Bad news, guys - there won't be a new chapter until next year... Oh wait, that begins in less than 48 hours! Wow. Time is weird.
They had no time to stop and process. In hindsight, Scott realised that this was probably a blessing in disguise because if he'd had chance to really consider everything which had just occurred, he doubted he'd have made it off the floor, let alone out of the room or the entire hospital. As it was, he repressed all questions – of which there were so many that his head was pounding – and crushed every shred of emotion until all he could focus on was the task at hand.
Virgil had been gathering supplies in preparation for their escape ever since they had first stepped foot in the foyer. With the exception of Alan with his bat, Scott was the only one carrying weapons.
Technically, Gordon's GDF suit probably held some secrets, but Gordon himself wasn't exactly present. Scott could only pray that it was a dissociative spell that his brother would snap out of, despite his instincts whispering otherwise. The psyche could only take so much trauma before it snapped and he knew what he'd seen in Gordon's eyes. But denial was a wonderful thing and Scott was willing to go along with it until they reached a safe zone. Unfortunately, it was beginning to look as though such a place didn't exist.
The infected had torn apart every survivor in the hospital and the evidence was everywhere. Alan kept his eyes on his shoes, one hand coiled around his bat and the other gripping Finch's leash so tightly that it seemed as if she were his only tether to reality. Virgil stuck close by him. It was unclear whether their slight distance from the rest of the family was a deliberate decision or subconscious choice. On another day it would have hurt. At current, Scott was incapable of feeling anything and, for once, he didn't want to.
There had been more survivors scattered over the hospital than anyone had realised. Rotters, driven wild by approaching radiation, had ripped them to shreds. The stench of fresh blood was overpowering, that metallic tang drowning the rotten smell of the infected. Strips of flesh were slippery underfoot. Broken bone glinted in the beams of flashlights, a shock of horror against the mundanity of abandoned coke cans and the spokes of an empty wheelchair.
It was a massacre. Organs, mostly consumed, were bared to ashen air. Entrails smeared the floors, walls, ceilings, even light bulbs. Torn clothes, backpacks soaked in blood, weapons and even a child's toy – they were all strewn across the hospital, left behind in the wake of the creatures' insatiable appetites. Entire survival groups, killed in mere minutes.
The only sounds were their own steps - the crunch of shattered glass and slick squelch of blood – distant howling and, of course, that low wail of the strengthening wind. Scott couldn't recall ever seeing Finch look so scared – ears flattened, tail drooping so that it nearly brushed the crimson floor, cowering behind Alan's legs, not even daring to growl when another thick droplet of human intestine splashed from the ceiling.
His own grip on the gun was almost painful. The tension ignited a dull ache in his injured shoulder, but it was like background noise – only noticeable when he chose to focus on it. Up ahead, the second gun glinted in Virgil's hands. No one trusted Gordon with a weapon, not yet anyway, although nobody had voiced the reason why aloud.
He dragged his attention away from the hallway ahead just briefly to glimpse his brother. Gordon was wearing a hoodie over his GDF suit – although still had yet to cease shivering – with his hands plunged into the pockets, each step careful to avoid broken glass or pieces of severed sinew, mastering the art of being watchful without being present, as if running on autopilot. He hadn't said a word and it was unnerving.
John delicately sidestepped a mauled arm, disembodied with a few rotten teeth embedded in the flesh. A ruined photograph – the small, square type usually kept in a wallet – was still clutched in curled fingers, displaying a pretty brunette and two young children. Were any of them alive? Had that plush triceratops sitting in a pool of blood belonged to one of the kids?
Virgil stopped short, staring at that photograph with an unreadable expression.
John studied him as if he were a particularly troublesome puzzle, coming to a stop beside Scott. He'd been deliberately careful to avoid physical contact with any of the others, which raised yet more questions.
"Keep moving."
Virgil didn't lift his gaze from the photograph. "The other survivors…"
"What about them?" The words were curt, icy, void of any emotion. John tilted his head as if listening to a frequency no one else could hear, then jolted out of the trance. "We don't have time for this. They're dead. We will be too if we don't get out of here."
"What's the rush?" Virgil shot him an accusatory look. "You can stop them."
"The infected? To an extent, yes. But I can't control a radiation storm, can I?" John's voice dropped to something unfamiliar, not quite a command but close. "Start walking."
"Virgil," Scott whispered, reading the many layers of distrust building across his brother's shoulders, all-too aware of the protective stance Virgil took on at the sound of John's voice, silently gesturing for Alan to keep his distance. "Let's get out of here. Then we'll talk."
Virgil wouldn't look at him. The sounds of infected scraping at exposed bone echoed from the corridor to their left. The dripping of blood was steady like a heartbeat as the creatures slurped bruised organs and picked bits of skin away from the carcass. Alan looked suspiciously as if he was about to puke. Gordon calmly strode past the corridor without hesitation.
What the fuck, Scott thought privately, recognising the resurgence of earlier's horror with a jolt and immediately trying to repress it beneath that haze of meds and dissociative fear.
He tightened his hold to feel the curve of the gun's grip against his palm. Everything was wrong, so, so, impossibly wrong and maybe he had died after all. Maybe this really was Hell. He flattened a hand against the fresh bandages across his stomach and sucked in a sharp breath at the immediate flare of pain. Stay in the moment. Stay alive.
John was watching him.
"What?" he snapped, more venomously than he'd intended, because the truth was that he was slowly tuning into Virgil's wavelength – he wanted to trust John, but instinct wouldn't let him.
John shrugged. "Nothing."
Which was just another red flag. The last time Scott had been truly convinced that he was speaking to his brother – and not just the hive mind – was when John had stumbled into the hallway of that house and had only kept himself standing through sheer force of will because he had been so determined to see for himself that Scott was okay. But now? Utter indifference. He hadn't reacted to anything. Admittedly, neither had Gordon, but then again Gordon seemed to be having a complete breakdown and so could be excused.
Maybe, Scott considered, he was just being paranoid. If it was the hive mind, what did it have to gain from saving them from the horde? Or was that just proof that John was still in there? There was so many unanswered questions and-
Someone snapped their fingers in front of his face. He swung the gun up and around, slamming the culprit against the wall on instinct alone, finger crooked around the trigger without actually pulling it.
"Jesus," he muttered, stepping back and lowering the gun. "Don't do that."
John brushed flecks of dried blood off his jacket. He seemed completely unphased by the fact Scott had literally just pointed a gun in his face.
"Stay focussed then."
Scott exhaled slowly. "Right."
His skin was crawling. He repressed a shiver as an icy chill scuttled down his spine. When he looked up, Alan was staring at him, looking for all the world as if he were seeing a stranger.
Something metallic and heavy crashed.
Virgil caught Alan's arm and hauled him into a sprint. "Go, now."
The hospital was a maze of no-go zones or areas which had been the scene of such brutal killings that Scott refused to let Alan (or even Virgil for that matter) see them, ordering John to find another way around. John just looked at him for a long moment but didn't protest and Scott tried not to flinch under the weight of that gaze because his brother had never seemed such a stranger as he did in that instant.
Somewhere distant and vaguely upwards – for they were now deep within the bowels of the hospital, following a path forged through John's inhuman senses and Alan's map – the storm rumbled. Dust fell constantly like light rain. It was ghostly in their flashlight beams. Even through masks it scratched their throats and Alan's cough seemed worse than ever. Thunder shook it from the rafters and in places it gathered in greats dunes like ashfall from a volcanic eruption. It deadened their footsteps and soaked excess blood from their shoes.
The generator was giving up the ghost again. Flickering lights cast strange patterns. The path took them through a strange space which reminded Scott of a high school gymnasium. A long line of windows ran along one wall. Several palms smashed against the glass. Dark fluids trickled down the panes. Groans and growls were transformed into something thin and lonely by the echo of such a large space. The infected hurled themselves at the glass, turned to mere silhouettes by the sporadic lighting. In the semi-darkness, they looked like skeletons, eyes turned to dark pits and faces bony with death like skulls.
Scott didn't realise he was holding his breath until Alan cautiously tapped him on the shoulder. It was their first interaction since That Moment, and it was probably a bad sign that Scott sort of wanted to cry.
He'd been replaying the events over-and-over and had been unable to identify the look in Alan's eyes. Buried deep down had been the terror that maybe something between them had shattered. Now, he let Alan grab his wrist. They stood in silence for a long minute, the quiet broken only by the thuds of rotters against the glass and the low growl of thunder.
Finch whined, slinking between them.
'This is wrong,' Alan signed, expression shadowed as everything plunged into darkness once again. 'All of it. John's not acting like himself.' He knitted his fingers together, eyes wide and haunted in the glow of the flashlight. 'I don't trust him right now.'
Honestly?
Scott felt the exact same way.
There were eyes on him. He could feel someone watching. It wasn't the infected. He twisted to catch John's calculating stare from across the room and was struck by a sudden desire to drag Gordon away too, to keep himself between his two youngest brothers and John. That itching instinct that they were all walking on a very unsteady tightrope reared its head with a vengeance. He lifted a hand to feel for the comforting shape of the gun at his hip, only for Alan to slip beneath his arm instead.
He lowered his voice to a whisper. "You're my priority. You know that, right? If you tell me we need to leave, I'll do it."
Alan tilted his head to glimpse the open honesty in Scott's face. 'We're already leaving the hospital.'
"That's not what I meant."
There was a distinct crack as another infected slammed its skull into the glass. Alan jolted. Scott planted one hand firmly on his brother's shoulder and aimed the gun with the other, not firing but prepared to take that shot in less than a heartbeat. Across the room, Virgil's guarded expression thawed a little, just sufficiently for Scott to read the hidden message in his eyes.
Stay on your guard. The infected aren't the only threat.
Scott glanced to Gordon. Virgil followed his gaze, visibly took a deep breath to steel himself against unforgiven memories, then moved to fall into step at Gordon's side. Gordon didn't acknowledge him, just put one foot in front of the other, but didn't protest when Virgil passed him a bottle of water, picking at the worn label rather than his own knuckles.
John followed closely, but there was a distinct line of separation between him and the rest of the family. Scott was painfully aware of it. He couldn't bring himself to check on John's expression, not because he feared he would see something upset and betrayed there, but because he was scared that he wouldn't.
A tunnel connected the hospital to a pharmacy on the other side of the street. The stairwell from the tunnel up to the rusted door of the pharmacy was smothered in mildew and a variety of contaminated liquids.
Scott yanked Alan's hood over his head before he could spot the emaciated corpse of a kid, roughly twelve, maybe thirteen, clinging to a well-loved blanket clearly passed down between familial generations, now ruined by blood. Virgil finally closed the distance between them, knocking their shoulders together until Scott caught his gaze. Something twisted in his chest at the sight of tears. He reached for Virgil's wrist and squeezed once in silent solidarity, reassured when Virgil took a steadying breath and didn't flinch.
Alan froze in the doorway to the pharmacy.
Virgil swept broken glass off the countertop and set the bags down. "What? Did you hear something?"
Alan studied the tiny body of a dead songbird at his feet.
'Nothing.' He wrapped his arms around himself with a shiver. 'Last time I was in one of these places, we nearly got eaten.'
Scott quietly shut the door to the tunnel and slid a wooden slat across to barricade it. "That's not going to happen today."
"Of course not," John interjected coolly, slipping past the counter to examine the street through dust-fogged windows. "I wouldn't let it." He wiped a hole in the grime with his sleeve. "We need to make it across the city by nightfall. The winds are going to change, and we don't have enough distance between us and that storm yet."
Virgil slammed a water bottle onto the counter so violently that the windowpanes quivered in their frames. "How the hell do you know that?"
John inspected the smear of blood on his palm from the window. He took a step back, grimacing at the sight of a partly consumed torso. Maggots were writhing in the upper layers of flesh. He nudged it aside with his boot, maintaining that unaffected air.
Alan stumbled back until he slammed into Scott. His hands were shaking too much to sign properly.
"I can sense it," John explained casually, as if there wasn't a headless, limbless corpse at his feet. He gestured to the bruised sky. "It follows a pattern, like everything in the known universe."
Scott closed his hands around the edge of the counter, fighting dizziness because the realisation hit him like a brick wall and he just knew. Maybe he had known from the second John had grabbed his wrist, or even before that. He just hadn't wanted to admit it. Denial was a powerful drug. He swallowed the rising panic and, slowly, lifted his chin to meet John's gaze, because the truth was that Gordon had been right.
Lightning exploded a few streets over, illuminating the road outside. There were more infected than Scott could count. Multiple hordes had merged and now they walked, stumbled, lurched, fleeing the radiation en-mass. Some of them were missing jaws. Their upper lips curled in wicked smiles to expose bloodied teeth. They were every nightmare come to life, every horror torn from a grave.
John pressed a hand to the window and observed them through splayed fingers.
Alan flinched. Scott wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close so that Alan was safe against his chest, tucked under his chin. He tightened his grip until he could feel his brother's heartbeat, frightened and mirroring his own, and whispered, "Don't move."
He wanted to believe that John wouldn't let the infected touch them, but he didn't trust how much of John was actually left. They were talking to the hivemind directly. They knew it was clever, sentient, could strategize and play people like fiddles. Who knew if this was just another scheme? Maybe the creatures were running out of food. Perhaps the only reason the hivemind had saved them was to reinvent farming.
We're not safe, he thought, trying to focus on Alan's breathing to keep himself from giving into the wave of panic. And then, with a jolt of pure grief, considered, John's dedicated so much time to keeping us safe, but now he might be the one to lead us to our deaths.
Gordon either hadn't noticed the infected or didn't care. He dropped to his knees amid the broken glass and dust and bits of bodies and cautiously ran a finger along the wing of the lifeless songbird. He was so gentle that it was painful to watch. Scott was vividly reminded of Virgil with Zizzi the cat.
"You could have saved them," Virgil whispered, brittle and accusatory. He swiped angry tears away from his face. "Couldn't you? Those other survivors in the hospital. But you let them get torn apart. You let them."
John tore his gaze away from the infected. "Yes, I probably could have done. But you can't save everyone, Virgil."
"We don't get to decide who lives and who dies!"
"We don't. Not all of us. Only a few get that choice. And guess what?" John lowered his voice to a hiss. "I'm one of those people."
The tension was so palpable that it could have been cut with a blunt knife. And yet when it did inevitably break, Scott was still taken aback. Virgil's move was sharp and sudden, and Scott's instinctive reaction was to flinch, to fold Alan closer against his chest so that he could serve as a shield despite Alan's protests. It took a moment to register the sight in front of him.
Virgil slammed John against the wall of looted medical supplies and pinned him there, arm against his throat, trembling with a level of righteous fury usually reserved for people akin to the Hood. He tightened a fist in John's shirt, leaning in close so that he could convey every emotion in nothing louder than a whisper.
"Do not make excuses for cowardice."
The part of Scott's mind which had yet to accept all the evidence in front of him as blatant truth expected John to snap back, to think up some lightning-quick retort with enough venom to hurt, to lash back just as viciously, only John did nothing. He didn't even shove Virgil's hands away. Instead, he remained perfectly still as if the shelves weren't digging painfully into his lower back, as if the heartbreak in Virgil's eyes wouldn't have hurt him just as badly if he'd been in his right mind.
Instead, he began to laugh.
Virgil recoiled but didn't release his grip on John's shirt.
Scott cautiously pushed Alan behind the counter and told him to remain there with nothing more than a stern look. He had no idea if he was capable of actually acting upon Gordon's initial plan, but if it came down to definitely saving Virgil's life versus possibly saving John's, then he'd have to make that choice.
It wasn't true laughter. It was brittle, hollow, so void of emotion that it was icy. Scott froze, one hand hovering above the gun but unable to bring himself to actually hold it. He sought John's expression for any hint of the brother he knew, heart sinking as he came up empty handed.
John caught Virgil's wrists. "You're scared of me."
His voice was clinical, as if diagnosing a rare condition rather than a simple observation.
Virgil stumbled over his own words. "I- What?"
"You don't know what I'm capable of and it scares you." John let out another of those chilling laughs, as if any of this were funny in any possible way. "You're probably right. You should be goddamn scared of me."
Virgil ripped his wrists out of John's hands and flung himself backwards, nearly tripping over the corpse. Scott caught him but didn't let go, surprised when Virgil made no move to step away either. He kept his hands on Virgil's biceps and took a second to remember how to breathe.
The world had already fallen apart and now their world was crumbling too – John wasn't in control of his own mind, Alan had his hands clasped to his mouth as if he could hide the tear tracks on his face and Gordon was on his knees in the broken glass, cradling that poor, dead songbird as if it were something precious and holy when in reality its cheerful yellow feathers had already been marred by blood and dust – but Virgil was still at his side. At the end of all things, he could still count on Virgil.
Virgil caught his eye and Scott frowned, because there was an apology there and he wasn't entirely sure why. Virgil had nothing to be sorry for. He shook away the confusion and straightened up, trusting Virgil to watch his back in case this went south any more than it already had.
"I'm not scared of you, John. I'm scared of losing you. But if that's already happened, then there's nothing left to be afraid of, is there?"
"Scott," Virgil murmured, low, a warning.
Scott reached backwards, palm-up, beckoning without words and putting all his faith in Virgil's ability to read him like an open book, because if their bond failed now then the only plan he had left was the end of all things and it involved that gun.
"It doesn't make sense. Why save us? Especially when three of us lack immunity." He took a step closer. John tracked his movements silently. "So, here's my theory. My brother is still in there somewhere."
Cool metal pressed into his palm. He wrapped his fingers around it and stepped out of Virgil's reach and into John's.
"You can tell me to be scared, but it won't do any good, because the truth is that you have consistently scared the shit out of me for our entire lives. You used to climb on the roof even in the rain and every time I heard a tile crash I'd think it was you. You'd call me from college and claim you were fine even when I knew you weren't, but there was nothing I could do because we were half a world apart and you were pulling away from everyone and I could practically feel myself losing you. You went into fucking space – and everyone knows astronauts are crazy, you willingly sit on a bunch of explosives for Chrissake – and I spent every goddamn day imagining what-if scenarios because everything up there tries to kill you."
He shifted his thumb into place, praying his hand wasn't shaking badly enough to be noticeable, because this had to work.
"I've always been scared of losing you, but I've accepted that. But you? You've never accepted just how scared you are of losing me."
He took a deep breath, conscious of Virgil stepping into place behind him, gripping the gun that they both prayed they wouldn't need.
"I know you're still in there. Whatever lies this thing is feeding you, it's all bullshit. And it's scary, I get that, because right now you have the power to protect us, to stop those things from turning on us, but Johnny? Life is all about being scared. You can't control every factor. It's a leap of faith, little brother. Now come home. Come back to me."
The lighter worked first time like a charm, which was a good thing because Scott did not have time to waste trying to ignite it again. His clothes had dried but still harboured some of the gasoline Gordon and he had covered themselves in when escaping the generator room; the lighter ignited his sleeve in less than a second.
And then he tackled John to the ground.
Because he was a genius like that.
Okay, in his defence he'd come up with this plan in approximately ten seconds whilst fending off panic and an entire clusterfuck of emotions that had hit him like a trainwreck.
But hey, it totally worked!
Sort of.
"Are you an actual idiot, holy shit, Scott, what the ever-loving fuck is wrong with you, oh my God, why are you like this?"
On one hand, ow, setting fire to your sleeve hurt a lot apparently. On the other hand, hell yeah, suck on that weird, super creepy hivemind! Because-
"John?" Virgil whispered in a very tiny, painfully hopeful voice. "Is- Are you- Did it work?"
"Fuck yeah it worked," Scott announced gleefully, too hyped on adrenaline and relief to focus on the dull pain snaking its way around his forearm.
Hey, at least it was only a minor burn. John had taken most of the impact and extinguished the fire before it could do any damage. But, well. Virgil was a smother-hen. And also a trained medic who had just spent the better part of a week trying to cure everybody only for Scott to immediately counteract some of that treatment, so the horror was probably well deserved.
John closed his eyes for a split second and grimaced. "My head is so quiet. That's- I don't know how to feel about it."
"Grateful?" Scott suggested.
John glared at him. "You can shut the fuck up. You don't get an opinion."
"Virgil agreed to the plan!"
"Um, Virgil did not realise that that was your plan," Virgil interrupted, looking distinctly unimpressed.
He crouched beside them, grabbing Scott's arm to examine him for any burns of which there were surprisingly little – seriously, Scott had obtained worse blisters from trying to light one of Penny's scented candles – because John had been exposed to most of the flames.
Scott shot him a betrayed look. "What did you think I was going to do?"
"Use the lighter on him directly! Not set your sleeve on fire like an idiot!"
John held up his hands with a warning stare and Scott promptly remembered the insane numbers of infected right outside the door. He obediently bit back his words and let Virgil examine his arm without further protest. Glass crunched underfoot as Alan tried to quietly reach them and gave up, instead sprinting across the short space and falling to his knees at their side.
"It's still in my head," John explained quietly, before anyone could ask. "Not as loud, but still there. I can hear it. Well, not hear it as such. It's not words. More like feelings, or some kind of sixth sense. It's a two-way street. It can track me, but I can track it. I can command them to a certain extent. That trick only worked because I was so panicked about keeping you safe that they could all sense that feeling through the hivemind, so left you alone. That's my working theory, anyway."
"That's the next stage of being a carrier," Virgil murmured. "It gets strong enough to draw you into the hivemind."
"And after that… complete control presumably, so it can infect others using the carrier as some kind of sleeper agent," John concluded. "Jesus."
He blinked, registering the blood on his hands, and recoiled, wiping it against his knees whilst trying not to gag.
"I…" He scrambled backwards and Scott caught his hands before he could cut his palms up on the broken glass. "I was one of them, that's- fuck, I- I could've-"
"You deliberately kept your distance from me," Virgil pointed out. "From Alan and Gordon too. I think you had more control than you realise."
Scott stared at the raw skin of his forearm, cautiously running a thumb over the burnt skin.
"I'm not a carrier," he realised aloud. "I got burnt."
Virgil winced. "Yeah, don't remind me. Idiot."
"No, no, that's not- I'm not a carrier, so how the hell did I-? John, I could sense your feelings through the hivemind. I didn't realise it at the time but… You knew the horde was coming and you wanted to warn us, right? I could sense that. How?"
Alan hesitated. 'Maybe getting bitten leaves a backdoor into the hivemind. Or some kind of one-way window? So you can sense the hivemind but it can't sense you.'
"There's a lot we don't know," Virgil cut them all off before the conversation could spiral any further. He dragged a hand down his face and offered a tired smile which, despite everything, was genuinely hopeful. "We're not going to figure it out here. We have two options now – we wait for the infected to travel further north and pray we still have enough time to stay ahead of the radiation storm."
There was a pause.
"Or?" Scott prompted.
Virgil looked distinctly uncomfortable.
John read between the lines.
"Or I try tapping into the hivemind again and get us through the horde without being eaten." He repressed a shiver. "Hopefully."
Scott looked at him. "Is that even possible?"
"Theoretically, sure."
"But?"
"I don't know if… That door works both ways. You broke the connection, but I wasn't too far under to begin with. What if the fire trick doesn't work next time?"
Except I didn't break the connection, Scott corrected silently, because you can still hear them. All I did was weaken it.
He didn't vocalise the thought aloud. There was already too much fear in the room, as thick as the ash falling outside, threatening to choke every vulnerable whisper of hope until it wizened and died just like everything else. He could feel his own anxiety threatening to sink its claws into every semblance of control he'd carefully constructed.
John hunched over his knees, voice muffled. "We don't have a choice, do we?"
"We could stay here for a while longer," Virgil began to suggest, trailing off because that wasn't a real option, and everyone knew it, not to mention the fact that they now knew the winds were going to change – hey, maybe there were some benefits to the hivemind after all.
The ash was falling freely now. It collected along the windowpanes and carpeted the road so that the rotters' footfall grew muted. According to the clock on the wall – still faithfully ticking even in the end-times – it was only a little after five in the afternoon, and yet it was as dark as night outside.
There were certain moments in which it was impossible to remain in denial. But this was the apocalypse. It was brutal and bloody and demanded sacrifices which no one was willing to make and yet found themselves agreeing to anyway. Right now, with that ominous glow of radioactive clouds striking a deep orange glaze over the world, it looked as if the sky was falling. Ash swiftly buried the view from sight, blocking out all glimpses of the outside world beyond a dark sheet.
Alan switched on his flashlight now that the creatures couldn't see past the ash. Distantly, sluggish steps dragged across the ash. They all froze until the sound drifted out of earshot. John stared at the window as if he could see through the ash, eyes wide and haunted, not even daring to breathe.
The only person who seemed unaffected was Gordon, who had moved to sit against the pharmacy counter with his knees drawn to his chest. The songbird was carefully wrapped in a tiny shroud he'd created from a clean tissue he'd found in one of the drawers. The damage to their family had been done a long time ago in the early days of the apocalypse, but now those cracks were widening, and it was growing harder to pretend they didn't exist.
John slid the lighter back to Virgil. "I need you to promise me."
He caught Scott's gaze and held it, proof that while he sounded as if he were addressing the entire family, the message was only truly intended for one person.
"I wouldn't ask you if I had any other choice. If you can't break the connection, don't let me stay as one of those things. Please."
"I wouldn't let that happen," Scott murmured, unable to keep from glancing to Gordon, because it was a bold-faced lie. The only person who'd been willing to do what was necessary was now lost in his own head and Scott couldn't help but feel like that was his fault. Shoot me, he recalled with a shudder.
"I need you to promise me. I don't care if you're holding out hope for a cure or think you can fix everything just because the alternative is… you do what is necessary, okay?"
"Okay." It was Virgil who spoke. He couldn't look at Scott as he caught John's hand and repeated, firmly, "Okay. I promise you. If it comes down to it… I'll do whatever it takes."
John studied him for a long moment. "Can you make that promise?"
Virgil took a deep breath. "Yeah, I can. Gordon was willing to, but I let him down. This time it's my responsibility." He snatched up the lighter before anyone could speak. "We've got just under three hours to make it across the city by my predictions. We need to leave."
Alan wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, seeming very small swamped in an oversized hoodie. 'What about Gordon?'
A lone infected screamed.
John flinched.
"I'll get Gordon," Scott said quietly. "John, are you…?"
"Five minutes," John muttered, closing his eyes. "Then we go."
The infected kept coming. It was a never-ending sea of bodies, coming from every direction. They were mostly silent, which only made the sight eerier, deadened footsteps against the ash and the occasional squelch of rotten flesh. They moved en-mass. Weaker, more decomposed rotters dragged themselves along the tarmac to leave great gouges in the ash.
Some gave up entirely. It didn't take long for their bodies to grow still, covered by ash. The idea of unknowingly walking over corpses sent a chill down Scott's spine. Everything about the sight unnerved him. The creatures were uninterested in the flashlights or obvious human activity within the pharmacy. Their focus was purely set on heading north.
The silence was suffocating. Occasionally, thunder would rattle the windows, but for the rest of the time it was the sound of an unbearable absence of all life on Earth. Scott tightened his mask before opening the door a slither – just enough to glimpse the sky.
It looked bruised – deep purples, threaded with sickly green, dashes of yellow and the impossibly dark blue ink of poisonous clouds. For a brief moment he entertained the idea that maybe there had been some super-volcanic explosion – Yellowstone was overdue, wasn't it? – because he couldn't comprehend how much damage it would take to make the sky look like that.
Looking northwards revealed a thin strip of pale blue, just above the horizon. It was mostly blocked by the falling ash and the smoky grey of storm clouds moving to mask the tops of buildings. Scott stared at it until his vision blurred and he was forced to blink. He retreated back into the pharmacy and eased the latch on the door.
John was sat quietly in front of the window, head bowed, eyes closed, hands palms-up on his knees so that at first glance he could have been mistaken to be meditating. He jolted out of the trance at the sound of cracked glass under Scott's shoes, shivering slightly as he tried to focus on the room rather than the constant chorus of the hivemind.
Scott didn't need to say anything. John read the truth off his face.
"It's bad, huh?"
"It's bad," Scott confirmed, sinking to sit beside him. He was fighting that strange, dizzy sensation again and was hoping nobody would notice. John didn't mention anything but shifted slightly so that their shoulders were pressed together and Scott could lean against him. "It's… it's so bad."
John stared at the dust smothering his jeans.
"I know." He hesitated. "I can sense it."
At one time that phrase would have had Scott freaking the fuck out. Now, he just accepted it. He had the sense that everything was falling apart around him – even more so than it already had – and that he was grasping at strands of his old reality, trying to piece it back together but only succeeding in unravelling it further. He focussed on the slight pressure where John was leaning against him and tried to ignore the chill he could feel even through the layers of fabric.
"What's it like?"
John considered.
"Loud," he said at last, running a thumb over one of the newly acquired scars on his hand. "Chaotic. Sometimes I swear I can hear actual voices, distinguish words, but when I try to focus on them, it all blends back into one mess of noise again. It's mostly feelings. Senses, like you felt, translated into my own words."
He sighed.
"It's hard to describe. Imagine listening to every radio station at once – you can try to focus on a single frequency, but you can't help but hear the others too. Some of the words register with your subconscious mind though. It's… I don't know. I thought I was going crazy for the longest time. But then, out there, on my own, I was surrounded by them at all times and- The things I've seen? Experienced? If Hell is real, it's already here."
Scott had lived through enough horrors to know that sometimes it was impossible to find the words to truly convey such an experience. Sometimes you didn't want to talk about it or couldn't. He would have done anything to prevent John from understanding that too. But right then, looking at his brother's haunted expression, he could see nothing of the little boy who had watched the stars with such wonder. He was struck by overwhelming grief for all that hope and unspoilt imagination which had now been tainted and lost.
John stared at the creatures milling outside the window. There wasn't hatred in his gaze, not even fear, but hopelessness - desolate and deeply sad on many levels. There was that inhuman sense of other about him again as he tapped into the hivemind. His hands were shaking. Scott cautiously reached over and stilled them, biting back a comment at just how freezing John was to touch.
John tipped his head sideways to rest against Scott's shoulder, hesitantly, as if fearing being pushed away. "We'll talk. As soon as we get chance, we'll talk."
"You said that last time," Scott reminded him quietly.
John closed his eyes.
"Yeah," he murmured. "I know I did. But I mean it."
Lightning revealed a mass of rotten bodies, gaping grins and soulless eyes. Only a thin pane of glass separated them from the living.
Scott tried to imagine them as the people they had once been – with families, friends and feelings – only to discover that at some point over the past forty-eight hours he had lost the ability to see them as anything other than monsters. It dawned on him that maybe that was what John was so afraid of – being feared by the people he loved – and wondered how it had taken him so long to realise something that Gordon had understood within seconds.
"I still love you," he whispered, and John tensed. "I don't know if- I'm hoping you don't need that reminder, but just in case you do – I love you."
"You say that now," John muttered, voice rough with pain. "But how can you love someone when you don't know who or what they are?"
Scott floundered for words. "You're not a monster, John."
"I never said I was," John shot back, but there was no anger in his voice, just heavy sadness. "And yet that was the first word which occurred to you."
He pushed himself upright before Scott could protest.
"Let's go. If we don't leave now, we never will."
There was amber light flickering in the reflection across the glass. Scott heard the crackle of burning cloth. He twisted to spy a plastic box, already melting over the counter from the heat of the flaming bundle it held. He staggered to his feet and moved close enough to glimpse yellow feathers amid the fire.
"We couldn't bury it," Virgil explained under his breath. He tilted his head slightly at Gordon. "But he didn't want to just leave it."
The tiny body of the songbird didn't take long to burn.
Alan's eyes glistened with tears, pupils bright with reflected flames. Gordon stared into the embers, then snatched up a blade and turned away without a single glance back.
