sanchan | me, you and myself
Title: Me, You and Myself
Pairing: Gongchan/Sandeul
Genre: au!zombie apocalypse, bromance
Rating: G
wordcount: 3186
Chanshik doesn’t know a lot about Junghwan, considering that he has known the older boy for a grand total of two weeks, which is fourteen days and three-hundred and thirty-six hours, which seems like a lot, but really isn’t because humans count things using days and not hours nor seconds; and fourteen is less than three-hundred and thirty-six. Still, Chanshik feels that hanging out with Junghwan isn’t bad, especially if it means that they get a four-wheel drive.
It’s a strange thing on Chanshik’s pros and cons list, but everything is strange when you are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The damn thing isn’t even supposed to happen in the first place. There are movies and books about it and all, but it’s fiction.
Apparently not.
“Rise and shine, Channie. There are zombies to kill today.”
The thing about living in the middle of a zombie apocalypse with Junghwan is that nothing really seems dark and depressing. Sure, having all your family members turn into mindless cannibals isn’t really the happiest thing in the world and nor is pushing a bookshelf onto your high school crush out of self-defense. Even so, after meeting Junghwan, Chanshik has actually laughed and done some of the stupidest things in his life, so in the end of the day, his life post-zombie apocalypse does have some plus points. Besides, Junghwan is a good singer, so he gets free entertainment.
“I used to be part of the school choir.”
Chanshik is not one for music. Sure, he has his fair share of songs which are replayed more than they should on his music player -- singing though? No, that is not for him. “School choir? Really?”
Junghwan nods as he tentatively pokes his head out of the garden shed. “One of the soloists too. It’s surprising what girls dig in a guy.”
Chanshik runs his gaze over his new(ish) friend. He is somewhat attractive, with that delightful smile and pale skin. He’s rather thin too, and with a one to seven and a half head to body ratio, he doesn’t look too bad in terms of proportion. Still, he doubts that Junghwan has ever had a girlfriend.
“Hey, Channie.”
“Yeah?”
Junghwan is closing the door now. “One of them got to our salami sticks.”
Chanshik sighs as he bends down to retrieve the shovel they had found the night before, “Didn’t you lock the car?”
“Well, it has a rock. A big rock.”
“Ah. I see.”
They don’t get to breathe fresh air much.
It’s not what Chanshik expects, especially since now that most polluters aren’t functioning anymore. Cars have stopped running, trains are abandoned. The odd factory still spews thick clouds, but they are all malfunctioning on their own, like there is a mysterious higher power turning everything off. With devastating effects. Still, the skies seem a little bluer, and the rain that falls on the odd day doesn’t smell foul and sour. Still, even though the weather is better, they don’t get to experience it properly. It’s usually a whole day spent in a car, watching the signs on the road fly past. A day spent avoiding zombies, breaking into abandoned homes in search of supplies.
Chanshik wonders if Junghwan misses it. Freedom. Easy freedom. They have freedom now, they can drive down empty roads in search of their chosen safe haven. They have an empty freedom, but it is still freedom. “Hey, Junghwan.”
They’re speeding down a highway, windows wound down. It’s chaotic, the wind whipping through their hair, chilling their skin. “What is it?” Junghwan asks, still focused on the road, following the white lines leading to a momentary future.
“It’s weird, we have so much time and space -”
Junghwan snorts.
“-but we don’t really appreciate it.”
The older boy sighs. “We’re running away from hell. Do we really have that luxury?”
Chanshik eyes the road that they’re tearing down. There are wrecks on the sides and only twenty minutes ago, Junghwan had to navigate his way around a combusted semi-trailer. “But for all we know, everything’s hell already.”
Junghwan shrugs as he slows down to edge around the wreckage of a van and a motorcycle. There is still a stray limb, rotting. “We could head to the mountains.”
Chanshik falls silent as he wonders if pandas can fall prey to the virus as well. He almost doesn’t notice when Junghwan brakes and turns off the engine. “What are you doing?”
He smiles and Chanshik knows that he shouldn’t think that eye smile is gorgeous. “Appreciating time and space.”
They’re well on their way into China when winter arrives. Only, it’s really hard for Chanshik to tell that it’s actually China. There isn’t anything distinctively Chinese that isn’t dead or rotting. Or a zombie, he notes as their dusty truck trundles down the dirt track, past what used to be a farmer. It (or is it a he? Do zombies have gender?) seems to give them a cursory glance, but doesn’t make any effort to follow them. Metal mustn’t look that appetising.
“You know, you shouldn’t expect too much.” Junghwan tells him as he draws slowly to a stop on the road. The engine splutters silent as he sticks his head out the window, probably to check if there are any lurking zombies waiting to feast on their flesh in the otherwise inviting Chinese countryside, with rice paddies that resemble swamps now. He retreats inside the car, winding the window up, “We kind of have to assume that the majority of people leaving in Asia have turned into zombies, making every former landmark very disappointing.”
Personally, Chanshik feels that Junghwan wastes a lot of words, but then again, when you live in a world with a human population of two, it’s better to practise talking, just in case you forget one day. “You’re the disappointed one,” he scoffs, smile playing on his lips.
Junghwan takes his eyes off the road for a second too long. “Fine.”
One night, they are sitting on the rooftop of a skyscraper. They’ve decided to linger on the fringes of Shanghai, mainly because they can’t imagine any other options. Where else are they to go? Travelling the world would be nice, but what would be the point? It would have been the same everywhere, Chanshik had told Junghwan after he came back from shooting a zombie three times in the skull, tattered newspaper in hand. The Chinese script was faded and spotty, but the two boys put their heads together and they make out a few phrases and words (“all cities”, “continents”, “spread”, “virus”). Chanshik had tore it up after Junghwan had uttered those words, yellowed fragments fluttering away from his fingers as a metal bin fell to the ground down the road. They hadn’t spoken after that, but they knew.
It’s just us now.
Just the two of them, cross-legged on the concrete on a skyscraper’s rooftop. “You know,” Chanshik begins, “why do you think that it’s us?”
Junghwan seems to be staring ahead at nothing in particular, or maybe he is listening to the car sirens in the distance. He smiles a little though, just the subtle tilt of the corners of his lips. “What? Are you saying this is fate?” It is a painful smile.
If it is fate, Chanshik thinks, then the world must really hate them. It is one thing to die, to disintegrate into the very basic building blocks of your physical being. To become ashes, to become dust. It is another to walk the earth which is now the breeding ground of the living dead. “Fate? Well, it depends on which part.” It is windy and cold on the rooftop, but the air is better, less smoke, less rot. “Being the left overs? Or meeting you?”
“It’s probably a coincidence,” Junghwan says as a street light flickers on the ruined road below.
That bothers Chanshik, but he doesn’t say much more. “Think what you want. We should go indoors now.” He stands, arms wrapped around his thin frame - thinner now, after the running and the killing. “It’s cold at night.”
Junghwan joins him, swinging an arm over his shoulders. “What do you think we’ll die of? Zombie or starvation?”
Chanshik shrugs, “I’ll decide when the time comes.”
In all fairness, it’s not the end of the world when Chanshik finds a photo in Junghwan’s things. Besides, it isn’t like he is poking around his friend’s possessions without permission. It was Junghwan who had asked him to grab everything from the apartment they were living in for the past week. And grab everything, Chanshik must, which meant he had to turn over every single object they had touched in room. Which meant that it was pretty inevitable that he would stumble across that photo sitting underneath Junghwan’s wallet, which had been carelessly left on the bedside table. It is perfectly still in Chanshik’s hand, like any inanimate object would be, but it bothers him so much. For one, it’s a girl. She is beautiful, Chanshik decides, with a delightful smile. There’s a “Yenny” scrawled on the back of the photo, but Chanshik thinks that probably isn’t her name. Perhaps it’s a pet name of sorts -
“Put that down.”
He looks up and finds Junghwan at the door, a bag slung over his shoulder. Probably checking to see that everything’s packed up, but no, this is what he finds.
“Put it down.”
Jumping to conclusions is a bad thing to do, regardless of what circumstances. “Yenny,” Chanshik starts, letting his mouth function without his brain. “Yenny. You’re looking for her.” He can’t get that image out of his mind now, the characters, written in pen, her smiling face. Who is she? Why does she bother him - threaten him - so much?
“I’m not.”
But you are, Chanshik can see it in his eyes, or maybe you were. He picks up Junghwan’s wallet (what is the point of one? There’s nothing to spend money on.) and hands them to the older boy, “Here.”
“Thanks,” It’s forced though, like Junghwan’s only saying it to keep up that illusion of stability. He hides things a lot, Chanshik has noticed. Junghwan is insecure, time has helped him a little, but not enough.
“You can say it if you’re angry with me.”
He sighs now, “I’m not.”
Chanshik is really sick of it. The lying, the miscommunication or lack of. “Tell me what’s wrong then, if you aren’t angry.” They’re friends, brothers, almost. They’ve got each other - that’s all they’ve got left and they’re ruining it like this.
“Yenny,” he starts, slow and soft, “I was looking for her.”
Past tense means nothing to Chanshik at this point though, because everything is unfolding in ways he doesn’t want.
“Do you miss her?” Chanshik asks the question as they stand at the entrance of a supermarket, guns and knives in hand.
Junghwan is beside him, watching a few zombies clamour around the remnants of the meat refrigerator. “Some nights. Yes.” He raises his gun and fires, one ear-shattering shot followed by some unearthly howls. He fires another, one falls to its knees. “But it’s alright now.”
Chanshik is shooting now and three shots send one of them barrelling into the floor. “How come?”
Junghwan smiles at him. “You’re here.”
The snow comes half a year later, like the world has a crossed wire and no longer remembers how to run itself correctly. The skies swirl with darker clouds and the sun greets the ground a lot less. The wind comes first, but the snow is swift to follow. Swift, and merciless. There used to be a time when the snow was a good thing. When it meant all kinds of happiness. Used to be.
Now, it is a bringer of death. A slow and chilling death, where the cold seeps through all the cracks in your defense, numbing all that it touches.
It takes a month for Junghwan to collapse. They are on the road after thirty minutes worth of Chanshik repeatedly telling him how it was dangerous. The snow is thick and who knows where there are icy patches. What’s more, they don’t have medicine, if there’s an accident, there’d be no way to treat - “Junghwan!” Yelling is pointless though, because he’s already lost control of it and Chanshik lunging for the steering wheel isn’t much help either. They veer off the road and roll to a stop after what feels like an age of frantic fumbling and coming into contact with a tree.
Chanshik is almost grateful that there is an obstacle, that is, until he sees the windscreen with what might be hundreds of white lines, marking cracks. Until he sees all the glass on the seats, on him, on Junghwan. Until he sees the red - all that blood - with no idea of where it’s coming from.
He holds on tight though, fingers gripping tight on Junghwan’s arm. Chanshik isn’t letting go yet. Not yet. “Come on hyung, stay with me.” They’re not over yet.
Not yet.
Chanshik has never felt so vulnerable.
They’re locked inside a deserted farmhouse after Chanshik had half-dragged, half-lifted Junghwan through the now-wild farmland they had ended up in. He’s had to abandon much of their supplies, there’s food he hasn’t been able to sling over his back along with Junghwan. There are guns which he couldn’t bring alone, he’s only got the bare essentials and even then, Chanshik isn’t sure if they’re sufficient. He’s barely managed to tend to Junghwan too, using almost all of the bandages they had collected. Cleaning the gaping wound on Junghwan’s head and picking out the glass shards from the driver’s side window wasn’t any simple task either.
And then there were the stitches.
You don’t just grab a needle and thread then stitch up a gaping wound. Ideally, you have painkillers on hand, so the patient doesn’t suffer as you work on them. But they don’t have that kind of luxury, Chanshik was lucky enough to even have needle and thread (and even then, that was actually fishing wire). Stitching up Junghwan had meant taking advantage of his unconscious state - unconscious, because Chanshik made sure that Junghwan was breathing and his heart was beating.
“Sorry,” he had murmured as he worked the needle, gritting his teeth, imagining the pain which Junghwan would or wouldn’t feel. “Sorry, hyung.” He apologises for more than the pain. He apologises because of the situation they’re in. The last dregs of humanity. A lost love only present in memories.
The snow keeps falling outside and Chanshik doesn’t dare fall asleep as he keeps the flame he’s created in the fireplace going. He doesn’t let it get too warm though, as he sits cross-legged in front of it, Junghwan bundled in a sleeping bag beside him. Can’t attract attention, he reminds himself. Smoke attracts them, because they understand that it equals to people. Living beings, a feast.
They aren’t going to die though, Chanshik is determined, he knows that they’ll pull through. He’ll make sure of it. “Don’t die on me, hyung.” There’s still life left in them.
They’re far from gone.
On the third day, Junghwan wakes up.
“Hyung?”
“Hey, Channie.”
Chanshik feels like he’s conversing with a ghost, but it’s enough for now.
For a while, it looks like there’s hope. For one, Junghwan is alive. Alive. Breathing, heart beating, walking, albeit with a limp. His wounds are healing on what little food Chanshik has to spare. They’re starving though, slowly but surely, as much as Chanshik refuses to admit it.
“Take it.” Junghwan’s holding out a hard cracker, one of the snacks they can spare (but even they are running low now).
Chanshik can’t. He’s been hiding it from Junghwan who he has confined in the living room, covered in think blankets stripped from the various dwellings they have previously visited. He knows where the food supplies are hidden, they’re running low. “No thanks. I’m not hungry,” he lies. He’s hungry, really, but he hasn’t been over-exerting himself -- not when they are essentially barricaded indoors while an ice age begins outside.
Junghwan looks at him, long, hard, penetrating. “Liar,” he says as he returns the offending piece of food to its original compartment. “Just say it if we’re running low. Say it, if we’re starving to death.”
“We’re not dying.”
Junghwan laughs at him. “Think what you want.”
Chanshik finds Junghwan awake, tending to the fire in the morning. It’s the first time since they’ve been cooped up indoors that this has happened. What’s more, there’s bread on the table. Bread that’s probably stale on the outside, but will be edible on the inside. Some dried fruit too. He feels a ball of something lodge in his throat when he sees that. “Where did you get that?” he half-whispers, as he approaches the coffee table the food is set out on.
Junghwan smiles at him, but doesn’t say anything.
Chanshik finds the bloody change of clothes and knife that evening, and Junghwan collapses in the bathroom only minutes after the discovery.
This time, nothing he does will save him.
“Give up, Channie.”
“Don’t call me that. Not now.”
He laughs a little, weak. “Just give up.”
“No.”
It’s dark, the sky is pitch black and they’ve only got the flickering light of the fire to see by. Still, Junghwan can see Chanshik, biting his lip, desperately trying to hold all the emotions back. He’s at breaking point though, and it’s painful just to look at. “Hey, listen to me.” It’s tiring, getting the words out. And the pain is consistent, eating away at him. “Listen. I’m not hanging around much longer.”
“Shut up, Junghwan. You are.” Chanshik isn’t letting him just leave -
“Come on, listen to me,” he draws in a shaky breath, “I started off alone.”
The air is still and silent. Chanshik is listening.
“But then I met you and for a while, it was us two. I liked that.”
“Like.”
Junghwan is amused a little, that Chanshik was so hung up on it. How many lives have they ended? Zombies were people once, and now, he is the one who is dying. How many lives have they extinguished without batting an eyelid? And now he’s the one dying and Chanshik is spiralling down into denial. “I’m going to use past tense and you can’t stop me.” There’s a pause as those words, light-hearted and so out of place, hang between them. “Look, Chanshik, at the end of the day, you’ve only got yourself. But that time when it was you and me? That was special.”
It ends the way it started, him, alone. But really, Chanshik thinks as he lets the snow bury the spot where he buried Junghwan, their time in this world (together) has long expired, so mourning isn’t appropriate.
Chanshik can’t imagine how he’s going to continue from now on, he’ll probably freeze to death, or starve.
He’s not afraid though, when the sky opens up and breathes in his soul.
Pairing: Gongchan/Sandeul
Genre: au!zombie apocalypse, bromance
Rating: G
wordcount: 3186
Chanshik doesn’t know a lot about Junghwan, considering that he has known the older boy for a grand total of two weeks, which is fourteen days and three-hundred and thirty-six hours, which seems like a lot, but really isn’t because humans count things using days and not hours nor seconds; and fourteen is less than three-hundred and thirty-six. Still, Chanshik feels that hanging out with Junghwan isn’t bad, especially if it means that they get a four-wheel drive.
It’s a strange thing on Chanshik’s pros and cons list, but everything is strange when you are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The damn thing isn’t even supposed to happen in the first place. There are movies and books about it and all, but it’s fiction.
Apparently not.
“Rise and shine, Channie. There are zombies to kill today.”
The thing about living in the middle of a zombie apocalypse with Junghwan is that nothing really seems dark and depressing. Sure, having all your family members turn into mindless cannibals isn’t really the happiest thing in the world and nor is pushing a bookshelf onto your high school crush out of self-defense. Even so, after meeting Junghwan, Chanshik has actually laughed and done some of the stupidest things in his life, so in the end of the day, his life post-zombie apocalypse does have some plus points. Besides, Junghwan is a good singer, so he gets free entertainment.
“I used to be part of the school choir.”
Chanshik is not one for music. Sure, he has his fair share of songs which are replayed more than they should on his music player -- singing though? No, that is not for him. “School choir? Really?”
Junghwan nods as he tentatively pokes his head out of the garden shed. “One of the soloists too. It’s surprising what girls dig in a guy.”
Chanshik runs his gaze over his new(ish) friend. He is somewhat attractive, with that delightful smile and pale skin. He’s rather thin too, and with a one to seven and a half head to body ratio, he doesn’t look too bad in terms of proportion. Still, he doubts that Junghwan has ever had a girlfriend.
“Hey, Channie.”
“Yeah?”
Junghwan is closing the door now. “One of them got to our salami sticks.”
Chanshik sighs as he bends down to retrieve the shovel they had found the night before, “Didn’t you lock the car?”
“Well, it has a rock. A big rock.”
“Ah. I see.”
They don’t get to breathe fresh air much.
It’s not what Chanshik expects, especially since now that most polluters aren’t functioning anymore. Cars have stopped running, trains are abandoned. The odd factory still spews thick clouds, but they are all malfunctioning on their own, like there is a mysterious higher power turning everything off. With devastating effects. Still, the skies seem a little bluer, and the rain that falls on the odd day doesn’t smell foul and sour. Still, even though the weather is better, they don’t get to experience it properly. It’s usually a whole day spent in a car, watching the signs on the road fly past. A day spent avoiding zombies, breaking into abandoned homes in search of supplies.
Chanshik wonders if Junghwan misses it. Freedom. Easy freedom. They have freedom now, they can drive down empty roads in search of their chosen safe haven. They have an empty freedom, but it is still freedom. “Hey, Junghwan.”
They’re speeding down a highway, windows wound down. It’s chaotic, the wind whipping through their hair, chilling their skin. “What is it?” Junghwan asks, still focused on the road, following the white lines leading to a momentary future.
“It’s weird, we have so much time and space -”
Junghwan snorts.
“-but we don’t really appreciate it.”
The older boy sighs. “We’re running away from hell. Do we really have that luxury?”
Chanshik eyes the road that they’re tearing down. There are wrecks on the sides and only twenty minutes ago, Junghwan had to navigate his way around a combusted semi-trailer. “But for all we know, everything’s hell already.”
Junghwan shrugs as he slows down to edge around the wreckage of a van and a motorcycle. There is still a stray limb, rotting. “We could head to the mountains.”
Chanshik falls silent as he wonders if pandas can fall prey to the virus as well. He almost doesn’t notice when Junghwan brakes and turns off the engine. “What are you doing?”
He smiles and Chanshik knows that he shouldn’t think that eye smile is gorgeous. “Appreciating time and space.”
They’re well on their way into China when winter arrives. Only, it’s really hard for Chanshik to tell that it’s actually China. There isn’t anything distinctively Chinese that isn’t dead or rotting. Or a zombie, he notes as their dusty truck trundles down the dirt track, past what used to be a farmer. It (or is it a he? Do zombies have gender?) seems to give them a cursory glance, but doesn’t make any effort to follow them. Metal mustn’t look that appetising.
“You know, you shouldn’t expect too much.” Junghwan tells him as he draws slowly to a stop on the road. The engine splutters silent as he sticks his head out the window, probably to check if there are any lurking zombies waiting to feast on their flesh in the otherwise inviting Chinese countryside, with rice paddies that resemble swamps now. He retreats inside the car, winding the window up, “We kind of have to assume that the majority of people leaving in Asia have turned into zombies, making every former landmark very disappointing.”
Personally, Chanshik feels that Junghwan wastes a lot of words, but then again, when you live in a world with a human population of two, it’s better to practise talking, just in case you forget one day. “You’re the disappointed one,” he scoffs, smile playing on his lips.
Junghwan takes his eyes off the road for a second too long. “Fine.”
One night, they are sitting on the rooftop of a skyscraper. They’ve decided to linger on the fringes of Shanghai, mainly because they can’t imagine any other options. Where else are they to go? Travelling the world would be nice, but what would be the point? It would have been the same everywhere, Chanshik had told Junghwan after he came back from shooting a zombie three times in the skull, tattered newspaper in hand. The Chinese script was faded and spotty, but the two boys put their heads together and they make out a few phrases and words (“all cities”, “continents”, “spread”, “virus”). Chanshik had tore it up after Junghwan had uttered those words, yellowed fragments fluttering away from his fingers as a metal bin fell to the ground down the road. They hadn’t spoken after that, but they knew.
It’s just us now.
Just the two of them, cross-legged on the concrete on a skyscraper’s rooftop. “You know,” Chanshik begins, “why do you think that it’s us?”
Junghwan seems to be staring ahead at nothing in particular, or maybe he is listening to the car sirens in the distance. He smiles a little though, just the subtle tilt of the corners of his lips. “What? Are you saying this is fate?” It is a painful smile.
If it is fate, Chanshik thinks, then the world must really hate them. It is one thing to die, to disintegrate into the very basic building blocks of your physical being. To become ashes, to become dust. It is another to walk the earth which is now the breeding ground of the living dead. “Fate? Well, it depends on which part.” It is windy and cold on the rooftop, but the air is better, less smoke, less rot. “Being the left overs? Or meeting you?”
“It’s probably a coincidence,” Junghwan says as a street light flickers on the ruined road below.
That bothers Chanshik, but he doesn’t say much more. “Think what you want. We should go indoors now.” He stands, arms wrapped around his thin frame - thinner now, after the running and the killing. “It’s cold at night.”
Junghwan joins him, swinging an arm over his shoulders. “What do you think we’ll die of? Zombie or starvation?”
Chanshik shrugs, “I’ll decide when the time comes.”
In all fairness, it’s not the end of the world when Chanshik finds a photo in Junghwan’s things. Besides, it isn’t like he is poking around his friend’s possessions without permission. It was Junghwan who had asked him to grab everything from the apartment they were living in for the past week. And grab everything, Chanshik must, which meant he had to turn over every single object they had touched in room. Which meant that it was pretty inevitable that he would stumble across that photo sitting underneath Junghwan’s wallet, which had been carelessly left on the bedside table. It is perfectly still in Chanshik’s hand, like any inanimate object would be, but it bothers him so much. For one, it’s a girl. She is beautiful, Chanshik decides, with a delightful smile. There’s a “Yenny” scrawled on the back of the photo, but Chanshik thinks that probably isn’t her name. Perhaps it’s a pet name of sorts -
“Put that down.”
He looks up and finds Junghwan at the door, a bag slung over his shoulder. Probably checking to see that everything’s packed up, but no, this is what he finds.
“Put it down.”
Jumping to conclusions is a bad thing to do, regardless of what circumstances. “Yenny,” Chanshik starts, letting his mouth function without his brain. “Yenny. You’re looking for her.” He can’t get that image out of his mind now, the characters, written in pen, her smiling face. Who is she? Why does she bother him - threaten him - so much?
“I’m not.”
But you are, Chanshik can see it in his eyes, or maybe you were. He picks up Junghwan’s wallet (what is the point of one? There’s nothing to spend money on.) and hands them to the older boy, “Here.”
“Thanks,” It’s forced though, like Junghwan’s only saying it to keep up that illusion of stability. He hides things a lot, Chanshik has noticed. Junghwan is insecure, time has helped him a little, but not enough.
“You can say it if you’re angry with me.”
He sighs now, “I’m not.”
Chanshik is really sick of it. The lying, the miscommunication or lack of. “Tell me what’s wrong then, if you aren’t angry.” They’re friends, brothers, almost. They’ve got each other - that’s all they’ve got left and they’re ruining it like this.
“Yenny,” he starts, slow and soft, “I was looking for her.”
Past tense means nothing to Chanshik at this point though, because everything is unfolding in ways he doesn’t want.
“Do you miss her?” Chanshik asks the question as they stand at the entrance of a supermarket, guns and knives in hand.
Junghwan is beside him, watching a few zombies clamour around the remnants of the meat refrigerator. “Some nights. Yes.” He raises his gun and fires, one ear-shattering shot followed by some unearthly howls. He fires another, one falls to its knees. “But it’s alright now.”
Chanshik is shooting now and three shots send one of them barrelling into the floor. “How come?”
Junghwan smiles at him. “You’re here.”
The snow comes half a year later, like the world has a crossed wire and no longer remembers how to run itself correctly. The skies swirl with darker clouds and the sun greets the ground a lot less. The wind comes first, but the snow is swift to follow. Swift, and merciless. There used to be a time when the snow was a good thing. When it meant all kinds of happiness. Used to be.
Now, it is a bringer of death. A slow and chilling death, where the cold seeps through all the cracks in your defense, numbing all that it touches.
It takes a month for Junghwan to collapse. They are on the road after thirty minutes worth of Chanshik repeatedly telling him how it was dangerous. The snow is thick and who knows where there are icy patches. What’s more, they don’t have medicine, if there’s an accident, there’d be no way to treat - “Junghwan!” Yelling is pointless though, because he’s already lost control of it and Chanshik lunging for the steering wheel isn’t much help either. They veer off the road and roll to a stop after what feels like an age of frantic fumbling and coming into contact with a tree.
Chanshik is almost grateful that there is an obstacle, that is, until he sees the windscreen with what might be hundreds of white lines, marking cracks. Until he sees all the glass on the seats, on him, on Junghwan. Until he sees the red - all that blood - with no idea of where it’s coming from.
He holds on tight though, fingers gripping tight on Junghwan’s arm. Chanshik isn’t letting go yet. Not yet. “Come on hyung, stay with me.” They’re not over yet.
Not yet.
Chanshik has never felt so vulnerable.
They’re locked inside a deserted farmhouse after Chanshik had half-dragged, half-lifted Junghwan through the now-wild farmland they had ended up in. He’s had to abandon much of their supplies, there’s food he hasn’t been able to sling over his back along with Junghwan. There are guns which he couldn’t bring alone, he’s only got the bare essentials and even then, Chanshik isn’t sure if they’re sufficient. He’s barely managed to tend to Junghwan too, using almost all of the bandages they had collected. Cleaning the gaping wound on Junghwan’s head and picking out the glass shards from the driver’s side window wasn’t any simple task either.
And then there were the stitches.
You don’t just grab a needle and thread then stitch up a gaping wound. Ideally, you have painkillers on hand, so the patient doesn’t suffer as you work on them. But they don’t have that kind of luxury, Chanshik was lucky enough to even have needle and thread (and even then, that was actually fishing wire). Stitching up Junghwan had meant taking advantage of his unconscious state - unconscious, because Chanshik made sure that Junghwan was breathing and his heart was beating.
“Sorry,” he had murmured as he worked the needle, gritting his teeth, imagining the pain which Junghwan would or wouldn’t feel. “Sorry, hyung.” He apologises for more than the pain. He apologises because of the situation they’re in. The last dregs of humanity. A lost love only present in memories.
The snow keeps falling outside and Chanshik doesn’t dare fall asleep as he keeps the flame he’s created in the fireplace going. He doesn’t let it get too warm though, as he sits cross-legged in front of it, Junghwan bundled in a sleeping bag beside him. Can’t attract attention, he reminds himself. Smoke attracts them, because they understand that it equals to people. Living beings, a feast.
They aren’t going to die though, Chanshik is determined, he knows that they’ll pull through. He’ll make sure of it. “Don’t die on me, hyung.” There’s still life left in them.
They’re far from gone.
On the third day, Junghwan wakes up.
“Hyung?”
“Hey, Channie.”
Chanshik feels like he’s conversing with a ghost, but it’s enough for now.
For a while, it looks like there’s hope. For one, Junghwan is alive. Alive. Breathing, heart beating, walking, albeit with a limp. His wounds are healing on what little food Chanshik has to spare. They’re starving though, slowly but surely, as much as Chanshik refuses to admit it.
“Take it.” Junghwan’s holding out a hard cracker, one of the snacks they can spare (but even they are running low now).
Chanshik can’t. He’s been hiding it from Junghwan who he has confined in the living room, covered in think blankets stripped from the various dwellings they have previously visited. He knows where the food supplies are hidden, they’re running low. “No thanks. I’m not hungry,” he lies. He’s hungry, really, but he hasn’t been over-exerting himself -- not when they are essentially barricaded indoors while an ice age begins outside.
Junghwan looks at him, long, hard, penetrating. “Liar,” he says as he returns the offending piece of food to its original compartment. “Just say it if we’re running low. Say it, if we’re starving to death.”
“We’re not dying.”
Junghwan laughs at him. “Think what you want.”
Chanshik finds Junghwan awake, tending to the fire in the morning. It’s the first time since they’ve been cooped up indoors that this has happened. What’s more, there’s bread on the table. Bread that’s probably stale on the outside, but will be edible on the inside. Some dried fruit too. He feels a ball of something lodge in his throat when he sees that. “Where did you get that?” he half-whispers, as he approaches the coffee table the food is set out on.
Junghwan smiles at him, but doesn’t say anything.
Chanshik finds the bloody change of clothes and knife that evening, and Junghwan collapses in the bathroom only minutes after the discovery.
This time, nothing he does will save him.
“Give up, Channie.”
“Don’t call me that. Not now.”
He laughs a little, weak. “Just give up.”
“No.”
It’s dark, the sky is pitch black and they’ve only got the flickering light of the fire to see by. Still, Junghwan can see Chanshik, biting his lip, desperately trying to hold all the emotions back. He’s at breaking point though, and it’s painful just to look at. “Hey, listen to me.” It’s tiring, getting the words out. And the pain is consistent, eating away at him. “Listen. I’m not hanging around much longer.”
“Shut up, Junghwan. You are.” Chanshik isn’t letting him just leave -
“Come on, listen to me,” he draws in a shaky breath, “I started off alone.”
The air is still and silent. Chanshik is listening.
“But then I met you and for a while, it was us two. I liked that.”
“Like.”
Junghwan is amused a little, that Chanshik was so hung up on it. How many lives have they ended? Zombies were people once, and now, he is the one who is dying. How many lives have they extinguished without batting an eyelid? And now he’s the one dying and Chanshik is spiralling down into denial. “I’m going to use past tense and you can’t stop me.” There’s a pause as those words, light-hearted and so out of place, hang between them. “Look, Chanshik, at the end of the day, you’ve only got yourself. But that time when it was you and me? That was special.”
It ends the way it started, him, alone. But really, Chanshik thinks as he lets the snow bury the spot where he buried Junghwan, their time in this world (together) has long expired, so mourning isn’t appropriate.
Chanshik can’t imagine how he’s going to continue from now on, he’ll probably freeze to death, or starve.
He’s not afraid though, when the sky opens up and breathes in his soul.