and cartilage flying. Mello hesitated, briefly realizing just how close he had come to Matt's skull.

The second shot caught the woman in the throat, turning her bloodthirsty shrieks into helpless gurgling and throwing her off balance enough to allow Matt to push her away. The redhead scrambled to his feet, chest heaving. He stared, paralyzed, as the woman rolled around on the dusty pavement, watched as blood poured from the side of her throat, as her eyes flitted around in a frenzy.

And then they locked with Matt's, held them, brown irises meeting that horribly neutral abyss.

"Matt!" Mello called, pulling the chain away from the door. The sound of others coming to the woman's aid bounced back and forth off the empty buildings, echoing and warping in a disorienting circle of savage screams. "Matt! Come on! We have to get in!" But the redhead seemed worlds away, trapped in those eyes that both thirsted for blood and pleaded for mercy.

She stretched out a shaking hand, fingernails broken and mangled in places, with dark clumps of dirt and filth and God-knows-what wedged underneath them. Her fingers brushed the side of Matt's leg, tightened weakly around the denim of his pants, and Matt's heart stopped.

He imagined those eyes were a brilliant green once, those hands smooth and gentle with nails neatly trimmed, a French manicure maybe. That blouse was once pale pink, not dingy brown with missing buttons and vomit stains. Her legs may have once had soft curves, gentle slopes, but now they were angled and bulging, thin but muscular, tendons and veins prominent under pasty flesh.

Her fingers tightened and she bared her teeth at him, hissing, canines stained with red in the negligible moonlight.

Matt's finger twitched and pulled and the woman went silent, her face and skull riddled with shot.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there, listening to that nagging voice in the back of his head (she wasn't an animal, she was human. And you've killed her, you've murdered her, murderer, murderer!) before Mello was at his side, dragging him away and cursing under his breath.

"...the fuck is wrong with you?!" The blond's voice finally drifted in. All around them, shrieks echoed back and forth. "We have to get in now! Those things are coming and we have no defense here!"

Matt stumbled along, Mello's hand tight around his upper arm. He blinked dumbly, staring at the ground.

Get inside, his brain murmured, muffled by the shouted accusations. They'll know you're there. They'll break in. He stopped just inside, just as Mello released him to work at wrenching a PVC shelf from one of the displays that he could use to bar the doors.

They don't know there's two of you.

"Vinegar," Matt murmured, looking around, thin, spidery lines of blood drying on his cheek.

Mello gave him an annoyed look, shakily setting the shelf down. "What?" he panted. The damn sheet of PVC was heavier than he thought.

"Vinegar!" Matt repeated, gesturing impatiently with his hands. "It'll cover our scent!" He hurried forward, rummaging through one of the dusty shelves full of baking soda and corn starch and - aha! Vinegar! There were only a few small bottles left. He took three and shoved them in his messenger bag and ripped the cap off another.

"What in the world are you doing?!" Mello exclaimed as Matt ran back outside and began pouring the pungent fluid all over the concrete just outside the store. "They could be here any second! Now get in!"

"There should be enough food in here to last you the night," Matt said, flinging the empty vinegar bottle aside and pulling a pair of Berettas from the duffel bag. The guns were placed with the extra vinegar bottles. "If this place hasn't been broken into yet, chances are they can't get in anywhere else." His eyes were bright and frantic.

Mello found it incredibly disturbing.

"What do you mean me? You're not actually thinking of staying out there?" Mello grabbed Matt's arm as he gathered up the chain and lock from the front door, fingers tight around his thin wrist. "That thing almost killed you!"

"But it didn't," Matt countered, pulling his arm out of the desperate grip. "And with that woman's body out there, they're not going to leave unless they have something to chase." The redhead passed the duffel bag off to Mello, along with the contents of his pockets and his wallet chain and smiled weakly. "Stay in here until morning, okay?"

Mello paled, both furious and horrified. "You couldn't even go up and down the stairs without getting winded! Stop trying to be heroic, alright?! I don't need protecting!"

Smashing glass and a resounding car alarm went off in the street. Matt used the distraction to shove Mello inside. He began pulling the doors closed, chain and lock slung over his shouder. "If I don't come back..." he trailed off, biting his lip. "Just go on without me, okay?"

He didn't give his friend time to respond. A second later, the doors were shut tight and there was the sound of the chain rattling and the lock closing. For a few moments, the blond stood frozen in place, stunned. Then he raced back to grab the shelf and wedge it between the doors handles, huffing and panting with the effort.

The shrieks and screeching and screams came closer, closer, and then they were passing by and fading away into the night. In the silence that followed, Mello sank down against a shelf full of canned fruit, soup, and beans.

Just go on without me, okay?

Mello kicked irritably at the shelf across from him, angrier than he had been in a long time. He hated that look in Matt's eyes, that guilty, self-sacrificing, bullshit expression.

He hated this fucking burn on his face, he hated his shaking hands, he hated the fear and the tears that were stirring inside him and threatening to overflow.

He hated the flickering emergency lighting above his head and the smell of ammonia and dust and stagnant, dry air.

He hated the worry and the questions that plagued him even as he drifted in and out of an uneasy, half-asleep state.

'Where the fuck am I supposed to go?'

Matt ran.

Thighs burning, arms pumping, chest heaving, he ran, not daring to look back.

His footfalls on the barren asphalt sounded like heavy drum beats, drawing the shrieking hoard right to him.

In case of an emergency, contact your local disaster shelter, Matt's mind recited, Kiyomi Takada's voice replaying the same message again and again and again. The nearest shelter to your area is the LA Red Cross on Ohio Avenue...

Vaguely, Matt saw the route he needed to take in his mind, but he felt as if he were floating far off and all he had to do was make sure he kept putting one heavy foot in front of the other.

'Barry Avenue,' he thought. 'Follow Barry to Rochester.' Inhuman cries rounded the corner behind him. He passed a parking garage; dozens of cars sat in the little spaces, empty and dark. 'Follow Barry to Rochester, Barry to Rochester, Barry to-'

Just after the garage, he took a sharp left turn, darting between the parking structure and a sparse line of trees, and then another right onto the unnamed road heading south.

"Fuck!" he gasped, lungs burning and pleading at him to stop. He struggled to keep his footing on the uneven, unkempt roadway. The backs of houses towered darkly on either side of him, broken windows and torn curtains like gaping mouths, screaming wordlessly into the night, ready to release a howling demon at any moment. Takada's soothing directions in his head cut off there, because this wasn't the proper route that she had been narrating to them every morning, afternoon, and evening for the past month. He was supposed to take Barry to Rochester. Right at Barry, she'd said. Then left at Rochester. Or, if Wilshire was open, proceed to Hadley, and then to Dowlen, and...and-

His feet carried him against his will, locked into some grand plan that he wasn't privy to, this time taking a right onto Federal Avenue. His brain frantically tried to recalculate the directions, grasped at his bearings like grasping at smoke, torn between the instinctive response to flight and the rational urge to remain calm.

And then he wasn't floating anymore. He was falling, heavily, back into himself and his rising panic.

He stumbled and slowed, doubling over with his arms around his middle.

"I can't," he gasped, speaking into the emptiness of the night. "I can't." Can't run, can't win, can't escape.

There wasn't enough ammo to fight them all off, there wasn't enough time until dawn to keep running.

Any moment now, they were going to bear down on him and tear him to pieces. Maybe they would be truly merciful and actually kill him, maybe he could actually fight the urge to struggle and actually stay dead. Maybe they would smash his head open on the asphalt and slurp up his brain matter and finish it-

The redhead felt his stomach clench nauseatingly and he gagged, hand pressed to his mouth to stifle the noise. He would not let them hear his cries, he refused to incite them.

And that was when Matt realized that it was strangely quiet.

His breath stilled in his throat, his diaphragm twitching in an attempt at an optimistic gasp. He could hear nothing behind him, only the sounds of snarls and low growls off in the distance.

He turned his head to look back, slowly, afraid that if he were wrong, they might leap at him if he moved too suddenly.

The empty street stared back at him. Moths danced, reverent and entranced, around a dying street lamp on the corner of the intersection.

He had shaken them off. He had actually managed to elude them.

But it wouldn't be for long, he registered. They were still scouring the street. They could still smell him, smell his heat, smell his breath, smell his flesh and his blood and his life.

He looked around frantically, his throat sore and burning with every wheezing breath. He had to get off the street, he had to find some way to slow them down. But he needed something to throw him off his trail, or else they would just end up following him all the way to the shelter.

He took a few stumbling steps forward, standing in the intersection between Federal and Texas. There were no lights on at all down that street, just an endless tunnel of black.

His brain sprang into action again, but this time he felt none of the floating sensations from before. He worked quickly, tearing away what remained of his left shirt sleeve, hooking the pieces on the spindly branches of a bush growing in front of a motel on the corner. He ran a small ways down the street, brushing against cars and leaving scraps of striped fabric in his wake. Then he ran back to the intersection and headed farther down Federal Avenue instead, dumping out one of the bottles of vinegar behind him.

The Red Cross was to the east, just on the other side of the buildings lining the road. He jumped the fence at the entrance of the National Guard building (the building had been evacuated after an employee had collapsed after falling ill; they moved their operations to the police department downtown) and jogged quickly and quietly across the nearly empty parking lot. A few camouflaged military trucks still sat off near the fenced perimeter, covered in dirt and oil and grease.

He couldn't bring himself to run, legs still aching under the strain of even the moderate pace of his jog. Getting over the next fence was even more difficult, arms shaking and screaming in protest as he pulled himself up. It was a cumbersome task, getting his legs over the top of the fence, and when he came down on the ground on the other side, he staggered forward and fell into the dirt, unprepared for the change from solid asphalt to yielding, dry earth. The dust came up in slow clouds around him, invading his nostrils, filling his mouth. He coughed weakly into the crook of his arm, his lungs greedily trying to keep him from expelling more air than necessary.

There were no lights out here, and if there were, they weren't working. He was, quite literally, wandering blindly. He pulled one of the handguns from his bag, checking to make sure it was loaded.

His steps were slow, feet shuffling through the dirt until they hit gravel. The sudden sound of stones rattling beneath his feet startled him at first. He jerked backwards, gun raised, whipping his head around for signs of movement. Even if something had moved, he doubted he would see it, a black shadow on the black night. Virtually invisible.

After a few tense moments, he toed the gravel again, walked through it until his foot hit dirt. He stopped and then turned slightly to follow the gravel once more and hit dirt a few moments later. He squinted, straining to see in front of him, and made out a very vague, curving trail extending out in front of him.

It was a path.

A path he followed, simply because it was the only distinguishable landmark, the only thing leading him anywhere. A path that eventually led to a pair of inoperative transformers.

And Dowlen drive. And the Red Cross.

Matt laughed weakly as he stumbled up to the building, almost crying with joy at the dim light still on in the entrance.

Mello fumed.

This was not his usual position, left at a significant disadvantage. He was usually the one with the upper hand. He had always made sure of that during his days with the mob.

And something about the fact that he was not only being protected against his will, but cut off from the outside world as well had him drawn taut and tense in aggravation.

He took a painfully slow and (vaguely) steady breath to try and create some shaky sense of calm. Almost reluctantly, his shoulders slumped, his knees drew in a little closer to his chest, and he sighed heavily, cradling the left half of his face with splayed fingers and a calloused palm. The edge of a dusty shelf dug further between a pair of vertebrae in the small of his back.

The back entrance had been left locked, with no signs of damage. The freezer was warm and moist and smelled of spoilt milk, but empty. It was the same in the supply closet, without the unpleasant dampness and odor of sour dairy.

The silence was unbearable, feeding the gluttonous uncertainty in the pit of his stomach. He felt it swell and twitch inside of him, felt it constrict around his chest as fear and hopelessness flitted back and forth across his brain, felt it crest in a very quiet gasping sound somewhere near the back of his throat, and then ebb away once more.

In the wake of those moments, he felt himself split. With his right eye, he saw cold, grey tiles, saw wooden panels and metal shutters fencing him in. With his right eye, he saw nothing.

In his left eye, he saw sunlight. Bright, warm, yellow radiance spilling over onto wooden floorboards. It was like watching an old film; everything seemed dusty and worn and far, far away. Matt's hair was a dull mahogany, his voice was nothing more than the echo of a whisper, remnants of smoke, hardly there at all. He was all unreadable smiles and lazy stances and eyes hidden behind orange lenses.

Mello fumed and seethed and hurt. Yes, hurt, because the bandage over his eye was slimy and itchy and desperately needed to be changed.

And because of all the things he could have thought of to keep his mind off of how many hours were left until dawn, he found himself stuck on that same jumble of half-formed, vague images of the redheaded gamer.

He stretched to the side to fist a hand in the fabric of the nearby duffel and drag it close. He peeled away the tape holding the gauze to his skin slowly, but with enough frustrated yanking that it left a burning bite behind.

He rummaged through the duffel and pulled out the emergency kit. His fingers fumbled around, blinking to try and clear his vision.

The colors still swam maddeningly about in his left eye.

Why Matt? Why him?, he thought angrily as he unscrewed a tub of ointment with a violent turn of the hand. His fingers let the lid slip indifferently from his hands, not bothering to watch in which direction it skidded across the slightly grimy tiles.

It wasn't as if that was all there was in his life. He had plenty other memories, plenty of experiences he had accumulated.

He scooped out ointment with his fingers and began spreading it, a bit more roughly than he probably should have, over the burn. He almost reveled in the throbbing, white hot ache that rose form his forceful touch, because he needed something to take his frustration out on, and he was the only thing within reach that could feel pain. It allowed him to feel something other than the anxiety he vehemently denied he was feeling, even as he felt the awkward rigidity in his arms and shoulders, felt the burning of something unnameable high on his cheeks and in the corners of his eyes.

Abruptly, Mello went still as he felt the dark beast in his belly rear it's head again, but this time it was tinged with something he couldn't place, a heavy and thick sensation that curled at the hollow of his neck. It was suffocating, leaden, cold and hot at the same time. He was being squeezed to a quantum singularity and free falling all at once ,compressing, descending, collapsing, plummeting into some lukewarm place that hovered between nothing and everything.

At first, there was nothing but the dim hum of a generator, punctuated with the faltering, muted crackle of florescent lightbulbs. Then, the quiet ripping of fibers as gauze was torn into squares and the scrittt of unrolling medical tape.

And then...crying, soft, so soft the generator nearly overwhelmed it. Mello put his hands over his face and simply cried in frustration, without excuse, without explanation. Tears that refused to start or stop and stayed desperately clinging to his eyelashes.

His jaw tightened, his teeth clenched together, his breaths were measured and deliberate, held back only by a feeble rhythm that threatened to break at any moment into an uneven tempo of wheezing.

THUNK! THUNK! CRASH!

Mello's head jerked up, his entire body suddenly at attention as a few aisles away, a number of cans tipped over, rolled off their shelf, and fell heavily to the floor.

He wasn't alone.

In one smooth motion, the blond was on his feet, gun in hand and aimed at the shelf in the distant aisle where a lone, toppled can slowly rolled back and forth.

The store fell into unsettling silence again, save for panicked and poorly stifled breathing. seconds ticked by (because the only clock in the convenience store had been stuck at 7:30 all night long) as Mello tried to calm his racing heart, head jerking minutely to the left every so often to see what his peripherals could not. He would have been content telling himself that it was simply a wobbly shelf, that those cans had been balancing precariously there for days.

But, he was certain that he had heard a flurry of noises amidst the clunking, something that wasn't falling cans.

He took cautious, careful steps towards the mess of cans at the end of one of the center aisles. Heel to toe, heel to toe, not even his soles dare let out a stray squeak against the ceramic tiling. He crept closer and closer, ears straining to hear that noise again, that slight scrabbling, but his breathing was louder and faster, despite all attempts to tell himself to calm down, just calm down, just fucking calm down!

The doors were locked, he told himself, No one has gotten in or out since then, no one could possibly be in here.

Unless -

His breath hitched just as the toe of his boot collided with an unlabeled can, kicking it a short way across the floor.

Unless someone had locked themselves in and they had ended up...

Mello swallowed, eyes wide, as his arms began to shake with minute tremors, aching from being raised for so long.

He saw a dark shape move and then disappear behind a line of boxes on one of the lower shelves. He felt relief which was quickly replaced by fear. Too small to be human, but big enough to bite him, to kill him. His arms followed the shadow, watched cardboard boxes rustle as it scurried along the shelf and knocked over a few bags of rice and a box of baking soda along the way.

The lights flickered overhead and the shadow suddenly darted over into the next aisle.

Mello followed as quickly as he could, making sure not to trip on the cans, but it wasn't enough. In the unsteady lighting, all the shadows moved and writhed and the scratching noise had disappeared.

Something warm brushed against his ankle.

He leapt back with a yelp, fingers twitching on the trigger as he aimed at the floor.

"Mreow..."

There was a cat sitting at his feet, staring up at him with wide, emerald eyes.

At first, Mello had thought the feline was infected and that it was about to bite down on his leg and tear the skin from his thigh.

That thought evaporated quickly, though, when the cat meowed softly at him again, rubbing his head against his foot.

Mello heaved a very heavy, very relieved sigh, the muscles in his shoulders gratefully uncoiling as he lowered his arms. "Just a fucking cat," he breathed, rubbing a hand tiredly over his face.

It was, quite possibly, the ugliest cat Mello had ever seen. Its coat was a muddy brown, as if he had never been given a proper bath, with a long puckered scar over his forehead that ended just above one big green eye. Bent and uneven whiskers framed his chubby face and a little chunk was missing from the tip of his right ear. And his legs...they were short. Freakishly short, one or two inches long at most.

He had never seen an infected animal, so watched the cat with a wary eye, watching for any signs that it might be dangerous.

The cat continued to mewl at him, pawing lightly at the blond's leather covered legs, gazing up with a pleading look.

No, it definitely wasn't dangerous.

"What?" he sighed, rather irritated. "What do you want?" The gun slipped into the waistband of his pants and he leaned down to pick the cat up, slipping his hands under it's stubby arms. The cat hung limply, letting out a whining meow, not even looking the blond in the eye. Mello frowned, feeling a little offended. "What?" he repeated, brow furrowed. "Isn't this what you want?"

The cat wriggled and, when Mello put him back down on the floor, hurried over to the closed supply closet door. It cried and pawed at the door, looking back at the former mob boss with an imploring look.

When Mello finally opened the door, the cat darted in and started in on gnawing determinedly on the corner of an unopened bag of cat food. A pair of small metal bowls next to it were completely empty.

He felt bad for the cat all of a sudden. He wondered how long ago the store owner had locked it inside, how long it had gone without food.

The cat began to meow loudly in excitement when Mello finally filled it's food and water bowls and, after it finished eating, wouldn't leave him alone. He purred loudly in gratitude and rubbed his head against Mello's hand and thigh and hip after his leather-clad savior had settled back in his spot beside the duffel, across from the canned peaches.

Watching the cat eat reminded him that he hadn't eaten in almost 12 hours, so he ripped open the pull-back lid on one of the cans of peaches and tore into the preserved fruit. He tried using his fingers at first, but a large drop of syrup dripped out onto the cat's head, leaving the blond laughing as it ran off to give itself a thorough grooming, yowling indignantly. By the time the cat sauntered back, head clean and only slightly sticky, Mello had settled on slurping the slices from the can, being careful not to cut his mouth on the rim. He was still hungry afterwards, but the small bit of food was enough to have his eyelids drooping drowsily only a few minutes later.

"You know, you need a name," he murmured to the cat who had chosen to curl up in Mello's lap for the night. He paused for a moment, scratching behind his injured ear. "How about Mail?" He tried to smile, but his face fell as his heart gave a painful twinge.

No, not Mail. Not that name.

His body felt heavy and warm, chest slowly rising and falling. Pain was turning to tingling numbness, light was becoming dark, soothing and inviting and enveloping.

He licked at his chapped lips, tongue thick in his mouth.

"Neville," he murmured as his eyes slipped shut. "That's a nice name...Neville."

The last thing he heard and felt was the cat purring in response, warm vibrations ripping through him and lulling him to sleep.