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The house around them was still and silent, but Neptune caught his brow knitting as he stared around, finding evidence of the people who’d lived here before everything that had happened, the drawings pinned on the fridge, the backpacks on the ground, partially open and spilling notebooks and pencils onto the ground—and frowned with a low sigh before pushing it aside and focusing on Triton.
“The rooms are clear, right?” Neptune forced a grin onto his face and stared down the hallway. Triton nodded.
“Nothing there.”
“Upstairs, then!” Neptune readied his trident and made his way to the stairs.
“I still don’t get why you use that weapon,” Triton suddenly said.
Neptune stared up the stairs, searching for any hint of the undead he knew was there. The house smelled of it, that familiar stench that invaded your senses—and then he remembered that Triton had spoken to him, and grinned wide, hefting his trident high.
“It’s useful!”
“There’s no way it’s useful enough to not just use an actual weapon,” Triton hissed.
“Hey,” Neptune shook his head. “You’ve seen me take down zombies with it! I saved you with it, didn’t I?” He regretted the second part a second later when Triton’s expression spasmed, and instead took a step back. “It’s pretty. And I do like it. That’s all that matters to me.”
Triton didn’t say anything else, just thinned his mouth and started up the stairs. Neptune followed after another moment, something uncertain bubbling up in his gut. It felt like something was going to happen, a thought he couldn’t shake, but finally he pushed it aside as best he could and focused on keeping quiet as they made their way up. A pair of sunglasses sat out on the table on the second floor just beside the stairs, and Neptune made a short, low sound when he saw them.
“Hey, Triton,” Neptune tossed out, picking up the sunglasses and putting them over his eyes. The world around him tinted darker, and he grinned as Triton turned around and stared at him, unamused. “Don’t I look cool?” Triton blinked—and then turned around without a reply, and Neptune sighed, shaking his head—but he kept the sunglasses on, the accessory making a little bit of happiness curl in his heart. And Neptune grasped for every chance at happiness in the world.
“Come on, Triton! Be a little cheerful about things,” he said, a second later.
“We’re in an apocalypse, Neptune. If anything, you are far too cheerful,” Triton rasped.
Neptune just smiled and shrugged. “Someone has to be.”
Triton rolled his eyes and started forward, but Neptune ignored that and instead tightened his grip on his trident as he dropped his hand away from the sunglasses, eyes darting about—and then Triton stepped forward past a door, and through the gap of the hinges Neptune could see movement, and his heart dropped into his stomach. “Triton!” He darted forward and pushed Triton back, and cold, rotting hands grasped at his clothes, at his skin. His trident dropped out of his grasp—and then a white-hot, bone-deep agony sparked in his throat and tore through his veins.
————
“NEPTUNE!”
The knife dropped from his grasp, his breath caught in his chest—and in front of him, the undead pulled away from Neptune’s throat with a high spray of blood. Neptune’s eyes were wide, his mouth opening and closing like he was trying to say something, but the only thing that fell into the air was a series of low pained sounds, the noise finally ripping Triton from his stupor as he ran forward, dipping down in the same motion to rip Neptune’s trident from the floor.
The metal was cold in his grip, unfamiliar—but he still shoved it forward with all of his strength, and it slid through the undead’s face like a knife through melted butter. He shoved the trident forward, and it dropped away from Neptune, dead weight onto the floor—and Triton reached out and caught Neptune as he wavered, falling forward as blood sluggishly pumped from the bloody wound on his throat, a never-ending river of red despite the hand he’d splayed across it. “Neptune,” he gasped out, his thoughts spinning out of control.
“Neptune!” There was no response from Neptune, just another low noise, his eyes gone unfocused, hazy. Triton panicked for another moment, his hands shaking before he finally lowered Neptune completely towards the floor, his head tilting backwards, the sunglasses sliding off completely to clatter onto the ground beside them. He reached out and hooked his fingertips into his bag, dragging it across the floor towards them where it’d fallen off his shoulder when Neptune pushed him aside—pushed him aside to take the bite that should have been his.
His hands were still shaking when he pulled the bandages out of his bag and ripped them out of their packets, and it was only when he pressed them down hard onto Neptune’s throat and watched the blood immediately saturate through that Neptune seemed to finally regain full consciousness, his eyes widening.
“Neptune, you’re going to be fine,” Triton hissed. “Just let me put the bandages on you, and then we need to get out of here, okay? We can find somewhere to hole up, and you’ll—” And then his voice cut off completely. Even if Neptune didn’t die from blood loss, he’d been bitten by one of the undead, and that meant… a unintelligible sound slipped out of him as Triton fully realized that, and it almost fell like the world around him was disappearing, the edges of his vision darker than normal. “Neptune…”
“Shh…” Neptune’s eyes locked onto him, and he smiled, the corners of his mouth wavering as if it was taking all of his energy just to keep it up—and suddenly Triton was somewhere else, and someone else was underneath his hands, blood seeping underneath the bandages as he helplessly tried to stem the blood, knowing all the while that it was useless. “It’s okay, Triton,” and then he coughed, and blood dripped down his chin, and Triton returned to the real world, just as helpless as before.
“No,” he finally said, the word strangled. “You can’t—” What would he do?
Neptune moved his hand, his fingers trembling harshly as he reached for the fallen sunglasses—a noise of absolute pain followed, and Triton felt his eyes widen again, his heart squeezing tight in his chest until it almost felt like a black hole was forming, localized entirely inside of him. He closed his fingertips around one of the arms, and then lifted it. It shook within his grasp, but Triton could see determination in his eyes, almost overtaken by the haze of obvious pain. “You can—” He coughed, hard and harsh, and more blood gushed onto the soaked bandages, seeping through his teeth, dripping down his chin. “You can be co—ol, now, Triton,” and Neptune tried to put the sunglasses onto his face, but couldn’t quite, his hand shaking too much.
Triton shook his head. “No, no,” he repeated, pressing down harder. He had to-He had to stem the bleeding. “Neptune, please, you can’t-“
Neptune gave up on putting the sunglasses over his eyes and instead just dropped them atop his head, still smiling, the smile dipping completely in one corner. “Shh…” he repeated, his hand dropping a second later, like he couldn’t hold it up anymore. “You’ll be fine, Triton,” and his voice disappeared, replaced by a hard wheeze, and then his eyes went distant again, hazy and lifeless in a way they’d never been before, and all Triton could feel was disbelief. He threw away the blood-soaked bandages and applied new ones, and when he dipped his head to press down harder, to stem the bleeding, the sunglasses dropped onto the floor next to him, and finally Triton saw the growing pool of blood beneath them, the sluggish river slowing more and more as the seconds passed.
“No,” he repeated again, his head shaking violently. This wasn’t happening—this wasn’t—
And he was thrown back a year ago, futilely shaking a cooling body, the blood soaking into the floor around them. “Wake up!” He shook again, and their head just lolled back, eyes empty and lifeless. “Wake up!”
“I don’t think they’re going to wake up,” a voice interrupted his thoughts, and Triton turned to see an unfamiliar man staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes. “You should probably stop.” No, no, he wasn’t unfamiliar, that was Neptune, Neptune was standing in front of him and taking him away from—but no, Neptune was on the ground in front of him, more blood pumping out of the bloody wound on his throat with every shake of his shoulders—and suddenly Triton couldn’t think, and he stumbled backwards into the wall, his breath stuttered
—and then he froze.
Neptune lay on the ground in front of him, one hand splayed over his chest where it’d fallen, the other limp on the ground, fingertips stained with blood; his eyes were dull and lifeless, and even a shaft of sunlight bursting in through the hallway window didn’t light them up, his lips pulled into an eternal half-smile. Triton choked suddenly, a strangled sound pulled out of him as he dropped to his knees, the black-hole of his heart growing larger and larger, leaving him almost numb. He crept back towards Neptune, and then his eyes caught on the sunglasses again, stained red by blood. A new pain woke up his chest, and Triton reached out with a hard swallow, closing his grip around the arm of the sunglasses and lifting them up to his face.
The room darkened when he put them on, and he could feel the cold wetness of blood against his temples, but Triton ignored that and instead moved Neptune’s hand, placing it onto his chest beside the other one. He treated it like he was watching someone else do everything, his vision ever-so-slightly blurred, the burn of tears in his eyes and the choked feeling in his throat easy to ignore when he acted like it was someone else feeling that way. But still, the torment lurked on the edge of his consciousness, and Triton closed his eyes for a brief second and felt something slide down his cheek, dripping onto his cracked lips. He wet them—and tasted salt, and ignored it.
Triton turned to look at the undead, Neptune’s trident still sticking out from its face—and for a second, he imagined Neptune’s reaction to it, and his lips twitched—and then he remembered that Neptune would never react that way again, and instead he pushed himself up onto his feet and trailed over, ripping the trident up with more violence than strictly needed.
It was quiet. Triton had often found himself wishing that Neptune would stay silent, but now that the silence was here, it felt like it was choking him, a tight grasp around his throat keeping his breath strangled. The trident shook in his grasp—and then a sound from behind made the tears in his eyes overflow, and Triton sucked in a shaky breath as he turned around to see that Neptune was moving again, had turned over and was facing him, one hand reaching out and grasping, clenching and unclenching.
But Triton knew exactly what was happening, and he readied the trident in hand.
“It’s okay, Neptune,” and his voice was stronger than he expected. “I’ll help you.”
He lifted the trident, aimed, distantly recognized the lifeless blue in Neptune’s eyes, darkened by the tint of the sunglasses—and then looked away as he sunk the three prongs directly into his head, silencing him forever. He didn’t look again, something like ice spreading in his chest as he put everything into his bag, grabbed Neptune’s, and then pulled the trident away before starting down the stairs.
There was nothing left for him here.
Nothing.