Chapter Text
but sometimes i walk down an aisle
in a grocery store searching
for a pair of eyes to meet mine
to stop the hunger from howling.
Disconnected | KY Robinson
CH 1. NASHVILLE, TN - ROANOKE RAPIDS, NC
Day 36. August 15th, 2007
Imagine that the last movie you saw on earth was motherfucking Shrek the Third. Like, it’s not even a good movie, never mind a good rendition of Shrek, which was a FUCKING MASTERPIECE!!!! Goddamn better than Pulp Fiction. Fuck you Tarantino and your creepy foot fetish and weird objectification of women. To any Cinephiles with the severe misfortune of reading this diary, I must be dead and I’m not sorry. I’m two years from graduating from Harvard and, yes, I am also an asshole majoring in philosophy—but I think I’m qualified to be an expert.
Okay, but as much as I love Shrek, imagine trying to fall asleep in this god-forsaken world and the last thing you see, seared onto the back of your eyelids, is a fucking giant green ogre, the entire script clearly written by someone who was projecting their daddy issues. All I can hear is the dulcet tones of Justin Timberlake trying to play a fucking nerd, which, man, was the weakest shit I’ve ever seen.
I wonder what Justin Timberlake is up to.
Hell, any celebrities. They’re all rich fucks with no souls (for the most part); I wonder if they were able to put aside their own narcissism and egos to band together in some weird underground bunker in LA or if they all just died alone in their mega rich mansions.
Guess that’d be kinda sad.
Are we all alone out here? Thinking we’re the last ones left, with just a tattered copy of Eat, Pray, Love, and our own voices?
Just kidding. Fuck that book.
Someone better Eat, Pray, Love on my ass soon. Just not literally. I’m not ready to die at 21.
Ray Person is perched on the hood of Ma’s burnt orange VW, windows underneath him cracked open to air out the stuffiness. It’s not ideal, sweat is still running in tendrils down his neck, his hair is mussed to hell and he'll probably get a sunburn. But the twittering of the birds is miles better than the claustrophobic silence of the car and the loud racing of his own thoughts.
Even if it poses another type of threat.
He looks up from the tattered moleskin notebook he’s currently journaling in, stretching his wrist out. The bones snap, crackle, pop. In the distance, where the road crests, there’s a dark shape. At first it looks like it might be a car, even if those are rare enough that he’s one of the lucky few with one nowadays.
Then its movements become more pronounced; it’s humanoid and it’s fucking running.
Grabbing for his binoculars, Ray watches as the three Runners come hurtling down the abandoned highway with inhuman speed. Apparently close enough to smell him now, their feet flay open as they accelerate; each impact makes a splatting sound against the hot tarmac. It would be comical if you couldn’t tell that they’d all been people once, just like him.
Ray swallows and buries the thought. Then, he turns around and grabs the bow and the make-shift quiver of arrows he’s carried since D-01, resting precariously against the windshield. It’s not a professional bow, and he’s not a professional archer at any length, but it’s more sustainable than a gun and less suicidal than a knife or other melee weapon. He’s not a total fucking idiot, nor is he a total fucking Macho Man, thinking that he’ll just survive because the story-line says he will.
A part of him is glad for all the hours he’s spent playing D&D with Nate and the guys; at least he has the correct terminology for this shit now.
His marksmanship has gotten its fair share of honing, and, placing an arrow on the shelf before letting it fly, he watches with sick fascination as it soars through the air, burying itself in the shoulder of one of them. It takes a good three arrows, but then one buries itself deep in the tallest fucker’s eyeball. It falls to the ground, and stays down. Ray takes a deep breath and shoots four more arrows. Two of them hit their targets. The last Runner sways in place for a second before tripping and face-planting where it stands, the unrecognizable face becoming even more of a bloody, soggy mush as it hits the asphalt, spraying decaying goo everywhere.
Ray doesn’t move.
He keeps his bow ready for a couple more minutes, counting each of his breaths and listening, expecting to see one, two, a hundred more of them coming barging up the crest.
As none appear, he begins to walk the quarter mile to get his arrows from what he calls the Runners.
It’s easier to think of them like that:
Runners, zombies, predators, hunters, monsters. Instead of trying to imagine that somewhere in there is a consciousness flickering like a fluorescent light in a deserted bathroom, in the days when power was still a thing. A consciousness that coughs and tries to break through, even as the instinct to feed gets so strong that they don’t even remember what humanity they have in front of them.
That thought is a dangerous one.
With practiced ease, he pulls the arrows from the corpses, wipes them off against the thighs of his ratty light-wash jeans, and goes to pack up the rusty orange Volkswagen to continue North.
Before he goes, he grabs the hand-crank radio from Ma’s emergency kit he’s been carrying around since St. Louis, and tunes in to 95.3 MHz.
“… from WHRB, with your latest update. The latest reports from California, which we are now sure was the source of the initial outbreak, were back in June, and we haven’t really heard from the Berkeley station since then. It might be as simple as they’re out of range since so many booster stations across the country have gone silent these last few weeks…”
Ray nearly stabs the hand-crank radio off. He pulls back, unable to listen any more. Doesn’t really see the point when it’s not Nate’s voice relaying the information. None of it’s new, but people are still out there. He avoids the silence by singing to himself, instead. He knows it’s risky, but he can’t be left alone with his thoughts.
“Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining—” he starts, turning the ignition and continuing northeast, Nashville in the rear-view.
There are days where he just stays in his car and sleeps on and off, unable to bring himself to go out and scrounge for food. Hunger is a friend at this point, a familiar emptiness that reminds him that he’s still human. It claws at his stomach, digging an even deeper pit for each hour, until it dissolves into nothing, only noticeable in the decreased blood flow to his hands and a low-level weakness that encompasses his whole body.
He’s tired of seeing the sunrise. Nothing ever changes. He’s tired of the silence. It never ends. He’s tired of seeing death and decay. The bodies keep piling up.
He’s so fucking tired of being alone.
He’s kept track of time in his journal, only missing a day here and there, so he’s pretty certain it’s nearing the end of August. What day of the week escapes him, but he follows his routine when the glare of the sun hits him square in the face, making him groan and hate his life just a little more than before.
How that’s even possible—fuck if Ray knows.
The day goes.
First thing he does is open the windows of the van to at least try and air out the stuffiness of his own BO. Then he takes his binoculars and looks out the windshield, front and rear, before he opens the back doors and does a quick scan of the roof.
One morning, his Ma had nearly gotten ambushed when a Runner had climbed onto the VW during the night and thought it would eat Ma for a quick morning snack.
She’d gotten it with her kitchen knife though, so no dice.
Like most mornings the last few weeks, there’s nothing to eat, even if he wanted to. His stomach claws at him. Yeah, sure, maybe he’s too chicken-shit to go into town and get really adventurous. He’s not a teenage dirtbag anymore.
Instead, tired as all hell, he pours some of the last rain water into the empty Pepsi bottle he’s still keeping around. He’s collected the water since St. Louis, with bright mismatching pails placed precariously on the dented roof of the VW. He puts it in the cup holder before he gets the VW back on the road.
The roar of the motor revving to life is definitely enough to alert the nearby Runners.
But he leaves them in his wake.
He only stops by her house because he’s passing through the area, and has a fleeting hope that maybe, just maybe, the Posts have made it through.
It’s dumb. It’s so dumb how much of a shit he gives, since they were only together for two years in high school. Fucking ridiculous how such a short time can make a dent in your life.
Still, he’ll never forget that Thanksgiving dinner, where she smiled at him from across the table while her mother succeeded in convincing him that brussel sprouts could be edible, if roasted crispy and prepared with bacon. They proceeded to argue fiercely about Kierkegaard, she met his Ma, made him figure out that he was mainly into dudes while staying his friend. Then she moved to Tennessee and he got swept up with college and hasn’t seen her for years.
Now he sees her, lying on a lilac floral couch, maggots crawling over her once-tanned skin.
He drags his sleeve over his face, the light hoodie getting damp with the moisture.
“Fuck, Annie,” he mutters, trying not to think too much about the bullet hole in her temple or the brain matter splattered all over the armrest and the floor, smeared into her blonde hair. Instead, he tosses a blanket over her so it looks like she’s just taking a nap.
There are tears trickling down his face as he leaves the house with the bright red door. He stares at the upsettingly cheerful welcome mat by his feet, trying to blink away the tears that cling stubbornly to his eyelashes.
His first mistake was stepping out of the house. His second was not looking. He should’ve fucking realized that things change, and an area that was clear when you left it isn’t necessarily clear when you return to it.
Swiftly, he’s pinned up against the wall with a shove of force he didn’t realize Runners were capable of, as one watery eye rolls to look at him. It hisses, but like, half its jaw is literally hanging off its face by a few threads of muscle so Ray gets a tasty faceful of zombie gunk, and worse than the fact that it’s a Runner, is that it clearly used to be a fucking accountant. Like, there’s a split second where Ray gets to notice the pocket protector and pens in the once-white button-down shirt. It’s pathetic.
“Ah, fucking gross, dude, what the fuck!” he shouts at the creature trying to get really intimate really quickly. “I’m safe-wording out of this! Motherfucker!”
Of course, the ex-dude has literally no interest in safe sexual play, and continues trying to eat his brains.
A dark blur zips in front of him and before Ray realizes it, he can breathe—there’s a fucking dog that came out of nowhere and literally just tore off a fucking zombie arm. The distraction is enough time to grab the ceramic pot that contains wilting flowers and brain the fucking thing over the head. Multiple times.
The dog doesn’t leave his side. It follows at a respectable distance as he looks through the garden shed for anything of value, sniffing around and seemingly standing guard while he’s inside.
“Did you know Annie?” he asks.
The dog doesn’t reply, just tilts its head. Then she/he/it whatever follows him to the VW, and Ray allows it to happen. Because who is Ray to say no to shit-you-not picture perfect puppy eyes?
Besides, it’s a hail-Mary pass, but the dog might’ve belonged to Annie.
He decides to name her Toni, after checking that she doesn’t have any balls, either hanging out or snipped off. Also it isn’t like Toni has a collar, or anything, so as far as he’s concerned it’s free game until she learns how to, like, speak English and tell him what a dumb name he gave her.
He read somewhere—or maybe Ma told him—that a dog’s name always should contain an ee sound, or they wouldn’t come when you called. It’s also fitting because the last book they dissected in class was Beloved after all, and even before that, Ray had always loved Toni Morrison.
“Are you okay with that, Toni?”
She looks up at him, tilts her head in that way that dogs do. He realizes at this moment, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, that her muzzle isn’t dark just because of all the Runner blood trailing down her jaw; it’s dark brown even underneath all the grime that’s currently dripping onto the passenger seat.
“We all need a wash, huh?” He looks ruefully at the stains of blood spattering his once brand new Nike hoodie. He lets his fingers run over the jagged teeth of his dorm room key, before he turns the ignition and takes off down the road.
They drive to the river down the road and wash up.
He doesn’t mean to fully get in the water, but she really wants to get the stick, and she just bounds deeper into the river without any heed. Ray laughs and follows her.
“C’mere, you dummy,” he says quietly, and tries to take the stick from her mouth but she keeps bouncing away, a surprising amount of force in her short legs, splashing all around, making a racket, but the sounds are swallowed by the babble of the brook.
He ends up actually washing his hair with the shampoo he’s tucked away, for the first time in days, fully going under.
He exhales the air out of his lungs and surfaces, shaking himself free.
They’re drying off by the side of the river, clothes hung up to dry in the summer sun, and he’s toweling the blood out of Toni’s fur. He grabs the scissors and hairbrush he’d been carrying around in his backpack and gets to work cutting the mats out of Toni’s long hair, brushing her clean, uncovering the copper colored fur underneath. She looks back at him as he does so, with knowing dark eyes, and he wonders what she’s thinking, wonders if she felt as alone as he did.
“Did your owners turn?” he asks, voice low.
Toni offers no answer, and somehow, Ray’s grateful for it.
He never had dogs as a kid and doesn’t really know how to behave around them, but Toni doesn’t seem to care. He makes a space for her in Ma’s cot in the back, complete with a blanket and pillow.
She seems to appreciate it, even though she always sits with him up front when they drive, head stuck out the window, air breezing through her fur, saliva messy off her tongue.
Ma, look at me now, he writes, to an audience of none.
It takes him nearly a whole fucking week, like a supreme retard to realize that Toni doesn’t bark. He just thought she was a quiet sort of dog; retrievers usually are, according to this book he pilfered in some library of bumfuck, nowhere. Fuck. Maybe that’s how she was able to survive for so long. That’s a depressing fucking thought.
He flips through the book.
She’s definitely not like, primarily a golden, though. She’s smaller, more russet in color than anything, has an uneven white patch on her breast, and is probably half the size of all the retrievers he’s ever met.
They’re curled up one night in the bed of the VW, in a nest out of sleeping bags after they’ve played fetch for a while. She’d been wagging her tail, all excited over a fucking sad-ass torn-open baseball, and then opened her mouth and clicked her teeth. It looked like she wanted to bark, but no sound came out.
It’s depressing. But fuck, what isn’t these days?
“It means we get to stay together for longer, probably,” he tells her as she sighs in that way that both dogs and people do when they’re judging the shit out of you.
In the back of his mind, Ray acknowledges that she probably saved his life. Not physically, but mentally for sure. Man’s best friend, indeed. He turns another page in the tattered library atlas over dog breeds, and finds out that Toni is definitely half or more than half toller. Hopefully she can find some fuckin’ ducks.
A few days later, they’re driving down an abandoned gamekeeper's trail in the woods, the VW miraculously managing to skirt down the dirt road, until they stop for the night under a grove of pine trees. Right by the bed of roots are wildflowers.
He keeps close to the river, not only because of the water, but also because the Runners have bad sight, and he thinks can’t smell much either, but they have predatory-level hearing, which is all kinda fucked.
They set up camp for the night and fall asleep curled in the back of the car, windows cracked open, the cool night air and the sound of cicadas filtering in.
Morning breaks over the horizon, and Ray has this weird feeling in his stomach. It’s not because of the mushrooms they found last night, that like, would’ve already affected him, and it’s not because he can’t get rid of this stupid fucking cow-lick that sticks up at the back of his skull.
The gentle murmuring of the river covers most of the sounds they make as they comb through the undergrowth. It rained a few days ago, and the altitude here should have spawned some really nice fresh mushrooms. Not the fun kind, mind, though he’d fucking love that right now.
Idly, he wonders if dogs can get high? Fuck, wait, maybe it would be kinda neat if Toni was a pig, instead. Then she could find some truffles. Then again, pigs are kinda slow, which isn’t really ideal.
It’s somewhere there, on the banks, that Toni suddenly perks up and Ray’s internal monologue is violently interrupted. “Toni,” a harsh whisper is instinctual out of his mouth, but silence is key. He really doesn’t want to take any chances tonight. They managed to avoid any presence for the last few hours, but if these last weeks have taught him anything, it is that misfortune falls upon even the best.
And before Ray can call her back, afraid to shout too loudly, she runs off; retriever mix that she is, she just bounds off along the banks, mud spraying around her paws as she clicks her teeth.
Ray crouches down, hiding behind some reeds.
Then—
“Oh, hi. You’re beautiful, aren’t you?”
Further up the bank, there’s another human. Not a zombie. At least not yet.
He’s shirtless, other than a leather strap over his shoulder, looking comically like the actual Main Character of this story with that kinda gun, and even crouching down as he is, Ray can tell that the dude is tall. The rising sun makes it hard to see what he looks like, shrouded in early morning mist and backlit. But he’s fucking ripped, as the mist catches his deltoid muscles, and a few drops from the dew trail down his pecs, which Ray is absolutely not following with his eyes.
And he does, uh, have a nice voice. That’s it. That’s literally all Ray is thinking about.
“And really friendly, aren’t you, girl? Haven’t had food in awhile? Yeah, guess not a lot of us have. C’mon, I’ve got some at camp, let’s go.”
He watches as the guy delicately packs up the laundry that had been soaking in the river, bundles it in a bag. He’s not even, like, nervous. He’s confident in the stream, in being shirtless, in still somehow being fucking ripped even though they’re two months into an apocalypse, and all the gyms he knows are definitely fucking closed.
There are a few large bruises on him though.
Ray curses under his breath, not feeling brave enough to rush up and re-claim Toni as his own. Dude might be all keyed up and ready to blow Ray’s brains out on sight. So, instead, his bow on the ready, he half walks, half crawls after the quiet footfalls of the guy and, well, what he thought was his own dog.
Betrayed for a slice of beef jerky.
They walk for just a couple of minutes, before they come to a simple camp. There’s a tarp stretched up between two trees, providing shelter from the wind and the fucking rain that wouldn’t stop falling yesterday; Ray is so fucking glad that it’s still summer.
As he watches, Aryan Nation Dude—who must be either biker, felon or military with that sort of hair-cut and ugly-ass tattoo that covers most of his lower and mid back—opens a pack, and pulls out a strip of beef jerky. He makes Toni sit before he gives it to her, and she, of course, devours it, going so far as to even lick at his hand to get the last crumbs.
But shit, it’s somehow been weeks since he’s seen another human. Even one as intimidating as this.
“Wish I had more, but that’s all for now, dog. You can run off or stay here if you want.”
Ray, following his heart and praying to the gods that he absolutely fucking doesn’t believe in, decides to clear his throat loudly enough that it can't be misinterpreted as anything but a human sound.
“She’s with me, actually.”
It’s a miracle he doesn’t get shot, but he raises his hands in the air in a gesture of peace, seeing as the dude completely stiffens at the intrusion, and points his gun at Ray in about three milliseconds flat as he looks Ray over.
He feels like he’s being judged, though dude is the one who’s all busted up and without a shirt for fuck’s sake. He’s the one who should be feeling vulnerable right now, not Ray.
“State your name and business,” his voice is cold, completely unlike how it sounded just a few seconds ago when talking to Toni.
“Um, that’s my dog. Toni,” he whistles, beckoning her over. She bounds over to him, tail wagging up a storm.
“Alright, Tony—” Mr. Blue Eyes starts, and Ray sighs heavily.
“No, my name is Ray. Ray Person. Jesus, do I look like a Toni?”
He shouldn’t mouth off to someone who has a gun pointed at him, like, he’s idly aware of that, but he does anyway. “If you’re gonna shoot me just get it over with, I’ve never been into edging.”
The dude still doesn’t move. “Brad,” he then says, still wary.
It’s not a great name, if you ask Ray, but at least it’s not Zebadiah or some weird shit, because he’s not ready to be a main character, especially not one that is vaguely Biblical. He goes by Ray and not Joshua for a reason. He can work with Brad.
“No surname?”
“Not pertinent.”
Oh boy, this dude is clearly going to be a great fucking conversationalist.
By his feet, Toni perks up again, ears moving towards some sound. Squinting, Ray sees or hears nothing, apart from some bluebirds taking flight.
“No worries, Toni. It’s just birds.”
“You named your dog Tony?” Brad stares at him with a carefully calculated expression, but he lowers his rifle, clearly convinced that Ray is harmless. Sort of.
“Yeah, Toni, isn’t she great.” He bends down to scratch at her ear, getting a click of teeth for his efforts.
“Since when does Tony Soprano have a pussy?”
“What—No, the fuck, Toni with an I, you dipshit.”
“Like Toni Colette?”
“No, Toni Morrison.”
Brad stares at him, with like, the weirdest fucking look on his face, and then shakes his head. “You two are welcome to join my camp for the night.”
“Good, well, we could use some company. I think Toni is tired of hearing all my singing.”
“Please tell me you don’t actually sing.”
Ray manages to jerry-rig a fishing hook out of a sharpened paper clip and somehow actually fucking catches a trout from the river. It’s barely hooked to the lip of the damn thing, and his clip is all bent to shit afterwards, but it worked. He had hooks in St. Louis, but they were lost with the rest of his survival kit, in the wreck. He has to stop himself from shouting with delight afterwards, holding the wriggling fish up to Brad with a bright grin on his face.
“Told you I could fucking do it.”
Brad bleeds and skins the fish, flaying it open on a tree stump near the clearing. He keeps the skin on the fish, but uses the dull edge of the knife against the grain to scrape the scales off, then he roasts it over the fire. Real fucking camping shit.
“Early mission reports say that the Runners have no sense of smell,” Brad explains to Ray, who hesitates at Brad lighting a fire. “They’re just eerily fast for a decomposing pile of limbs, and their hearing is the one thing that isn’t fucked to shit.”
“Ah, great. And here I was hoping they had to use hearing aids, and this was like, Revenge of the Grandpas.”
It’s one of his better one-liners, he thinks. Brad doesn’t laugh.
They eat pretty well for both lunch and dinner, despite the uncertainty of meeting another human that clings to the both of them in their shared looks.
“Where are you going, anyway?” Ray asks, already tired of the silence that’s started to settle in over their camp, as he feeds Toni little pieces of his fish for the second time today. More than he should, he knows, but he feels hollow in his stomach at the thought of eating. He still thinks of dirty nails and dirty fingers and dirty guts.
Brad doesn’t look up from where he’s cleaning his rifle. “None of your business.”
“We just ate a sweet dinner because I’m good at fishing and you’re like, a flayer. Or something.”
At that, Brad just gives him a look, not rising to the bait, not rising to any bait. Ray throws up his hands.
“Okay, seriously, so are we just, like, not going to trust each other? Because I don’t know if you have actually looked at me, but I’m not a threat, and I’ll seriously be pissed off if you steal my dog or my shit, but I can already tell you’re not going to do that, because of your, like, Warrior ethos, right? Anyway, the world is going to shit and if we can’t even trust each other, then what’s the fucking point?”
Ray digs the toe of his sneaker into the damp earth. Brad spits, once. His lips quirk marginally upwards in what, on anyone else, would be a scowl, but Ray actually fucking thinks this is Brad’s attempt at an easy smile. To show how chill he clearly is not.
“You use a bow and arrow,” he starts, and before Ray can rise to defend himself, hand already up with his fingers out to start ticking off the benefits, Brad continues. “North to D.C.”
He parts with the information delicately, as if he wasn’t sure it was a good idea or not.
“Okay, in case you need to be reminded of how it works to have a conversation, I’m going to Boston.”
Two can play at that game. Ray specifically does not mention the comfort of his VW just down the road a hair.
“Why the fuck would you want to go to Boston, the Red Sox are terrible.” Brad says, and Ray looks at him with surprise, because was that—was that a joke that came from this stiff, chiseled statue of a human being?
It is one hundo-percent, absolutely not what he expects.
“Uh, I went to college there. The last radio transmission I got was from my buddy, he said the colleges there are banding together and creating a pretty cool safe zone. Like, everyone’s fueled on comic books and anxiety, with a healthy dose of collegiate, Ivy-League arrogance.”
As he talks, Ray digs out the weather radio. He hasn’t tuned in since this morning, but when he tunes in to the NOAA station, the emergency message plays as if on cue:
… viral contagion is spreading across the country. Infected individuals rapidly lose all cognitive function and turn violent. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Take immediate action measures…
The beeps indicating they’d caught the tail end of the transmission tune out, and Ray clears his throat as he stops cranking the handle. “I check in on the Harvard student radio every morning. Sometimes I catch them, sometimes it’s just static.”
There’s a pause, and Brad hums in thought, “Well, since we’re both going in the same direction, it would be better tactically to travel together. Then we’ll part at D.C. It’s en route.” Brad says, definitively.
And that’s the end of that conversation.
Turns out Brad had a motorcycle and he’d been biking across the country, until it got fucked three days ago. There’s something more to that story, something to do with how Brad got all his bruises, but when Ray starts to pry, Brad just stops answering.
So it’s probably embarrassing or really bad.
Fuel shortage hasn’t been too bad yet. You can usually drain a broken down car of gas—a lot of them are just abandoned by the side of the road, in traffic jams getting out of cities.
The problem with vehicles, Ray figured out, is that they tend to be big, and slow, and loud. Nothing was better than being on foot.
The other, bigger problem is, there’s a whole lot of fucking distance between fucking bumfuck east coast and Boston. Fucking, like, thousands of miles. He’s never done the trip in one leg, but it’s gotta be at least 8 or 9 hours, and that’s driving on the interstate when it’s not blocked by cars and bodies.
It’s probably not a smart or long con plan, but he decides to reveal the VW, and they keep traveling with it even though Brad complains about his knees hitting the glove compartment because the seat adjuster is stuck.
“Well no fucking shit, the passenger seat wasn’t designed for a gargantuan freak of nature like you.”
Stupidly, he feels safe in the VW, with the ratty floral curtains she put up and his favorite pillow from childhood stuffed inside.
He thinks of how petite his Ma was, sitting in that same chair. If Brad hadn’t been twice her size, he might’ve been more prone to mistaking him for her.
He grips the steering wheel tighter, knuckles white, and then starts to sing.
Funnily enough, Brad doesn’t comment on his off-tune caterwauling. Instead, he just stares out the window, and that’s good enough for Ray.
Time moves differently now. That’s probably not a new revelation only uttered by him, but it does make it hard to keep track of things like day of the week or even what month it is. Calendars and almanacs mean jack and shit, and the only thing that helps you keep track is the things you do, and writing them down. His journal was probably the only one keeping him from going b-a-n-a-n-a-s (as the late Gwen Stefani would say, R.I.P to her well-manicured soul, uh, probably) before Brad.
That, and well, the small changes in nature.
Ray’s not accustomed to the minutiae of North Carolina’s seasonal changes like he is to those in Missouri, but he’s pretty sure it’s the beginning of September and if he were to guess, it’s a Monday.
He glances over his shoulder at the journal, neglected over the past week in his backpack.
Dusk is upon them, and they’ve got a fire going. They’ve stopped for the night, still keeping close to the river for noise coverage, and Ray is giving Toni most of his dinner again. He’s perched on a gray moss-covered rock, the heel of his ratty red converse pressed against his thigh, and she’s curled in the mud at his feet.
He’s going to have to brush her clean again; it’s a perpetual chore, just like laundry.
Not even the apocalypse will save you from that.
They found some duck eggs by the river, and Brad pulled together a nearly bourgeoisie scramble with some wild herbs, and Ray’s cast-iron skillet, and she’s licking his fingers clean gratefully.
“You shouldn’t give her all of your food.”
Ray starts at the voice over his shoulder, and turns back from his sitting position to look at the tall figure looming behind him.
“You’re rail thin. You need your strength, especially if you plan on using that bow.” His voice is softer than Ray thinks he’s ever heard it—similar to when Brad first met Toni, before he realized there was more company involved. “Look, Toni is great, but she’s just a dog.”
His shoulders meet his ears before he realizes it, lips curled up in what’s almost a snarl, and then he takes a deep breath. “You can’t fucking tell me what to do. I still only know your first name, Brad. Are you cagey about it because it’s Pitt, and you know for a fact that you’ll never be as handsome as him?”
“We’re going to part ways. No use getting attached.” Brad says, not rising to the bait of the dig, voice flat as ever. “You don’t need to know about my life, and I don’t need to know about yours. I’m just trying to give you some survival tips.”
Brad doesn’t know what Toni did for him—how her existence saved him. He doesn’t know, and he clearly doesn’t care.
Their arguments escalate when they run into travelers.
They seem harmless enough, is the thing. Haggard, and surprisingly even dirtier than Ray; a teenage couple that rolls their ‘ah’s delicately like they’re from a yuppie town. The girl has her blonde hair in a braid that’s coming undone, the roots dark with grease.
They’re down by the river when he goes down there in the afternoon to try and catch something for dinner. Toni is trailing behind him, and Brad’s at the camp, setting stuff up and just being a pedant. At first, Ray thinks the two of them are runners just by the quick movements of their feet. But then Toni perks her ears up, and she doesn’t press low to the ground like she usually does when there’s danger afoot.
“Where are you headed?” Ray asks as he’s showing them the way back to camp, as he hands the guy the baseball with the tear in it.
He gives Ray an odd look. “New York. What do you want me to do with this?”
“Jesus, I know you’re like, fourteen or somethin’, but fetch was invented like, fifteen thousand years ago. You’ve never played fetch?”
“I’m fifteen as of last week.” He stands at his full height of, what, fucking five feet, and scowls.
It doesn’t seem like it’s going to bring the kid joy—the fucking weirdo—so Ray takes the ball back. He throws it into a more sparse area of the forest, and Toni sets off like a rocket. She catches up to them again just as they come up over the crest into the small dell where he and Brad have set up camp for the night.
They’re all fucking tired and alone. Company, for one night, should be nice.
As soon as they come into view, Brad shoots up from his crouch by the fire, rifle drawn.
“Calm down, homes. Just me.”
Brad lowers it imperceptibly. “What the fuck, Ray?”
Ray ignores him. “Hi, Brad. This is David and Jessie. They were trying to fish down by the river, so I invited them back.”
Brad’s face is indecipherable. “You didn’t.”
Ray stares back. “I did. Just like you did, when I showed up.”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
No matter how laconic and fucking composed Brad is, it’s not often that he’s at a loss of for words. Sure, he might not rise to one of Ray’s baits or answer questions, but it’s not hard to see when he’s choosing not to do so.
Now he’s simply staring, looking kind of dumb.
So Ray ignores him, and shows the kids where to sit before he holds out the trout to Brad.
“I can never get the bones out properly,” he admits, and apparently that’s enough for Brad to take the fish and do his usual routine.
They put it on the fire and then split it four ways. It’s not enough, despite its belly being thick, swollen with spawn. They all know it, but in times like this, you have to sacrifice some. Ray’s still feeling hollow, and instead of giving it to Toni, he hands the girl, Jessie, a bit of his fried fish. As he holds out his hand, Toni sticks her nose up and clicks her teeth in anticipation, even though Jessie eats it right away.
Licking her own fingers, she then looks at Toni.
“She’s never been able to bark?”
Ray scratches Toni behind the ears, pointedly ignoring Brad’s stare of icy fury from across the fire. “Don’t know. Found her a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh. She just started following you?”
There’s an odd note in her voice. Ray narrows his eyes, trying to see if it’s just exhaustion or something else. It makes him a little more cautious as they turn in for the night, though, keeping his arm around Toni as they sleep together, bundled in their mass of sleeping bags. But not cautious enough that he doesn’t accept when David agrees to take second watch, promising to wake Brad up when the fire is starting to die down.
Something David doesn’t do.
And so, in the morning, they're down three days of supplies. They don't stop for anything anymore, even when they drive by a weathered couple nervously hidden against the side of the road that look like they could be Brad’s parents.
The hordes are also getting bigger. There are less cars on the road, the majority stuck in the exodus jams from the cities or stuck in ditches. Before, they’d see another moving vehicle at least every six hours.
Now it’s been days.
The stench of death seems to follow them no matter where they go, seeping into their skin. There are flies everywhere. It’s the worst along the roads. Ray tries not to think about how it would’ve come about. How most people got stuck in these traffic jams, trying to flee, and then the Runners came, alerted by the noise.
That’s probably how it went, but Ray doesn’t think about it. He can’t think about it. He concentrates on driving, zig-zagging through the jams when he has to, and trying to stick to the smaller roads whenever opportunity rises.
Brad doesn’t say much. He’s too concentrated on looking through the scope of his rifle, the barrel resting on the edge of the cranked open window. If it wasn’t such a smart thing to do, Ray would’ve put it down as Brad forcing him to not make more noise than necessary with his singing.
Toni doesn’t seem to mind either way, so Ray decides, in his mind, that she misses it.
The gas he filled up in Nashville is enough to take the VW through most of North Carolina. It's expected that it runs out shortly before leaving Raleigh.
“What was life like, before, for you?” Ray asks, shielding his eyes from the obnoxious rays of the southern sun, bright as it ever was in a cloudless, brilliant blue sky. He misses the luxury of sunglasses, but those unfortunately flew off in a tussle outside of St. Louis. He doesn’t feel the need to go back for them.
They’re walking through a small town, peering at abandoned cars and checking the level of gas in their tanks—the VW is out of fuel, and they’re trying to find anything, carrying around a little red gas canister each and looking kinda pathetic.
“Routine.”
Ray rolls his eyes. “Homes, I’m trying to make conversation here. It takes two to tango, and as I said last night, company—beast or not—is like, pretty important to stave off the crazy.”
Of course, Brad is put off by that, but after another kilometer of fucking nothing left in the tanks, he buckles.
“Early mornings. I rode my bike a lot. Liked running. Surfing. That sort of thing.”
It says absolutely everything and also nothing about who Brad is. Ray should’ve expected as much.
“Great. I also enjoyed eating, jerking off, and watching Criterion Collection films just to make fun of film nerds.”
That gets him a huff of amusement in reply, but that’s also all.
They end up finding gas, but it takes another twenty minutes of small-talk that makes him feel like he’s pulling Brad’s teeth. Like, Ray should have majored in orthodontics instead of philosophy. Might have given him the right wrist technique to remove molars, and get Brad to talk more easily.
The next time the VW runs out of gas, it’s not far from a house with a pretty extensive home garden. There are fruit trees and well-tended plots of land with all these little hand-written labels indicating carrots, parsnips and radishes underground.
By the time they arrive, it’s kinda overgrown, though.
“Would you consider us Communists if we are reaping the fruits of someone else’s labor?” Ray asks, as he thumbs a hungry grub off of an apple that he just pulled from the tree. He sinks his teeth into it, juice dribbling down his chin.
“Fuck,” he continues, moaning at the taste. “I never thought I would miss apples. Like, we haven’t been eating them, so in theory, a Doctor should show up at any point now to save us. Get it? An apple a day keeps the Doctor away? Well, Christ, I could really use a doctor right now.”
Brad levels a look at him as they comb through the weed-infested garden overtaking this someone’s backyard. Somehow the brilliant heat of the summer has made these abandoned vegetables thrive. He digs potatoes from the ground with the flat of his dullest knife, and shoves tomatoes in his bag.
“You’re a damn mess, Ray. Where did you learn your manners? Are they all this disgusting in the cousin-fucking trailer-trash south?”
Ray, laughing, apple skin still in his teeth, just blows him a kiss and then flips him the bird.
He’s starting to figure Brad out. Despite the frigid bitch front that he puts up, especially after the situation with weird strangers a week ago, Brad really has a soft and mushy interior.
He sees it when Brad looks at Toni, when he feeds her scraps of his food. And, shit, he thinks, when he squints , he sees it when Brad looks at him too. Brad doesn’t realize it yet; he clearly has a giant hard-on for being emotionally constipated.
It’s been three weeks of trudging up the American coast and Ray definitely isn’t catching feelings. That would be stupid—no, moronic, no, that would be absolutely fucking absurd.
“Hey, Brad, get your gargantuan ass over here and pick these tall apples from the tree. I swear, they’re the best ones. Even the grubs can’t get them.”
The garden is an absolute gold mine, and despite the danger of staying in the same place for too long, they decide to spend the night.
With the things they find, they make a salad for dinner, on top of the rabbit Ray managed to shoot, a soft thanks skywards feeling obligatory off of his lips. It has, like, proper wild lettuce and shit, and carrots, that Ray managed to pull from the soil with a barely contained shout. Somehow the bugs didn’t completely go to town on the patch of yard, though he did have to pick out a couple worms from the greens.
When the sun starts to set, Brad sneaks into the house, comes out with proper fucking dishware. They eat on strangely undamaged crate and barrel dishware, on the abandoned metal table in the yard.
The grass is about as high as his boot, and the dandelions are just starting to turn into seeds; they’re transforming, preparing for winter and death.
The sun sets over the horizon, casting an unrealistic orange glow over the world. The shattered glass of the greenhouse shimmers red, pink and gold and the fireflies start rising from their nests, swarming and fluttering through the darkness.
It’s almost like it’s fucking normal—even though Ray wouldn’t be caught dead with his house looking like this. There are even crickets chirping, ushering in the summer haze.
Brad’s bright blue eyes catch in the flickering light from the kerosene lamp.
Ray offers a small, timid smile, swallowing the rant down his throat. Actually, it gets caught there and dies, because he’s realizing quite a few things. Brad is actually, like, really attractive. Like it’s unfair how good-looking he is, all Nordic with a sharp bone structure, strong lines and a tilted, slow-zipper smile that probably got him more numbers than he deserved. And to top it off, he’s just unnecessarily tall. That’s never been Ray’s thing, not really. Sure, his last ex was taller, and Annie too, especially when she wore heels and that’s kinda kinky—but there’s something nice about Brad’s height.
If he'd been famous, he'd have definitely been one of teenage Ray's sexual awakenings. Him and Britney Spears.
“So, uh, come here often?”
Toni is lying at their feet between them, the grass bending underneath her small frame. She’s chewing at it, and he leans down to pet her smooth, russet coat, getting a head-butt for his efforts.
“Doesn’t align with my dietary inclinations, but the chef does seasonal food well.”
Ray looks up, startled. Across this rickety table that squeaks when he puts his elbow on it, Brad has this tick at the corner of his mouth that could, with some imagination, be a smile. It’s hard to tell, but it is clear that he’s in on the joke.
“The produce is really good, yeah, but the beer is so fucking overpriced, homes.”
“Aren’t you supposed to have wine to go with antipasto?”
Ray snorts, smiling into his plate. “Fuck if I know. I grew up in a trailer with a hole in the floor beside the toilet, dude. One pair of shoes a year from Walmart, that sorta deal.”
Brad stops with his fork half-way to his mouth for a moment. “I wouldn’t have been able to tell,” he then says. “Your vocabulary is astounding.”
“Fuck off.”
It’s a good banter though, Ray has to admit. And maybe that’s the way to go with Brad.
Fuck, if they’re stuck together, might as well make the most of it.
Gas stations are a pretty good substitute for grocery stores. They have all the nutritional food groups. Chocolate, candy, caffeine.
Especially the stations further from the interstate, the ones hidden in small towns, and the honestly sketchy looking ones- they have quite a lot of loot left. People before them have favored the big roads. Probably to reach friends and family faster, when time was of the essence.
In the smaller stations, there’s a smorgasbord of junk food left: potato chips, gummy bears and what have you. He found twinkies once. Sometimes, they’re even lucky enough to find some bottled water among the sodas.
This time, the crown jewel is a big pack of Doritos. The family size one, too, not the personal calorie-safe ones.
“Isn’t this like, way off from your—what did you call it—dietary inclinations?”
His voice twangs with mockery as he says ‘dietary inclinations’, tossing it at Brad with a cheeky grin.
“It has salt,” Brad supplies as he puts some soured milk-product back into the dead fridge.
He goes into the back room to search for ammunition, with the explanation that the owner probably had a gun for safety. Ray starts going through the magazine section, finding some skin mags as well as one with a hundred different crosswords. He pockets the latter for some unknown reason.
When Brad comes back, they leave through the back door to get the last of the gas that might be lingering in the pumps.
He’s just got the damn thing to work when it happens.
Ray, by now, has managed to kill a medium sized pack of Runners with ease. He considers himself an expert, isn’t nauseous as he hovers over the decaying flesh and pulls his arrows back out of them, dropping them in the quiver over his shoulder.
So he reacts quickly when there’s a growling, a hissing, behind him and whirls around, a clean arrow already notched on the arrow shelf.
Fuck.
It’s a goddamn kid.
A kid with ratty red converse, fuck, as tall as his hip, one of the laces untied, and he half looks like a fucked-up OshKosh B’Gosh advertisement, in brown overalls.
It hurts, actually, seeing this fucker stumble over to them. It’s Brad who nails a bullet to the skull, right above the left eyebrow; blood and brain matter sprays in an arch behind the small skull, the bigger pieces landing with splattering sounds against the still warm asphalt, sizzling slightly in the sun.
Ray just stares at it. Then he turns around.
“What are you doing— ”
“Keeping us alive. What are you doing?”
“Not shooting kids, homes!”
“I need to know you have my six, Ray,” Brad snaps at him.
“What the fuck, dude, I’m not like you, I didn’t fucking live and die for this, these are still kids—”
“No.”
Brad’s voice is sharp like a whip-crack, and Ray shuts up faster than he has in his entire life.
“They’re Runners,” Brad continues, but even though his voice is hard, Ray can tell his eyes look watery, like he’s close to tears. “They’re corpses, a mass of animate rotting flesh. If you slip up for even a second, they’ll fucking get us both. Do you copy?”
There’s a hand on his shoulder, fingers digging into the ball of it. Ray wants to shake it off—doesn’t want Brad touching him right now, not when he just killed a child—but Brad’s voice doesn’t leave any room for questioning. It’s an order.
He was probably a Sergeant or something.
Ray shrugs his hand off. “Fine, fucking fine. Yes, I get it.”
“It’s difficult, at first. You learn to turn it off.”
“Some too much.”
“Yes.”
It’s a relief that Brad doesn’t defend that at least. Ray’s way too much of a true crime aficcionado to know the relevance of military service in the making of a serial killer. Not that it matters much now, anyways.
It might even be a benefit not to feel any remorse.
They don’t even bother to try and hide the VW for the night. Instead they open up the back and start a small fire on the asphalt behind the store, eating some of yesterday’s rabbit mixed with a can of peas, carrots and corn Brad had found in the little staff room.
Afterwards, when it’s pitch black outside, save for their fire and the unusually bright dots of stars in the sky, Ray pulls out the Doritos bag and wiggles his eyebrows.And when Brad doesn’t protest, he tears it open.
“Y’know, like, these Doritos might entirely be broken, but like, the heart of them is still—”
Brad steals a chip from Ray’s hand.
“They called me Iceman in the corps.”
“Like Top Gun ? Fuck, that makes so much sense. No wonder it feels like there’s a stick up your ass.”
“Are you just intimately familiar with Dicks, or have you been here before?” Ray waggles his eyebrows playfully, ignoring the scowl on Brad’s face as they enter a Dick’s sporting goods.
They pick up more fishing gear, thumb through the dusty mess to find a 5-pack of Pepsi and an overturned box of freeze-dried minced taco. He swipes a pack of Big Red cinnamon gum to chew for when they can’t find food.
Toni, brilliant dog that she is, leads them right to the knocked over rack of generic brand dog food, her muzzle deep in the selection of different kibble. Ray grabs a new Patagonia backpack to shove all of Toni’s food in, ignoring the price tag of $139.99 that flops awkwardly against the zipper.
“Jackpot, baby.”
There’s still room in the backpack for something after he grabs a couple bags of kibble in different flavors, so he crouches down by the dog toys. Even though he knows—
“You need warm clothes, Ray, not any of that shit.” Brad says with a tight look. “We’re going north.”
He keeps eye contact with Brad as he grabs a rope toy. Toni picks out a stuffed white lamb. Brad can go fuck himself. Of course he’s going to get Toni a toy, or two, or three. It’s not like they are really going to take that much space. He doesn’t tell him to fuck off though, just bites the inside of his cheek.
He grabs a red running hoodie with thumb holes and a clean, heathered gray sweat-wicking Under Armor t-shirt, leaving his ratty black band shirt.
It becomes just another object left behind.
The fucking Volkswagen is dead.
Like fucking everything these days, it’s limped its last lap, and its cam belt is tore through and the engine is about to collapse in on itself. The battery is fucking smoking and hissing and it’s going to draw attention and he’s about to hyperventilate he’s definitely not already breathing quick and he doesn’t have his workshop here and he can’t fix it and they don’t have time they don’t have time they don’t have time and—
They have to leave the car.
He grabs the worn polaroid of him and Ma when they went to Disney in 2003 that’s stuck to the sun shade and pockets it. Then he just stands for a minute because he can’t bear to leave—
“Move, Ray ,” Brad snaps, shoving at him, the fleeting imprint of Brad’s palm on his back burning hot as the patter of bloody, flayed and decaying feet picks up behind them.
Toni hesitates too, looking back at the VW, until Ray whistles harshly. In her mouth is that stupid lamb toy they picked up three days ago.
“C’mon, girl.”
Her nails click against the asphalt as they run, leaving the VW and all it stands for in their wake.
Brad’s shot maybe twenty Runners; they just keep coming, until they finally manage to get behind the entry gate and the makeshift barricade of those that came before. It’s enough to stop them for long enough that a new source of noise makes the pack stagger in the opposite direction.
Ray’s still so out of it, he doesn’t realize until Brad grabs his elbow and shoves him through a heavy wooden door, where they are.
“Scout the left,” Brad barks the order, and it’s easy to listen to that, to perform the routine that’s ingrained in him by days spent with Brad, checking windows and kicking open doors as they make sure the place is clear.
It’s just a small community church, yet it’s clear it was the final frontier for this town. It’s also obvious it fell months ago.
There’s nothing left of the silver, or the psalm books. The lectern sits empty. Even the crucifix above the altar is gone. The only thing left is an icon of the Virgin Mary dressed in blue. The pews are eerily empty, only the sound of Ray’s sniffling bounces off the high ceiling. Most of the stained glass is intact, and the different colored squares and rhomboids dance across the floor and ceiling, glowing with the last of the afternoon sun.
He’s crying. He stumbles when he gets to the side altar, looking up at Mary as he kneels on the pews by the candles.
She wouldn’t have wanted him to cry.
Fuck, it’s the nasty crying too. It’s full-on snot, ugly tears, that whole she-bang, that he wipes off against the sleeve of his too-dirty hoodie.
He keeps crying. It’s fucking embarrassing. He knows he failed her before, and he failed her again.
Brad joins him; he feels the presence of all of his 6 feet and change hovering behind him, clearly satisfied with the scout. Ray glances over his shoulder, biting the inside of his cheek until the skin is so stretched he can taste the blood just beneath the surface.
His tears are running clean tracks down his dirty cheeks, and he rubs aggressively at them.
“Stop lookin’ at me like that, Brad. You look like the world’s last lemon jizzed in your mouth.” It’s easier to default to a gross joke than to address his feelings.
At that, Brad does stop looking at him. He shifts his grip on his gun—the M40 rifle he hasn’t dropped since they met and that will probably have to be pried out of his cold, dead hands when the time comes. Or, Ray will have to do it, if he’s not long dead by then.
It’s a sort of hysterical thought, and almost enough to make him laugh just to keep his sanity. He keeps sniffling, sharply inhaling, attempting to regain his composure.
He manages to breathe.
He stares up at Mary, her palms held open in front of her. He half considers praying, too, but then, why would She listen to him? Fuck, why would God listen to him?
“Ma and I were shitty Catholics. I never, like, was a bible-thumper, but we used to go to Church on Sundays. Okay, not like, every Sunday - mostly the big holidays. Y’know, like Easter Sunday, and Ash Wednesday, and we went for fuckin’ Christmas, and, y’know, that might’ve been it, actually.”
Brad says nothing, has said nothing, will probably say nothing, so Ray opens his mouth and continues.
“Do you believe in God, Brad?”
He waits a beat, and then continues.
“Like, are we totally fucked? Did he abandon us? Is this whole,” he gestures wildly with his snotty arm, “zombie bullshit, like, divine retribution for humanity being assholes and polluting the planet? Is it because the Patriots won the Superbowl too many times? I mean,” a little, high-strung laugh. “Am I fucked, because I didn’t Pray enough? Is that it? Is that why He took Ma away from me? Is that why I fucking lost the VW? But then why the fuck am I still here?”
The tears keep coming, the shame and guilt from his half-assed Catholic upbringing, those worries and fear that you will go to Hell if you aren’t Righteous Enough, the little voice in the back of his head that tells him he’s a fucking sinner, Everything that he’s ignored and processed through for so fucking long because he used to love the way he was.
All that’s been a tense knot in his stomach for weeks slowly starts to unravel.
“I’m Jewish,” Brad offers, after a long moment, handing Ray the bandana that Brad keeps in his back pocket. “We never… really did the whole, burning in Hell thing.”
Ray falls back from his knees to sit on the ground, cross-legged in front of the altar. The floor is cold, but it doesn’t register.
To his right, Brad pulls back and shifts again, and then:
“Toni, c’mere girl.”
She’d found some interesting shit somewhere, and Ray couldn’t be bothered to steer her away from it. But now, responding to Brad’s voice, there’s the sound of paws padding over. And then she’s on him, sticking her wet nose in his face, licking at his cheeks.
She keeps at it until he has to smile a little, and then curls up in his lap. Ray digs his fingers into her fur, still sniffling but not as hiccupy and awful as before. It feels better to have that softness, the slight movement of her ribcage under his hands.
“Better?”
Brad’s voice is soft, but there’s no judgment in there. Ray wipes at his cheeks again, but they’re almost dry.
“Yeah.”
Brad reaches out and pat Ray’s knee once. “Good.” Clearing his throat, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a matchbook, striking it quickly. Ray furrows his brow at the noise, before he sees Brad lighting the small candles by the altar. They have a moment, there, as they watch the light flickering in front of the offerings.
“Y’know, Toni is probably thankful you’re here. You saved her just as much as she saved you.”
He doesn’t say anything more, and Ray doesn’t either.
He embraces his new world, quiet though it may be.
They spend the night with no interruptions in the church under the watchful gaze of Whatever The Fuck Is Up There, and as they leave the next morning, Ray utters a silent thank you for the shelter. It feels like the right thing to do.
Even if it falls on dead ears, it’s gotta count for something.