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New York has fallen.
It was the first city of course, to succumb to the disease, just as the movies liked to tell. It’s survival never really had much of a hope. The killer stalked at night, turning families against each other, friend on friend, lover on lover. As a fortnight drew to a close, the Statue of Liberty burnt to the backdrop of human screams.
But then the virus, like a particularly cruel and vicious tumour, had spread rapidly across America, criss crossing her lands in a matter of weeks. It’s particular qualities meant at first it killed people within minutes. A perfectly healthy man or woman would suddenly collapse in the street. No sound, no warning. They were gone, just like that.
From a purely biological viewpoint, this wasn’t very logical for the virus. If the host is dead, the virus can’t be passed on. So a new strain developed. One which roused the dead bodies from their sleep, pulling them like puppets from the ground. Nobody said the word zombies. Nobody wanted to say the word apocalypse.
And yet nobody was safe. And as the rest of the world closed its borders on America, it became clear nobody was coming to save them.
Ash put his face to the glass, peering through into the wasteland beyond. Grime blocked the last rays of the reddening sun from piercing into their tiny room. A hut they had managed to bar themselves in. A hovel really, in a small dusty town somewhere north of New York. Where? He didn’t know. His mind was too exhausted to cover the events that had passed to get them to this point. He had never been so tired. He should be reflecting, thinking back over the days, weeks. What had gone wrong, where had he failed, what did he need to learn from.
But, God. Fuck, he was tired.
Even in the darkest days of his time under Dino, and then as a gang leader, Ash had never been under such mental and physical strain. The constant fear. Checking every corner, saving every last bite. Drink. Breath.
But then, he had never been looking out for a life beside his own.
A breath glimmered in the dark. The last flush of light faded into darkness.
The world beyond their isolated hut looked still. For now, safety.
“Ash.”
He turned from the window at the soft voice nudging through the din of his thoughts. Eiji watched him in the gloom. His body sagged with the exhaustion of months on the road. His face was thinner, grimier, hair almost shaggy. Yet, his eyes still shone with gentle warmth, even if the naive edges had been ground down.
Ash met his weary smile and unfolded himself, standing to stretch, before crossing the dusty floor to Eiji. The town was empty now. Home to rats, crows and the ghosts of memories. This hut may have been the shed of a small allotment, accounting for the healthy amount of locks. Potting tables lined the walls, hunched and narrow like the shadows of stray cats. Stained pitchforks gleamed dimly on carefully polished racks. Eiji was huddled between two shelves, their last blanket from the New York flat wrapped tightly around his shoulders. The other one had been lost to bandages two weeks ago after Ash fought another man over food.
Food. It had been little more than a box of crackers, half of them already splintered with mould. And a man had died for them. Ash was past the swelling of guilt whenever he took a life, but it seemed so pointless, so wretched that he had fought like a mongrel dog over what most people would consider not worthy of the birds.
From pampered mafia pooch to rabid street dog. Yet, Ash knew which he preferred.
And it wasn’t like the mafia still existed in America. Nothing of the old regime existed, as far as he knew. The world had cut America off with the first murmurs of the virus. And now it was choking into a stilted death.
He took Eiji’s hands as they slipped, pale and bony, out from under the blanket. They were cold and dry, still delicate in his grasp. They weren’t hands for killing. They weren’t built to survive. He curled his own hands around them, trying to trap as much warmth as possible between them.
“No fire tonight.” Eiji whispered. Ash brushed his thumb across a knuckle, feeling how sharp it was, how the white of bone shone through the skin. ‘No fires’ was supposed to be Ash’s line, how a survivor should think. Not someone like Eiji.
Someone like Eiji should always be warm, safe and comfortable, tucked up beside a crackling fireplace, reading some trashy romance. That’s what Eiji deserved.
He wondered if the virus had reached Japan. He wondered if Eiji thought about it.
“I’ll take first watch.” Ash murmured, not daring to raise his voice above the gentle hum of the wind.
Eiji glared at him. His hand wound tighter around his, and he leaned forward, bringing his face very close to Ash’s. Suddenly his dark eyes seemed like pools. Pools of night. Ash saw his own face, haggard and worn, reflected in them. He wanted to recoil from that image. It seemed it took an apocalypse to make him unrecognisable to himself.
“Wake me when you’re tired. Promise me.”
Ash tapped his forehead against Eiji’s, letting his breath ghost across his face for a second.
“I promise.’
The gun was heavy in the palms of his hands. He adjusted his grip. It was not as heavy as it should have been. They were running low on bullets, and Ash was loathed to rely on knives. Knives meant letting the danger get up close. Up close put Eiji at risk.
Perhaps...
No, they would search the town tomorrow, when they were protected by the thin beams of sunlight. He couldn’t leave Eiji alone now. Defenceless. He wrapped the blanket tighter around them, preserving some of the body heat for a little longer. Though it seemed as quickly as it was produced, the cold night air stole it into itself, allowing wisps of ice to dart through the threadbare cracks in the blanket. Eiji was curled between his legs, body resting against his chest. With every heart beat, a soft breath fanned out across his collarbones. One slim hand had curled sleepily around Ash’s arm and lay there, steady and warm.
Ash rested his chin in the dark hair on top of Eiji’s head, watching stray curls flutter in the gloom with every white puff of his breath.
The room was completely dark. Oppressively so. A small dark square of indigo night coming through the opposite window was Ash’s only point of reference. And he kept his gaze fixed on that square, just as his ears strained for the slightest change in the wind whispering outside.
As usual, it didn’t take long before the thoughts came. Nagging and nipping at the corners of his mind with guilty jibes.
What had happened to Max? Ibe? The rest of the gang? He simply had no idea. Getting himself and Eiji out of New York alone had been the biggest challenge. They had slipped out at night. A risky plan because when the sun sunk below the horizon was when the virus moved fastest. But it also meant most people were locked tight in their homes, and wouldn’t notice two boys scrambling down into the sewers. The train tracks out of New York were blocked. Every road was monitored.
He brought the blanket impossible closer. The sewers.
He had shaken Eiji awake at the dead of night. Eiji didn’t know about the plan. It was too risky letting him know, in case something slipped out. Not that he would say anything, but, well, Eiji was a dreadful liar.
In a matter of minutes they had left the apartment through the abandoned side stairwell. Ash moved silently. Eiji stuck to his shadow, hand clasped against his mouth.
Things had moved smoothly until Ash closed the manhole to the sewer and plunged them into darkness. Under the city streets, accompanied by only the rush of stink infested water, Ash and Eiji had heard the movements of the dead.
“Stay close.” Ash had grasped Eiji’s hand, feeling it cold and clammy against fingers. How it shook against his skin. Eiji hadn’t said anything, obediently following Ash through the tunnels.
No lights. No fires. Their only supplies in the world weighed too light against their backs.
At the last bend in the tunnel, the last bend before Ash knew there was a second manhole that would take them above ground, somewhere safe, Eiji suddenly stopped.
“Ash, wait.” His accent came out thicker in his fear. Ash tugged him closer.
“What.” He let the question pass just above the groan of the sewer river.
“There’s someone else here.”
They froze. And for the first time Ash felt truly helpless. In complete darkness, his only point of reference the tight clasp of Eiji’s hand. His ears muted by the roar of human sewage.
And then he heard the rattling gasp of a dying breath. A breath of a body that should have long succumbed to the grave. It came from his right.
Without thinking he pulled Eiji, wrenching the other boy to stand behind him. With his other hand, a knife. He stared out into the blackness and counted his breaths.
The sound came again closer. The river rushed beside them.
“Eiji, on three, we need get in the river. Can you do that?”
Eiji’s grip tightened on his hand in response.
And the the sound again, clawing, screeching, biting metallic screams through his skull. And then he and Eiji had fallen. Down, down. For two whole seconds, they were airborne, and Ash wondered if this was how Eiji felt when he flew.
They hit the water with a crack, and in the rushing torrents of the water, Eiji’s hand was ripped from his grip.
Ash was screaming before he even hit the surface. Bitter water hit the back of his throat, and bit its way into his eyes.
“Eiji! Eiji!”
The water carried him along, unforgiving, uncaring. He could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing.
Eiji, Eiji, Eiji. His hands and legs thrashed out trying to find something. Anything.
Not now, don’t take him away from me.
And then hands, strong hands, were looping under his armpits and dragging him up. He shrieked, knife flashing up to-
“Ash!”
He was on the side of the sewer. The moon glinted through the manhole above them. Eiji, hair blue-black and running in inky strands against his face, grasped Ash’s shoulders. Heat beat through the soaked cotton of his shirt.
“Are you hurt?”
“Eiji. Eiji.” He could only whisper. He took Eiji in his arms and pulled him against his chest.
Ash’s thumb found Eiji’s wrist and felt his pulse throb gently against the pads of his fingers, as fragile as the heartbeat of a sparrow.
That had been a few months ago now.
Or had it only been a few weeks?
Ash didn’t know. He didn’t seem to know anything anymore.
For days, Eiji had been the only human face he had seen. The corrupted bodies they occasionally saw, hazy shadows limping on the horizon, didn’t count. Christ, he didn’t know anything. They could be the only humans alive on Earth and he wouldn’t have the faintest idea. Perhaps it was jealous of him to be glad he wasn’t alone. And deep down, he was glad it was Eiji he was alone with. A selfish, cruel thought, but he couldn’t help it. A smile twitched on his face as Eiji shifted against him, nuzzling deeper into his chest.
He leant his head back against the wall and let out a thin stream of air between pursed lips. He would wait a little longer and then wake Eiji. As much as he wanted to keep guard all night long, it would be unpractical to be exhausted tomorrow. If there was no sign of danger, they might stay in this town for a few days to stock up on supplies. There was bound to be ammunition in one of the peeling timber houses that crested the top of the hill. If not, hopefully there would be a corner shop with long life food.
Ash had just let the gun sag in his grip, when a noise stirred from outside.
And then-
Something tapped on the wall, just above Ash’s head. He froze, breath stilling on his lips.
For five painstaking seconds there was silence. Ash remained completely still, only his heart pounding against his ribcage. On the sixth second, he let the air loosen in his chest.
And then-
A purr. No, a rattling intake of air. A breath being forced into rotting lungs. Further away from Ash and Eiji, but closer toward the thin wooden door. Suddenly the two rusted latches they had slid across this afternoon seemed immeasurably weak.
Unlocking his muscles, Ash began to shift Eiji from his chest. He let out a slight groan as Ash laid his body against the wall, fingers stirring at the loss of Ash’s body warmth. Ash watched him for a second before the rattling came again, crawling through the thin cracks around the door and whispering across the floor. Ash tightened his finger on the trigger of the gun and wound his body to crouch in front of Eiji.
He counted his breaths in the silence. Seven, eight, nine, ten...
And then he heard the rattling again, and the scuffing of bone worn feet against dried earth. The sound faded until it fell beneath the wind and he and Eiji were alone. To Ash, curled in the darkness of their hut, it suddenly seemed like they maybe were the only survivors on Earth, the dark hut the last gasp of light in a slowly encroaching hell.
Ash was not religious, but as he sat there listening to the shuffling sound of the inhuman dead, he wondered how hell could ever hope to compete with what they had on Earth.
He woke Eiji after what seemed like an hour had passed. The thick cloud which had darkened their journey for the past few days had lifted, and the window now revealed the pinprick light of stars.
Eiji’s hands lingered in Ash’s hair, smoothing away the loose blond locks which had escaped the ponytail. It was too long now to keep out and they had mutually agreed he shouldn’t cut it.
Light peeked into their hovel, signalling some semblance of safety. For now. Ash breathed softly against his ear. He had slept fitfully, waking in the early hours to clutch at Eiji until he folded him carefully into his arms and traced the lines of his back in long, wandering paths. Even now, Ash held Eiji so tightly in his sleep Eiji wondered if he would ever be able to untangle him.
Gently, he pressed a kiss to the top of Ash’s head. For now, they were together. And that would always be enough.