When the World Comes In Part One
master post
WINTER
Jon had never really been a morning person, but he was really good at adapting. His alarm went off at 5:23 and he slapped the snooze button. He buried his nose in his blanket and kept his eyes shut for the next seven minutes. He listened to Dylan purr, just a shade louder than the hum of the generators, but he didn't fall back asleep. His body was getting used to his new early hours.
Getting out of bed was rough, even though he was awake enough. It was the cold that made it difficult. Late February in Chicago didn’t do much to inspire coming out from under the covers. He got ready fast and remembered the way his mom would prod him to get going when he was a kid and slow to start. She always said he would warm up if he got moving. Of course the heat in his parents' house had been far more reliable than what he was currently dealing with. Man, he had had it so good. He had no idea.
Dylan stared at him while Jon sat on the edge of his bed to pull on his boots. Jon made a face at her. Dylan yawned.
-
Brendon woke up when Spencer started mumbling in his sleep. Brendon couldn't make out any actual words, only that Spencer sounded unhappy.
He kept his eyes shut, but reached out to rub Spencer's arm, up through his shoulder and back down in what he hoped was a soothing way. Spencer kept talking and Brendon opened his eyes. He said, "You're okay, you're fine. Just a dream, Spence." Spencer mumbled back something about how it was just an arm, they could have it, he didn't really need it.
Brendon pulled his hand away from Spencer. Maybe he was causing the dream just by touching him.
"Hmm?" Spencer asked.
"You were dreaming," Ryan said from behind Spencer. "It's nothing, go back to sleep."
Brendon met Ryan's eyes in the dark and watched him sling an arm over Spencer's body and haul him closer. Spencer sighed and snuggled back into him.
Before rolling over and falling back to sleep, Brendon reached out one more time to squeeze lightly between Spencer's neck and shoulder. "Night," he said. He really hoped Spencer didn't remember his dream in the morning.
-
The best thing about early mornings was how empty the place was. The earliest Jon could remember seeing Pete up and around was maybe 9:00, and Jon was relatively certain that had been a one time thing. At 5:30 the only people who were awake were the people on kitchen duty or line duty, which just so happened to be the exact amount of people that Jon could deal with at a time. People were much less inclined to engage in conversation this side of sunrise.
Joe was making something with bell peppers. Jon could smell it from the stairs, overpowering and strong even from so far away. He couldn't smell the coffee until he got to the kitchen, but there hadn't been a day Jon could remember that Joe forgot the coffee, so he hadn't been worried. Okay, he had kind of been worried, but he was glad it was unfounded.
Joe waved a spatula at him when he pushed through the door, but didn't turn away from the stove. Jon liked Joe.
Jon poured fresh coffee into his to-go mug. It was red and probably used to say Starbucks. He had found it in one of the offices up on the fourth floor when they were clearing the building out. One day Jon wouldn't wonder who it had belonged to, but today was not that day. While Jon retrieved powdered creamer from the cabinet above the coffee maker, Joe dropped some toast on a plate and slid it down the counter towards him. Jon really liked Joe.
Jon slapped the two halves of toast together, peanut butter on one side, honey on the other. On his way out he said, "Tell Greta I said hi."
Joe did the wave thing with the spatula again, said, "Will do," and went back to flipping eggs. Joe was totally this close to becoming Jon's best friend. He’d be in, only Tom existed.
-
It was either hours or minutes after Spencer's bad dream that Brendon had one of his own. Or he thought he did. He was disoriented, but definitely awake and the sound of the dream kept going. Wet, guttural sounds, loud enough to carry through concrete walls.
Brendon hated that he could tell the difference between zombies looking for shit to eat and zombies finding it. He wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear the sound of bones cracking.
How was it even possible that there were people left to eat? Shouldn't the zombie’s food supply be running low? Brendon hoped for the hundredth time that the zombies were finally hungry enough that they'd turned on themselves. Life would be so much easier if the fuckers wound up killing themselves off. Sure, the clean up wouldn't be pretty, but they'd deal.
The alternative - that someone, some actual human person, had made it this far, through months and months of this horrible half-life of survival, only to be eaten in the middle of the night outside an industrial park half way between Summerlin and The Strip - was just a little more than Brendon could handle.
Brendon put flat palms over his ears and pressed tight. He wriggled closer to Spencer and tried to go back to sleep. Even if it didn't work out, Brendon was getting more and more used to surviving on minimal amounts of sleep. Besides, when they were sleeping, Ryan and Spencer both seemed...nicer than they did during the day. Not that he had been much of a pleasure to be around lately either. But like this, with Spencer close and Ryan's hand tucked up near his chest, Brendon felt marginally better.
-
There were about a hundred yards of open space between the cluster of buildings they were using and the electric fence. Jon lit a cigarette as he walked through it. He didn't see anyone familiar on his way out, but he wasn't looking all that hard.
Jon liked this part of his day best, the part where it was quiet and he was outside, but he didn't have to be alert enough to kill anything yet. Jon reached the gate and loitered for a minute, finishing his cigarette. When he stomped it out, there was a buzz, and whoever it was who was monitoring the fence from on high let him out.
Theoretically, Jon wasn't supposed to patrol on his own, but save for one isolated incident it had been ages since anyone had questioned him about it. Besides, he kept finding his way back, day after day, bite free and ready for dinner.
Jon scratched at his beard. It was getting long again. He wouldn't give a shit, only it was kind of irritating; the whole point of the beard was so he’d have one less thing to annoy him, but it wasn't really working out that way.
Tom never scratched at his beard. Fucker.
Then, as though he’d conjured him out of sheer annoyance, Jon saw Tom crest a pile of rubble and head straight for him. Sean wasn't far behind, which wasn't altogether unusual. Where one was, the other generally followed.
Jon lifted his hand in a wave and squinted against the rising sun. Tom turned his own wave into a gesture, pointing out a bit of unbroken concrete down and to the left of the rubble pile. Jon scanned the area behind them. They were out in the open, but he couldn't see or hear anything worrisome, so he pointed his shot gun at the same area and they met in the middle.
Jon's voice felt scratchy and unused when he said hello. Tom didn't answer, just smiled at him closed mouthed and snagged a sip of coffee. Jon held out his hand until Tom put the mug back where it belonged.
"There's something going on off of 18th," Sean said. He followed it up with a yawn. Tom and Sean had been on the night shift for a while. Maybe Jon would offer to switch. Pete probably wouldn't go for it because of the whole lone killer thing Jon was cultivating, but he didn't mind sleeping though the day. It couldn't hurt to ask.
"Yeah," Tom agreed. "The zombie hoard is congregating. Because that's not unnerving."
"You're unnerving," Sean said.
Jon looked at Tom look at Sean, and the moment stretched out long and quiet until Tom smiled, small and toothy, and said, "You like that I'm unnerving."
Sean started to say something, some retort that was probably half flirting, half goading, but then his eyes slid left and he reached for his gun.
Jon turned on his feet, and without thinking hurled his coffee at the figure stumbling toward them. The kid couldn't have been more than fourteen, back when he was a kid, and he was gaunt and hungry looking - he went down like a sack of bricks. Or like a zombie beaned in the temple with a travel coffee mug.
They were all quiet for a minute, taking in the stunned expression on its face. Huh, Jon thought, he wasn't aware they could look stunned. Jon lifted his shot gun and shot him in the head. He didn't even realize that Sean and Tom had also opened fire until they all stopped shooting.
Tom looked at Jon, then Sean, than back at Jon. His mouth twitched, trying to hold back a smile or laughter. Jon rolled his eyes, because shit.
"That must've been a killer cup of coffee," Tom said.
Jon pinched at his nose. He was never going to live throwing his coffee at a zombie down. By the time he got home, Jon bet everyone Tom came in contact with would know some version of the story. Also damn, he had really liked that mug. That mug that was now covered in decaying zombie goo.
-
Brendon woke up to the sound of Spencer muttering again, only this time it didn't sound so much like scared muttering as bitchy, angry muttering. Brendon heard the telltale hiss of the propane stove and the tinny sound of the metal as Spencer tried to get it to stand up straight rather than list to the left like it always did.
We're almost out of propane," Spencer said tonelessly.
Brendon wondered if he remembered his dream, but he didn't want to ask. Ryan stared at him as he craned his neck back to look at Spencer without rolling over.
"You twitch in your sleep," Ryan said, flat and mean. Oh, good, they were starting first thing in the morning today.
"Yeah, well you’re a dick." Brendon didn't wait around for an answer; he just rolled off the mattress and headed out to take a piss. Maybe he could piss Spencer off too. Spencer hated it when anyone went outside alone.
On his way out, Brendon remembered the things he had heard in the night. In the clear light of morning, the only trace the scuffle had left was a wet bloody patch of ground around the side of the building. Brendon stared at it for a minute, and then he went back inside.
-
They key to patrolling alone was to find someplace high and hidden and stick around for awhile. Some place where he could see, but not be seen.
Jon wasn't especially interested in killing zombies. He wasn't especially interested in killing period. Which was good, because the point of patrolling was not killing. The point of patrolling was to bring survivors in safely. Which, okay, there was definitely some zombie killing involved, but if all he did all day was pick off the living dead, Jon would be significantly less interested in the position.
The reason Jon even had a job, and he used the term loosely, was that people - real people, the kind who hadn't died and come back to life - kept coming. Somehow, they had grown from tiny, divided clusters of local survivors, to a place people were trying to get.
Jon knew there wasn't a whole lot he was good at. He wasn't an idea guy, like Pete. Or a logistics guy like Patrick. He couldn't make shit grow, like Greta, or cook it like Joe. He was never going to be good at cheering people up or making them want to live another day in this particular hell. There were really only three things Jon excelled at: he could play some decent guitar, he won at scrabble more often than he lost, and during a zombie crises he could keep people safe just long enough to get them home.
So that's what he did.
He went out into the big, bad world every day and he watched the road, and he tried to protect strangers from zombies. That was his job, and he tried to do it right. Sure, there were better, easier, less likely to get you killed jobs, but. Stick to what you’re best at and all that.
At least it wasn't the dead of winter anymore, the city piled high with snow and no plows to push it away. There had been weeks on end where he could only go out a few hours at a time, if at all.
It was extremely difficult to run for your life all bundled up in snow pants and a parka. It was extremely difficult to do anything at all, really. Jon had stayed close to home those days.
But despite the inhospitable weather, people had kept coming to Chicago. Fewer at a time and not nearly as often, but they still came. So Jon still went out and tried to find them. The thing that made him venture out was more blind determination than anything else. That and he had to do something that wasn’t holing up in his room and talking to Dylan all day. Dylan had started to get annoyed, Jon could tell.
There had been one stretch of days when, because of a particularly bad blizzard, no one had been able to go out at all. Jon probably would have stupidly tried, but Pete nipped that in the bud. Jon went stir crazy in his room until Tom dragged him down to the kitchen where it was warm and full and loud.
Jon sat at the edges and drank his Irish hot chocolate (no really, Joe was amazing) and listened as Sean laughed out a story about a zombie stuck in a snowdrift like a car, backing up and going forward again and again without ever getting anywhere.
The conversation devolved quickly from there. Jon didn’t talk much, but it was enough to sit back and listen to Pete debate the merits of surviving the zombie apocalypse in a location were the natural process of decaying was slowed by the weather, because yes, the zombies would probably last longer, but at least they were nicer to look at and didn’t smell as bad as they could.
The next morning it had been clear and cold and the snow was high and bright, and Jon had gone out into it.
-
Spencer missed the Weather Channel.
He had never given a damn about it before, but now he had all this time to think about how great it was. You just turned it on and all that information was right there. For instance, Spencer was sure that if he had access to the Weather Channel, he would know in under three minutes whether or not there was a blizzard between Vegas and Chicago. Even better, he would know whether or not there was going to be one in the next seven to ten days.
Technically, before the end of the world as they knew it, he could have gotten this information from any number of sources: the internet, his phone, a newspaper. Why he chose to fixate on the Weather Channel was anyone's guess. He supposed it was frivolous. An entire channel devoted to the weather. It was just kind of weird in retrospect.
It was something to think about, anyway, something that wasn't their next meal and how they were going to get it without succumbing to a violent death.
So, the Weather Channel. The Weather Channel and Chicago were always at the front of his mind. Mostly Chicago, though. He wanted it to be real, not just some rumor that had spread because people needed something to work towards.
They talked about heading south and bypassing the Rockies. It would take longer, but it would be safer, weather wise. Of course, maybe they'd get eaten in Albuquerque and then the weather in Denver wouldn't matter.
Vegas was warm. Vegas was always warm, even when it was cool, but it was starting to get warmer. And with the weather so pleasant, it became hard to remember why they had to wait. Especially when nothing else was pleasant. Nothing at all.
Spencer crumpled a pop tart wrapper in his hand and chucked it towards the box they were currently using as a trash can. He missed. Ryan sighed and rolled away from him on the mattress. It was an annoyed, passive-aggressive sigh. Spencer fought the urge to kick out at him; bring some aggressive-aggressive into the mix that was their current standoff.
"Stop thinking about the Weather Channel," Brendon said. He was slumped low on the couch with his legs spread, hogging the space that no one shared with him. He bounced his leg and stared at Spencer over his crossword book. "Seriously. Stop it."
There used to be affection in Brendon's voice when someone brought up the weather channel thing (Spencer maybe talked about it more than was strictly necessary, but really, they had no idea how good they had it before people started dying and trying to eat them), but now it sounded like thinly veiled irritation.
On some level Spencer knew it wasn't personal. They couldn't go anywhere, they couldn't do anything. There were monsters outside. Every moment of every day they were either really bored or running for their lives. It was hard to come down from that, so the quieter days were filled with some strange zombie induced cabin fever that none of them could shake.
But in the thick of it, Spencer found it hard to think about their situation in rational terms. He wanted to lash out, maybe kick and scream and throw a tantrum. And if the tight way Ryan had started holding himself was any indication, or the way Brendon's constant movement had a new and frantic edge, Spencer wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Spencer stared at the ceiling of their shitty ass giant box of a warehouse. He let his eyes follow a crack all the way down to the high, filthy windows. It was getting dark and the sky was pale purple through the grimy film. He shut his eyes, just to have something to do.
It wasn't just cabin fever. It wasn't just gearing up to leave, but never actually going anywhere. There was something else, something nagging and raw and scary. Not scarier than zombies, maybe, but scary nevertheless.
Every time Brendon touched him, because despite all the frustration and irritability Brendon was still a toucher, Spencer had the twin urges to push him as far away as he could or pull him close enough to crush. The half way gesture of Brendon's leg against his or his hand playing with his sleeve was slowly driving him crazy.
And then there was Ryan. With Ryan it was different. Ryan touched less when he got tense. He got quiet and spiteful. Spencer knew he chose his limited words with the intention that they be as cutting as humanly possible. It was infuriating, but Spencer couldn't stop baiting him, waiting for the moment when Ryan's jaw would tense and his mouth would thin out and his eyes would flash, and all that effort Ryan had made to keep himself distant and above the childish antics of Spencer and Brendon was suddenly gone. It made Spencer's heart race. He liked it, knowing he could eventually get to Ryan.
Spencer was pretty fucked up.
Spencer pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and let out a tiny frustrated groan.
"Jesus," Ryan said, "can you please just shut up?"
Spencer tasted something bitter in the back of his throat. He had to do something.
It was easy to get in Ryan's face. They were so close already, only a few feet of ratty mattress between them. He pushed at Ryan's shoulder until Ryan flailed his arm and swatted out at Spencer. It wasn't long before Ryan sat up.
"What?" Ryan asked through clenched teeth.
The problem was that Spencer didn't actually know what.
Spencer looked past Ryan's ear and glanced at Brendon. He looked small and far away on the couch, but Spencer saw the way he was chewing on his bottom lip and how he had stopped slouching in favor of leaning forward, toward Ryan and him. His eyes were wide in a way that spurred Spencer on. Like maybe he could garner a response from both of them and shift the unhappy stalemate the three of them found themselves in. Spencer licked his lips.
-
It had been quiet for hours; no sign of people, real or otherwise. Jon lit another cigarette, his third, not that he was keeping track, and looked east. He had a nice view from so high. The day was oddly clear for late winter and Jon could feel the way Spring was just around the corner. Real Spring. He could see slices of lake between buildings, empty and blue-grey, and he wondered if it would ever feel normal, not seeing boats or activity out there. He didn't know whether or not he wanted it to.
Jon closed his eyes and listened, but he couldn't hear anything except the wind. There was something percolating at the back of his mind, something he wanted to check out. He thought he had enough time to do it, but he wanted to be sure.
Jon tended not to wear a watch, but the light was usually a good indicator of when he should pack it up and head in. He knew from experience that he had an hour, maybe two, before Pete started worrying and sent someone after him. Or came after him himself.
He knew because it had happened before. Only once, but it had been entirely Jon's fault. He had dozed off. Whenever he thought about it he felt a nauseating mix of guilt and overwhelming embarrassment. He didn't have an excuse for it, he hadn't changed his shift or slept poorly the night before, he had just been warm in his jacket and his back had been covered by a convenient wall. It was stupid and he was ashamed and, thus far, he hadn't let it happen again.
Ashlee had found him, and Pete had been right behind her. Ashlee grinned and held out her hand to help Jon up. Pete made some off-hand comment about sleeping on the job, but he was pretty friendly about it. Probably too friendly, considering. Pete liked Jon, and even if Jon wasn't really clear on why in the first place, he hated to give Pete a reason to change his mind.
Pete didn't generally do any patrolling, mostly because he was really, amazingly terrible at it. For whatever reason, Pete had the tendency to attract any number of mishaps. Attracting mishaps wouldn't be a problem normally, but zombie apocalypses tended to skew normal. Zombie apocalypses turned mishaps into a far more serious business. So when Pete and Ashlee came to rescue Jon, of course they had had a run in with some zombies on their way home.
They got cornered in an industrial area, some tiny alley Jon had never seen, with nothing behind them but a couple of dumpsters that hadn't been emptied in months. It smelled so bad that for a moment Jon had paused and actually weighed his options. Zombies and almost certain death behind him, really old garbage in front of him. It wasn't really a choice, but man it stank.
Ashlee sighed in Pete's general direction and pushed him back towards the dumpsters. She told him, "Start climbing," while she and Jon slowed the zombie hoard with as many shots to the head as they could manage. But there were only two of them (three, of you counted Pete's well intentioned but horribly aimed shots from the top of the dumpster) and an ever growing number of zombies pressing in close and cutting off their only escape. Pete hauled Ashlee up first, and then together they managed to get Jon up, too, all while decaying yet driven hands scrambled at his ankles.
It was not Jon's fondest memory. Nor was the part where they wound up hanging out on the roof surrounded by zombies on all sides trying to figure out a way home. It was really hard to think critically while surrounded by hungry moaning undead.
The plan they came up with was not exactly the best plan ever. Mostly because it involved using each of them as zombie bait. It was Jon's job to draw the zombies to the front of the building by standing close to the edge of the roof, visible and appetizing. Pete and Ashlee could then climb down the back and run around to the front, distracting the zombies long enough to allow Jon to get down.
It was a really stupid plan, and Jon really hated running for his life, but it had worked. No one had died.
Pete had never admonished him for the fuck up, but he did stick him on patrol with Andy for like a week. Jon guessed that was punishment enough. Jon suspected that Andy could actually talk the ear of a zombie, about, like, the end of civilization, if only it weren’t for that pesky longing for brains thing.
Since Jon wasn't looking for a repeat performance, he was always very careful about coming back at a reasonable hour.
Jon looked at the sky again. He should have just enough time to do what he wanted.
-
When Spencer moved in, it didn't take Ryan any time at all to kiss back. There was no stunned moment where either of them froze or tried to work out what was going on. Ryan opened up immediately and kissed back. Hard. It was shocking the way neither of them was shocked.
Ryan looked skinny, was skinny, but he was also strong and kind of pushy. Spencer knew all of this, only he had never been on the receiving end of all that push and drive in this particular way.
Ryan wasn't graceful about it, but he managed to lean them back enough so that with just a few adjustments Spencer was flat on the mattress with his thighs bracketing Ryan's narrow hips.
Spencer couldn't see anything that wasn't Ryan, couldn't hear anything that wasn't the sounds they made, couldn't think of anything but Ryan and drawing him closer and keeping him there.
And then something broke through, loud enough that he felt Ryan jolt above him. Spencer hauled him back in by the back of his neck, never giving either of them the time to think about loud footsteps and slamming doors.
God, he was so selfish and he knew it and he felt guilty about it, but he didn't want to stop, not yet. It was slipping away, though, no matter how much he scrambled for it.
Ryan broke the kiss and exhaled against Spencer's cheek. "Brendon?" he said. He spoke it like a question, the lilt at the end clear even though his voice was rough. Spencer shuddered, like he wanted so much his body couldn't contain it. Brendon and Ryan and everything.
Ryan extracted himself from Spencer's grip. He sat apart from Spencer, and Spencer watched as he fought to catch his breath. Finally, Ryan lifted his head to meet Spencer's eyes.
"Brendon," Spencer answered.
Spencer had done it all wrong. He honestly wasn't sure how doing it right looked, but it certainly wasn't this.
-
Jon kept quiet on his feet and close to buildings. The days were still on the short side and it was getting late enough and dark enough that only thin light filtered down to street level. His best bet was to stick to the shadows where he could hide and thank god that he knew the city better now than he ever had before.
There weren't any zombies on 18th. At least none that Jon could see or hear. They had moved.
He had no idea if it was good news or bad news that they weren't there. Like, in theory, no zombies should always be good news, but Jon tended to lean towards all news is bad news since zombies, you know, existed at all.
Jon threw caution to the wind and walked out into the middle of the street to see what he could see. There was nothing in either direction.
Jon started walking.
-
There were about a billion things that Brendon wanted that he couldn't have. He wanted ice cream. He wanted his family to not be dead. He wanted to go outside and know that something wouldn't try and eat him alive. He wanted cheese. And, like, a soda that was actually cold, maybe with ice cubes and everything.
He wanted Spencer. He wanted Ryan.
And fine. He could deal with everything else. He had no control over his access to ice anymore, and that made it easier to accept the lack of it. And if one day he ran into a cow and instructions on how to age cheese, well maybe then he could have some cheddar in his life again. Until that day, he could make do. He could roll with death because what was the alternative? He had become zen with the limited scope of his world, and despite occasional wallowings into what might have been, he was doing remarkably well for a guy dealing with the end of the world. Sure, he was cranky a lot of the time, but he was stuck in a warehouse with Ryan Ross, it was only to be expected.
What he couldn't handle was the shit that was within his grasp that he couldn't have anyway. Because fate or god or who the fuck ever hated him. It was the furthest thing from fair.
He knew it was coming. He fucking knew it. They'd been circling each other for days, and idiot that he was, Brendon had imagined himself into their orbit.
Brendon paced the tiny office. He felt stupid and disappointed and very, very lonely. And angry, probably more angry than anything else. Primarily with himself. So angry that he could hardly keep it all in. He shook with it.
He braced his hands on the desk and exhaled. Then he took a deep breath and did it again.
He didn't have it wrong. He couldn't have it wrong.
He hadn't imagined it and whatever he was feeling, it wasn't just run-off from the sparks flying between Spencer and Ryan.
He saw the way Spencer looked at him. It was the same way he looked at Ryan. He saw the way Ryan had stopped looking at him.
He had no idea why he had gotten up and walked away. And now that he was safely tucked away in a tiny office in a shitty warehouse, he had no idea how he was going to make himself go out there and ask.
He drummed his fingers on the old desk and cracked his toes in his shoes. He looked at the clock on the wall. It was one of those right twice a day models that hadn't quite given itself over to death yet. The second hand made weak, abortive movements that ticked off seconds but never really got anywhere.
Brendon made a decision. He could figure out how to ask when he got out there.
He opened the door harder than he expected, his hand-eye coordination lost to nerves or adrenaline or what the fuck ever. It swung inward and Brendon had to step back out of the way of its arc. It hit the office wall with a thud.
Ryan stood outside with his hand in the air mid-knock. He looked half deer in the headlights, half amused at Brendon's plight with the door. It was a very strange look. Ryan’s mouth was shiny and he used the back of his hand to wipe it and man, Brendon wanted him so much. Had for almost as long as he’d known him.
"Hey," Brendon said, a touch breathless. He didn't give Ryan an opportunity to respond. Instead he took two strides forward, went on his toes, and kissed him.
He guessed that was one way to ask.
Brendon's hands were somehow on Ryan's chest. He kept them there and curled his fingers into Ryan’s shirt when he pulled back. He still didn’t ask, not with words, anyway, but Ryan answered anyway. He just said, "Brendon," and leaned carefully back in. It was exactly the answer Brendon wanted most.
From so close, he could feel Ryan's heart beat, wild and erratic. He could feel the way Ryan touched him like he had thought about it for a while. It was intoxicating. Brendon couldn’t even think.
There was only one thing missing.
"Fuck," Ryan said, mush-mouthed into Brendon's cheek, "doesn't anyone want to talk anymore? We can't just make out every time someone's pissed at me."
"Why not?" Brendon tilted his head back and panted into the air while Ryan grazed his teeth over his throat.
"Okay," Ryan said as he found Brendon's mouth again. It seemed like a good enough plan to Brendon. Except for that one tiny, Spencer-shaped thing he had yet to work out.
Brendon found Ryan's hand with his and looped their fingers together. He squeezed when he broke the kiss. Brendon bit at where his mouth felt tender and stared at Ryan. He glanced at where Spencer still sat and Ryan turned to follow his gaze.
He took Ryan with him to the edge of the mattress, refusing to let go of his hand. Spencer tilted his head up to look at them. He looked considerably less miserable than he had the last few days, weeks, whatever.
"I kissed Ryan," Brendon said.
Spencer nodded. "I saw," he said.
"And you kissed Ryan."
"I did." Spencer smiled. It was one of the big ones that Brendon hadn't seen in ages. He had forgotten, had it always left him weak-kneed and sort of fluttery?
Spencer curled his hand around Brendon's ankle and pushed down his sock to run his thumb over the knobby bone. Brendon was glad he knew where this was going, and probably how it would end, but Jesus, Spencer was making it hard for him to breathe.
"And I-" Brendon started.
"Oh my god," Ryan interrupted. "Stop torturing each other and make out already."
It was great how Ryan thought he was helping, but really wasn't. At all. "I was getting around to it," Brendon said through clenched teeth.
Spencer's eyes were still pretty well locked on Brendon's. Brendon had the genius idea that if he kissed him, Spencer would probably close them and then Brendon would feel less scrutinized. Probably. Coming on to someone was kind of hard work. Or maybe Brendon was just really bad at it.
Ryan sat on the mattress, and because he was still hanging on to Brendon's hand, he pulled him down with him. There, their mouths were at least at a similar level now.
"Spence?"
"Yeah?"
"It's. See, um-"
"Jesus, he wants to kiss you, you want to kiss him, do it already," Ryan said impatiently.
"Ryan?" Spencer said, still looking at Brendon.
"What?" Ryan said.
"Shut up or you can't watch."
"What's there to watch?" Ryan muttered, but Spencer glared and Ryan stopped talking.
Brendon cupped Spencer's cheek, sweaty palmed and shaky. "You have no idea how nervous I am right now," he said.
"Yeah, I kind of do." Spencer laughed softly and smiled before dropping his eyes to Brendon’s mouth.
Brendon leaned in and parted his mouth before rocking back on his rear end. "I know, right? It's like we waited too long, talked about it too much. Now there's all this pressure..."
Ryan flopped back on his back in exasperation, and Brendon started to laugh. Spencer leaned forward and cut Brendon's laugh off with his mouth.
Brendon made a muffled, surprised noise and shut his eyes. He was nervous, he hadn't just been baiting Ryan, though that was an added bonus. Spencer put a hand on his thigh and squeezed rhythmically until Brendon opened his mouth and kissed back.
It wasn't the same kind of frantic, desperate, tension breaking kiss Brendon had had with Ryan, but it still made his face heat up. It still felt good. Mostly, though, it felt right. It felt like finally Brendon had something now, rather than something to look forward to.
The mattress dipped and Brendon felt Ryan get closer, and then Ryan put his hand on Brendon’s hip and his mouth on Brendon’s neck. Brendon couldn’t bite back the sounds he made, what with his mouth being kind of occupied by Spencer’s. Spencer made a noise back, a pleased little hum, as he pushed Brendon back and down, away from Ryan.
“Okay, my turn now,” Ryan said, obviously impatient. Again.
Brendon made a negative noise into Spencer’s mouth, but Spencer actually pulled back enough to say, “You had your turn.”
“Psssh,” Ryan said, “It’s not a turn if you both kissed me first.”
Brendon pushed Spencer’s shirt up to get at his skin. Spencer groaned and rolled his hips. Brendon heard Ryan’s breath catch, it was pretty hot.
“Need I remind you that you both totally want me more. Remember? I’m the guy you can’t keep your hands off. Come on.”
Brendon started laughing. Spencer grinned down at him. Brendon couldn’t remember being this happy ever, and definitely not since the whole zombie thing had started.
“No seriously,” Ryan went on, “both of you, separately, like, attacked me with your mouths. You should think about doing it again.”
Spencer rolled his head to look at Ryan who was pouting just out of reach. “You were closer,” Spencer said. “And more annoying at the time.”
Ryan looked at Spencer, then at Brendon. “It’s true,” Brendon said, “Right place, right time.”
“You both suck,” Ryan said.
“Maybe,” Spencer said, “but you’ll never know if you don’t get in here. Hurry it up, we could all die tomorrow.”
-
If Jon were going to write a book called How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse in 5 Easy Steps, it would go a little something like this:
1. Visit your childhood home for the weekend. Be sure your mother has started using your former bedroom as a storage unit for her many crafts so you can sleep on the pull-out couch in the basement/den.
2. Make sure you lock the door because you're vaguely thinking of jerking off later. It is completely okay if, instead of jerking off, you drink most of your dad's mini-fridge beer and watch late night TV until you fall asleep.
3. Sleep late. This is key. You'll miss your dad’s awesome waffles, but you’ll also miss being turned by the new neighborhood zombies. Also, good thing you locked that door and left the TV on.
4. Stay put. When your family comes downstairs looking for tasty, tasty brains to eat you'll probably need some time to freak out a little. You can hide in the closet, cower behind the couch. Either will do. You can use this time to multi-task. Call everyone you know. They probably won't answer because phones won’t actually work. That and by this point everyone you know is either a zombie or just plain dead. Keep trying though; it helps to have something to do.
5. Kill your family. All of them. There will come a time, and that time will come much too soon, that a locked door won’t be able to save you. Use whatever you can find. Tell yourself that the lady out there isn’t your mom anymore, even if she’s still wearing that necklace you bought her for Mother’s Day when you were eight. Tell yourself your brother wouldn’t want to go on as a zombie, neither would your sister-in-law. None of this will help in either the long run or short run, but you should probably give it a try anyway.
6. Turn inward, become reclusive, kill a lot of zombies and save a couple people. Don’t make new friends because everyone’s on borrowed time and you’ll have to give them back eventually.
He’d have to work on the title, probably. There was one step too many. And maybe the list wasn’t quite book length either. Maybe pamphlets would be better.
Theoretically he could have a sublist of Shit Jon Walker Did After He Survived the Zombie Apocalypse That Should Have Gotten Him Killed But Somehow Didn’t. He could include things like retrieve his cat from his apartment, find his best friend, and generally go out into the zombie fray for no other reason than to have something to do all day. And that was just for starters.
What would be really great though, was if instead of composing lists in his head he could stop thinking about it altogether. That would be a better alternative.
But Jon did think about it. All the time. And he kept adding things to the sublist. He would probably have to put ‘walking down the middle of an empty Chicago street straight towards a theoretical zombie hoard with nothing but a shot gun to keep him safe from harm’ pretty high on the Stupid Shit list.
Jon heard the zombies before he saw them. In that sense, it was pretty par for the course. Those fuckers were loud. What was decidedly not par for the course was the sheer amount of them. He still wasn’t close enough to see, but from the volume Jon figured that there were more zombies in front of him than he had encountered before. Quite a bit more.
He had stopped walking. He didn’t know when, but he did know that standing around while zombies apparently massed was not necessarily a brilliant idea.
He’d have to get closer if he wanted to see anything, but he’d have to get higher, too. And he definitely needed some sort of wall between the hoard and himself since today didn’t feel like all that great a day to get torn limb from limb.
He went into the Bank of America by default. It was the first unlocked door he tried, and it looked at least twenty or so stories high. He would be able to get a decent view from one of the top floors, or failing that, the roof.
It never got less creepy, stealing through abandoned buildings that were once bustling. Jon slung his shotgun over his shoulder and dug out a flashlight from the bottom of his back pack.
His footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell and he trailed his hand up the bare white wall. From here, inside, he could almost pretend everything was normal outside. That people were going to work or watching their kids build snowmen in the yard. But if it was normal outside, there’d be florescent lights glowing overhead and he wouldn’t be in a long empty stairwell to begin with.
As he passed, Jon aimed his flashlight at each of the numbers on each of the doors. It took forever to get to the 20th floor. Maybe he was in better shape than he had ever been, slimmer and fitter and able to run further faster, but he was still breathless when he tried the door.
It wasn’t quite so dark outside of the stairwell. The last of the afternoon sun peeked through the slanted blinds. Jon pocketed his flashlight and weaved through cubicles until he got close enough to peer out the window.
Jon stared. He stared and stared and still it didn’t make sense. He fumbled for the string to pull up the blinds, never taking his eyes off the street below.
When he finally got the blinds up, Jon pressed his fingers to the glass and exhaled. The window fogged and cleared and Jon saw it all again. From so high and so far back, he could barely pick out individuals. From so high, he couldn’t even tell just how many zombies he was looking at because he had never seen so many in the same place before. He had maybe never seen so many separately before, either. It was a lot of fucking zombies. They were mashed together, moving as one. It was like seeing a lake or the ocean from a plane, like seeing the waves coursing from above.
Jon needed to get back. He needed to tell someone. He needed to tell Pete.
-
That night when Brendon woke up, it wasn’t to the sound of Spencer having a nightmare. It wasn’t to the sound of anything, really, unless it was Ryan’s light snoring or Spencer’s even breathing. He didn’t stay awake long, just long enough to remember how his crappy day had ended not so crappy. Okay, long enough to lean over and kiss Spencer’s cheek.
Spencer said, “Dork.”
Brendon said, “Whatever.” Yep, pretty great day.
part two
WINTER
Jon had never really been a morning person, but he was really good at adapting. His alarm went off at 5:23 and he slapped the snooze button. He buried his nose in his blanket and kept his eyes shut for the next seven minutes. He listened to Dylan purr, just a shade louder than the hum of the generators, but he didn't fall back asleep. His body was getting used to his new early hours.
Getting out of bed was rough, even though he was awake enough. It was the cold that made it difficult. Late February in Chicago didn’t do much to inspire coming out from under the covers. He got ready fast and remembered the way his mom would prod him to get going when he was a kid and slow to start. She always said he would warm up if he got moving. Of course the heat in his parents' house had been far more reliable than what he was currently dealing with. Man, he had had it so good. He had no idea.
Dylan stared at him while Jon sat on the edge of his bed to pull on his boots. Jon made a face at her. Dylan yawned.
-
Brendon woke up when Spencer started mumbling in his sleep. Brendon couldn't make out any actual words, only that Spencer sounded unhappy.
He kept his eyes shut, but reached out to rub Spencer's arm, up through his shoulder and back down in what he hoped was a soothing way. Spencer kept talking and Brendon opened his eyes. He said, "You're okay, you're fine. Just a dream, Spence." Spencer mumbled back something about how it was just an arm, they could have it, he didn't really need it.
Brendon pulled his hand away from Spencer. Maybe he was causing the dream just by touching him.
"Hmm?" Spencer asked.
"You were dreaming," Ryan said from behind Spencer. "It's nothing, go back to sleep."
Brendon met Ryan's eyes in the dark and watched him sling an arm over Spencer's body and haul him closer. Spencer sighed and snuggled back into him.
Before rolling over and falling back to sleep, Brendon reached out one more time to squeeze lightly between Spencer's neck and shoulder. "Night," he said. He really hoped Spencer didn't remember his dream in the morning.
-
The best thing about early mornings was how empty the place was. The earliest Jon could remember seeing Pete up and around was maybe 9:00, and Jon was relatively certain that had been a one time thing. At 5:30 the only people who were awake were the people on kitchen duty or line duty, which just so happened to be the exact amount of people that Jon could deal with at a time. People were much less inclined to engage in conversation this side of sunrise.
Joe was making something with bell peppers. Jon could smell it from the stairs, overpowering and strong even from so far away. He couldn't smell the coffee until he got to the kitchen, but there hadn't been a day Jon could remember that Joe forgot the coffee, so he hadn't been worried. Okay, he had kind of been worried, but he was glad it was unfounded.
Joe waved a spatula at him when he pushed through the door, but didn't turn away from the stove. Jon liked Joe.
Jon poured fresh coffee into his to-go mug. It was red and probably used to say Starbucks. He had found it in one of the offices up on the fourth floor when they were clearing the building out. One day Jon wouldn't wonder who it had belonged to, but today was not that day. While Jon retrieved powdered creamer from the cabinet above the coffee maker, Joe dropped some toast on a plate and slid it down the counter towards him. Jon really liked Joe.
Jon slapped the two halves of toast together, peanut butter on one side, honey on the other. On his way out he said, "Tell Greta I said hi."
Joe did the wave thing with the spatula again, said, "Will do," and went back to flipping eggs. Joe was totally this close to becoming Jon's best friend. He’d be in, only Tom existed.
-
It was either hours or minutes after Spencer's bad dream that Brendon had one of his own. Or he thought he did. He was disoriented, but definitely awake and the sound of the dream kept going. Wet, guttural sounds, loud enough to carry through concrete walls.
Brendon hated that he could tell the difference between zombies looking for shit to eat and zombies finding it. He wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear the sound of bones cracking.
How was it even possible that there were people left to eat? Shouldn't the zombie’s food supply be running low? Brendon hoped for the hundredth time that the zombies were finally hungry enough that they'd turned on themselves. Life would be so much easier if the fuckers wound up killing themselves off. Sure, the clean up wouldn't be pretty, but they'd deal.
The alternative - that someone, some actual human person, had made it this far, through months and months of this horrible half-life of survival, only to be eaten in the middle of the night outside an industrial park half way between Summerlin and The Strip - was just a little more than Brendon could handle.
Brendon put flat palms over his ears and pressed tight. He wriggled closer to Spencer and tried to go back to sleep. Even if it didn't work out, Brendon was getting more and more used to surviving on minimal amounts of sleep. Besides, when they were sleeping, Ryan and Spencer both seemed...nicer than they did during the day. Not that he had been much of a pleasure to be around lately either. But like this, with Spencer close and Ryan's hand tucked up near his chest, Brendon felt marginally better.
-
There were about a hundred yards of open space between the cluster of buildings they were using and the electric fence. Jon lit a cigarette as he walked through it. He didn't see anyone familiar on his way out, but he wasn't looking all that hard.
Jon liked this part of his day best, the part where it was quiet and he was outside, but he didn't have to be alert enough to kill anything yet. Jon reached the gate and loitered for a minute, finishing his cigarette. When he stomped it out, there was a buzz, and whoever it was who was monitoring the fence from on high let him out.
Theoretically, Jon wasn't supposed to patrol on his own, but save for one isolated incident it had been ages since anyone had questioned him about it. Besides, he kept finding his way back, day after day, bite free and ready for dinner.
Jon scratched at his beard. It was getting long again. He wouldn't give a shit, only it was kind of irritating; the whole point of the beard was so he’d have one less thing to annoy him, but it wasn't really working out that way.
Tom never scratched at his beard. Fucker.
Then, as though he’d conjured him out of sheer annoyance, Jon saw Tom crest a pile of rubble and head straight for him. Sean wasn't far behind, which wasn't altogether unusual. Where one was, the other generally followed.
Jon lifted his hand in a wave and squinted against the rising sun. Tom turned his own wave into a gesture, pointing out a bit of unbroken concrete down and to the left of the rubble pile. Jon scanned the area behind them. They were out in the open, but he couldn't see or hear anything worrisome, so he pointed his shot gun at the same area and they met in the middle.
Jon's voice felt scratchy and unused when he said hello. Tom didn't answer, just smiled at him closed mouthed and snagged a sip of coffee. Jon held out his hand until Tom put the mug back where it belonged.
"There's something going on off of 18th," Sean said. He followed it up with a yawn. Tom and Sean had been on the night shift for a while. Maybe Jon would offer to switch. Pete probably wouldn't go for it because of the whole lone killer thing Jon was cultivating, but he didn't mind sleeping though the day. It couldn't hurt to ask.
"Yeah," Tom agreed. "The zombie hoard is congregating. Because that's not unnerving."
"You're unnerving," Sean said.
Jon looked at Tom look at Sean, and the moment stretched out long and quiet until Tom smiled, small and toothy, and said, "You like that I'm unnerving."
Sean started to say something, some retort that was probably half flirting, half goading, but then his eyes slid left and he reached for his gun.
Jon turned on his feet, and without thinking hurled his coffee at the figure stumbling toward them. The kid couldn't have been more than fourteen, back when he was a kid, and he was gaunt and hungry looking - he went down like a sack of bricks. Or like a zombie beaned in the temple with a travel coffee mug.
They were all quiet for a minute, taking in the stunned expression on its face. Huh, Jon thought, he wasn't aware they could look stunned. Jon lifted his shot gun and shot him in the head. He didn't even realize that Sean and Tom had also opened fire until they all stopped shooting.
Tom looked at Jon, then Sean, than back at Jon. His mouth twitched, trying to hold back a smile or laughter. Jon rolled his eyes, because shit.
"That must've been a killer cup of coffee," Tom said.
Jon pinched at his nose. He was never going to live throwing his coffee at a zombie down. By the time he got home, Jon bet everyone Tom came in contact with would know some version of the story. Also damn, he had really liked that mug. That mug that was now covered in decaying zombie goo.
-
Brendon woke up to the sound of Spencer muttering again, only this time it didn't sound so much like scared muttering as bitchy, angry muttering. Brendon heard the telltale hiss of the propane stove and the tinny sound of the metal as Spencer tried to get it to stand up straight rather than list to the left like it always did.
We're almost out of propane," Spencer said tonelessly.
Brendon wondered if he remembered his dream, but he didn't want to ask. Ryan stared at him as he craned his neck back to look at Spencer without rolling over.
"You twitch in your sleep," Ryan said, flat and mean. Oh, good, they were starting first thing in the morning today.
"Yeah, well you’re a dick." Brendon didn't wait around for an answer; he just rolled off the mattress and headed out to take a piss. Maybe he could piss Spencer off too. Spencer hated it when anyone went outside alone.
On his way out, Brendon remembered the things he had heard in the night. In the clear light of morning, the only trace the scuffle had left was a wet bloody patch of ground around the side of the building. Brendon stared at it for a minute, and then he went back inside.
-
They key to patrolling alone was to find someplace high and hidden and stick around for awhile. Some place where he could see, but not be seen.
Jon wasn't especially interested in killing zombies. He wasn't especially interested in killing period. Which was good, because the point of patrolling was not killing. The point of patrolling was to bring survivors in safely. Which, okay, there was definitely some zombie killing involved, but if all he did all day was pick off the living dead, Jon would be significantly less interested in the position.
The reason Jon even had a job, and he used the term loosely, was that people - real people, the kind who hadn't died and come back to life - kept coming. Somehow, they had grown from tiny, divided clusters of local survivors, to a place people were trying to get.
Jon knew there wasn't a whole lot he was good at. He wasn't an idea guy, like Pete. Or a logistics guy like Patrick. He couldn't make shit grow, like Greta, or cook it like Joe. He was never going to be good at cheering people up or making them want to live another day in this particular hell. There were really only three things Jon excelled at: he could play some decent guitar, he won at scrabble more often than he lost, and during a zombie crises he could keep people safe just long enough to get them home.
So that's what he did.
He went out into the big, bad world every day and he watched the road, and he tried to protect strangers from zombies. That was his job, and he tried to do it right. Sure, there were better, easier, less likely to get you killed jobs, but. Stick to what you’re best at and all that.
At least it wasn't the dead of winter anymore, the city piled high with snow and no plows to push it away. There had been weeks on end where he could only go out a few hours at a time, if at all.
It was extremely difficult to run for your life all bundled up in snow pants and a parka. It was extremely difficult to do anything at all, really. Jon had stayed close to home those days.
But despite the inhospitable weather, people had kept coming to Chicago. Fewer at a time and not nearly as often, but they still came. So Jon still went out and tried to find them. The thing that made him venture out was more blind determination than anything else. That and he had to do something that wasn’t holing up in his room and talking to Dylan all day. Dylan had started to get annoyed, Jon could tell.
There had been one stretch of days when, because of a particularly bad blizzard, no one had been able to go out at all. Jon probably would have stupidly tried, but Pete nipped that in the bud. Jon went stir crazy in his room until Tom dragged him down to the kitchen where it was warm and full and loud.
Jon sat at the edges and drank his Irish hot chocolate (no really, Joe was amazing) and listened as Sean laughed out a story about a zombie stuck in a snowdrift like a car, backing up and going forward again and again without ever getting anywhere.
The conversation devolved quickly from there. Jon didn’t talk much, but it was enough to sit back and listen to Pete debate the merits of surviving the zombie apocalypse in a location were the natural process of decaying was slowed by the weather, because yes, the zombies would probably last longer, but at least they were nicer to look at and didn’t smell as bad as they could.
The next morning it had been clear and cold and the snow was high and bright, and Jon had gone out into it.
-
Spencer missed the Weather Channel.
He had never given a damn about it before, but now he had all this time to think about how great it was. You just turned it on and all that information was right there. For instance, Spencer was sure that if he had access to the Weather Channel, he would know in under three minutes whether or not there was a blizzard between Vegas and Chicago. Even better, he would know whether or not there was going to be one in the next seven to ten days.
Technically, before the end of the world as they knew it, he could have gotten this information from any number of sources: the internet, his phone, a newspaper. Why he chose to fixate on the Weather Channel was anyone's guess. He supposed it was frivolous. An entire channel devoted to the weather. It was just kind of weird in retrospect.
It was something to think about, anyway, something that wasn't their next meal and how they were going to get it without succumbing to a violent death.
So, the Weather Channel. The Weather Channel and Chicago were always at the front of his mind. Mostly Chicago, though. He wanted it to be real, not just some rumor that had spread because people needed something to work towards.
They talked about heading south and bypassing the Rockies. It would take longer, but it would be safer, weather wise. Of course, maybe they'd get eaten in Albuquerque and then the weather in Denver wouldn't matter.
Vegas was warm. Vegas was always warm, even when it was cool, but it was starting to get warmer. And with the weather so pleasant, it became hard to remember why they had to wait. Especially when nothing else was pleasant. Nothing at all.
Spencer crumpled a pop tart wrapper in his hand and chucked it towards the box they were currently using as a trash can. He missed. Ryan sighed and rolled away from him on the mattress. It was an annoyed, passive-aggressive sigh. Spencer fought the urge to kick out at him; bring some aggressive-aggressive into the mix that was their current standoff.
"Stop thinking about the Weather Channel," Brendon said. He was slumped low on the couch with his legs spread, hogging the space that no one shared with him. He bounced his leg and stared at Spencer over his crossword book. "Seriously. Stop it."
There used to be affection in Brendon's voice when someone brought up the weather channel thing (Spencer maybe talked about it more than was strictly necessary, but really, they had no idea how good they had it before people started dying and trying to eat them), but now it sounded like thinly veiled irritation.
On some level Spencer knew it wasn't personal. They couldn't go anywhere, they couldn't do anything. There were monsters outside. Every moment of every day they were either really bored or running for their lives. It was hard to come down from that, so the quieter days were filled with some strange zombie induced cabin fever that none of them could shake.
But in the thick of it, Spencer found it hard to think about their situation in rational terms. He wanted to lash out, maybe kick and scream and throw a tantrum. And if the tight way Ryan had started holding himself was any indication, or the way Brendon's constant movement had a new and frantic edge, Spencer wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Spencer stared at the ceiling of their shitty ass giant box of a warehouse. He let his eyes follow a crack all the way down to the high, filthy windows. It was getting dark and the sky was pale purple through the grimy film. He shut his eyes, just to have something to do.
It wasn't just cabin fever. It wasn't just gearing up to leave, but never actually going anywhere. There was something else, something nagging and raw and scary. Not scarier than zombies, maybe, but scary nevertheless.
Every time Brendon touched him, because despite all the frustration and irritability Brendon was still a toucher, Spencer had the twin urges to push him as far away as he could or pull him close enough to crush. The half way gesture of Brendon's leg against his or his hand playing with his sleeve was slowly driving him crazy.
And then there was Ryan. With Ryan it was different. Ryan touched less when he got tense. He got quiet and spiteful. Spencer knew he chose his limited words with the intention that they be as cutting as humanly possible. It was infuriating, but Spencer couldn't stop baiting him, waiting for the moment when Ryan's jaw would tense and his mouth would thin out and his eyes would flash, and all that effort Ryan had made to keep himself distant and above the childish antics of Spencer and Brendon was suddenly gone. It made Spencer's heart race. He liked it, knowing he could eventually get to Ryan.
Spencer was pretty fucked up.
Spencer pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and let out a tiny frustrated groan.
"Jesus," Ryan said, "can you please just shut up?"
Spencer tasted something bitter in the back of his throat. He had to do something.
It was easy to get in Ryan's face. They were so close already, only a few feet of ratty mattress between them. He pushed at Ryan's shoulder until Ryan flailed his arm and swatted out at Spencer. It wasn't long before Ryan sat up.
"What?" Ryan asked through clenched teeth.
The problem was that Spencer didn't actually know what.
Spencer looked past Ryan's ear and glanced at Brendon. He looked small and far away on the couch, but Spencer saw the way he was chewing on his bottom lip and how he had stopped slouching in favor of leaning forward, toward Ryan and him. His eyes were wide in a way that spurred Spencer on. Like maybe he could garner a response from both of them and shift the unhappy stalemate the three of them found themselves in. Spencer licked his lips.
-
It had been quiet for hours; no sign of people, real or otherwise. Jon lit another cigarette, his third, not that he was keeping track, and looked east. He had a nice view from so high. The day was oddly clear for late winter and Jon could feel the way Spring was just around the corner. Real Spring. He could see slices of lake between buildings, empty and blue-grey, and he wondered if it would ever feel normal, not seeing boats or activity out there. He didn't know whether or not he wanted it to.
Jon closed his eyes and listened, but he couldn't hear anything except the wind. There was something percolating at the back of his mind, something he wanted to check out. He thought he had enough time to do it, but he wanted to be sure.
Jon tended not to wear a watch, but the light was usually a good indicator of when he should pack it up and head in. He knew from experience that he had an hour, maybe two, before Pete started worrying and sent someone after him. Or came after him himself.
He knew because it had happened before. Only once, but it had been entirely Jon's fault. He had dozed off. Whenever he thought about it he felt a nauseating mix of guilt and overwhelming embarrassment. He didn't have an excuse for it, he hadn't changed his shift or slept poorly the night before, he had just been warm in his jacket and his back had been covered by a convenient wall. It was stupid and he was ashamed and, thus far, he hadn't let it happen again.
Ashlee had found him, and Pete had been right behind her. Ashlee grinned and held out her hand to help Jon up. Pete made some off-hand comment about sleeping on the job, but he was pretty friendly about it. Probably too friendly, considering. Pete liked Jon, and even if Jon wasn't really clear on why in the first place, he hated to give Pete a reason to change his mind.
Pete didn't generally do any patrolling, mostly because he was really, amazingly terrible at it. For whatever reason, Pete had the tendency to attract any number of mishaps. Attracting mishaps wouldn't be a problem normally, but zombie apocalypses tended to skew normal. Zombie apocalypses turned mishaps into a far more serious business. So when Pete and Ashlee came to rescue Jon, of course they had had a run in with some zombies on their way home.
They got cornered in an industrial area, some tiny alley Jon had never seen, with nothing behind them but a couple of dumpsters that hadn't been emptied in months. It smelled so bad that for a moment Jon had paused and actually weighed his options. Zombies and almost certain death behind him, really old garbage in front of him. It wasn't really a choice, but man it stank.
Ashlee sighed in Pete's general direction and pushed him back towards the dumpsters. She told him, "Start climbing," while she and Jon slowed the zombie hoard with as many shots to the head as they could manage. But there were only two of them (three, of you counted Pete's well intentioned but horribly aimed shots from the top of the dumpster) and an ever growing number of zombies pressing in close and cutting off their only escape. Pete hauled Ashlee up first, and then together they managed to get Jon up, too, all while decaying yet driven hands scrambled at his ankles.
It was not Jon's fondest memory. Nor was the part where they wound up hanging out on the roof surrounded by zombies on all sides trying to figure out a way home. It was really hard to think critically while surrounded by hungry moaning undead.
The plan they came up with was not exactly the best plan ever. Mostly because it involved using each of them as zombie bait. It was Jon's job to draw the zombies to the front of the building by standing close to the edge of the roof, visible and appetizing. Pete and Ashlee could then climb down the back and run around to the front, distracting the zombies long enough to allow Jon to get down.
It was a really stupid plan, and Jon really hated running for his life, but it had worked. No one had died.
Pete had never admonished him for the fuck up, but he did stick him on patrol with Andy for like a week. Jon guessed that was punishment enough. Jon suspected that Andy could actually talk the ear of a zombie, about, like, the end of civilization, if only it weren’t for that pesky longing for brains thing.
Since Jon wasn't looking for a repeat performance, he was always very careful about coming back at a reasonable hour.
Jon looked at the sky again. He should have just enough time to do what he wanted.
-
When Spencer moved in, it didn't take Ryan any time at all to kiss back. There was no stunned moment where either of them froze or tried to work out what was going on. Ryan opened up immediately and kissed back. Hard. It was shocking the way neither of them was shocked.
Ryan looked skinny, was skinny, but he was also strong and kind of pushy. Spencer knew all of this, only he had never been on the receiving end of all that push and drive in this particular way.
Ryan wasn't graceful about it, but he managed to lean them back enough so that with just a few adjustments Spencer was flat on the mattress with his thighs bracketing Ryan's narrow hips.
Spencer couldn't see anything that wasn't Ryan, couldn't hear anything that wasn't the sounds they made, couldn't think of anything but Ryan and drawing him closer and keeping him there.
And then something broke through, loud enough that he felt Ryan jolt above him. Spencer hauled him back in by the back of his neck, never giving either of them the time to think about loud footsteps and slamming doors.
God, he was so selfish and he knew it and he felt guilty about it, but he didn't want to stop, not yet. It was slipping away, though, no matter how much he scrambled for it.
Ryan broke the kiss and exhaled against Spencer's cheek. "Brendon?" he said. He spoke it like a question, the lilt at the end clear even though his voice was rough. Spencer shuddered, like he wanted so much his body couldn't contain it. Brendon and Ryan and everything.
Ryan extracted himself from Spencer's grip. He sat apart from Spencer, and Spencer watched as he fought to catch his breath. Finally, Ryan lifted his head to meet Spencer's eyes.
"Brendon," Spencer answered.
Spencer had done it all wrong. He honestly wasn't sure how doing it right looked, but it certainly wasn't this.
-
Jon kept quiet on his feet and close to buildings. The days were still on the short side and it was getting late enough and dark enough that only thin light filtered down to street level. His best bet was to stick to the shadows where he could hide and thank god that he knew the city better now than he ever had before.
There weren't any zombies on 18th. At least none that Jon could see or hear. They had moved.
He had no idea if it was good news or bad news that they weren't there. Like, in theory, no zombies should always be good news, but Jon tended to lean towards all news is bad news since zombies, you know, existed at all.
Jon threw caution to the wind and walked out into the middle of the street to see what he could see. There was nothing in either direction.
Jon started walking.
-
There were about a billion things that Brendon wanted that he couldn't have. He wanted ice cream. He wanted his family to not be dead. He wanted to go outside and know that something wouldn't try and eat him alive. He wanted cheese. And, like, a soda that was actually cold, maybe with ice cubes and everything.
He wanted Spencer. He wanted Ryan.
And fine. He could deal with everything else. He had no control over his access to ice anymore, and that made it easier to accept the lack of it. And if one day he ran into a cow and instructions on how to age cheese, well maybe then he could have some cheddar in his life again. Until that day, he could make do. He could roll with death because what was the alternative? He had become zen with the limited scope of his world, and despite occasional wallowings into what might have been, he was doing remarkably well for a guy dealing with the end of the world. Sure, he was cranky a lot of the time, but he was stuck in a warehouse with Ryan Ross, it was only to be expected.
What he couldn't handle was the shit that was within his grasp that he couldn't have anyway. Because fate or god or who the fuck ever hated him. It was the furthest thing from fair.
He knew it was coming. He fucking knew it. They'd been circling each other for days, and idiot that he was, Brendon had imagined himself into their orbit.
Brendon paced the tiny office. He felt stupid and disappointed and very, very lonely. And angry, probably more angry than anything else. Primarily with himself. So angry that he could hardly keep it all in. He shook with it.
He braced his hands on the desk and exhaled. Then he took a deep breath and did it again.
He didn't have it wrong. He couldn't have it wrong.
He hadn't imagined it and whatever he was feeling, it wasn't just run-off from the sparks flying between Spencer and Ryan.
He saw the way Spencer looked at him. It was the same way he looked at Ryan. He saw the way Ryan had stopped looking at him.
He had no idea why he had gotten up and walked away. And now that he was safely tucked away in a tiny office in a shitty warehouse, he had no idea how he was going to make himself go out there and ask.
He drummed his fingers on the old desk and cracked his toes in his shoes. He looked at the clock on the wall. It was one of those right twice a day models that hadn't quite given itself over to death yet. The second hand made weak, abortive movements that ticked off seconds but never really got anywhere.
Brendon made a decision. He could figure out how to ask when he got out there.
He opened the door harder than he expected, his hand-eye coordination lost to nerves or adrenaline or what the fuck ever. It swung inward and Brendon had to step back out of the way of its arc. It hit the office wall with a thud.
Ryan stood outside with his hand in the air mid-knock. He looked half deer in the headlights, half amused at Brendon's plight with the door. It was a very strange look. Ryan’s mouth was shiny and he used the back of his hand to wipe it and man, Brendon wanted him so much. Had for almost as long as he’d known him.
"Hey," Brendon said, a touch breathless. He didn't give Ryan an opportunity to respond. Instead he took two strides forward, went on his toes, and kissed him.
He guessed that was one way to ask.
Brendon's hands were somehow on Ryan's chest. He kept them there and curled his fingers into Ryan’s shirt when he pulled back. He still didn’t ask, not with words, anyway, but Ryan answered anyway. He just said, "Brendon," and leaned carefully back in. It was exactly the answer Brendon wanted most.
From so close, he could feel Ryan's heart beat, wild and erratic. He could feel the way Ryan touched him like he had thought about it for a while. It was intoxicating. Brendon couldn’t even think.
There was only one thing missing.
"Fuck," Ryan said, mush-mouthed into Brendon's cheek, "doesn't anyone want to talk anymore? We can't just make out every time someone's pissed at me."
"Why not?" Brendon tilted his head back and panted into the air while Ryan grazed his teeth over his throat.
"Okay," Ryan said as he found Brendon's mouth again. It seemed like a good enough plan to Brendon. Except for that one tiny, Spencer-shaped thing he had yet to work out.
Brendon found Ryan's hand with his and looped their fingers together. He squeezed when he broke the kiss. Brendon bit at where his mouth felt tender and stared at Ryan. He glanced at where Spencer still sat and Ryan turned to follow his gaze.
He took Ryan with him to the edge of the mattress, refusing to let go of his hand. Spencer tilted his head up to look at them. He looked considerably less miserable than he had the last few days, weeks, whatever.
"I kissed Ryan," Brendon said.
Spencer nodded. "I saw," he said.
"And you kissed Ryan."
"I did." Spencer smiled. It was one of the big ones that Brendon hadn't seen in ages. He had forgotten, had it always left him weak-kneed and sort of fluttery?
Spencer curled his hand around Brendon's ankle and pushed down his sock to run his thumb over the knobby bone. Brendon was glad he knew where this was going, and probably how it would end, but Jesus, Spencer was making it hard for him to breathe.
"And I-" Brendon started.
"Oh my god," Ryan interrupted. "Stop torturing each other and make out already."
It was great how Ryan thought he was helping, but really wasn't. At all. "I was getting around to it," Brendon said through clenched teeth.
Spencer's eyes were still pretty well locked on Brendon's. Brendon had the genius idea that if he kissed him, Spencer would probably close them and then Brendon would feel less scrutinized. Probably. Coming on to someone was kind of hard work. Or maybe Brendon was just really bad at it.
Ryan sat on the mattress, and because he was still hanging on to Brendon's hand, he pulled him down with him. There, their mouths were at least at a similar level now.
"Spence?"
"Yeah?"
"It's. See, um-"
"Jesus, he wants to kiss you, you want to kiss him, do it already," Ryan said impatiently.
"Ryan?" Spencer said, still looking at Brendon.
"What?" Ryan said.
"Shut up or you can't watch."
"What's there to watch?" Ryan muttered, but Spencer glared and Ryan stopped talking.
Brendon cupped Spencer's cheek, sweaty palmed and shaky. "You have no idea how nervous I am right now," he said.
"Yeah, I kind of do." Spencer laughed softly and smiled before dropping his eyes to Brendon’s mouth.
Brendon leaned in and parted his mouth before rocking back on his rear end. "I know, right? It's like we waited too long, talked about it too much. Now there's all this pressure..."
Ryan flopped back on his back in exasperation, and Brendon started to laugh. Spencer leaned forward and cut Brendon's laugh off with his mouth.
Brendon made a muffled, surprised noise and shut his eyes. He was nervous, he hadn't just been baiting Ryan, though that was an added bonus. Spencer put a hand on his thigh and squeezed rhythmically until Brendon opened his mouth and kissed back.
It wasn't the same kind of frantic, desperate, tension breaking kiss Brendon had had with Ryan, but it still made his face heat up. It still felt good. Mostly, though, it felt right. It felt like finally Brendon had something now, rather than something to look forward to.
The mattress dipped and Brendon felt Ryan get closer, and then Ryan put his hand on Brendon’s hip and his mouth on Brendon’s neck. Brendon couldn’t bite back the sounds he made, what with his mouth being kind of occupied by Spencer’s. Spencer made a noise back, a pleased little hum, as he pushed Brendon back and down, away from Ryan.
“Okay, my turn now,” Ryan said, obviously impatient. Again.
Brendon made a negative noise into Spencer’s mouth, but Spencer actually pulled back enough to say, “You had your turn.”
“Psssh,” Ryan said, “It’s not a turn if you both kissed me first.”
Brendon pushed Spencer’s shirt up to get at his skin. Spencer groaned and rolled his hips. Brendon heard Ryan’s breath catch, it was pretty hot.
“Need I remind you that you both totally want me more. Remember? I’m the guy you can’t keep your hands off. Come on.”
Brendon started laughing. Spencer grinned down at him. Brendon couldn’t remember being this happy ever, and definitely not since the whole zombie thing had started.
“No seriously,” Ryan went on, “both of you, separately, like, attacked me with your mouths. You should think about doing it again.”
Spencer rolled his head to look at Ryan who was pouting just out of reach. “You were closer,” Spencer said. “And more annoying at the time.”
Ryan looked at Spencer, then at Brendon. “It’s true,” Brendon said, “Right place, right time.”
“You both suck,” Ryan said.
“Maybe,” Spencer said, “but you’ll never know if you don’t get in here. Hurry it up, we could all die tomorrow.”
-
If Jon were going to write a book called How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse in 5 Easy Steps, it would go a little something like this:
1. Visit your childhood home for the weekend. Be sure your mother has started using your former bedroom as a storage unit for her many crafts so you can sleep on the pull-out couch in the basement/den.
2. Make sure you lock the door because you're vaguely thinking of jerking off later. It is completely okay if, instead of jerking off, you drink most of your dad's mini-fridge beer and watch late night TV until you fall asleep.
3. Sleep late. This is key. You'll miss your dad’s awesome waffles, but you’ll also miss being turned by the new neighborhood zombies. Also, good thing you locked that door and left the TV on.
4. Stay put. When your family comes downstairs looking for tasty, tasty brains to eat you'll probably need some time to freak out a little. You can hide in the closet, cower behind the couch. Either will do. You can use this time to multi-task. Call everyone you know. They probably won't answer because phones won’t actually work. That and by this point everyone you know is either a zombie or just plain dead. Keep trying though; it helps to have something to do.
5. Kill your family. All of them. There will come a time, and that time will come much too soon, that a locked door won’t be able to save you. Use whatever you can find. Tell yourself that the lady out there isn’t your mom anymore, even if she’s still wearing that necklace you bought her for Mother’s Day when you were eight. Tell yourself your brother wouldn’t want to go on as a zombie, neither would your sister-in-law. None of this will help in either the long run or short run, but you should probably give it a try anyway.
6. Turn inward, become reclusive, kill a lot of zombies and save a couple people. Don’t make new friends because everyone’s on borrowed time and you’ll have to give them back eventually.
He’d have to work on the title, probably. There was one step too many. And maybe the list wasn’t quite book length either. Maybe pamphlets would be better.
Theoretically he could have a sublist of Shit Jon Walker Did After He Survived the Zombie Apocalypse That Should Have Gotten Him Killed But Somehow Didn’t. He could include things like retrieve his cat from his apartment, find his best friend, and generally go out into the zombie fray for no other reason than to have something to do all day. And that was just for starters.
What would be really great though, was if instead of composing lists in his head he could stop thinking about it altogether. That would be a better alternative.
But Jon did think about it. All the time. And he kept adding things to the sublist. He would probably have to put ‘walking down the middle of an empty Chicago street straight towards a theoretical zombie hoard with nothing but a shot gun to keep him safe from harm’ pretty high on the Stupid Shit list.
Jon heard the zombies before he saw them. In that sense, it was pretty par for the course. Those fuckers were loud. What was decidedly not par for the course was the sheer amount of them. He still wasn’t close enough to see, but from the volume Jon figured that there were more zombies in front of him than he had encountered before. Quite a bit more.
He had stopped walking. He didn’t know when, but he did know that standing around while zombies apparently massed was not necessarily a brilliant idea.
He’d have to get closer if he wanted to see anything, but he’d have to get higher, too. And he definitely needed some sort of wall between the hoard and himself since today didn’t feel like all that great a day to get torn limb from limb.
He went into the Bank of America by default. It was the first unlocked door he tried, and it looked at least twenty or so stories high. He would be able to get a decent view from one of the top floors, or failing that, the roof.
It never got less creepy, stealing through abandoned buildings that were once bustling. Jon slung his shotgun over his shoulder and dug out a flashlight from the bottom of his back pack.
His footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell and he trailed his hand up the bare white wall. From here, inside, he could almost pretend everything was normal outside. That people were going to work or watching their kids build snowmen in the yard. But if it was normal outside, there’d be florescent lights glowing overhead and he wouldn’t be in a long empty stairwell to begin with.
As he passed, Jon aimed his flashlight at each of the numbers on each of the doors. It took forever to get to the 20th floor. Maybe he was in better shape than he had ever been, slimmer and fitter and able to run further faster, but he was still breathless when he tried the door.
It wasn’t quite so dark outside of the stairwell. The last of the afternoon sun peeked through the slanted blinds. Jon pocketed his flashlight and weaved through cubicles until he got close enough to peer out the window.
Jon stared. He stared and stared and still it didn’t make sense. He fumbled for the string to pull up the blinds, never taking his eyes off the street below.
When he finally got the blinds up, Jon pressed his fingers to the glass and exhaled. The window fogged and cleared and Jon saw it all again. From so high and so far back, he could barely pick out individuals. From so high, he couldn’t even tell just how many zombies he was looking at because he had never seen so many in the same place before. He had maybe never seen so many separately before, either. It was a lot of fucking zombies. They were mashed together, moving as one. It was like seeing a lake or the ocean from a plane, like seeing the waves coursing from above.
Jon needed to get back. He needed to tell someone. He needed to tell Pete.
-
That night when Brendon woke up, it wasn’t to the sound of Spencer having a nightmare. It wasn’t to the sound of anything, really, unless it was Ryan’s light snoring or Spencer’s even breathing. He didn’t stay awake long, just long enough to remember how his crappy day had ended not so crappy. Okay, long enough to lean over and kiss Spencer’s cheek.
Spencer said, “Dork.”
Brendon said, “Whatever.” Yep, pretty great day.
part two