FIC: Bloom and Scatter: Chapter 4: They Live
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Bloom and Scatter
Chapter 4: They Live
Length: 3,175
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Zombies
Genre: Zombies
Characters, Pairings: Tachibana Makoto, Matsuoka Rin
Summary: Rin returns to Japan to look for his mother and sister. What he finds, instead, is Makoto.
Notes: Originally posted on AO3.
Chapters:
[ 1: Homecoming ]
[ 2: THe Fog ]
[ 3: Masks ]
[ 4: They Live ]
[ 5: The Truth ]
[ 6: Making Plans ]
[ 7: Lost & Found ]
[ 8: The Payoff ]
[ 9: Hopeless ]
[ 10: The Waiting Game ]
“Are you okay?”
Rin looked up, expression shuttered, unaware that he had been hunching over in the first place. He managed to choke out a ‘yes’ and it burned his throat.
“You’re wheezing,” Tachibana said concernedly, a hand on his back.
“I’m fine,” Rin gasped, weakly swatting him away, surprised at how breathless he sounded. His head was spinning and his eyes were watering again, in spite of the goggles.
“You’re not fine,” Tachibana said firmly, “It’s the fog. We need to get out of Iwami.”
Everything sounded faint and muffled, as though he was submerged underwater. It was hard to think, but he had heard Tachibana clearly and that one part of him that never changed was immediately offended. All that they had been doing so far was skirt around the borders of Iwatobi city, and Tachibana was suggesting that they leave the district altogether?
“I’m not… going to… leave… after all it took… to get here.”
“Kitajima, if you keep going, you’re going to turn feral. The fog will only worsen the further in we go, and until you’ve gotten yourself a gas mask, you’re in danger.”
“Fuck… that shit.”
“Listen to me - you could die, you’re not even… oh. Oh.”
Rin squinted up at Tachibana, saw the ashen expression in his eyes, and tightened his grip on Tachibana’s sleeve. He was trying to keep his eyes open but his limbs felt heavy and it was too hard to even hold his head up.
“Vaccinated,” Tachibana whispered, “Oh my god, you’re not vaccinated against the fog. What have I been doing, I…”
Rin’s eyes shot open.
He was staring up at sterile tiles and fluorescent lights that were too white and over bright, making him squint and turn away with a low groan until his vision adjusted. The glare had made his head throb for a second, but it slowly ebbed away into something vague and dull and present, but distant. Despite how much his mouth felt like cotton, his mind felt calm and his lungs…
His lungs.
Rin reached up hesitantly, pressing his fingers against his sternum and rubbing. The sharp stabbing pain that had been there was just… gone. He could breathe. He realised there was a plastic mask strapped to his nose and mouth, bandana lying on his stomach. There was the quiet mechanical sound of pumping that came from an oxygen machine behind him, which it appeared that he was hooked up to. He inhaled slowly, let his chest expand, and then exhaled. He cleared his throat. Nothing hurt. He felt fine.
Rolling onto his back, Rin realised he was on the cold tiled floor of what looked like a laboratory. In the periphery, he saw counters and carts made of stainless steel, covered in bottles upon bottles of what he assumed were prescription drugs. He sat up slowly, relishing the feeling of being able to hold himself up without being on the verge of collapse, and glanced to the side. On his left, Tachibana had curled up, asleep, clutching tightly onto something. He couldn’t make out what it was.
Rin’s backpack had been placed against Tachibana’s sack near their feet. He quickly touched his hip and felt the machete still in its holster. A quick check of his gun in the back of his trousers made him grimace slightly - the skin there was tender, most likely bruised in the shape of a gun grip - but he was satisfied to see that it hadn’t gone anywhere. He checked its weight briefly and was generally confident that he still had a full magazine.
He turned to look at Tachibana, an unreadable expression on his face.
After a moment, he switched off the oxygen machine and removed the mask from his face. Rin placed a hand on Tachibana’s shoulder and shook gently.
“Tachibana,” Rin said, “Tachibana. Wake up.”
He heard a muffled huff and Tachibana slowly stirred, looking up at Rin with half-opened and unfocused eyes.
“Hey,” he said, sounding sleepy, sitting up, “How are you feeling?”
“Better. A lot better.”
“That’s good,” Tachibana let out a soft yawn and his hand, fisted to rub his eyes, smacked lightly against the glass of his eyehole. He stared at it incomprehensibly before he realised his mask was still on.
“Why didn’t you take that off if you were gonna nap?”
“Not even here is fog-proof,” he replied simply, scratching the base of his neck, “Do you need any painkillers?”
“I actually feel almost at one hundred per cent. What did you give me?”
“Anti-fog vaccine,” Tachibana groped for something on the floor and passed it to Rin. It was a small box with some technical medical term printed on it. It was unsealed and revealed a used syringe inside. Tachibana leaned forward and tapped Rin’s left inner elbow, and Rin was surprised to feel a slight ache there under a layer of gauze and cotton, “I gave you a jab while you were asleep, sorry.”
“No,” Rin said faintly, absently touching the bandage, “… Don’t apologise.”
“I’m really bad at this sort of thing, needles and blood and…” Tachibana scratched his head and it made his hair even messier, “I tried not to poke you too many times, and I don’t think I did, but…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rin said, more firmly, “You saved me.”
“I also,” Tachibana said haltingly, and gestured vaguely towards Rin’s body, “I accidentally hit us both against a wall, while running. I was piggybacking you, so your left side might be sore. I’m, um, a bit bruised. Are you…”
That explained a few things. Rin shook his head, “I’ll live. More importantly, where are we?”
“Tottori Hospital.”
Rin was taken aback, “Tottori Hospital? How far did you walk?”
“It took about two, three hours.”
“With me on your back.”
“Um… yeah.”
Rin fell silent briefly, “Why’d you bother?”
“Oh, well…” Tachibana mumbled something before he cleared his throat, looking away, “I just… didn’t want you to die.”
Rin easily pictured Tachibana placing him on top of that mound at the landfill, with the other grey bodies. He could understand why Tachibana felt that way. Rin simply nodded once before he took a better look around.
“What’s this place, a lab? No wards free or something?”
“It was sealed. Sterile environment. Had a working oxygen machine. Then, well, I broke in. Probably contaminated now.”
Rin glanced up at the flickering fluorescent lights. “There’s power here.”
“Mm.”
Tachibana was being surprisingly quiet and noncommittal with his answers, which… was very out of character for him, not that Rin was worried in particular. Except, Tachibana had saved his life a few times now (and Rin had also reciprocated, but).
“Hey, is something wrong?”
“Hit my head,” Tachibana murmured, “Hard to focus.”
“Oi, oi, you shouldn’t take concussions lightly,” Rin immediately crouched in front of Tachibana and placed both his hands on his scalp, pulling his head back so he could examine his eyes. They were green. “Your pupils look about the same size. Do you feel like puking? Any migraines?”
Tachibana gently shook his head, swaying, “Just out of sorts.”
“It’s probably mild,” Rin sat on his haunches, “You should rest a bit more. Maybe take that mask off and breathe some oxygen.”
“No, I’m okay,” Tachibana said softly but insistently, “I’m just tired from all the running.”
“All the more reason to get some rest.”
“I-I don’t want to sleep. Please. I’ll lie down or stay put, but no more sleeping.”
Rin looked at Tachibana, really looked at him, and, well, he’d saved Rin’s life… and he was agreeing to rest, if not nap…
“Fine,” Rin sighed, “On your head. Don’t blame me if it gets worse.”
“Thank you,” Tachibana sounded relieved, and that pulled at Rin’s heartstrings a bit but he ignored it. He lay back down slowly on the ground and pillowed his head with his arms. His breathing was even, which was good enough.
“I’m exploring,” Rin said, pulling his bandana over his face and tying it behind his head. Tachibana’s answer was a murmur, which he had anticipated, and Rin put his baseball cap on and tightened the straps of his backpack under his shoulders, fastening them over his torso with a click. He hesitated briefly, contemplated giving Tachibana his gun for self-defence, but he didn’t trust the guy that much, and he would probably waste his bullets anyway. Probably didn’t even know how to shoot a gun. Shaking his head, Rin inhaled slowly before he slipped out of the lab.
The hospital was in a bad way, just as bad as the mall had been, if not worse. The floor was covered in paper and prescriptions, with carts and stretchers turned over on the ground alongside potted plants. The layer of dust inside the hospital wasn’t as bad as it had been elsewhere, but it also occurred to Rin that they were further away from ‘Ground Zero’ as Tachibana had called it. It seemed like Iwatobi city had been the origin of the fog, and that realisation made something twist in Rin’s gut. What had happened? Why had the army abandoned a coastal town? There were a lot of question that still needed answering, and he supposed he’d have to sit Tachibana down again and compare notes. He wondered how much Tachibana knew, having lived in the country as well as a DMZ, and if he had gone through information blackouts too.
Something fell over, which made Rin jerk into a ready position, machete armed before him. A few doors down, a locker had broken through a display glass and its contents were hanging out. Rin approached cautiously, concluding that it had been cased by weight and gravity and other things like that, rather than being pushed. The locker itself held nothing of consequence - photographs, spare scrubs, some folders - but it led his eye to the occupants inside the room. There were two figures on the ground, both in gas masks and different coloured scrubs. They weren’t moving.
“…everything okay?” Tachibana’s voice, distant at first, grew louder as he stepped over the rubble and approached Rin, “I heard something loud.”
“It’s safe,” Rin said, more annoyed than he expected that Tachibana had gotten up, “Think I found myself some gas masks.”
He peered past the broken display glass and regarded Rin hesitantly.
“Cover me,” he ordered, elbowing open the door and slowly extending his arm into the room, poking the closest body with the tip of the machete.
No response.
“Kitajima,” Tachibana breathed, and Rin held up a hand as a gesture to keep quiet. He pressed his back against the wall of the room and rounded the figures to the other side, and when he was in range, did the same thing to the other body.
“All clear,” Rin let out a sigh of relief, although he didn’t sheathe his machete. He squatted by the bodies and pulled one of them by the shoulder so they were lying on their back. He sensed Tachibana approaching cautiously and crouching beside him.
“Doesn’t look damaged,” Rin muttered, singlehandedly fingering the straps. Tachibana placed a hand over his.
“Go for the other one,” he said, already removing it from the man’s head, “It’s a bit older than the one you’re holding, but it’s the same brand as mine.”
They didn’t look similar at all. “So?”
“I have spare filters that would fit it,” Tachibana held the mask up so its interior was parallel to his eyes, and inspected the parts carefully, “This looks like it works fine. Better clean it and put new filters in, just in case. I’ll show you how.”
Tachibana settled into a more comfortable sitting position and began to take the mask apart, pointing out the sections and telling Rin how to service it. Before long, the filters had come off and Tachibana had screwed new ones in.
“I can’t vouch for the smell,” he said apologetically.
“It came off a dead guy,” Rin replied bluntly, rolling his eyes as he waved the mask to and fro to air it out a little bit. When he was satisfied that the smell wasn’t as revolting as it had been previously, he pulled off his bandana and cap and clasped it on, tightening the straps so that it fit snugly.
“How is it?”
“Ugh, like a guy died in here,” Rin made a face. His model was newer than Tachibana’s, with a clear type of synthetic glass that showed the entire upper part of his face, with only the mouthpiece covered and affixed with twin filters. It was weird, sucking air in through the mouthpiece (and he would definitely consider hanging an air freshener in the visor) but, smell aside, the air quality was definitely different. It was better.
“It can feel a bit suffocating at first, but you’ll get used to it eventually,” Tachibana said, “Don’t take it off unless you have to, not even to sleep. You’ve already been over-exposed to the fog, as is.”
“Yeah? What about you? You’ve been hit by it since the beginning, right?”
“I was vaccinated and masked pre-emptively.”
Fair enough. “Fine.”
“We’ve gotten what we came for, are we ready to head off now?”
Rin looked at Tachibana, frowning at him, “We?”
Tachibana blinked, “Um?”
“There is no ‘we’ in this equation,” Rin said, trying to be firm but not douchey, “Look, I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, but now that I’ve gotten the mask, I’m heading back into Iwami district. Alone.”
“What? But-”
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a liability, Tachibana. Nice guy? Yes. Someone I want watching my back? No. You can’t swing a bat or shoot a gun. You can run, sure, but what good is running if it leads to a dead end? Besides, I can already tell from looking at you that (a) you don’t want to head back into Iwami; and (b) you are in no shape to go anywhere at all. You’re still concussed, you were shaking all the way here from the lab.”
It was probably a testament to how much time he’d spent with Tachibana to be able to tell his moods through a gas mask, because Rin knew for a fact that he’d hit Tachibana right where it hurt, and although that was something he was counting on, he also hoped that Tachibana would understand what he was trying to do and stay put. He looked like he wanted to, but couldn’t, argue with Rin.
“I… Kitajima, please.”
“Thanks for everything, Tachibana,” Rin hitched up his backpack, unable to look him in the eye, “Bye.”
He wasn’t feeling guilty. He wasn’t feeling guilty. He wasn’t feeling guilty.
Shit. He wasn’t feeling guilty.
“Fuck,” Rin growled, “God damn it. I’m right. He’s just lonely. I don’t want him to get me killed. Shit. Stop feeling bad. He understood too. If he didn’t, he’d be tagging along right now. Fuck.”
He was so wrapped up in trying to justify his feelings over the whole exchange that he barely realised the low, throaty growling. Before he could do anything, a figure lunged at him, clawing for his face. Its flesh was soft and rotting under his hands and he heard bones breaking as he threw it off of him. The creature, despite, the twisted pelvis, started crawling towards him. He knew this behaviour.
“Fucking fuck,” Rin cursed as he swung his machete down and decapitated the zombie. The noise must have attracted the rest, because he was staring down the beginnings of a small horde surrounding him on all sides.
“For fuck’s sake,” Rin hissed as he did a 180˚ and ran down a slew of zombies as he sprinted back towards the hospital.
“TACHIBANA,” Rin yelled, breaking down the door with a fire axe he had found, pulling it out of the splintered wood and hurling it across the room until it lodged itself in the head of a zombie, “I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, IF YOU’RE DEAD, I AM GOING TO MURDER THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR ZOMBIE CORPSE OVER AND OVER AGAIN.”
“Kitajima!” The voice was muffled and panicked, but human, and Rin cursed under his breath as he used another zombie for leverage and kicked the off face of another one, jumping over some rubble and landing near the opposite passageway.
“The fuck are you?!”
“In here!”
Rin pulled out his handgun and scored a few headshots before he spiralled into a ward, decapitating another zombie and crashing into Tachibana.
“I hate you so fucking much right now,” Rin seethed, “How dare you make me give a shit about you at the resolution of my dilemma. This is shoujo manga-grade bullshit. I want a refund on my feelings.”
“Why are there zombies here?” Tachibana whispered back fearfully, holding his sack up in front of him like it would effectively protect him from zombies, “They should have been wiped out weeks ago from the FDMZ! That was the whole point of the FDMZ!”
“Yeah? More importantly, what the fuck were you planning to do, huh? Jump out the window?” Rin glared at the obvious escape route, “And, what, practice flying?”
“I was going to run across the roof,” Tachibana’s voice was incredibly shaky and, actually, that plan was not half bad, considering the situation they were in.
“Haul ass, right now,” Rin grabbed a food tray off the ground and frisbeed it at a zombie in the doorway, using the lull to reload his handgun and fire off two more shots before he backed up against the window and followed Tachibana out.
“Run!”
Rin cursed Tachibana’s long legs as he hastily sheathed his machete and flipped the safety back on his gun, all but shoving it in his pants as he leapt off the side of the building and landed painfully on top of Tachibana in a dumpster.
“This way!” Tachibana grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him down the side, where the trash bags overflowed onto the street, and they kept running until they saw a boarded up building. The moment they got in, they slammed as many things as they could against the entrance - desks, chairs, cabinets - and rushed deeper into the building until they were completely out of gas.
Panting, they sank onto the ground, side by side, trying to recover their breaths. After what seemed like an eternity, Rin could finally hear something other than the rapid beating of his own heart, and it seemed as though the zombies hadn’t been able to track them all the way… wherever they were.
“You came back,” Tachibana said, voice hoarse but undeniably happy.
“I think we need some ground rules,” Rin glared at him, “Because I’ve just chosen to side with you, for god knows what reason, and you are going to make it worth my while.”
“Oh,” Tachibana said, smile watery, but present, “Okay then.”