fic: all the songs that you sing in the dark (2/2)
all the songs that you sing in the dark (2/2)
It gets easier after that, and also doesn’t get any easier at all. Louis has to brain another one that drags itself out of a ditch when they’re in between cars. Liam smashes one that tries to shove in through a window of a house they’re bunked in, and won’t speak to anyone for the rest of the night. They hit one with a car they’ve found and its head goes in a full circle, neck twisted all the way around, and that time Niall’s the one who’s sick.
When they stop for the night in the dingy two-flat near Stoke-On-Trent, Louis volunteers to check the house to make sure nothing’s inside.
“Are you sure, mate?” Liam asks tentatively. He’s been treating Louis like he’s something fragile and breakable for weeks. Maybe he’s right, maybe Louis is fragile, but he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel much of anything. “I can go,” Liam offers.
“Nah,” says Louis flatly, and shoulders one of their golf clubs to bring in with him. He’s not sure what he hopes is inside, something or nothing.
As it turns out, there’s nothing.
-
Liam goes off to look for firewood that night and comes back too soon, his face pale. He collapses heavily into a chair and scrubs a hand over his face.
“There’s so many of them,” he says, shaking his head. “Further -- further up the road, just. In a meadow. They’re blocking the road, no way we could get through. God, the smell.”
“S’alright, mate,” Zayn murmurs, resting a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “How many?”
“Hundred,” Liam says, his voice low. “Maybe more, dunno.”
“Jesus,” says Niall. “Can we go around them, d’you think?”
Liam shakes his head. “It’s all swamp and marsh around. Too wet.” Louis could have guessed at that. Everything is swollen and bloated from the rain that won’t stop, rivers running over their beds and choking dry ground until it’s nothing but bog.
“What d’we do, then?” asks Niall. “Go back?”
“No point,” Louis says. He turns his back to them and kneels down by the grate, trying to coax the few flimsy twigs left in it to catch with one of their matches, dwindling rapidly in number.
“They’ll -- they’ll probably move on, yeah?” Zayn asks, unsure. “We could wait here, I suppose.”
If anyone disagrees with that plan they don’t say so, and they all fall silent. After a moment Louis’ meager fire catches with a pop that makes him jump backwards.
-
They stay in the two-flat for several days, finding themselves a bit at loose ends without anything to do. Liam unpacks all their bags and re-packs them. Zayn finds a dog-eared book in one of the bedrooms and props it open on his lap, pretending to read while he smokes too many of his cigarettes out of the front room window.
Louis finds a small liquor cabinet hidden in the back of a wardrobe and pulls out several bottles of bitter, dark whiskey. He doesn’t open them, but lines them up carefully on the floor near his pack.
On the fourth day Louis decides he can’t take being inside for another second, so he pulls on his boots and several jumpers, telling the others he’s going for a walk.
“Be careful,” is all Liam says as he goes.
He doesn’t know where he’s going but he finds himself at the main road in only a few minutes, and turns to walk north, the way they’re meant to be going. All of a sudden he has a sick desire to see them for himself, this mass of living dead.
He smells them, first. A wet, oppressive smell overtakes him, and he gags, pulling his shirts over his nose. It smells like decay and dust and rot and blood, all mingled together, wrong and sickening.
Still, he carries on walking, and when he crests the next hill, he sees them.
They’re so many it’s like the whole of the meadow is crawling. Louis can barely see the ground beneath them, all he can make out is blood and bone and shuffling mangled bodies.
He means to back away, to turn and run back to the house, but he can’t, can’t stop staring. He absolutely and totally refuses to let the thought that’s trying to worm itself into his brain materialize: I wonder if Harry looks like that, somewhere.
After several minutes, he realizes that all of them are sort of shuffling in the same direction, lurching off towards the west through the swamp. Much further to the west, he can see a huge cloud of birds circling. They looks massive even from a distance. They look like scavengers.
-
When he gets back, he pulls one of the bottles of whiskey out of line and downs two thick gulps of it straight away. It makes his throat burn and his eyes water, but the spinning in his head is pleasant enough.
Liam looks at him pointedly like he wants to tell him to stop, but finally he settles for asking “Is that a good idea?” Louis ignores the question and carries on drinking as the rest of the lads rummage around to find something to eat.
-
“Louis says they’re starting to leave,” Niall reports that evening as they eat. The flat has started to smell, like dirty boys cramped up in small spaces and burning wood and the dregs of the shitty Yorkshire tea they’d nicked from an empty shop in town with its front window smashed in.
“Yeah?” asks Zayn, glancing at Louis. Louis shrugs, then nods. His vision’s gone all blurry from the whiskey. For the first time in ages, his limbs don’t totally feel like they’re weighed down by heavy shackles.
“We can look again in the morning,” Liam says from across the room. “If they clear out fast enough we could leave by tomorrow.”
“What d’you think they’re leaving for?” Louis muses idly.
“What d’you mean,” Zayn asks, frowning.
“Well, like. Something’s got their attention, yeah?” Louis continues. “Someone, more like.”
He’s drunk, he knows, and he should stop and sleep it off so he’ll feel well enough in the morning in case they can move on, but all of a sudden he’s angry, and sad, and he wants to keep prodding at it, wants to let it all spill over and revel in the horror that’s been his life for weeks now.
“I mean, if all they are is hungry,” he says, “then what would draw them out? Food. So. Other people.”
“Louis,” warns Liam, but he can’t stop now, he feels the words bubbling out of him like lava.
“Maybe it’s another group like us, only they caught up with them,” he speculates. “Cornered ‘em, tore ‘em apart, and now all of them for miles can smell it and came running. One big buffet.” He spreads his hand and starts to laugh.
“Christ,” says Niall, “stop it, that’s disgusting.”
But Louis is laughing and laughing and can’t stop now. “What if -- what if it’s someone we know getting eaten?” he spits out between peals of laughter. “Or, like, no, what if it’s someone we know doing the eating? Maybe both.”
“Shut up, Louis,” Liam says, suddenly right in front of Louis’ face, looking hard and angry. “I mean it, Lou, shut your mouth.”
“Nah,” says Louis. His laughter trails off into hiccups, and he takes another swig from the bottle, smirking. “We’re all thinking it anyway. About how everyone we know is probably dead, and we're dead anyway, so what’s the point of shutting up? It’s kind of funny.”
Niall groans, sounding like he might be sick.
“Stop talking, Louis, I swear to god,” says Zayn softly, looking a bit horrified.
“Fine,” says Louis, gathering up his blankets and his bottles. He’s unsteady on his feet and has to steady himself on Liam’s arm, who won’t look at him. “Fine, I’ll just fuck off, then,” he says, and stumbles out of the room into one of the back bedrooms. He collapses onto the floor in a heap, barely managing to pull a blanket over himself, and then passes out to a dead sleep, no dreams.
-
He stumbles into the kitchen the next morning, late. Niall informs him quietly that Liam’s gone off to check the road, and see if he can find any cars nearby that they could take. Louis nods and Niall doesn’t elaborate, just puts a plate of cold food in his hands.
When Liam returns he looks bleary around the eyes, and he’s soaking wet from the rain.
“Yeah?” Zayn asks, looking almost hopeful.
“Yeah,” Liam answers. “It’s all cleared out.”
“Any cars?” Louis asks carefully, hoping it sounds like the apology he can’t quite manage to make.
“Down the road,” Liam says, nodding.
“Alright, then,” says Louis, and he means I’m sorry.
“Alright,” Liam repeats, and Louis hopes it means I know.
-
In a stroke of luck that automatically makes Louis feel a bit suspicious, Liam’s found them a car with almost a full tank of petrol. “We could be there by tonight,” Niall breathes, unbelieving.
Louis reckons he’ll believe that when he sees it happen. As it is, he thinks they’ll probably be going forever, and never getting anywhere from it.
But he takes a seat in the back of the car, resting his pounding head against the cool glass of the window. The engine puts him to sleep almost immediately, and when he wakes up again, it’s because there car has stopped.
They’re in front of the bungalow.
-
Louis wakes up abruptly that first night in the bungalow, just after midnight, alone. The other boys have camped out in the front room in a pile of blankets, but Louis had headed straight for this room as soon as they arrived, and had shut the door firmly behind him.
Now the sheets are slick with his sweat, all tangled around his ankles where he’s kicked them off. “Fuck,” he says to no one. He passes a hand over his face and tries to calm down, but his heart is racing and he doesn’t know why. He picks at the sheets and tries not to look around the room, tries not to remember the last time he was here, curled up around Harry and pressed into his back and running his hands through his hair, and --
He realizes what woke him when he hears it again: a tapping, a sort of crunching from outside the window.
He means to call for Liam or Zayn, and grasps blindly next to the bed for the golf club he’d put there as soon as they had arrived. They’re both sleeping in the next room, and if he calls they’ll come running, help him take care of whatever it is that’s out in the yard -- Louis can probably guess -- but the sound sticks in his throat. He forces himself to look, and -- and there’s nothing.
He’s just about to turn away when movement catches his eye, at the end of the drive where he can just barely see it.
“Harry,” he croaks, sound returning. The shadow is gone as fast as it appeared, but Louis knows, deep down in his bones. He knows that shape, knows the lines of Harry’s body like a religion. “Harry,” he calls again, and then he’s running for the hall, making for the front door. Distantly he hears the rest of the lads moving, untangling themselves from their pile of blankets in the front room, but he can’t stop, can’t think about anything except getting out there.
He’s several steps off the front porch when something catches him, stopping his movement. “Louis, what are you doing?” Liam asks, looking horrified. Zayn and Niall stop a few paces behind them, looking just as shocked.
“It was Harry, he was here, I saw him,” Louis insists. “Just there, look.” He points to the drive but it’s empty. There’s nothing anywhere, not even a hint of him.
“There’s no one here, Lou,” Liam says softly, frowning.
“He was,” Louis says, but he lets himself be led back inside, the door bolt safely behind them. “I saw him.”
“You were dreaming,” Liam insists, all gentle. “Harry’s -- Harry’s not here.”
Louis opens his mouth to protest, but all that comes out is a choke, a sob.
-
Louis sees Harry again. He sees him peering in the front window and across the field when he walks into town to loot the small shops for supplies. He sees him in the reflection on the surface of the dirty swimming pool and hears his laugh, once, when he’s out in the back garden chopping wood for the fireplace. But whenever Louis looks too close, Harry disappears. He knows Harry is leaving little hints for him, but he can’t make them fit, can’t figure out what he’s meant to do with them.
He doesn’t mention it to Liam or any of the lads again.
Once he hears Liam talking to Zayn about him when they think he’s sleeping. Liam’s saying things like “worried about him” and “we have to be realistic” and “his sisters, and what happened with his mum, and” and then Louis stops listening because there’s bile in his throat.
That night he crawls into bed with Niall, makes himself very small against his side. “Y’alright, Lou?” Niall asks. Louis doesn’t have
an answer. He cries for the first time since Before.
-
The next night, Louis decided that if they all think he’s mad then he’ll just have to go find Harry on his own, and to hell with Liam and the rest if they don’t like it. Liam’s the one who made him leave Harry in the first place, he wouldn’t even have to be doing this at all if they’d just waited like he’d wanted to.
He goes through his bedroom window when he’s sure they’re all asleep. It gives him deja vu, the act so strangely familiar from his life a million years ago when he was in school and would sneak out of his mum’s house to muck around with Stan after curfew.
As soon as he calls it up, the memory of Stan, of his mum, of Before, he wants to retch, so he forces himself not to think about it, and focuses on getting to Harry instead. He fixes on Harry, like a compass point, like the north star.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he starts walking anyway. Harry’s been here, he’s sure of it, lurking around the bungalow and the garden and the woods, and probably he can’t have gone far, so if Louis walks enough, he’s bound to find him. That’s what he’s been doing all along, after all.
He’s walked two full circuits around the garden and down the drive, and he’s starting down the narrow lane when he first sees movement, just off in the distance and through a stand of trees. For a moment his heart starts to beat faster and he thinks -- maybe it’s not Harry? They haven’t seen any of the dead, not sense they left the two-flat near the meadow that was lousy with them, but they could still be about. He wishes he’d brought something heavy with him, just in case.
Don’t be an idiot, he thinks. It’s Harry, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.
Ahead of him, the leaves on the opposite side of the lane rustle, and he picks up his pace. A shadow that’s too smudgy to fully see darts between the trees and he goes as fast as he can without bothering his twisted ankle too much. “Harry,” he whispers, but the smudge of a shadow is too far ahead to hear him.
It darts off down a path through some underbrush and Louis follows, his breath coming heavier now. The path twists, and Louis can’t see Harry anymore, can’t see his shadow or hear any signs of his movement, so he just keeps on. The path suddenly stops and opens up in a small clearing, and a dilapidated shed that’s near to falling over springs up in the middle of it.
There’s no sign of Harry, but Louis can feel he’s close, knows it in his bones, so he stands still for a moment, trying to slow his pulse, and then pushes through the broken door into the shed.
Inside it’s dark, all dust and old rotten wood. There’s piles of rags and blankets and other loose ends, and a small loft with a ladder that leads up to it just beneath the patchwork ceiling.
“Harry,” Louis whispers. It comes out just a breath, a cloud of fog suspended in the air. “Harry,” he says again louder. “You’re here, I know it, just please--” He chokes off a desperate noise, willing himself not to cry, not to dissolve. And then something in the blackness of the loft shifts, way back in the farthest corner, and suddenly a pale hand peeks out, illuminated in the thin beam of moonlight that’s coming from one of the holes in the ceiling. There’s a trainer, and a skinny leg, and a mop of curls, and suddenly Harry is standing in front of him, whole and unharmed.
“Oh, God,” Louis chokes, and rushes forward, pressing himself right into Harry’s space and clinging onto him so his legs don’t give out with shaking. Harry doesn’t move, stays perfectly still in the little circle of weak light he’s found. “Harry, fuck, how did you get here, I’ve been looking for you, I didn’t want to go, Liam said we had to, oh God.” He can’t breath. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Harry, I didn’t want to leave you, I wanted to come find you.”
“Louis,” Harry finally says. His voice is slow like always, gravelly like he hasn’t used it lately.
Louis surges forward at that, pressing his lips against Harry’s, kissing him furiously. “God, I thought you were dead, I thought -- I thought I’d --” He chokes back a sob that’s forcing its way up his throat. “You stupid prat, never leave me again, not ever, you hear me?”
Harry rests his hands tentatively on Louis’ waist, slowly like he’s trying to remember the steps to a dance. “Louis,” he repeats.
“What happened?” Louis asks again, pulling away so he can look Harry in the face. He seems so put together, so clean, and Louis wonders how that can be -- him and the lads have long since devolved into a perpetual state of grime and wear, but Harry looks perfect, unmarred. He thinks -- he’s not sure, but he thinks Harry looks different. Paler, more stretched, too still and smooth. But then, it’s been so long since he’s seen Harry, and he’s seen terrible things in the meantime, so he’s not sure he trusts his own memory, his own eyes anymore.
“I don’t remember,” Harry says, still slowly, like he’s testing out how to talk. “I was. I wasn’t with you. I was away, I was across town, and I couldn’t come to you. And then it was later, and I was somewhere. A church, I think? The army was there, and they drove us. They took us north, but then they wanted to go further east. I wanted to come north. I wanted to find you. So I walked.”
“By yourself?” Louis asks, startled.
“I met others,” Harry explains. “Along the way, we walked together for a bit. They headed off to Derby, I think. I don’t remember what else.”
Louis frowns. Maybe Harry’s hurt himself, got amnesia or something. But it’s fine, it’s alright, he’ll worry about it later because Harry’s here now and that’s the only thing in the world that exists for him now.
“Have you noticed there are no stars anymore?” Harry asks suddenly.
“What?” asks Louis, a bit startled. He looks up through the hole in the roof, and Harry’s right -- the stars are all blotted out. He tries to remember if he’s seen them since Before, but finds he can’t recall.
“C’mon, you’ve got to get to the bungalow,” Louis remembers. “They’ll all be so relieved, we’re all here, all of us now, and Liam -- oh, God, Liam. C’mon, we’ve got to go.” He reaches out to pull Harry by the wrist, but Harry snatches his arm away so suddenly that Louis jumps.
“No,” Harry says sharply, and Louis feels the blood drain from his cheeks. Something in Harry’s voice is foreign and unnatural, like there’s a hiss behind it. Unbidden, Louis thinks of snakes, of serpents.
“What do you mean?” he asks slowly, confused. “Harry, seriously, stop messing around.”
“No, Lou, I mean it,” Harry says easily, and there’s something harsh about his eyes now too. “There was -- the group I was with. One of them was sick.”
“I don’t -- I don’t understand,” Louis protests weakly.
“Sick like the way everyone got,” Harry continues. “You know, Lou. You know what I mean.”
“But, like, they’re gone now, yeah? So it’s fine, we’re fine, we just have to go--”
“Listen, Lou, no. I wanted to stay here, make sure I was alright, that I hadn’t caught anything that might make you lot sick. I meant to stay hidden until I was sure. You weren’t supposed to see me yet.”
“Now I have, though,” Louis says, and it comes out childlike and pouting. If this was another lifetime he might have been embarrassed, but all he cares about now is Harry, that Harry’s back and he’s alive and now Louis needs to get him back to the bungalow so he can put him into his bed and curl around him and never let him out again. “Please, Harry, you don’t -- you can’t
expect me to leave you again. I’ll stay here, if you like, just, like, please. Please let me stay.”“Alright,” Harry agrees, and Louis presses himself back against Harry, wanting to feel him under his skin. Harry’s hand curls around Louis’ waist and another reaches up to the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “Yeah, stay,” Harry says, and a smile curls slow across his mouth while Louis gasps and mouths at his neck, desperate.
-
When he wakes up in the shed the next morning, Harry’s gone off somewhere. Louis looks for him, looks in every corner of the dilapidated shed, even the tiny ones that no one could possibly be hiding in. He walks around the outside of the shed, circling wider and wider until he’s circumnavigating the whole clearing, then the lane and the patch of woods, the whole garden around the bungalow. It starts to rain, and he turns his collar up against it. He doesn’t see Harry, or any sign he’d been there at all.
-
But the next night he hears that tapping again, and when he slips out the front door, Harry’s leaning against a tree, almost all the way down the drive. Louis tries not to run to him, but he gives up, and his sore ankle starts to burn a bit.
“You could come inside,” he whispers as soon as he reaches Harry, winding around him and pressing kisses against his jaw. But Harry’s shaking his head no before Louis even finished the sentence, and the moonlight catches against his curls. It makes Louis realize that the moon is out, lighting up the yard, but there are still no stars that he can see.
“Alright,” he relents, and lets Harry lead him by the hand down the lane to the shed.
-
Harry comes again for Louis, the next night and the night after and the night after, dragging him off the shed and shrugging off Louis pleading for him to come into the bungalow, please, to let him prove to Liam that he’s really here.
Louis is tired constantly, bags under his eyes. Harry will press up against him the moment they get to the shed, kissing and licking and biting, pulling Louis’ clothes off. He pushes Louis onto the broken wooden floor and yanks off his clothes, lays Louis flat on his back and presses inside him until Louis can only see blackness, no stars. He bites too hard at Louis’ neck, his hips, his chest, like he’s trying to consume him, and Louis lets him.
Afterward he pulls Louis into the tight circle of his arms, always cold and too thin. Harry won’t speak much to Louis, only tells him that he loves him and that he can’t leave him again, makes him promise it over and over. Louis promises until he’s out of breath, exhausted, and he sleeps fitfully. Harry’s never there when Louis wakes up, and he stumbles back to the bungalow alone, feeling bone-weary, somehow more exhausted than when he’d gone to sleep.
-
It carries on for a week like that. It feels more like a month, to Louis. A month or a year or forever.
On the fortieth day After, Harry’s gone again when Louis wakes up. The uncomfortable wood floor of the shed has made his hips shift in his sleep, and he aches with it deep down in his joints. Slowly, he maneuvers himself so that he’s sitting with the blanket pulled around his bare shoulders, and rests his chin on the unfinished windowsill. It’s jagged and rough and he can feel it snag on the short hairs he’s got from not giving enough of a shit to find a razor and shave in days. Maybe weeks.
More rain. He’s got a bruise on the inside of his wrist where Harry’s teeth had pressed in too long.
He thinks about showing it to Liam, saying, see, look, he was here, but he knows just how Liam’s face would look - sad and wary and pitying, and he can’t bear that look, not anymore, so he pulls his cuff further down, all the way over his knuckles, as he walks back to the bungalow.
As if Louis had summoned him up by thought, Liam is waiting on the porch of the bungalow when he approaches.
“Where,” starts Liam. His voice is hoarse, like something’s gone broken inside him. “Where the hell have you been.”
Louis stops, still several paces from the porch. Liam waits for a beat and then storms down the steps, grabbing Louis by the wrist and yanking him bodily up to the house. The circle of Liam’s fingers sting where they press into the mark Harry’d left.
Inside, Liam shoves him into one of the chairs and then sits next to him. “Tell me,” he says.
Louis can’t, though. He can’t speak, the horrible look of anguish in Liam’s eyes is too much for him, leaves him paralyzed. He knows if he tries to say Harry’s name he’ll choke on it.
“Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to wake up and not know where you were?” Liam finally continues, now barely more than whispering. “We had no idea what happened to you, we thought -- thought one of them had gotten you, or that you were off injured or dead somewhere, or that you’d left us--”
He spits the last part out like it’s the worst thing he could imagine, and Louis feels something in him snap.
“Left you?” he repeats, his voice edging on hysterical. “What, like we left Harry, do you mean? Like you made us leave without him, made us leave him behind?”
Liam looks like he might cry or hit something, but he does neither, just folds his hands in his lap. “I won’t apologize, if that’s what you want from me,” he finally says. “He was gone, and there wasn’t anything I could do, and I wouldn’t sit there and let you just wait to die. I won’t apologize for not being able to lose the rest of you.”
He stands up at that and pushes past Louis towards the bedrooms. Before he disappears down the hall he stops and turns back. “I miss him too, y’know. You’re not the only one who wishes this was different. That he was here.”
“But he is,” Louis protests, and as soon as it’s out of his mouth he regrets it, wishing he could yank the words out of the air and stuff them back in.
“What do you mean,” Liam asks cautiously.
“I mean I told you already,” Louis says. There’s nothing to be done for it now, he supposes. “I told you I’ve seen him. He’s here. There’s a shed down the lane where he’s been sleeping. Only he was around someone sick so he can’t come here in case it makes the rest of us sick too.” He folds his arms, daring Liam to argue.
But Liam only shakes his head sadly. “He’s not here, Lou. He’s not.” A wave of anguish passes over his face before he can stop it.
And then he disappears down the hallway, and Louis is alone.
-
Liam spends the whole night watching Louis like a hawk, barely takes his eyes off of him once, so he can’t slip out to see Harry. Instead he sits sulking in the front room, while Liam gazes at him steadily.
Louis thinks he can almost feel Harry from the direction of the shed, wavering with -- with disappointment, and something beneath that. Something like anger, like fury. It feels... off. Something’s felt off about Harry since Louis first saw him, he realizes.
“If Harry was really here, mate, he’d come back to the bungalow no matter what,” Liam says, as if he can tell what Louis’ thinking.
“I told you, he said he was worried he’d been around someone sick and didn't want to spread it to us if he had.”
“Lou,” Liam says gently. “If that was true, why would he have sent you back here too? If you’ve seen him, and he was infected, you'd be too, yeah?”
And Louis hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Harry hadn’t either, he reasons, but -- but then he thinks about the strange tone to Harry’s voice the first night, when he’d refused to come to the house, and the nights after when he’d been quiet and strange, wouldn’t talk to Louis about what had happened, and he’d -- he’d bitten Louis, when they’d fucked, and surely that...
He forces himself to cut the thought short.
“Louis,” he hears.
“What?”
“What, what?” Liam asks.
“You said my name,” Louis says carefully. “Just now.”
“No,” says Liam, shaking his head and frowning at Louis. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Louis, come on, come out here, come on,” the voice whispers. This time Louis’ looking at Liam, and his lips don’t move once. The voice whispers in from the window, working under the glass like fingers, gripping around Louis’ chest. “I’m waiting, please, come now, Louis, get out here, open the window, Louis, now.” The sound is oily and wrong and Louis feels his stomach turn.
“What,” asks Liam. “Do you -- you hear something?”
“It’s him,” Louis moans, dropping his head into his hands and feeling miserable. He wants to throw the window open and leap out of it, run to the shed as fast as possible and find Harry, and -- and make the voice stop. He feels queasy. He wants the voice to stop, but as soon as he reaches for the latch on the window he starts to shake, all the way through his body, and wants to crawl as far away from it as he can. “Liam,” he says, and it’s only a whisper. “I can hear him.”
“It’s okay,” Liam says, pulling Louis away from the window by the meat of his arm. “C’mon, there’s nothing there, shhh.”
But there is, Louis knows it, he can hear it. He hears it all night, Harry begging and angry and sad and coy, trying to coax him to please just come outside, please.
Louis tries to block it out, but he can’t. Eventually he falls asleep, Liam’s hand rubbing circles on his back and Harry’s unnatural voice hissing in his ear.
-
Liam spends the whole next day walking the grounds like he’s searching for something. “Only getting firewood,” he tells Zayn, but it sounds false. Louis thinks Zayn and Niall must be able to feel the strange mood between him and Liam, but they don’t say anything, only carry on arranging their food tins and bottling the rainwater they’ve collected in buckets.
Liam comes back in the late afternoon just as the rain picks up, and the four of them gather around the table for tea.
“I think we need to leave,” Liam announces. He glances immediately to Louis like he expects him to protest, but Louis stays silent, staring down at his untouched food. When no one protests, he carries on. “We can always come back here if we need to, but we need more supplies than there are in town, and we need to see -- see what else we can find out,” he concludes lamely. “We can’t stay hidden here forever.”
Niall and Zayn nod. “Bradford,” Zayn says after a moment. “I’d -- I’d like to go. Just to, you know. See.”
At the edge of the table, Louis can see Zayn and Niall have got their fingers tangled together, clinging on each other like a life preserver. He swallows hard. He doesn't nod, but he doesn’t protest either, and eventually the other three finish their tea and file out, leaving Louis to sit there alone.
Bye the time the sun sets they’ve all three fallen asleep on the couch in the sitting room. Louis doesn’t realize his feet are moving until he’s out the front door, shutting the latch behind him, and he’s a bit horrified to find that his feet are leading him to the shed on their own, as if he has no say in the matter.
“I thought you might not come,” Harry pouts when he gets there. He’s perched on an old palette of wood tossed in the corner, knees drawn up to his chin. He looks like he’s floating, like he’s weightless. Louis doesn’t remember if he’s always looked like that or not. Harry’s eyes glow too bright in the darkness.
“It’d be easier if you’d come to the bungalow,” Louis says, feeling uneasy.
“I can’t, not yet,” Harry says, and there’s something brittle under his voice like he’s losing his patience with Louis asking. Harry’d never lost his patience with Louis before. “I’ve told you.”
“They want to leave soon,” Louis starts. “Zayn wants to go to Bradford, see if there’s anyone left there.”
“Let them go,” Harry says, and it’s like a hiss again. “Stay here with me. Just the two of us, like we ought to be.”
“No, Harry, that’s... that’s not right. What about the others? All of us, and -- and their families?”
Harry’s mouth curls at that. Louis swallows hard, and Harry moves closer, pushing into Louis’ space.
“What about your family?” Harry asks “Your mum and your sisters? What about Lottie, Lou? And Daisy and Phoebe.” Harry licks his lips. “We could go find them, you know. You and I. We could find out what happened to them. After they got sick.”
“Don’t talk about them,” Louis spits, shoving Harry back an inch. “Not Lottie or Mum or any of them. Don’t -- don’t you dare even say their names.”
“Alright, Lou, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” Harry smiles flat, and it’s wrong on his face. It’s an imitation of something, so unnatural that Louis’ skin crawls.
“You don’t know how to be sorry,” he says, barely above a whisper.
“I do, I am, really,” Harry promises, leaning closer so their knees touch. His hand stretches out to hold Louis’ thigh. Even through his jeans, Louis can feel the chill of Harry’s fingers. “I’m sorry. I’ll show you, I’m really sorry.” His fingers clutch harder, and Louis thinks he might bruise.
He wants to shove Harry off. His stomach is turning now, he thinks he’ll be sick if he has to stay near him for another second, because this isn’t Harry. This is a specter in Harry’s face, a shadow, a horrible version of the boy he loved.
But it’s the closest he’s got. He swallows the saliva that’s gathered in his mouth and tries not to be sick on himself while this wrong version of Harry peels down his trousers.
-
No one says anything to him when he returns to the bungalow the next morning. Liam’s mouth is pressed into a thin line, and he simply hands Louis his empty bag. “Pack your things,” he says.
Louis retreats slowly into his room. Harry’s room, really. Before, this was the room Harry’d always slept in, and then later the both of them, curled up around each other like they couldn’t stand to have even an inch of space between them.
Louis moves slowly, folding his clothes and placing them gently inside his bag. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he brings a hand up to his face and it comes away wet.
He shuts the door behind him when he’s done, and doesn’t open it again.
In the front room, Zayn and Niall and sitting awkwardly near their bags as Liam loads supplies into the car outside, food and tents and all sorts of things he’s scrounged from around the bungalow. They can’t really take much, they certainly can’t carry it all and the car will run out of gas eventually and who knows if they’ll find another for ages, but it still feels nice to think that for once they might be over prepared, even if it’s just for a day.
Niall and Zayn load their packs in silence, and then take Louis’ too when he doesn’t move to get up.
Finally Liam comes into the room and sits quietly next to Louis on the sofa. Outside, the rain has stopped, and if Louis didn’t know better he’d think the sun was trying to shine through the clouds.
“Maybe we’ll be back someday,” Liam says. Louis knows they won’t -- at least he won’t. He knows he won’t ever be able to set foot inside this building again no matter what they find wherever it is they’re going. But he appreciates Liam saying it, at least. He leans his head on Liam’s shoulder.
“C’mon, then,” Liam says after a bit, standing up and offering his hand.
“Yeah, just. One minute, okay?”
Liam pauses, like he’s not sure if he wants to leave Louis alone. “It’s okay, I promise,” Louis says. “Just need to sort of, like. Say goodbye.”
Liam’s face softens, something soft and sad passing over it, before he says “Okay, Lou,” and goes to wait in the car, leaving the front door open behind him.
Louis turns around, trying to memorize the walls of the room. It feels suddenly like he’s lived his whole life in this room, every single moment with Harry and the rest of the lads. That first night when they barely knew each other, the first time Harry pressed his lips against Louis’ and smiled, a million nights in between and after.
An ache sets in his chest, and he knows it’s time to go.
“Alright, then,” he says to the empty room. “See you.”
He closes the door behind him as he goes, and it latches so softly it doesn’t make a sound.
-
“Okay,” Louis says, sitting carefully next to Liam in the back seat. “Okay. I’m ready now.”
Niall inches the car forward and they start down the drive. Louis wills himself not to look back. He knows whose face he’ll see in every window if he does.
As they approach the path that leads to the shed, the trees start moving as a breeze rustles through them. As he expects, there’s a voice on the wind, picking up as it blows harder until it fills Louis’ ears.
“Louis,” the voice wails, and Louis flinches, curling in closer to Liam’s shoulder.
“Alright?” Niall asks from the front.
“Just drive,” Liam instructs, so Niall does.
“Louis,” the voice continues. “You can’t, you promised, you said you wouldn’t leave me again, please.” It lifts and falls on the breeze, making Louis cringe and wince.
“It’s alright, Lou,” Liam says, and his voice drowns the other one out, briefly. They’re past the path to the shed now, leaving it behind in the distance, further and further away every second.
“Louis,” it says. “You can’t, you promised, I’ll die, I’ll die without you, Louis, please.”
Louis doesn’t look back. Whatever’s back there, lurking in the shadows of the shed, it can’t die. It’s already dead.
He straightens his back, squeezes Liam’s hand, and looks forward at the road.
It gets easier after that, and also doesn’t get any easier at all. Louis has to brain another one that drags itself out of a ditch when they’re in between cars. Liam smashes one that tries to shove in through a window of a house they’re bunked in, and won’t speak to anyone for the rest of the night. They hit one with a car they’ve found and its head goes in a full circle, neck twisted all the way around, and that time Niall’s the one who’s sick.
When they stop for the night in the dingy two-flat near Stoke-On-Trent, Louis volunteers to check the house to make sure nothing’s inside.
“Are you sure, mate?” Liam asks tentatively. He’s been treating Louis like he’s something fragile and breakable for weeks. Maybe he’s right, maybe Louis is fragile, but he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel much of anything. “I can go,” Liam offers.
“Nah,” says Louis flatly, and shoulders one of their golf clubs to bring in with him. He’s not sure what he hopes is inside, something or nothing.
As it turns out, there’s nothing.
-
Liam goes off to look for firewood that night and comes back too soon, his face pale. He collapses heavily into a chair and scrubs a hand over his face.
“There’s so many of them,” he says, shaking his head. “Further -- further up the road, just. In a meadow. They’re blocking the road, no way we could get through. God, the smell.”
“S’alright, mate,” Zayn murmurs, resting a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “How many?”
“Hundred,” Liam says, his voice low. “Maybe more, dunno.”
“Jesus,” says Niall. “Can we go around them, d’you think?”
Liam shakes his head. “It’s all swamp and marsh around. Too wet.” Louis could have guessed at that. Everything is swollen and bloated from the rain that won’t stop, rivers running over their beds and choking dry ground until it’s nothing but bog.
“What d’we do, then?” asks Niall. “Go back?”
“No point,” Louis says. He turns his back to them and kneels down by the grate, trying to coax the few flimsy twigs left in it to catch with one of their matches, dwindling rapidly in number.
“They’ll -- they’ll probably move on, yeah?” Zayn asks, unsure. “We could wait here, I suppose.”
If anyone disagrees with that plan they don’t say so, and they all fall silent. After a moment Louis’ meager fire catches with a pop that makes him jump backwards.
-
They stay in the two-flat for several days, finding themselves a bit at loose ends without anything to do. Liam unpacks all their bags and re-packs them. Zayn finds a dog-eared book in one of the bedrooms and props it open on his lap, pretending to read while he smokes too many of his cigarettes out of the front room window.
Louis finds a small liquor cabinet hidden in the back of a wardrobe and pulls out several bottles of bitter, dark whiskey. He doesn’t open them, but lines them up carefully on the floor near his pack.
On the fourth day Louis decides he can’t take being inside for another second, so he pulls on his boots and several jumpers, telling the others he’s going for a walk.
“Be careful,” is all Liam says as he goes.
He doesn’t know where he’s going but he finds himself at the main road in only a few minutes, and turns to walk north, the way they’re meant to be going. All of a sudden he has a sick desire to see them for himself, this mass of living dead.
He smells them, first. A wet, oppressive smell overtakes him, and he gags, pulling his shirts over his nose. It smells like decay and dust and rot and blood, all mingled together, wrong and sickening.
Still, he carries on walking, and when he crests the next hill, he sees them.
They’re so many it’s like the whole of the meadow is crawling. Louis can barely see the ground beneath them, all he can make out is blood and bone and shuffling mangled bodies.
He means to back away, to turn and run back to the house, but he can’t, can’t stop staring. He absolutely and totally refuses to let the thought that’s trying to worm itself into his brain materialize: I wonder if Harry looks like that, somewhere.
After several minutes, he realizes that all of them are sort of shuffling in the same direction, lurching off towards the west through the swamp. Much further to the west, he can see a huge cloud of birds circling. They looks massive even from a distance. They look like scavengers.
-
When he gets back, he pulls one of the bottles of whiskey out of line and downs two thick gulps of it straight away. It makes his throat burn and his eyes water, but the spinning in his head is pleasant enough.
Liam looks at him pointedly like he wants to tell him to stop, but finally he settles for asking “Is that a good idea?” Louis ignores the question and carries on drinking as the rest of the lads rummage around to find something to eat.
-
“Louis says they’re starting to leave,” Niall reports that evening as they eat. The flat has started to smell, like dirty boys cramped up in small spaces and burning wood and the dregs of the shitty Yorkshire tea they’d nicked from an empty shop in town with its front window smashed in.
“Yeah?” asks Zayn, glancing at Louis. Louis shrugs, then nods. His vision’s gone all blurry from the whiskey. For the first time in ages, his limbs don’t totally feel like they’re weighed down by heavy shackles.
“We can look again in the morning,” Liam says from across the room. “If they clear out fast enough we could leave by tomorrow.”
“What d’you think they’re leaving for?” Louis muses idly.
“What d’you mean,” Zayn asks, frowning.
“Well, like. Something’s got their attention, yeah?” Louis continues. “Someone, more like.”
He’s drunk, he knows, and he should stop and sleep it off so he’ll feel well enough in the morning in case they can move on, but all of a sudden he’s angry, and sad, and he wants to keep prodding at it, wants to let it all spill over and revel in the horror that’s been his life for weeks now.
“I mean, if all they are is hungry,” he says, “then what would draw them out? Food. So. Other people.”
“Louis,” warns Liam, but he can’t stop now, he feels the words bubbling out of him like lava.
“Maybe it’s another group like us, only they caught up with them,” he speculates. “Cornered ‘em, tore ‘em apart, and now all of them for miles can smell it and came running. One big buffet.” He spreads his hand and starts to laugh.
“Christ,” says Niall, “stop it, that’s disgusting.”
But Louis is laughing and laughing and can’t stop now. “What if -- what if it’s someone we know getting eaten?” he spits out between peals of laughter. “Or, like, no, what if it’s someone we know doing the eating? Maybe both.”
“Shut up, Louis,” Liam says, suddenly right in front of Louis’ face, looking hard and angry. “I mean it, Lou, shut your mouth.”
“Nah,” says Louis. His laughter trails off into hiccups, and he takes another swig from the bottle, smirking. “We’re all thinking it anyway. About how everyone we know is probably dead, and we're dead anyway, so what’s the point of shutting up? It’s kind of funny.”
Niall groans, sounding like he might be sick.
“Stop talking, Louis, I swear to god,” says Zayn softly, looking a bit horrified.
“Fine,” says Louis, gathering up his blankets and his bottles. He’s unsteady on his feet and has to steady himself on Liam’s arm, who won’t look at him. “Fine, I’ll just fuck off, then,” he says, and stumbles out of the room into one of the back bedrooms. He collapses onto the floor in a heap, barely managing to pull a blanket over himself, and then passes out to a dead sleep, no dreams.
-
He stumbles into the kitchen the next morning, late. Niall informs him quietly that Liam’s gone off to check the road, and see if he can find any cars nearby that they could take. Louis nods and Niall doesn’t elaborate, just puts a plate of cold food in his hands.
When Liam returns he looks bleary around the eyes, and he’s soaking wet from the rain.
“Yeah?” Zayn asks, looking almost hopeful.
“Yeah,” Liam answers. “It’s all cleared out.”
“Any cars?” Louis asks carefully, hoping it sounds like the apology he can’t quite manage to make.
“Down the road,” Liam says, nodding.
“Alright, then,” says Louis, and he means I’m sorry.
“Alright,” Liam repeats, and Louis hopes it means I know.
-
In a stroke of luck that automatically makes Louis feel a bit suspicious, Liam’s found them a car with almost a full tank of petrol. “We could be there by tonight,” Niall breathes, unbelieving.
Louis reckons he’ll believe that when he sees it happen. As it is, he thinks they’ll probably be going forever, and never getting anywhere from it.
But he takes a seat in the back of the car, resting his pounding head against the cool glass of the window. The engine puts him to sleep almost immediately, and when he wakes up again, it’s because there car has stopped.
They’re in front of the bungalow.
-
Louis wakes up abruptly that first night in the bungalow, just after midnight, alone. The other boys have camped out in the front room in a pile of blankets, but Louis had headed straight for this room as soon as they arrived, and had shut the door firmly behind him.
Now the sheets are slick with his sweat, all tangled around his ankles where he’s kicked them off. “Fuck,” he says to no one. He passes a hand over his face and tries to calm down, but his heart is racing and he doesn’t know why. He picks at the sheets and tries not to look around the room, tries not to remember the last time he was here, curled up around Harry and pressed into his back and running his hands through his hair, and --
He realizes what woke him when he hears it again: a tapping, a sort of crunching from outside the window.
He means to call for Liam or Zayn, and grasps blindly next to the bed for the golf club he’d put there as soon as they had arrived. They’re both sleeping in the next room, and if he calls they’ll come running, help him take care of whatever it is that’s out in the yard -- Louis can probably guess -- but the sound sticks in his throat. He forces himself to look, and -- and there’s nothing.
He’s just about to turn away when movement catches his eye, at the end of the drive where he can just barely see it.
“Harry,” he croaks, sound returning. The shadow is gone as fast as it appeared, but Louis knows, deep down in his bones. He knows that shape, knows the lines of Harry’s body like a religion. “Harry,” he calls again, and then he’s running for the hall, making for the front door. Distantly he hears the rest of the lads moving, untangling themselves from their pile of blankets in the front room, but he can’t stop, can’t think about anything except getting out there.
He’s several steps off the front porch when something catches him, stopping his movement. “Louis, what are you doing?” Liam asks, looking horrified. Zayn and Niall stop a few paces behind them, looking just as shocked.
“It was Harry, he was here, I saw him,” Louis insists. “Just there, look.” He points to the drive but it’s empty. There’s nothing anywhere, not even a hint of him.
“There’s no one here, Lou,” Liam says softly, frowning.
“He was,” Louis says, but he lets himself be led back inside, the door bolt safely behind them. “I saw him.”
“You were dreaming,” Liam insists, all gentle. “Harry’s -- Harry’s not here.”
Louis opens his mouth to protest, but all that comes out is a choke, a sob.
-
Louis sees Harry again. He sees him peering in the front window and across the field when he walks into town to loot the small shops for supplies. He sees him in the reflection on the surface of the dirty swimming pool and hears his laugh, once, when he’s out in the back garden chopping wood for the fireplace. But whenever Louis looks too close, Harry disappears. He knows Harry is leaving little hints for him, but he can’t make them fit, can’t figure out what he’s meant to do with them.
He doesn’t mention it to Liam or any of the lads again.
Once he hears Liam talking to Zayn about him when they think he’s sleeping. Liam’s saying things like “worried about him” and “we have to be realistic” and “his sisters, and what happened with his mum, and” and then Louis stops listening because there’s bile in his throat.
That night he crawls into bed with Niall, makes himself very small against his side. “Y’alright, Lou?” Niall asks. Louis doesn’t have
an answer. He cries for the first time since Before.
-
The next night, Louis decided that if they all think he’s mad then he’ll just have to go find Harry on his own, and to hell with Liam and the rest if they don’t like it. Liam’s the one who made him leave Harry in the first place, he wouldn’t even have to be doing this at all if they’d just waited like he’d wanted to.
He goes through his bedroom window when he’s sure they’re all asleep. It gives him deja vu, the act so strangely familiar from his life a million years ago when he was in school and would sneak out of his mum’s house to muck around with Stan after curfew.
As soon as he calls it up, the memory of Stan, of his mum, of Before, he wants to retch, so he forces himself not to think about it, and focuses on getting to Harry instead. He fixes on Harry, like a compass point, like the north star.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he starts walking anyway. Harry’s been here, he’s sure of it, lurking around the bungalow and the garden and the woods, and probably he can’t have gone far, so if Louis walks enough, he’s bound to find him. That’s what he’s been doing all along, after all.
He’s walked two full circuits around the garden and down the drive, and he’s starting down the narrow lane when he first sees movement, just off in the distance and through a stand of trees. For a moment his heart starts to beat faster and he thinks -- maybe it’s not Harry? They haven’t seen any of the dead, not sense they left the two-flat near the meadow that was lousy with them, but they could still be about. He wishes he’d brought something heavy with him, just in case.
Don’t be an idiot, he thinks. It’s Harry, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.
Ahead of him, the leaves on the opposite side of the lane rustle, and he picks up his pace. A shadow that’s too smudgy to fully see darts between the trees and he goes as fast as he can without bothering his twisted ankle too much. “Harry,” he whispers, but the smudge of a shadow is too far ahead to hear him.
It darts off down a path through some underbrush and Louis follows, his breath coming heavier now. The path twists, and Louis can’t see Harry anymore, can’t see his shadow or hear any signs of his movement, so he just keeps on. The path suddenly stops and opens up in a small clearing, and a dilapidated shed that’s near to falling over springs up in the middle of it.
There’s no sign of Harry, but Louis can feel he’s close, knows it in his bones, so he stands still for a moment, trying to slow his pulse, and then pushes through the broken door into the shed.
Inside it’s dark, all dust and old rotten wood. There’s piles of rags and blankets and other loose ends, and a small loft with a ladder that leads up to it just beneath the patchwork ceiling.
“Harry,” Louis whispers. It comes out just a breath, a cloud of fog suspended in the air. “Harry,” he says again louder. “You’re here, I know it, just please--” He chokes off a desperate noise, willing himself not to cry, not to dissolve. And then something in the blackness of the loft shifts, way back in the farthest corner, and suddenly a pale hand peeks out, illuminated in the thin beam of moonlight that’s coming from one of the holes in the ceiling. There’s a trainer, and a skinny leg, and a mop of curls, and suddenly Harry is standing in front of him, whole and unharmed.
“Oh, God,” Louis chokes, and rushes forward, pressing himself right into Harry’s space and clinging onto him so his legs don’t give out with shaking. Harry doesn’t move, stays perfectly still in the little circle of weak light he’s found. “Harry, fuck, how did you get here, I’ve been looking for you, I didn’t want to go, Liam said we had to, oh God.” He can’t breath. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Harry, I didn’t want to leave you, I wanted to come find you.”
“Louis,” Harry finally says. His voice is slow like always, gravelly like he hasn’t used it lately.
Louis surges forward at that, pressing his lips against Harry’s, kissing him furiously. “God, I thought you were dead, I thought -- I thought I’d --” He chokes back a sob that’s forcing its way up his throat. “You stupid prat, never leave me again, not ever, you hear me?”
Harry rests his hands tentatively on Louis’ waist, slowly like he’s trying to remember the steps to a dance. “Louis,” he repeats.
“What happened?” Louis asks again, pulling away so he can look Harry in the face. He seems so put together, so clean, and Louis wonders how that can be -- him and the lads have long since devolved into a perpetual state of grime and wear, but Harry looks perfect, unmarred. He thinks -- he’s not sure, but he thinks Harry looks different. Paler, more stretched, too still and smooth. But then, it’s been so long since he’s seen Harry, and he’s seen terrible things in the meantime, so he’s not sure he trusts his own memory, his own eyes anymore.
“I don’t remember,” Harry says, still slowly, like he’s testing out how to talk. “I was. I wasn’t with you. I was away, I was across town, and I couldn’t come to you. And then it was later, and I was somewhere. A church, I think? The army was there, and they drove us. They took us north, but then they wanted to go further east. I wanted to come north. I wanted to find you. So I walked.”
“By yourself?” Louis asks, startled.
“I met others,” Harry explains. “Along the way, we walked together for a bit. They headed off to Derby, I think. I don’t remember what else.”
Louis frowns. Maybe Harry’s hurt himself, got amnesia or something. But it’s fine, it’s alright, he’ll worry about it later because Harry’s here now and that’s the only thing in the world that exists for him now.
“Have you noticed there are no stars anymore?” Harry asks suddenly.
“What?” asks Louis, a bit startled. He looks up through the hole in the roof, and Harry’s right -- the stars are all blotted out. He tries to remember if he’s seen them since Before, but finds he can’t recall.
“C’mon, you’ve got to get to the bungalow,” Louis remembers. “They’ll all be so relieved, we’re all here, all of us now, and Liam -- oh, God, Liam. C’mon, we’ve got to go.” He reaches out to pull Harry by the wrist, but Harry snatches his arm away so suddenly that Louis jumps.
“No,” Harry says sharply, and Louis feels the blood drain from his cheeks. Something in Harry’s voice is foreign and unnatural, like there’s a hiss behind it. Unbidden, Louis thinks of snakes, of serpents.
“What do you mean?” he asks slowly, confused. “Harry, seriously, stop messing around.”
“No, Lou, I mean it,” Harry says easily, and there’s something harsh about his eyes now too. “There was -- the group I was with. One of them was sick.”
“I don’t -- I don’t understand,” Louis protests weakly.
“Sick like the way everyone got,” Harry continues. “You know, Lou. You know what I mean.”
“But, like, they’re gone now, yeah? So it’s fine, we’re fine, we just have to go--”
“Listen, Lou, no. I wanted to stay here, make sure I was alright, that I hadn’t caught anything that might make you lot sick. I meant to stay hidden until I was sure. You weren’t supposed to see me yet.”
“Now I have, though,” Louis says, and it comes out childlike and pouting. If this was another lifetime he might have been embarrassed, but all he cares about now is Harry, that Harry’s back and he’s alive and now Louis needs to get him back to the bungalow so he can put him into his bed and curl around him and never let him out again. “Please, Harry, you don’t -- you can’t
expect me to leave you again. I’ll stay here, if you like, just, like, please. Please let me stay.”“Alright,” Harry agrees, and Louis presses himself back against Harry, wanting to feel him under his skin. Harry’s hand curls around Louis’ waist and another reaches up to the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “Yeah, stay,” Harry says, and a smile curls slow across his mouth while Louis gasps and mouths at his neck, desperate.
-
When he wakes up in the shed the next morning, Harry’s gone off somewhere. Louis looks for him, looks in every corner of the dilapidated shed, even the tiny ones that no one could possibly be hiding in. He walks around the outside of the shed, circling wider and wider until he’s circumnavigating the whole clearing, then the lane and the patch of woods, the whole garden around the bungalow. It starts to rain, and he turns his collar up against it. He doesn’t see Harry, or any sign he’d been there at all.
-
But the next night he hears that tapping again, and when he slips out the front door, Harry’s leaning against a tree, almost all the way down the drive. Louis tries not to run to him, but he gives up, and his sore ankle starts to burn a bit.
“You could come inside,” he whispers as soon as he reaches Harry, winding around him and pressing kisses against his jaw. But Harry’s shaking his head no before Louis even finished the sentence, and the moonlight catches against his curls. It makes Louis realize that the moon is out, lighting up the yard, but there are still no stars that he can see.
“Alright,” he relents, and lets Harry lead him by the hand down the lane to the shed.
-
Harry comes again for Louis, the next night and the night after and the night after, dragging him off the shed and shrugging off Louis pleading for him to come into the bungalow, please, to let him prove to Liam that he’s really here.
Louis is tired constantly, bags under his eyes. Harry will press up against him the moment they get to the shed, kissing and licking and biting, pulling Louis’ clothes off. He pushes Louis onto the broken wooden floor and yanks off his clothes, lays Louis flat on his back and presses inside him until Louis can only see blackness, no stars. He bites too hard at Louis’ neck, his hips, his chest, like he’s trying to consume him, and Louis lets him.
Afterward he pulls Louis into the tight circle of his arms, always cold and too thin. Harry won’t speak much to Louis, only tells him that he loves him and that he can’t leave him again, makes him promise it over and over. Louis promises until he’s out of breath, exhausted, and he sleeps fitfully. Harry’s never there when Louis wakes up, and he stumbles back to the bungalow alone, feeling bone-weary, somehow more exhausted than when he’d gone to sleep.
-
It carries on for a week like that. It feels more like a month, to Louis. A month or a year or forever.
On the fortieth day After, Harry’s gone again when Louis wakes up. The uncomfortable wood floor of the shed has made his hips shift in his sleep, and he aches with it deep down in his joints. Slowly, he maneuvers himself so that he’s sitting with the blanket pulled around his bare shoulders, and rests his chin on the unfinished windowsill. It’s jagged and rough and he can feel it snag on the short hairs he’s got from not giving enough of a shit to find a razor and shave in days. Maybe weeks.
More rain. He’s got a bruise on the inside of his wrist where Harry’s teeth had pressed in too long.
He thinks about showing it to Liam, saying, see, look, he was here, but he knows just how Liam’s face would look - sad and wary and pitying, and he can’t bear that look, not anymore, so he pulls his cuff further down, all the way over his knuckles, as he walks back to the bungalow.
As if Louis had summoned him up by thought, Liam is waiting on the porch of the bungalow when he approaches.
“Where,” starts Liam. His voice is hoarse, like something’s gone broken inside him. “Where the hell have you been.”
Louis stops, still several paces from the porch. Liam waits for a beat and then storms down the steps, grabbing Louis by the wrist and yanking him bodily up to the house. The circle of Liam’s fingers sting where they press into the mark Harry’d left.
Inside, Liam shoves him into one of the chairs and then sits next to him. “Tell me,” he says.
Louis can’t, though. He can’t speak, the horrible look of anguish in Liam’s eyes is too much for him, leaves him paralyzed. He knows if he tries to say Harry’s name he’ll choke on it.
“Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to wake up and not know where you were?” Liam finally continues, now barely more than whispering. “We had no idea what happened to you, we thought -- thought one of them had gotten you, or that you were off injured or dead somewhere, or that you’d left us--”
He spits the last part out like it’s the worst thing he could imagine, and Louis feels something in him snap.
“Left you?” he repeats, his voice edging on hysterical. “What, like we left Harry, do you mean? Like you made us leave without him, made us leave him behind?”
Liam looks like he might cry or hit something, but he does neither, just folds his hands in his lap. “I won’t apologize, if that’s what you want from me,” he finally says. “He was gone, and there wasn’t anything I could do, and I wouldn’t sit there and let you just wait to die. I won’t apologize for not being able to lose the rest of you.”
He stands up at that and pushes past Louis towards the bedrooms. Before he disappears down the hall he stops and turns back. “I miss him too, y’know. You’re not the only one who wishes this was different. That he was here.”
“But he is,” Louis protests, and as soon as it’s out of his mouth he regrets it, wishing he could yank the words out of the air and stuff them back in.
“What do you mean,” Liam asks cautiously.
“I mean I told you already,” Louis says. There’s nothing to be done for it now, he supposes. “I told you I’ve seen him. He’s here. There’s a shed down the lane where he’s been sleeping. Only he was around someone sick so he can’t come here in case it makes the rest of us sick too.” He folds his arms, daring Liam to argue.
But Liam only shakes his head sadly. “He’s not here, Lou. He’s not.” A wave of anguish passes over his face before he can stop it.
And then he disappears down the hallway, and Louis is alone.
-
Liam spends the whole night watching Louis like a hawk, barely takes his eyes off of him once, so he can’t slip out to see Harry. Instead he sits sulking in the front room, while Liam gazes at him steadily.
Louis thinks he can almost feel Harry from the direction of the shed, wavering with -- with disappointment, and something beneath that. Something like anger, like fury. It feels... off. Something’s felt off about Harry since Louis first saw him, he realizes.
“If Harry was really here, mate, he’d come back to the bungalow no matter what,” Liam says, as if he can tell what Louis’ thinking.
“I told you, he said he was worried he’d been around someone sick and didn't want to spread it to us if he had.”
“Lou,” Liam says gently. “If that was true, why would he have sent you back here too? If you’ve seen him, and he was infected, you'd be too, yeah?”
And Louis hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Harry hadn’t either, he reasons, but -- but then he thinks about the strange tone to Harry’s voice the first night, when he’d refused to come to the house, and the nights after when he’d been quiet and strange, wouldn’t talk to Louis about what had happened, and he’d -- he’d bitten Louis, when they’d fucked, and surely that...
He forces himself to cut the thought short.
“Louis,” he hears.
“What?”
“What, what?” Liam asks.
“You said my name,” Louis says carefully. “Just now.”
“No,” says Liam, shaking his head and frowning at Louis. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Louis, come on, come out here, come on,” the voice whispers. This time Louis’ looking at Liam, and his lips don’t move once. The voice whispers in from the window, working under the glass like fingers, gripping around Louis’ chest. “I’m waiting, please, come now, Louis, get out here, open the window, Louis, now.” The sound is oily and wrong and Louis feels his stomach turn.
“What,” asks Liam. “Do you -- you hear something?”
“It’s him,” Louis moans, dropping his head into his hands and feeling miserable. He wants to throw the window open and leap out of it, run to the shed as fast as possible and find Harry, and -- and make the voice stop. He feels queasy. He wants the voice to stop, but as soon as he reaches for the latch on the window he starts to shake, all the way through his body, and wants to crawl as far away from it as he can. “Liam,” he says, and it’s only a whisper. “I can hear him.”
“It’s okay,” Liam says, pulling Louis away from the window by the meat of his arm. “C’mon, there’s nothing there, shhh.”
But there is, Louis knows it, he can hear it. He hears it all night, Harry begging and angry and sad and coy, trying to coax him to please just come outside, please.
Louis tries to block it out, but he can’t. Eventually he falls asleep, Liam’s hand rubbing circles on his back and Harry’s unnatural voice hissing in his ear.
-
Liam spends the whole next day walking the grounds like he’s searching for something. “Only getting firewood,” he tells Zayn, but it sounds false. Louis thinks Zayn and Niall must be able to feel the strange mood between him and Liam, but they don’t say anything, only carry on arranging their food tins and bottling the rainwater they’ve collected in buckets.
Liam comes back in the late afternoon just as the rain picks up, and the four of them gather around the table for tea.
“I think we need to leave,” Liam announces. He glances immediately to Louis like he expects him to protest, but Louis stays silent, staring down at his untouched food. When no one protests, he carries on. “We can always come back here if we need to, but we need more supplies than there are in town, and we need to see -- see what else we can find out,” he concludes lamely. “We can’t stay hidden here forever.”
Niall and Zayn nod. “Bradford,” Zayn says after a moment. “I’d -- I’d like to go. Just to, you know. See.”
At the edge of the table, Louis can see Zayn and Niall have got their fingers tangled together, clinging on each other like a life preserver. He swallows hard. He doesn't nod, but he doesn’t protest either, and eventually the other three finish their tea and file out, leaving Louis to sit there alone.
Bye the time the sun sets they’ve all three fallen asleep on the couch in the sitting room. Louis doesn’t realize his feet are moving until he’s out the front door, shutting the latch behind him, and he’s a bit horrified to find that his feet are leading him to the shed on their own, as if he has no say in the matter.
“I thought you might not come,” Harry pouts when he gets there. He’s perched on an old palette of wood tossed in the corner, knees drawn up to his chin. He looks like he’s floating, like he’s weightless. Louis doesn’t remember if he’s always looked like that or not. Harry’s eyes glow too bright in the darkness.
“It’d be easier if you’d come to the bungalow,” Louis says, feeling uneasy.
“I can’t, not yet,” Harry says, and there’s something brittle under his voice like he’s losing his patience with Louis asking. Harry’d never lost his patience with Louis before. “I’ve told you.”
“They want to leave soon,” Louis starts. “Zayn wants to go to Bradford, see if there’s anyone left there.”
“Let them go,” Harry says, and it’s like a hiss again. “Stay here with me. Just the two of us, like we ought to be.”
“No, Harry, that’s... that’s not right. What about the others? All of us, and -- and their families?”
Harry’s mouth curls at that. Louis swallows hard, and Harry moves closer, pushing into Louis’ space.
“What about your family?” Harry asks “Your mum and your sisters? What about Lottie, Lou? And Daisy and Phoebe.” Harry licks his lips. “We could go find them, you know. You and I. We could find out what happened to them. After they got sick.”
“Don’t talk about them,” Louis spits, shoving Harry back an inch. “Not Lottie or Mum or any of them. Don’t -- don’t you dare even say their names.”
“Alright, Lou, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.” Harry smiles flat, and it’s wrong on his face. It’s an imitation of something, so unnatural that Louis’ skin crawls.
“You don’t know how to be sorry,” he says, barely above a whisper.
“I do, I am, really,” Harry promises, leaning closer so their knees touch. His hand stretches out to hold Louis’ thigh. Even through his jeans, Louis can feel the chill of Harry’s fingers. “I’m sorry. I’ll show you, I’m really sorry.” His fingers clutch harder, and Louis thinks he might bruise.
He wants to shove Harry off. His stomach is turning now, he thinks he’ll be sick if he has to stay near him for another second, because this isn’t Harry. This is a specter in Harry’s face, a shadow, a horrible version of the boy he loved.
But it’s the closest he’s got. He swallows the saliva that’s gathered in his mouth and tries not to be sick on himself while this wrong version of Harry peels down his trousers.
-
No one says anything to him when he returns to the bungalow the next morning. Liam’s mouth is pressed into a thin line, and he simply hands Louis his empty bag. “Pack your things,” he says.
Louis retreats slowly into his room. Harry’s room, really. Before, this was the room Harry’d always slept in, and then later the both of them, curled up around each other like they couldn’t stand to have even an inch of space between them.
Louis moves slowly, folding his clothes and placing them gently inside his bag. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he brings a hand up to his face and it comes away wet.
He shuts the door behind him when he’s done, and doesn’t open it again.
In the front room, Zayn and Niall and sitting awkwardly near their bags as Liam loads supplies into the car outside, food and tents and all sorts of things he’s scrounged from around the bungalow. They can’t really take much, they certainly can’t carry it all and the car will run out of gas eventually and who knows if they’ll find another for ages, but it still feels nice to think that for once they might be over prepared, even if it’s just for a day.
Niall and Zayn load their packs in silence, and then take Louis’ too when he doesn’t move to get up.
Finally Liam comes into the room and sits quietly next to Louis on the sofa. Outside, the rain has stopped, and if Louis didn’t know better he’d think the sun was trying to shine through the clouds.
“Maybe we’ll be back someday,” Liam says. Louis knows they won’t -- at least he won’t. He knows he won’t ever be able to set foot inside this building again no matter what they find wherever it is they’re going. But he appreciates Liam saying it, at least. He leans his head on Liam’s shoulder.
“C’mon, then,” Liam says after a bit, standing up and offering his hand.
“Yeah, just. One minute, okay?”
Liam pauses, like he’s not sure if he wants to leave Louis alone. “It’s okay, I promise,” Louis says. “Just need to sort of, like. Say goodbye.”
Liam’s face softens, something soft and sad passing over it, before he says “Okay, Lou,” and goes to wait in the car, leaving the front door open behind him.
Louis turns around, trying to memorize the walls of the room. It feels suddenly like he’s lived his whole life in this room, every single moment with Harry and the rest of the lads. That first night when they barely knew each other, the first time Harry pressed his lips against Louis’ and smiled, a million nights in between and after.
An ache sets in his chest, and he knows it’s time to go.
“Alright, then,” he says to the empty room. “See you.”
He closes the door behind him as he goes, and it latches so softly it doesn’t make a sound.
-
“Okay,” Louis says, sitting carefully next to Liam in the back seat. “Okay. I’m ready now.”
Niall inches the car forward and they start down the drive. Louis wills himself not to look back. He knows whose face he’ll see in every window if he does.
As they approach the path that leads to the shed, the trees start moving as a breeze rustles through them. As he expects, there’s a voice on the wind, picking up as it blows harder until it fills Louis’ ears.
“Louis,” the voice wails, and Louis flinches, curling in closer to Liam’s shoulder.
“Alright?” Niall asks from the front.
“Just drive,” Liam instructs, so Niall does.
“Louis,” the voice continues. “You can’t, you promised, you said you wouldn’t leave me again, please.” It lifts and falls on the breeze, making Louis cringe and wince.
“It’s alright, Lou,” Liam says, and his voice drowns the other one out, briefly. They’re past the path to the shed now, leaving it behind in the distance, further and further away every second.
“Louis,” it says. “You can’t, you promised, I’ll die, I’ll die without you, Louis, please.”
Louis doesn’t look back. Whatever’s back there, lurking in the shadows of the shed, it can’t die. It’s already dead.
He straightens his back, squeezes Liam’s hand, and looks forward at the road.