The next morning comes with a pale grey dawn. Iceland blinks open his eyes. Denmark is awake, still staring down at Norway. There are dark circles under his eyes.
"Did you sleep at all?" Iceland asks groggily.
"No," Denmark says, his voice barely above a whisper. "I felt too guilty to sleep."
"You need rest, Denmark," Iceland says. "You can't protect us if you don't get sleep."
Denmark shrugs
Finland and Sweden are already up, and they're pacing around the roof of the building. Sweden turns when he notices that Iceland is up.
"Mornin', Ice," he says. "We're running low on food."
"How? I thought we had a lot left?" Iceland asks incredulously.
"It's gone," Finland says. "Someone must've taken it, but they didn't take anything else, which doesn't make sense. So maybe they didn't? I don't know…"
"But anyway, Fin and I were thinking of trying t' find that supermarket Germany was talking about. Maybe it still has some food left," Sweden says. "You and Denmark and Norway can stay here again, that way you can watch over him."
"No," Iceland says. I need to learn how to conquer my fears, otherwise they'll cripple me. "I'm coming with you guys."
Finland looks pained, but he ends up relenting. "We can keep you safe," he says, sounding more like he's assuring himself than he's assuring Iceland.
"I'm also coming with you," Norway says. The others look at him. He must've just woken up. He looks rather irked, and pushes the hair out of his face. "It doesn't hurt that much, and it wasn't too deep. I'll be fine."
"No, you're going to stay here with me where I can protect you," Denmark says.
"No, I'm going to go help our family look for food to keep us alive," Norway says. "And if you want to protect me, you'll have to come with me. Don't try to stop me."
If Norway makes his mind up about something, there's almost nothing that will change it. Iceland doubts that anything anyone of them says will sway Norway in any way.
"Fine," Finland says. "But if you need it, Denmark can carry you."
"I don't need that," Norway says. "I'm fine, really." He pushes himself up out of Denmark's lap, and staggers to a standing position. "See?"
He looks pained.
"Yeah… sure…" Finland says. He sounds unconvinced, but he knows that Norway's going to decide to come with them no matter what.
"No more splitting up, okay?" Norway says. "We're going to stick together, this family of ours. I'm not letting another one of you out of my sight again."
They all agree.
Setting off down the ladder, they retrace their steps from yesterday, carefully listening to see if they can hear any sounds. Norway has his guns back. Denmark had picked them up and carried them for him after he was taken yesterday.
They find the place where Italy lays, and try and avert their eyes from the sight of his body. Iceland sees that it's become a bit more mangled and bloody, and his heart feels for the cheerful Italian who used to smile and laugh and speak of unity and peace.
"There's food in Germany and Italy and Romano's packs, probably," Finland says.
He takes a deep breath, and scrambles over the pile of rubbish, and walks into the alley, making sure he doesn't look at Italy's corpse. Finland grabs the three bags, slinging two over his shoulders and carrying one. He sets them down in front of the rest of the Nordics, and they check out the contents of each.
Inside, they find plenty of food left.
There's more pasta, some soup, jerky, crackers, granola, trail mix, six water bottles, and three more bars of Hershey's chocolate.
"This'll do for now," Norway says. He goes to pick up one of the backpacks, but Denmark waves him off.
"Ya need to heal, Nor," Denmark says.
He carries one, and Finland and Sweden carry the other two. They start to walk back, heads facing downward and eyes staring at the cracked asphalt.
Suddenly, Finland stops. "You know what?" he says. "This is the worst. We need to take a break. We're going to have a picnic, and we're going to eat some food, and we're going to talk about our plan. We can't keep wandering around aimlessly trying not to die."
"Alright," Denmark says. "A few blocks past our camp there's a small park."
They walk there, luckily not running into anyone, man or zombie. When they reach the park, Iceland has to marvel at how overgrown it is.
The grass is up to his thigh, and trees and saplings are everywhere.
They pick their way through the grass to a picnic table, and set out an array of beef jerky, crackers, and trail mix.
"Here we go," Finland says.
The food is okay. It's certainly not as good as the pasta they had with Germany and Italy and Romano, but Iceland wasn't entirely sure there was anything that could beat that. Warm pasta and chocolate, surrounded by friends?
Friends that died.
Some small talk is made, and eventually everyone becomes more animated. They invest in pointless chatter to try to drown out the ache in their hearts.
"Remember that time we fought for three days straight?" Denmark asks Sweden.
"And I won?" Sweden responds, a tiny smile appearing on his usually serious lips.
"Pshaw," Denmark says. "Only because I let ya."
Norway rolls his eyes, and Finland laughs. "I'll bet you did, Denmark," Finland says, voice tinged with playful sarcasm.
"Remember when Iceland was little and we used to read him stories and fairytales, Nor?" Denmark asks. "That was nice. I miss those times."
"Yes," Norway says. "I remember. Ice loved it so much."
"Shut up," Iceland says.
Norway snorts, and shrugs. "Too bad I don't have a storybook with me right now."
Finland grins. "Well actually… There's something else that I found in Italy's backpack." He reaches in, and pulls out a small, colorfully illustrated book and hands it to Norway. "Read us something, Norway."
The book is by Dr. Seuss, and while it's certainly not as good as fairytales, Iceland finds himself enjoying it. Norway's voice is rhythmic, and the rhymes in the book are nice to hear. The simple comedy aimed at younger children is just the thing that everyone needs right now, and soon they're all grinning and chuckling, distracting themselves from the pain that they feel.
Everything's going great.
Until Finland hears a voice that shoots his head up and brings tears to his eyes.
"Sealand?" he calls, shooting up. "Sealand is that you?"
Norway stops reading, and they all tilt their head to listen. It's faint, very faint, but Iceland can tell that the voice does in fact belong to Sealand. Iceland can't tell what Sealand's yelling, but as they sprint closer to investigate, he realizes.
Help. Sealand is screaming for help.
Finland sprints the fastest that Iceland has ever seen anyone run, and skids around to the edge of the alley where Sealand's voice is coming from.
Sealand is surrounded by a horde of zombies. He's pinned up against a 10 foot wall, and there's no way out. The zombies draw closer, and just as Finland runs forward to knock them away from his son, they launch themselves on top of Sealand.
He has just enough time to be able to see his family, to be able to see Finland and Sweden rushing towards him, before he's overwhelmed and falls to the ground, dead.