When Billy wakes, he thinks, just for an instant, that he's dead again. His eyes snap open but see nothing, nothing but inky, infinite darkness like the space between stars. The complete dark is such a rare thing in his life that it seems unnatural; light pollution in cities, lava lamps, starlight, all these things robbed him of darkness. And yet now it's here, oppressive and impenetrable. His breath quickens, just for an instant, his eyes, with no images to process, flashing back to corpses-blood: one, two, brain: three, four, there are so many, too many-that move behind his eyelids. He gasps, trying to blink them away, but the darkness behind his eyelids is no different from the darkness outside of them, serving as a perfect, simple mirror. He sees himself truly for the first time since he woke, in that mirror, just a glimpse. He's dead, many people are dead, there is no hope for normal life. The realization is crushing in a way Billy didn't even know existed.
He almost shouts in alarm when he feels a warm hand on his shoulder, but a soft coo of Spencer's voice alleviates his doubts. Relief washes over him. It's silly, for a grown man to be afraid of the dark, but it's not a mirror he wants to look into, not any more. He doesn't want clarity. He wants Spencer to curl up next to him and be his baby cousin again. He grabs the boy's slim wrist in his hand and grips it, perhaps too tight.
"Why did you do that to me?" Billy says. They're the first words out of his mouth before he can stop them. At first he regrets it, but then doesn't, feeling that he deserves to know. Part of him understands, but another part of him, scared and wounded, wants to know why Spencer would intentionally hurt him like that. Spencer's fingers just keep touching him, curling on his shoulder like he's scratching the back of a cat.
"Do you think I wanted to?" Spencer replies, his voice hard at first, riddled with something old and tired. "I was the one who had to drag them all there, keep them from littering the yard. I was the one who made that grave. Did you think it was easy for me? I tried to burn them, you know, but the smoke…it attracted things." then he just sighs, and his voice goes gentle and calm again. Billy waits with quiet anticipation, expecting an answer.
"You had to know." Spencer finally says. "You had to know and you had to know fast. Trust me." Billy slowly releases Spencer's wrist, and sighs in a strange, nostalgic satisfaction as Spencer slides it across his chest. It seems to sink into his pores, the nurturing touch, a relief like being in his mother's arms, tying him to the real world. It's preparing him for whatever news Spencer is about to deliver. "If I hadn't shown you, and just told you…" Spencer gulps. "...you would've told me I was crazy. You would've denied it, then you would've accused me of lying, maybe gotten violent." his finger twitches against Billy's chest, and Billy holds his breath. "Then you would've started wailing. you would've gone outside, seen it, and begun to cry. You would have blamed me, or yourself, maybe. You would've leapt the fence to look for help, and you would've been killed. If not, you'd hole yourself up and lose it. Some of them just go crazy." Billy realizes, a little too late, that Spencer isn't even talking about him. "Sometimes they never make it out of the starting gate."
He places his hand over Spencer's as it stills in the center of his chest. He can feel the hard knuckles, the soft veins and flesh, the smoothness of fingernails. It's a human hand belonging to a human companion. Billy holds it like treasure.
"It's night out right now. I figured I'd keep watch." Spencer says. He holds something behind his teeth, something threatening to bubble up in his throat and spill out. It sits on his tongue like a stone, so hard Billy can feel it in the air.
Billy knows Spencer needs sleep. He knows that it isn't his fault, that he didn't wish this into existence. His mind searches for someone to blame, for some reason, but he can't find one. He waits in silence another moment, and then, without prompt, Spencer starts speaking again.
"It started about a year ago. Ten months, eight days, to be exact. I've been counting." Spencer says. His voice is painfully shaky. Billy strokes his hand with his thumb, and waits for everything to pour out. The darkness in cleansing, in a way. Spencer doesn't want anyone to see him cry, not again.
"At first, nobody knew anything. It was kept under wraps. A gag order was issued in my town, and then a town after that, and a town after that. And then the radio broadcasts started." Spencer says. He breathes in, and then out again, stalling himself. "They weren't supposed to get out. Nobody was supposed to know. But they did. At first they were just…unbelievable, you know? The dead are walking, they'd say, but no one believed them. A few people packed up after a particular broadcast aired…" he pauses. "...have you ever heard it before? The sound of someone being eaten alive, I mean."
Billy can't say anything. He doesn't know what it sounds like.
"Anyway, after that we were all told not to call anyone or go anywhere...there were soldiers in the streets, and people were getting scared. But we still didn't believe it, you know? We thought maybe there had been a bomb threat or something, anything but the truth, really." Billy feels Spencer shrug. "And then they were on us. Suddenly, so fast it was paralyzing. The sirens went off only an instant before we were flooded with them. The soldiers died in the streets like civilians." he swallows. "We left. We left in a big fucking hurry, mowed down a couple people in the van, I think. We came out here to find you, but by the time we got here, you were already…" he stops. The air is hard and thick.
Billy thinks. His mind churns.
We.
Spencer wasn't alone, not when he got here.
"Who was with you?" Billy finally asks, after waiting for a long moment in complete darkness. He feels Spencer's hand flex and then release, flex and release. He can feel the quick, panicked pulse in the boy's wrist.
"My Mom and Dad. My sister, Jessica." Spencer rasps.
Billy holds him in silence for a long, tense moment.
"It's alright, Spence." Billy says into the quiet, sacred darkness. He doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't know how to tell a boy who hasn't had time to grieve his family to keep trying. He doesn't know how he can encourage Spencer when the odds his cousin faces are of a magnitude that Billy can't even fathom.
Billy's father died on a mountain of corporate wealth, far away and cold, when Billy was six. He taught Billy to want what he couldn't have, with mistresses and business, and to take what he couldn't get, with money and power. His mother left him when he was fourteen. The Wrights, Billy thinks, are gone. But there are types of gone to the world. They aren't gone like Billy's mother and father, they're gone in another way completely. Gone in a nasty, horrible, terrifying way. Billy doesn't ask what happened, partly because a strange, nostalgic, human part of him loved the Wright family, and he'll miss them, too.
He grips Spencer's hand and feels the boy lay down next to him, curling into his side, warm and alive and shaking; probably crying. Crying silently in the complete, utter dark.
"I was so happy when I found you up here, alive. Even if you're only like...half alive." Spencer whispers into his side, voice shaky and wet. "You don't know what it's like. I was alone here for so long. I counted the days, Billy. In scratches on the walls." he sniffs. "And...I loved you, alright? I do love you, you're my friend...it was so hard to come up here and find you dead. To think that you might get up again and try to kill me. To wall you away when I…" Billy pulls an arm around him. "But then you were here, and I know I'm not good at showing it, I've been around this block before, but...I thanked the fucking stars you were alive. I want you to know how much I don't want you to die."
Billy blinks tears from his eyes and turns, kissing the crown of Spencer's head. Spencer is young and wounded and exhausted to his very bones. Billy knows a few things about loneliness, about filling in the gaps and trying not to lose yourself in them.
"I'll keep watch tonight." Billy says after a moment of just stroking Spencer's hair. He feels Spencer adjust nervously, twisting his legs.
"What?" he croaks. Billy closes his eyes, sighs.
"That's why you aren't sleeping, right? You watch everything, the doors and windows, day and night. So I'll do it tonight. Cry yourself to sleep, and rest and as long as you want to. I'll take care of it tonight, alright, Spencelvania?" he pushes his smile into the top of Spencer's head so the boy can feel it. He feels Spencer's hand close in the center of his chest the way a baby's fist curls. Billy's runs his thumb, feels with sensory depraved sensitivity the slick slice of the scar on Spencer's cheek. He doesn't feel scared of the dark any more.
He hears Spencer hiccup a sighing, nervous breath. It seems to rattle up out of his ribs, shaking from the density of his emotion. Spencer's thumb rubs circles on Billy's chest, either a nervous habit or a comforting gesture.
"And thanks, too. For telling me, I mean." Billy knows it wasn't easy. He might have nightmares if he sleeps, anyway, so keeping watch doesn't sound hard.
"Just….okay. okay, yeah, I need to be in better shape." Spencer sighs. "I need rest. Go up to the roof and just….make sure nothing breaks the perimeter. Wake me if anything even gets close." Spencer's voice teeters between grateful and terrified, his voice worn by sadness after his first attempt at mourning his family. He's just a kid, Billy thinks. Billy himself isn't much more, twenty five and ten years less mature, but he knows he's the adult here, that for once he has to throw away his pop star hat and take on a new responsibility. This is his baby cousin laying on the bed, crying and begging and mourning. The baby cousin he gave piggyback rides to. The baby cousin who played with Wendy in a kiddie pool on the fourth of July. The baby cousin who dared him to eat a cricket for a nickel. He smiles, and wonders what happened to get them from there to here. He wonders how they both got so far from where they started.
"I wish I could sleep here with you." Billy murmurs into Spencer's hair.
"I wish that, too." Spencer says. It's upsettingly genuine, and strange in contrast to his usual demeanor. He flip flops between being the stoic adult and the frightened child, forced to grow up in a manner of months. Billy never really grew up, so he doesn't totally understand, but he does sympathize.
They stay together for another moment as the air clears in the darkness, Spencer's soft cries ebbing into slow, even breaths against Billy's side. He has to get up and go take on the watch in a moment, he knows, but he doesn't want to leave until Spencer is asleep. It just feels wrong.
"You know, Billy…" Spencer murmurs softly, voice hoarse and on the verge of sleep. "...I had this big, stupid crush on you when I was a kid." Spencer scoffs and Billy holds him tight. "I kinda idolized you." hiss body is so warm and soft, his voice barely audible. He's finally calm. "I just thought you should know that." and then he's asleep. Billy wonders why Spencer told him that, and why he waited so long.
Billy checks him, poking his side, but when it elicits no response he takes it as a sign that Spencer is out cold. He carefully, with a sore back, slips out of the boy's grasp and onto his feet, before slowly, carefully stumbling his way to the door frame. It's his house so he knows where everything is, but he doesn't want to make noise falling down and wake Spencer up after getting him to sleep had been such an ordeal.
Billy makes his way to the roof, checking what he can see along the way, silvery moonlight slipping between the cracks in the boarded up windows, filtering in and illuminating bright specks of dust. When he finally makes it to the roof, the glow of the moon alarms him. He can see again for the first time in the night, the tiny, white pinpricks of light littering the black sky above like spotlights. The light pollution from the city can still be seen over the horizon, but it's not enough to dilute the larger mass of the night sky, which consumes everything. There are no clouds, and although it's a little chilly, Billy doesn't feel uncomfortable. It's incredibly freeing to see again, to have confirmation that he exists. He sits down and stares out into the dark, watching the dark, sparsely wooded area behind his house carefully. He breathes easy, out of the stuffy house that reeks of blood and rot. Although the breeze still carries death, he can hardly detect it, and the intensity isn't like what it was near the pool, where it was so thick and dense he could taste it in the back of his throat when he breathed. He stares up into the silvery half-orb of the moon and wonders who he is now.
He's dead. That's a whole ordeal to come to terms with, but he hasn't even had time to consider it. He guesses there were simply more important things at hand, but when he slides a hand up over his breastbone he find that no, his heart isn't beating. He's dead like the things stacked in the pool. There are no more parties, no more concerts, no more of the things that made him who he was. He's left with the little piece of himself he thought he left behind when he gave up everything to become famous, to travel the globe, to be adored. He's always craved adoration and attention, so he supposes at least that part of him is the same, but he's a stranger to himself. Who is the Billy who got left behind, his own skeleton? Take away the fame, what is he?
Billy sighs and looks down. The yard is barely lit with moonlight, but with his adjusted eyes he can see a silvery reflection of his own hands in front of him. He likes it better in the light, where he has a sense of space, of existence. It was a worrying dark, in there with Spencer. Billy smiles at the thought, curls his fingers together, feels his still heart go hard, but warm. He has to protect Spencer; that's who he is. He's never felt responsible for anyone other than himself, but if there was one person to whom his loyalty was never broken it was his little cousin. Cousin with a crush, cousin with braces, cousin who cared too much and was too shy for the debate team in high school. Billy wonders how old Spencer is now; seventeen, eighteen?
Billy realizes, belatedly, that he hasn't eaten since he woke up alive. He isn't hungry, and chalks it up to being dead.
The night presses with agonizing slowness. Time moves differently now that he's so alone. He suddenly wishes Spencer was up, but then thinks better of it. He curls his knees up to his chin and sits there, unable to conserve heat with his dead body. It's a strange, bone tingling chill; not coldness, not yet, but crisp and clean and almost uncomfortable. He's not scared, sitting up there. It's like the world below him is fake, like he's above it all, which is a familiar feeling. It's an addictive feeling, he knows. He's been there.
But then he hears something over the sound of the breeze and the house noises. It's a low rustling at first, far away and quiet, but his hearing has adjusted to the silence and his nerves are tense, so he picks it up instantly. He snaps his gaze around-is it Spencer? No, that's stupid, why would he be up-but doesn't see anything at first. Only the darkness surrounds him, in the company of the moon, waiting for morning. He lets the time pass by, slowly allowing his thoughts settle like dust. It's peaceful, a moment not reflecting something he doesn't want to see.
Then he hears it again. Low, gurgling, and frighteningly human. He looks around, scanning the fences for…for whatever Spencer was telling him to look for. He focuses, tries to hear it again. he stops his breathing, the only sounds he makes the wet sounds of his inner body, and he hears it. A long, low, drawn out moan that evolves into a distressed whine, like a wounded, tired dog, but human. There's something innately bone chilling about it, something that seeps into his very marrow. It's an unnatural sound, one a human doesn't voluntarily make, one that couldn't be mistaken for ordinary. It sounds wrong.
Just over the fence, in the clearing before the brush starts, he sees a human shape, barely illuminated and sifting among the trees. Something about its gate is...off. Billy doesn't know what it is, but it triggers a strange, innate fear of him, like an animal missing a leg, or something running toward him. He makes himself still; he's up high, but in clear view from that distance. It could turn its head and see him. He doesn't know why the notion is so horrifying, why he's so afraid to be seen. He wishes he had blankets to pull over his head. Suddenly the night is not inviting, but an endless number of places for things to be hiding. His eyes are trained on the human shape, which shuffles slowly toward the fence. Billy sucks his lower lip into his mouth and chews it, watching in transfixed, childlike horror.
It walks out from under the shadow of the fence, shambling backward in the moonlight, and he sees just barely enough. It has a face, a human face, one with a nose and eyes and skin, though it is covered with something dark. It's a face, but it is not a pretty face, as its jaw is gone, letting its tongue hang, long and thick and heavy like a wet rag, from the hole leading to its dark throat. He sees just barely enough to fill him with dread and stupefied wonder.
Part of him hadn't believed Spencer, he realizes. He hadn't thought it was real, that the dead walked; who would believe that? He had been there, seen the bodies, heard the story, and he still hadn't believed it. Something clicks and breaks in his brain like a switch and, with a bolt of terrified energy, he gets up, afraid to be seen but too scared to stay still, and sprints back inside. Once back in his safe place he just stands, happy to be in the blinding dark again, and doesn't breathe. The feeling of being watched doesn't leave him, no matter where he goes. He feels watched by a dark hole, from every place outside of him.
this one felt kinda gross but spencer needs to start talking and billy needs to figure out that shits serious
third chapter in, a zombie finally appears! for like ten seconds jesus chri st
spencers totally gonna have to fight it tho lmao