fic: all the songs that you sing in the dark (1/2)
all the songs that you sing in the dark
r, 10,000 words
harry/louis
zombie / horror / apocalypse AU,
warnings for violence, minor characeter death, ambiguous major character death, etc.
a/n L O L SO I WROTE A ZOMBIE AU I GUESS??? what even, i don't know.
It’s rained for thirty-two days straight. Louis has counted every single one. He has a notebook that stays in his back pocket and he’s been tallying the days inside the front cover, a tick-mark for every day he wakes up and the clouds are still hanging low, spitting down on them.
The last time they saw the sun was Before. There’s not a name for what happened, or if there is Louis doesn’t know it. To him, there was just Before, and now it’s After.
What happened was that first people got sick.
What happened after that was that they died.
But the worst thing was what happened after that. After they died, they came back.
Half of London, all at once. Worse in the south, worst of all in Brighton and Dover, not quite so bad in Liverpool and Manchester. Last Louis heard, the U.K. was down to 7% of it’s original population. The first half died after they got sick, and then when they came back, they took almost all the rest of the ones that were left. He’s not sure about Europe, or the US, or anywhere else, if it was not so bad or maybe even worse, and frankly he doesn’t want to know, which is easy enough with the blackout, now. It’s enough -- it’s too much -- to know as much as he already does, to have seen the things he has. It makes him feel bent in half, the weight of it.
Louis tries not to dream about Before. He tries not to sleep much at all anymore, because something’s always lurking for him there when he does. He jerks awake most mornings feeling faces of ghosts staring down at him from secret corners, doesn’t matter what room he’s in or how far they run.
This morning, Liam kicks him awake. It’s really more a nudge with his trainer than anything, but it’s mostly the same to Louis, anyway. He can’t imagine he’d be terribly bothered if Liam had aimed a boot straight between his ribs. It’s better than being haunted by ghosts that don’t exist.
“Tea,” Liam says soft and low, smiling a bit at Louis. He looks like he’s not slept at all. Probably he hasn’t. “Niall’s got a fire going and the kettle’ll be on soon.”
Louis flexes one of his feet deep inside his pile of blankets. He’d twisted his left ankle the week before crossing a stream, and it’s still aching, on and off.
“Lou?” Liam asks, looking back as he’s already crossing to the door.
"Coming, yeah,” Louis replies, pushing himself up and grabbing for his pack. He’s got a jumper that’s still clean from the last time they’d washed, and the chill is back in the air, creeping into his joints and nerves.
They’re in the upper level of a squat, dingy two-flat building, nearly to the bungalow. Louis guesses they're somewhere near Stoke-On-Trent. Another few days if they have to walk, maybe. If they get lucky and find a car they could be there by nightfall. Louis doesn’t feel optimistic about either of those eventualities, though.
There’s a framed photo of a dark-haired girl with braces on the wall of the room he’s slept in. Louis wonders idly if she’s dead now. She probably is.
He looks out the window, and sighs, digging into the pocket of his trousers for the notebook. It’s raining again.
-
When everyone first starts to get sick, when the hospitals start to fill up to their brims, Louis is kipping at Zayn’s flat because Harry’s off visiting Nick for a few days, filling in on his radio show and all that, so Louis is bored stiff in their own empty flat. The fourth night Harry’s away, Louis wakes up on Zayn’s couch and it’s late, or early. Unexpectedly, Zayn is awake next to him on the couch even though it’s half four and he’d gone to his own room hours ago. The telly is on low, flickering blue on Zayn’s face where he’s leaning forward, mouth open a bit.
“What,” Louis starts, but he’s too tired to figure out how to finish the sentence, so he doesn’t bother.
“Something’s wrong,” Zayn says. The hood of his sweatshirt is pulled up tight around his face, and he rests his chin on his knees, curled in towards his chest. “There’s, like. An epidemic, or summat.”
On the telly, there’s an emergency news bulletin, saying how the hospitals became overloaded in hours, everyone showing up vomiting and bleeding for no reason and there’s not enough of anything to help them all. Not enough beds or doctors or IVs or bandages.
Louis doesn’t know what to make of that, so he repeats: “What.”
His mobile rings besides him then, nearly making him jump off the sofa.
“Harry,” he says, feeling a sigh of relief deflate his chest a bit. “Are you alright? Y’seeing this?”
“Yeah. S’mad,” Harry responds. He sounds quiet, a little awestruck. “Are you alright?”
“Can you come home?” Louis asks. “It’s just, like -- I’d feel better if you were here, I think.”
“Nick thinks I’d better stay here for now,” says Harry. “My mum too. But I’ll get a car over as soon as I can, yeah? In the morning, maybe?”
“Alright,” Louis agrees slowly. His mouth feels a bit funny. He wonders if that’s how it starts. “Get here soon.”
“Soon as I can,” Harry repeats, and there’s no smile in his voice, he sounds actually worried, and that’s what makes Louis feel scared all of a sudden. “Go to Liam’s for now, okay? Take Zayn and get Niall and stay there. I’ll come soon.”
Harry’s never lied to him before, so Louis believes it.
-
Days later they watch the news, all four of them gathered around the telly in Liam’s flat. Outside car alarms have been going off all day. The footage from the BBC is spotty at best, cuts out for minutes at a time before flickering back in. They’ve got a tent set up somewhere to broadcast from, it looks like, and the screen keeps looping the same footage: Great Ormond Street, St. Bart’s, St. George’s, New Scotland Yard, and back again. Prepared statements asking people to stay indoors, to only leave to try and reach the approved zones that are too few and far between. Minutes-long bits of dead air. Shots from a helicopter of bodies in the street, truly dead, and the awful shuffling figures of those who aren’t quite, anymore.
Niall’s eyes are red around the edges, and he’s not moved from his spot on the floor for ages. “How?” he asks. “How does this--”
“Does it matter?” Louis asks, a bit sharper than he means.
“We need,” Liam starts. “We need a plan.” He’s got his mobile out, surrounded by all their mobiles that they’d surrendered to him, save for Louis’, which is smashed where he’d chucked it against a wall. There’s no signals at all anymore. Haven’t been since the sirens started at half three the morning two days ago, when the BBC had first reported that waves of the dead were sitting up, teeth too sharp, eyes too clear. They’re hungry, they’d said.
Liam is dialling again, pointlessly, and Louis knows he’s cycling through everyone he can think of -- Harry’s mobile, Danielle’s, his mum’s, Simon’s, anyone’s.
Downstairs, they hear a window smash. The sound goes through Louis sharp, arrow-like. Their street’s been quiet so far and the television had said the worst of it was to the south a bit, but somehow he doesn't feel comforted by that.
“D’you reckon we better move?” Niall asks nervously. Zayn’s peering through the curtains cautiously.
“I don’t want to go,” Louis says firmly.
“We can’t just wait here, I don’t think,” Zayn says quietly.
“What about Harry?” Louis asks sharply. “He could come back, he’ll be back soon, and what if we’re gone?”
“He’s been gone for days, Lou,” Zayn says softly.
“We could,” Niall starts. “We could go up? Further up in the flats?”
Louis doesn’t want to move at all, wants to stay put until Harry comes through the door and then they can run, run as far away as they can. But not before Harry comes.
“Zayn? Lou?” Liam asks. “Should we?”
“It’s better than nothing,” Zayn shrugs. He’s still near the window.
“Fine, yeah, alright,” Louis concedes. “Just so long as we stay in the building.”
As they go, Liam shuts off the telly, which makes a hysterical laugh gurgle up in Louis’ gut -- it seems so absurd, so uselessly careful. He scrawls a note for Harry so he’ll know where they’ve gone when he gets back, and they lock the door behind them before creeping through the back stairwell to the top floor. The building is nearly deserted, silent at every landing all the way up to the top. Louis had known loads of people had left days ago, fleeing the city, but hadn’t realized so many had gone.
At the very top, they let themselves into one of the flat that has it’s front door ajar, and it’s silent inside.
The four of them sit awkwardly around the table in the kitchen, painfully unsure of what to do next. There’s a small portable television near the sink, and Niall snaps it on. It flickers for several moments before a picture comes in -- one of the dead, walking down the middle of Bond Street. It’s a man, middle-aged and all gray in the skin, wearing a stained hospital gown. He moves too smoothly, with too much purpose, and the sight of it makes Louis want to be ill. The man has blood down his front that Louis suspects isn’t his, and there’s nothing behind his eyes. There’s something in his hand, something small clutched fiercely, and it’s only after the image cuts away to more static that Louis realizes what it had been -- a severed finger.
-
“We stayed too long,” Liam finally says as the sun starts to set, sounding miserable. “We should have left when they said. When people were getting sick, when they were--” He stops himself before he can say it: when they were dying, when they were just dead.
“Where would we have gone?” Louis asks. He feels empty. He doesn’t feel anything at all. Harry’s still not home, still gone.
“Lou,” says Liam gently, and Louis knows what’s coming next.
“No,” he says. He’s not leaving, not without Harry.
Liam stops, bites his lip, but then he continues. “If we have to leave, Lou, you’re coming. I’ll -- I’ll carry you, if I have to.”
Louis wants to scream because he means it, he’s not going until Harry gets back. He wants to think he’d fight Liam off if he has to, but he knows Liam means it too, so he stays quiet.
More shots of the dead pop up on the telly, broken and covered in blood. It makes Louis shiver.
“How do you fight them?” Louis asks Liam quietly. “How do you kill them?”
“Lou, we don’t -- I mean, there are people for that, right, the army and all that? We just -- we just have to stay away, stay--” He doesn’t finish his sentence, doesn’t say stay alive.
“Li.” Louis takes one breath in, and feels strangely calm, because this is simple. He needs to know. If it comes to it, he needs to know. No one’s coming for them, probably, and if they have to leave, Liam will make him come along, he’s sure of it. So he’s got to be able to keep himself safe, do the same for Liam and Zayn and Niall. He’s got to be able to get to Harry. There’s no arguing with that.
He looks around the flat they’re in. It’s a backwards version of Niall’s, the layout reversed so the toilet’s on the wrong side of the hall and the kitchen is flipped in on itself. Whoever had been there had left fast, the cabinets hanging open and the wardrobes half-emptied. It’s so still that Louis thinks he can hear the dust swirling around them, a soft shushing sound that builds and builds until he thinks he might go deaf with it.
He steps deeper into the kitchen, away from the windows of the front room, and presses his hands over his ears. There’s another smash, this time closer, and another siren rings hollowly in the distance. Louis keeps his hands over his ears until his arms start to ache.
“Should we go?” Niall asks when Louis lowers his hands from his ears, flitting his gaze from Liam to Louis and back again. Louis looks away and pulls open a drawer, taking out the largest knife he can find inside and setting it on the counter between them all.
“How do we kill them?” Louis repeats. “Do they bleed?”
Zayn pushes the knife across the counter, looking like he wants as much distance between it and himself and he can get. Louis reaches over and picks it up, touching the sharp tip of it to the pad of his thumb.
-
Louis only agrees to leave their block of flats when the electricity finally goes off, and stays off.
“I’m sorry, Lou, really,” Liam whispers as they gather up bags of things, no more than they can carry. “I really think this is for the best, but. I know he’s -- I know you were -- well.”
“Leave it,” Louis says flatly. “If we’re going, let’s go.”
Liam stays silent, and soon he leaves the room, leaving Louis to kneel alone in a pile of jumpers and unmatched socks while another siren howls outside.
-
Outside their flats, the street is eerily silent. Whatever’s smashed the lowest windows has gone on now. Further east there’s a few plumes of smoke dancing up through the sky, and more sirens, far off and empty sounding. Niall’s got a golf club clutched in his hands, Zayn a cricket bat, and they press together, glancing around fast although there’s not much to see here. Not now, at least.
“A car,” Liam says. “We need -- we need to find a car, we can’t walk out in the open like this.”
“Alright, yeah,” says Zayn. “Where?” There’s cars all around them -- London is full of cars, too full almost always -- but they’re all locked, cold, silent.
“Don’t reckon anyone knows how to jump one?” Niall asks.
“Didn’t exactly teach us that on X-Factor, Ni.” Louis says. He wants to laugh, but can’t. No one else laughs either. “Guess we walk, then.”
They pick through the streets, headed vaguely north. The news had said something about a perimeter, about zones and evacuation and army tents, but Louis can’t remember any of it now, so they just sort of -- go, hoping it’s the right direction.
They don’t see one for almost an hour. They’re reaching the north edge of the city, crossing paths with other people on foot occasionally, although they don’t speak.
The round a corner and there it is. It used to be a woman, and she’s pacing in front of a storefront, running her dead fingers brokenly along the glass.
Liam sees it first and stops, holds out his hand to Louis’ chest to stop them. “Fuck,” Zayn says low, and then it turns to look at them. Its eyes are -- they’re hungry, that’s honestly all Louis can think to call them. There’s nothing human, nothing living there. It tries to smile and it’s teeth look too sharp. It starts towards them.
“Fuck, go, run,” Zayn says, shoving them all back the way they came. They backtrack awkwardly, tripping on each other’s heels and getting all turned around. It stops following them after just a minute, but they don't stop running until Louis feels like his lungs are about to burst and stops, dropping to rest his forearms on his knees.
-
They walk until the city starts to spread out around them. They try abandoned cars to see if anyone’s left keys in the engines, and just before midnight they find one. Zayn cheers so loud that Liam can’t stop looking around, worried about what the noise might have attracted.
They don’t make it more than two miles down the road, Louis behind the wheel, until they’re stopped by a hastily created wooden barricade. There are army men milling about it, almost a dozen, and rows of low tents beyond it. Past those, there’s another barricade, and then the road carries on, dark and littered with abandoned cars. Louis drives right up to the barricade, and by the time he’s stopped, a soldier has walked up to the car, gesturing for them to open the windows.
“This your car?” the soldier asks them.
“No,” Louis admits, because what are they going to do, exactly, chuck him in jail? Seems that the law enforcement is a bit preoccupied at current, what with trying to keep the remaining populace from being eaten alive and all that.
“Where’re you taking it, then?”
“Dunno. Haven’t decided. Wherever we can get to, I guess.” That’s not necessarily the truth, they’ve got a bit of a plan. A tiny, nothing little thing that almost resembles a plan if you squint a bit, at least. But Louis doesn’t feel particularly inclined to share with this soldier, who looks about as old as they are anyway. Possibly younger.
The soldier looks at them for a moment, frowning slightly, and then disappears into the tent.
“They’re not gonna let us though,” Niall says from the back.
“They can’t stop us,” Louis counters, although he doesn’t know if that’s true or not. Zayn glances at Liam dubiously, but they don’t respond.
The soldier reappears then, carrying a map. He draws an angry red line bisecting the country just below London.
“Not south,” the soldier tells them. “Go north or go nowhere at all. Don’t go past here.” He taps the line. “Stay out of the cities, find somewhere to hole up. That’s my only advice for you.”
“That’s our plan, then,” Louis says. He wants to go now, be moving immediately. He can’t stand this hanging around bit.
“Can’t help you, once you leave,” the soldier warns them.
Louis laughs for the first time in days. “Mate,” he says. “You couldn’t help us if we stayed, either.”
-
“We’ll stop in Wolverhampton if we can, Liam,” Zayn confirms as they set out again. “See if we can find out about your mum and dad.”
Liam just nods grimly, his jaw set in a way that Louis doesn’t recognize. It looks horribly like disbelief. It looks too much like grief.
The road spreads out beyond them like a graveyard, dirty and lit up by their headlights. They go slowly, picking around abandoned cars as best they can. Eventually Zayn drops off to sleep, and then Niall.
Just before the fuel runs out, Louis feels a hand on his shoulder. “Doncaster’s not so far from Cheshire,” Liam says so low it’s almost a whisper. “Once we get there, once we get to the bungalow, we could. You know.”
“Don’t,” Louis warns.
Liam bites his lips. “Lou, about your family.”
“Don’t.”
“Alright,” Liam says. He leaves his hand on Louis’ shoulder, and they drive until the car sputters to a stop.
-
Zayn reckons it’ll take them a few days total to get to the bungalow. When they’re nearly a fortnight into their journey and they’ve still got more than halfway to go, he amends this estimate. “Fuck if I know,” he mutters when Niall asks.
They have piss poor luck finding cars that have both petrol and keys in them, so mostly they walk. At night they bunk in empty houses along the way. At first they try to take turns keeping watch, but eventually they’re all too tired, so they just collapse in a heap. Louis tells himself that if something dead tries to eat him in his sleep, it’ll likely make enough noise that he’ll at least wake up first.
And sometimes he thinks that it might not be the worst thing even if he doesn’t.
-
The first one they kill is outside of a Tesco. The shop’s empty, just like almost every place they’ve stopped, which is well enough because they’re able to fill their bags with bottled water and tins of food in peace. Sometimes Louis can’t believe how empty it is everywhere, can’t figure out how everyone’s gone away and left all this open space.
They don’t see it until they’re upon it. It’s rummaging through a bin just around the back of the shop, and when they turn the corner, it looks up at them, snarling and baring its teeth.
“Fuck,” Niall says, and they move to run but it’s too close, jerks forward once and is almost upon them and there’s no time so Louis reaches out to grab the first thing he can find, one of the heavy bats they’ve been carrying or Liam’s hand or anything, and his fingers close on a long piece of heavy wood and before he can think he’s rushing forward to meet it. The wood meets its head with a sickening thunk as its skull cracks. Its mouth drops open loosely and it gurgles in something that might once have been shock or anger, trying to snarl and claw towards Louis so he hits it again, again, keeps hitting it even as it falls, and doesn’t stop until he feels hands on his shoulders trying to pull him away.
“Stop, Louis, Christ, it’s dead,” Liam whispers, but Louis can’t stop, keeps pummeling it until its head is just a mass of flesh and blood, unrecognizable as anything that was once human.
He stops and looks at his hands. He doesn’t know whose blood is on them, his or the thing’s. The piece of wood clatters to the ground, and he waits a bit before falling to kneel next to it, retching.
(part 2)
r, 10,000 words
harry/louis
zombie / horror / apocalypse AU,
warnings for violence, minor characeter death, ambiguous major character death, etc.
a/n L O L SO I WROTE A ZOMBIE AU I GUESS??? what even, i don't know.
It’s rained for thirty-two days straight. Louis has counted every single one. He has a notebook that stays in his back pocket and he’s been tallying the days inside the front cover, a tick-mark for every day he wakes up and the clouds are still hanging low, spitting down on them.
The last time they saw the sun was Before. There’s not a name for what happened, or if there is Louis doesn’t know it. To him, there was just Before, and now it’s After.
What happened was that first people got sick.
What happened after that was that they died.
But the worst thing was what happened after that. After they died, they came back.
Half of London, all at once. Worse in the south, worst of all in Brighton and Dover, not quite so bad in Liverpool and Manchester. Last Louis heard, the U.K. was down to 7% of it’s original population. The first half died after they got sick, and then when they came back, they took almost all the rest of the ones that were left. He’s not sure about Europe, or the US, or anywhere else, if it was not so bad or maybe even worse, and frankly he doesn’t want to know, which is easy enough with the blackout, now. It’s enough -- it’s too much -- to know as much as he already does, to have seen the things he has. It makes him feel bent in half, the weight of it.
Louis tries not to dream about Before. He tries not to sleep much at all anymore, because something’s always lurking for him there when he does. He jerks awake most mornings feeling faces of ghosts staring down at him from secret corners, doesn’t matter what room he’s in or how far they run.
This morning, Liam kicks him awake. It’s really more a nudge with his trainer than anything, but it’s mostly the same to Louis, anyway. He can’t imagine he’d be terribly bothered if Liam had aimed a boot straight between his ribs. It’s better than being haunted by ghosts that don’t exist.
“Tea,” Liam says soft and low, smiling a bit at Louis. He looks like he’s not slept at all. Probably he hasn’t. “Niall’s got a fire going and the kettle’ll be on soon.”
Louis flexes one of his feet deep inside his pile of blankets. He’d twisted his left ankle the week before crossing a stream, and it’s still aching, on and off.
“Lou?” Liam asks, looking back as he’s already crossing to the door.
"Coming, yeah,” Louis replies, pushing himself up and grabbing for his pack. He’s got a jumper that’s still clean from the last time they’d washed, and the chill is back in the air, creeping into his joints and nerves.
They’re in the upper level of a squat, dingy two-flat building, nearly to the bungalow. Louis guesses they're somewhere near Stoke-On-Trent. Another few days if they have to walk, maybe. If they get lucky and find a car they could be there by nightfall. Louis doesn’t feel optimistic about either of those eventualities, though.
There’s a framed photo of a dark-haired girl with braces on the wall of the room he’s slept in. Louis wonders idly if she’s dead now. She probably is.
He looks out the window, and sighs, digging into the pocket of his trousers for the notebook. It’s raining again.
-
When everyone first starts to get sick, when the hospitals start to fill up to their brims, Louis is kipping at Zayn’s flat because Harry’s off visiting Nick for a few days, filling in on his radio show and all that, so Louis is bored stiff in their own empty flat. The fourth night Harry’s away, Louis wakes up on Zayn’s couch and it’s late, or early. Unexpectedly, Zayn is awake next to him on the couch even though it’s half four and he’d gone to his own room hours ago. The telly is on low, flickering blue on Zayn’s face where he’s leaning forward, mouth open a bit.
“What,” Louis starts, but he’s too tired to figure out how to finish the sentence, so he doesn’t bother.
“Something’s wrong,” Zayn says. The hood of his sweatshirt is pulled up tight around his face, and he rests his chin on his knees, curled in towards his chest. “There’s, like. An epidemic, or summat.”
On the telly, there’s an emergency news bulletin, saying how the hospitals became overloaded in hours, everyone showing up vomiting and bleeding for no reason and there’s not enough of anything to help them all. Not enough beds or doctors or IVs or bandages.
Louis doesn’t know what to make of that, so he repeats: “What.”
His mobile rings besides him then, nearly making him jump off the sofa.
“Harry,” he says, feeling a sigh of relief deflate his chest a bit. “Are you alright? Y’seeing this?”
“Yeah. S’mad,” Harry responds. He sounds quiet, a little awestruck. “Are you alright?”
“Can you come home?” Louis asks. “It’s just, like -- I’d feel better if you were here, I think.”
“Nick thinks I’d better stay here for now,” says Harry. “My mum too. But I’ll get a car over as soon as I can, yeah? In the morning, maybe?”
“Alright,” Louis agrees slowly. His mouth feels a bit funny. He wonders if that’s how it starts. “Get here soon.”
“Soon as I can,” Harry repeats, and there’s no smile in his voice, he sounds actually worried, and that’s what makes Louis feel scared all of a sudden. “Go to Liam’s for now, okay? Take Zayn and get Niall and stay there. I’ll come soon.”
Harry’s never lied to him before, so Louis believes it.
-
Days later they watch the news, all four of them gathered around the telly in Liam’s flat. Outside car alarms have been going off all day. The footage from the BBC is spotty at best, cuts out for minutes at a time before flickering back in. They’ve got a tent set up somewhere to broadcast from, it looks like, and the screen keeps looping the same footage: Great Ormond Street, St. Bart’s, St. George’s, New Scotland Yard, and back again. Prepared statements asking people to stay indoors, to only leave to try and reach the approved zones that are too few and far between. Minutes-long bits of dead air. Shots from a helicopter of bodies in the street, truly dead, and the awful shuffling figures of those who aren’t quite, anymore.
Niall’s eyes are red around the edges, and he’s not moved from his spot on the floor for ages. “How?” he asks. “How does this--”
“Does it matter?” Louis asks, a bit sharper than he means.
“We need,” Liam starts. “We need a plan.” He’s got his mobile out, surrounded by all their mobiles that they’d surrendered to him, save for Louis’, which is smashed where he’d chucked it against a wall. There’s no signals at all anymore. Haven’t been since the sirens started at half three the morning two days ago, when the BBC had first reported that waves of the dead were sitting up, teeth too sharp, eyes too clear. They’re hungry, they’d said.
Liam is dialling again, pointlessly, and Louis knows he’s cycling through everyone he can think of -- Harry’s mobile, Danielle’s, his mum’s, Simon’s, anyone’s.
Downstairs, they hear a window smash. The sound goes through Louis sharp, arrow-like. Their street’s been quiet so far and the television had said the worst of it was to the south a bit, but somehow he doesn't feel comforted by that.
“D’you reckon we better move?” Niall asks nervously. Zayn’s peering through the curtains cautiously.
“I don’t want to go,” Louis says firmly.
“We can’t just wait here, I don’t think,” Zayn says quietly.
“What about Harry?” Louis asks sharply. “He could come back, he’ll be back soon, and what if we’re gone?”
“He’s been gone for days, Lou,” Zayn says softly.
“We could,” Niall starts. “We could go up? Further up in the flats?”
Louis doesn’t want to move at all, wants to stay put until Harry comes through the door and then they can run, run as far away as they can. But not before Harry comes.
“Zayn? Lou?” Liam asks. “Should we?”
“It’s better than nothing,” Zayn shrugs. He’s still near the window.
“Fine, yeah, alright,” Louis concedes. “Just so long as we stay in the building.”
As they go, Liam shuts off the telly, which makes a hysterical laugh gurgle up in Louis’ gut -- it seems so absurd, so uselessly careful. He scrawls a note for Harry so he’ll know where they’ve gone when he gets back, and they lock the door behind them before creeping through the back stairwell to the top floor. The building is nearly deserted, silent at every landing all the way up to the top. Louis had known loads of people had left days ago, fleeing the city, but hadn’t realized so many had gone.
At the very top, they let themselves into one of the flat that has it’s front door ajar, and it’s silent inside.
The four of them sit awkwardly around the table in the kitchen, painfully unsure of what to do next. There’s a small portable television near the sink, and Niall snaps it on. It flickers for several moments before a picture comes in -- one of the dead, walking down the middle of Bond Street. It’s a man, middle-aged and all gray in the skin, wearing a stained hospital gown. He moves too smoothly, with too much purpose, and the sight of it makes Louis want to be ill. The man has blood down his front that Louis suspects isn’t his, and there’s nothing behind his eyes. There’s something in his hand, something small clutched fiercely, and it’s only after the image cuts away to more static that Louis realizes what it had been -- a severed finger.
-
“We stayed too long,” Liam finally says as the sun starts to set, sounding miserable. “We should have left when they said. When people were getting sick, when they were--” He stops himself before he can say it: when they were dying, when they were just dead.
“Where would we have gone?” Louis asks. He feels empty. He doesn’t feel anything at all. Harry’s still not home, still gone.
“Lou,” says Liam gently, and Louis knows what’s coming next.
“No,” he says. He’s not leaving, not without Harry.
Liam stops, bites his lip, but then he continues. “If we have to leave, Lou, you’re coming. I’ll -- I’ll carry you, if I have to.”
Louis wants to scream because he means it, he’s not going until Harry gets back. He wants to think he’d fight Liam off if he has to, but he knows Liam means it too, so he stays quiet.
More shots of the dead pop up on the telly, broken and covered in blood. It makes Louis shiver.
“How do you fight them?” Louis asks Liam quietly. “How do you kill them?”
“Lou, we don’t -- I mean, there are people for that, right, the army and all that? We just -- we just have to stay away, stay--” He doesn’t finish his sentence, doesn’t say stay alive.
“Li.” Louis takes one breath in, and feels strangely calm, because this is simple. He needs to know. If it comes to it, he needs to know. No one’s coming for them, probably, and if they have to leave, Liam will make him come along, he’s sure of it. So he’s got to be able to keep himself safe, do the same for Liam and Zayn and Niall. He’s got to be able to get to Harry. There’s no arguing with that.
He looks around the flat they’re in. It’s a backwards version of Niall’s, the layout reversed so the toilet’s on the wrong side of the hall and the kitchen is flipped in on itself. Whoever had been there had left fast, the cabinets hanging open and the wardrobes half-emptied. It’s so still that Louis thinks he can hear the dust swirling around them, a soft shushing sound that builds and builds until he thinks he might go deaf with it.
He steps deeper into the kitchen, away from the windows of the front room, and presses his hands over his ears. There’s another smash, this time closer, and another siren rings hollowly in the distance. Louis keeps his hands over his ears until his arms start to ache.
“Should we go?” Niall asks when Louis lowers his hands from his ears, flitting his gaze from Liam to Louis and back again. Louis looks away and pulls open a drawer, taking out the largest knife he can find inside and setting it on the counter between them all.
“How do we kill them?” Louis repeats. “Do they bleed?”
Zayn pushes the knife across the counter, looking like he wants as much distance between it and himself and he can get. Louis reaches over and picks it up, touching the sharp tip of it to the pad of his thumb.
-
Louis only agrees to leave their block of flats when the electricity finally goes off, and stays off.
“I’m sorry, Lou, really,” Liam whispers as they gather up bags of things, no more than they can carry. “I really think this is for the best, but. I know he’s -- I know you were -- well.”
“Leave it,” Louis says flatly. “If we’re going, let’s go.”
Liam stays silent, and soon he leaves the room, leaving Louis to kneel alone in a pile of jumpers and unmatched socks while another siren howls outside.
-
Outside their flats, the street is eerily silent. Whatever’s smashed the lowest windows has gone on now. Further east there’s a few plumes of smoke dancing up through the sky, and more sirens, far off and empty sounding. Niall’s got a golf club clutched in his hands, Zayn a cricket bat, and they press together, glancing around fast although there’s not much to see here. Not now, at least.
“A car,” Liam says. “We need -- we need to find a car, we can’t walk out in the open like this.”
“Alright, yeah,” says Zayn. “Where?” There’s cars all around them -- London is full of cars, too full almost always -- but they’re all locked, cold, silent.
“Don’t reckon anyone knows how to jump one?” Niall asks.
“Didn’t exactly teach us that on X-Factor, Ni.” Louis says. He wants to laugh, but can’t. No one else laughs either. “Guess we walk, then.”
They pick through the streets, headed vaguely north. The news had said something about a perimeter, about zones and evacuation and army tents, but Louis can’t remember any of it now, so they just sort of -- go, hoping it’s the right direction.
They don’t see one for almost an hour. They’re reaching the north edge of the city, crossing paths with other people on foot occasionally, although they don’t speak.
The round a corner and there it is. It used to be a woman, and she’s pacing in front of a storefront, running her dead fingers brokenly along the glass.
Liam sees it first and stops, holds out his hand to Louis’ chest to stop them. “Fuck,” Zayn says low, and then it turns to look at them. Its eyes are -- they’re hungry, that’s honestly all Louis can think to call them. There’s nothing human, nothing living there. It tries to smile and it’s teeth look too sharp. It starts towards them.
“Fuck, go, run,” Zayn says, shoving them all back the way they came. They backtrack awkwardly, tripping on each other’s heels and getting all turned around. It stops following them after just a minute, but they don't stop running until Louis feels like his lungs are about to burst and stops, dropping to rest his forearms on his knees.
-
They walk until the city starts to spread out around them. They try abandoned cars to see if anyone’s left keys in the engines, and just before midnight they find one. Zayn cheers so loud that Liam can’t stop looking around, worried about what the noise might have attracted.
They don’t make it more than two miles down the road, Louis behind the wheel, until they’re stopped by a hastily created wooden barricade. There are army men milling about it, almost a dozen, and rows of low tents beyond it. Past those, there’s another barricade, and then the road carries on, dark and littered with abandoned cars. Louis drives right up to the barricade, and by the time he’s stopped, a soldier has walked up to the car, gesturing for them to open the windows.
“This your car?” the soldier asks them.
“No,” Louis admits, because what are they going to do, exactly, chuck him in jail? Seems that the law enforcement is a bit preoccupied at current, what with trying to keep the remaining populace from being eaten alive and all that.
“Where’re you taking it, then?”
“Dunno. Haven’t decided. Wherever we can get to, I guess.” That’s not necessarily the truth, they’ve got a bit of a plan. A tiny, nothing little thing that almost resembles a plan if you squint a bit, at least. But Louis doesn’t feel particularly inclined to share with this soldier, who looks about as old as they are anyway. Possibly younger.
The soldier looks at them for a moment, frowning slightly, and then disappears into the tent.
“They’re not gonna let us though,” Niall says from the back.
“They can’t stop us,” Louis counters, although he doesn’t know if that’s true or not. Zayn glances at Liam dubiously, but they don’t respond.
The soldier reappears then, carrying a map. He draws an angry red line bisecting the country just below London.
“Not south,” the soldier tells them. “Go north or go nowhere at all. Don’t go past here.” He taps the line. “Stay out of the cities, find somewhere to hole up. That’s my only advice for you.”
“That’s our plan, then,” Louis says. He wants to go now, be moving immediately. He can’t stand this hanging around bit.
“Can’t help you, once you leave,” the soldier warns them.
Louis laughs for the first time in days. “Mate,” he says. “You couldn’t help us if we stayed, either.”
-
“We’ll stop in Wolverhampton if we can, Liam,” Zayn confirms as they set out again. “See if we can find out about your mum and dad.”
Liam just nods grimly, his jaw set in a way that Louis doesn’t recognize. It looks horribly like disbelief. It looks too much like grief.
The road spreads out beyond them like a graveyard, dirty and lit up by their headlights. They go slowly, picking around abandoned cars as best they can. Eventually Zayn drops off to sleep, and then Niall.
Just before the fuel runs out, Louis feels a hand on his shoulder. “Doncaster’s not so far from Cheshire,” Liam says so low it’s almost a whisper. “Once we get there, once we get to the bungalow, we could. You know.”
“Don’t,” Louis warns.
Liam bites his lips. “Lou, about your family.”
“Don’t.”
“Alright,” Liam says. He leaves his hand on Louis’ shoulder, and they drive until the car sputters to a stop.
-
Zayn reckons it’ll take them a few days total to get to the bungalow. When they’re nearly a fortnight into their journey and they’ve still got more than halfway to go, he amends this estimate. “Fuck if I know,” he mutters when Niall asks.
They have piss poor luck finding cars that have both petrol and keys in them, so mostly they walk. At night they bunk in empty houses along the way. At first they try to take turns keeping watch, but eventually they’re all too tired, so they just collapse in a heap. Louis tells himself that if something dead tries to eat him in his sleep, it’ll likely make enough noise that he’ll at least wake up first.
And sometimes he thinks that it might not be the worst thing even if he doesn’t.
-
The first one they kill is outside of a Tesco. The shop’s empty, just like almost every place they’ve stopped, which is well enough because they’re able to fill their bags with bottled water and tins of food in peace. Sometimes Louis can’t believe how empty it is everywhere, can’t figure out how everyone’s gone away and left all this open space.
They don’t see it until they’re upon it. It’s rummaging through a bin just around the back of the shop, and when they turn the corner, it looks up at them, snarling and baring its teeth.
“Fuck,” Niall says, and they move to run but it’s too close, jerks forward once and is almost upon them and there’s no time so Louis reaches out to grab the first thing he can find, one of the heavy bats they’ve been carrying or Liam’s hand or anything, and his fingers close on a long piece of heavy wood and before he can think he’s rushing forward to meet it. The wood meets its head with a sickening thunk as its skull cracks. Its mouth drops open loosely and it gurgles in something that might once have been shock or anger, trying to snarl and claw towards Louis so he hits it again, again, keeps hitting it even as it falls, and doesn’t stop until he feels hands on his shoulders trying to pull him away.
“Stop, Louis, Christ, it’s dead,” Liam whispers, but Louis can’t stop, keeps pummeling it until its head is just a mass of flesh and blood, unrecognizable as anything that was once human.
He stops and looks at his hands. He doesn’t know whose blood is on them, his or the thing’s. The piece of wood clatters to the ground, and he waits a bit before falling to kneel next to it, retching.
(part 2)