It had never used to be like this. It never used to be so quiet, so desolate. Leeds University had usually been so full of life, something happening around every corner as people weaved in and out of the crowds.
Now the only crowds left were corpses of half eaten birds and some live ones, but even they barely made any sound as Charlie trudged in, backpack on his back and a blood stained garden rake in hand. Alone. Desperate.
It started several weeks ago. People got sick, they died and then suddenly, reappeared. No one understood how, as to doctors, they were all clinically dead or something. Most people blew it off as a hoax. Then there was the lockdown and that's when things really got serious.
Now here Charlie stands, the world he once knew and thought he would get to know, looking frozen in time as he pokes around buildings, his newly built nomadic tendencies being put to use as he tries to open doors and goes around peering in windows looking for anything.
Anything to say that Nick is still alive.
He's only made it here out of sheer willpower at this point, as it can't be anything else. Tao originally forbade him to leave Sahar's house, where everyone had fled to after finding out it had become the neighbourhood base, but it was easy to slip away unnoticed in the chaos of trying to protect everyone. He wanted, no, /needed/ to know his boyfriend was alive, even if he was risking his own version of aliveness just to do it.
He also hoped Sarah, Nick's Mum, was alive as well, given she practically races to London in order to find him and bring him home when she found out the lockdown was happening. She never came back and sadly, neither did Nick - but he's here now. He's here after trudging through road markers and weeds for days, following the well worn train tracks that carried no one anymore into the city and hiding in boarded up houses and train stations to survive.
Former him before therapy would never have done this stupid stuff. Current him also hopes that Geoff made it out alive unlike some he used to know before moving swiftly onwards to something else.
Of course when he finally reaches where he's going officially, it's not exactly a hopeful sight.
Nick's uni block is covered in weeds, London's concrete jungle fighting a one man war against the real one. Most of the windows are broken and there are several zombie corpses littered about with their brains bashed in and what looks like pockets and belongings looted. He's woeful and thankful he doesn't have to deal with that at least, given lotting isn't exactly risk free, but it helps.
He'll still go in there, however, risk being damned. He'll search every floor if he has to. He has to know.
Suddenly, without warning, he hears a guttural growl from his right and just ducks out of the way in time as a still alive zombie with a hole in it's chest dives towards him, also missing a leg and an eye. He recognises the face, someone Nick knew from one of the clubs that he vaguely remembers being introduced to. He doesn't really know if that makes what he has to do better, as it misses, but that doesn't mean it stops trying to come toward him.
Growling, the thing reaches out toward him again and Charlie readies the rake he's acquired from some farmer's field along the way, ready to strike, when a sudden sound pierces the air. He's only got a split second to blink before something comes sailing though and skewers the zombie in the face, completely knocking it off its feet and making it slump over, dead for (hopefully) real this time.
Shaking, Charlie lowers the rake only to see someone standing over it, pulling the object out of it's skull with a sickening crunch. From his point of view, it looks like a sharpener golf club, but even that no longer matters when he gets a look at his saviour's face.
Reddish brown hair that's crew cut, hoodie covered in blood, stubble that hasn't been shaved in a while - but those eyes. He knows those eyes anywhere and they look at him like he's in a dream, feverish and frenzied.
"Charlie?" His voice breaks.
Charlie's heart drops before letting out a loud sob. "Nick."
It's all he gets out before he goes ahead and faints on the common.