Chapter Text
On the tail of Grian's heartfelt plea for time, something… shifts, for Etho. The storm passes, as they always do. The flooding sticks around only for a few days, so after that, it's more or less back to business. Not everything remains the same, though.
Namely, Grian is a lot more present. He was obviously around all the time before this— roommates and all— but it goes beyond something physical. Etho has heard more of Grian's thoughts and emotions this past week than he probably has the entire span of their three year friendship. Etho, for one, is too nervous to voice it aloud; he's pretty sure it might frighten Grian off, or at the very least embarrass him.
It’s a precarious thing, this new normal of theirs. It definitely keeps him in a balancing act anyway, with an increasingly omnipresent Grian and an increasingly distant Gem standing on two sides of him in a constant push and pull. It’s this tug of war that has him walking through the city’s busy center with Gem at his side, far from the safety of their little home.
“Surely we aren’t here for trading,” Gem huffs, hand on her hip— right against her sword. She makes for a powerful image with her chin up and eyes out, hair half up in a braid, the rest loose around her shoulders. Blood unabashedly coats the surface of her boots; he knows she’s never tried to hide it, knows she never will.
She commands attention. They walk together, but no eyes follow Etho as they slink down the sidewalk; they follow Gem, gazes snagging on all her sharp edges like cotton on barbed wire. It really counteracts the work Etho is doing to blend in here; his hood and mask are pulled up and he’s slouching just to look a little shorter. None of it matters when Gem moves this way: purposefully, like she has a goal, and threateningly, like you’re in her way.
He’s well aware, though, that she can’t help it. No amount of hoods or masks could dull the searing way that Gem shines. If she’s not actively trying for the opposite, she will get noticed. It’s who she is. It’s his fault, really, for not being as forthcoming as he should’ve been. Oh, well. Might as well fill her in now, he figures.
“No, we’re not,” he confirms, and shoots her a long, thoughtful glance. “It’s surveillance.”
Without another word, her hood is up and her head is down. “Etho,” she hisses, elbowing him in the side. “You should’ve said something!”
He laughs, and silence stretches between them, but it's not discomforting at all. Her ability to just morph into whatever the situation requires of her will never cease to amaze Etho; in the blink of an eye, she is draped in shadow and secrecy. She looks, to all the world, entirely unremarkable.
“Can I know what we’re looking for?” Gem complains, brow crooking up as her gaze catches on a pair of women just as one of them levels the other with a sickening punch to the jaw. She giggles a little; a quiet thing, but loud enough that it masks the sharp, tiny breath Etho pulls through his teeth.
“I’m trying to see how far the rumors about Scott have spread,” Etho hums, gaze lingering on the woman slumped on the ground as they pass. “If we find someone to steal from, even better.”
“Right… Man From a Far Off Land again,” she grumbles, scuffing her boot against the mangled concrete. Etho shoots her a disapproving glance; even though she doesn’t see it, she must feel it, because she huffs. “I’m just— people around here are lazy! It’s kind of stupid to think one of these idiots could orchestrate a cross-country assassination attempt.”
When she jabs her thumb to her left, she perfectly frames some guy with his leg jammed in a fence gate. From the looks of it, he’s stuck. Etho sighs.
He concedes. “You’re not… incorrect.”
She raises her eyebrows at him.
God, Etho misses when things were easier. Every day was chaotic, but predictable. He could tell his sister that really, he just wanted to hang out with her, and he wouldn’t have to torture himself over what she’d think about it. She's hardly uttered a word about the plan to leave since the hurricane, be it negative or positive; this is concerning, of course, because Gem is the most outspoken person he knows. She has a lot of opinions, and whether it's love or hate, she will share all of them.
It's something he loves about her. He doesn't know what this — her raised eyebrows and cold eyes and careful silence— is. It's not her, he knows that.
He wonders, too, if it's his fault. Has he done something to make her believe he doesn't care about her opinions? If that's the case, he's screwed. Gem is stubborn— once her mind is set to something, that's that.
“Do you remember the first time we came here?” Etho murmurs.
The corners of Gem’s lips twitch up into a fond little smile. “Yeah,” she answers lightly. “I had just turned 17.”
Nine years ago. It was nine years ago that they first set foot in this city.
In some ways, it feels so much longer than that. Maybe it's just because of how much things have changed. Coming just after the apocalypse started, when death was at its most pungent and anarchy its most rampant, meant that any show of humanity was a massive improvement. Back then, no one cared for anyone or anything but themselves; you had to, if you wanted to survive.
When he looks around now, he sees proof of humanity everywhere. The city's center is just shy of their old normal, with its bustling people and glowing lights. Truthfully, its functionality is entirely reliant on the collaboration of dozens of different groups and factions; Etho still remembers when they banded together to fix up the solar panels on the street lamps and clear the streets of the worst of its rubble. It's the final bastion of love in this war-torn world of theirs.
Which isn't to say it's entirely peaceful. People kill each other here all the time, and he's sure that he'll see it happen before he leaves for the day. But people laugh here too. They'll shop around the little stalls in the thrown-together market corner, or meet new people at the faux parks where nature has reclaimed what's hers, or host parties both big and small in the dusty grand halls of the crumbling hotels.
This city has no leader. No one told them to leave this little chunk of the city free of border disputes. They just… did it. And now, there's some universal, unspoken, beautiful thing guarding this place from the worst of the new world's horrors. Everyone respects it for what it is.
“Certainly changed a lot,” Etho comments more than a little affectionately after a long stretch of silence.
“If by that you mean there are less people actively dying in front of our eyes, then yes,” Gem snorts and lifts her head to glance around. And then, more fondly: “It's nice. Like walking through a kinda messed up time machine.”
It grows quiet between them again, but this time Etho is knocked breathless by the awkwardness of it. Gem is walking out of step with him, brows pinched and lips pursed as she glances around; her thinking face. He just watches as subtly as he can from the corner of his eye, determined not to deter her from talking to him.
She takes a quick breath, and her mouth opens. She hardly has the first letter of his name past her lips before she's cut off by a horn.
It's distant, and a little quiet, but he freezes in place anyway. The street has fallen into startled, fearful silence, save for hushed whispers and shuffling feet. Gem has frozen too, her hand tight on her side sword, already crouched and ready for a fight.
“Wh— the stampede alarm?” She whispers, eyes darting this way and that. “Do you—”
It sounds again, but this time, it's closer, encroaching from in front of them. This is the first pass, and the sound is long, so that must mean the danger is somewhere in front of them too. It's the call to evacuate. Etho squints, peering over the hunkered heads of the people lining the street, but he doesn't see anything—
Again it cries, long and loud, violent as it bares down on Etho's eardrums and rattles every bone in his body. It yowls from the watchtower almost directly next to them, and then it cascades away to the one behind them. With every thunderous beat of his heart against his tightening ribcage, his blood boils hotter, the pervasive tremble of his hands growing worse and worse.
Someone shrieks from in front of them, unintelligible. It's panicked enough that the message is crystal clear: run.
Etho grabs Gem’s wrist, swivels on his heel, and sprints.
The world jerks into motion around them until every person on the street is running in the same direction. The alarm is circling back now in shorter calls, fading behind their backs, but they all know this set of alarms is solely an attempt to lure away the horde of zombies that is most certainly on its way.
“Etho,” Gem shouts over the pounding of feet, slipping her hand free to run alongside him. “It’s the office building—”
“I know,” he yells back as he leaps over a dislodged crate, chest heaving as the soles of his boots just barely brush the corner of it. “I wrote the stupid thing!”
If Gem is offended, she doesn’t say as much, but it’s true anyway; he did help write the evacuation plan. He and Cleo, along with a dozen others, wrote it up after the very first zombie stampede. Hundreds died in the central part of the city, taken by surprise and too frantic to save themselves. For each section of the city’s heart, a safe building was elected, and for each block along the main street, watch towers were constructed. In every watch tower there is an alarm, and each alarm when sounded follows the other like a line of dominoes: a warning. And then, as everyone runs to safety, the direction reverses: a diversion.
It works. Etho has seen it firsthand. Luckily, they weren’t far from this section’s evacuation spot— a giant office building, comfortably distant from the gaping maw of the rift, but not too far out of the way— when the alarm sounded.
Etho runs, and he does not look back, because he knows better. He hears all he needs to know anyway: a cacophony of animalistic groaning and screeching, overwhelming even the harried footsteps of the people around them as hundreds of zombies pour into the street.
It takes them exactly 44 seconds to swing into the makeshift doorway of the dilapidated office building, not quite at the front of the pack, but somewhere close. Etho nestles himself up against a boarded-up windowsill, chest heaving as he fights for a full breath.
The worst part about this evacuation location is that it’s dark. There are dozens of windows lining every wall, and once upon a time, they were wide open; the glass has since been shuttered in wood, metal sheets, and anything else they could scrounge up. The barest amount of light spills in from slats and holes in the covers, so Etho can see the vague shapes of people storming in on the other side of the room, even if he can't make out details.
The first floor is completely empty, save for an old receptionist’s desk, some foundational pillars, and random furniture strewn about. It was part of the reason they chose the building as an evacuation location all those years ago; in the event that a lot of people need some place to go, there's enough room here for all of them.
“It's been a long time since we had a stampede,” Gem says, a notch louder than before so her voice isn't lost in the crescendoing volume of this echoey room. People keep pouring in, tripping over each other, shouting back and forth.
When Etho thinks about it for a second, he realizes Gem is right. It's been probably two and a half years since he last heard of a stampede in the city, and twice that since he was actually present for one.
There are a lot of reasons for that. Most notable is the fact that a lot of zombies don't actually like clumping together; the ones that do, Etho calls “herders.” Herders tend to be older and irradiated, but with everyone's more coordinated efforts to wipe out zombies before they can age into scarier creatures, that combination has been getting rarer and rarer.
To Etho, the presence of a stampede means one of two things. One: these guys were trapped somewhere, but something happened to get them free. Not an impossible feat. More likely, though, is two: someone is slacking on keeping their territory clean. The problem with that is the fact that there's no real rule being enforced about purging your area’s zombies. How could there be, with nothing and no one to enforce it? It's more of an unspoken courtesy, if anything— if you want your presence in this city to be granted with even the barest hint of respect, you deal with your zombie infestations.
It's for this reason that so much of Etho and his people’s time is spent patrolling. When sat against the size of their group, the area they call home is comparatively massive. But with how well they work together, they can manage all the zombies that come with an area so big in a way most other groups just couldn't. The work the four of them do directly benefits even the people who despise them, and so, they're left alone.
Truth be told, it doesn't really irritate him that people are cutting corners. He just hopes whoever has been is here to see the consequences. For as many lives as the evacuation plan has saved, it can't save everybody. It hasn't and it won't.
These facts have filtered through Gem's mind, too. Etho might not care, but even in the half-light of this makeshift bunker it is abundantly obvious to him that she feels differently. The fire blazing in her eyes makes sure of that.
Lightly, almost laughing, he asks, “Why do you care so much? You couldn't care less if some guy across the city dies from his own stupidity.” Every bone in Gem's body stiffens. She turns her head to look at him so slowly it's almost comical.
Only, it's not comical; Gem's gaze is utterly withering as it fixes on him. Her nails claw crescent moons into the meat of her calloused palms, digging in so hard he can see the way her forearms shudder. She doesn't even notice when someone bumps into her as the swelling crowd of people descends on their little corner. He swears he hears something creak, but he doesn’t look away, afraid that if he does she might explode into the wildfire she was born to be.
He's expecting her to start yelling. It makes it scarier when all she bites out is a clipped, careful, “It's the principle, Etho.”
It makes him twitch. She says the word as if it were from a foreign language, as if it were a concept so novel he'd collapse if he even tried to grasp it. As if he wasn't the one who taught her every principle she holds. He bites his tongue, figuring now isn't really the time for a petty argument. The throng of bodies shoves in even closer, until he and Gem are pressed against each other, caged into the corner of the room. He holds his breath, brows furrowed as he tries to see over the heads of the people surrounding them.
It happens in horribly brief steps.
One second, Etho is thinking, are there too many of us?
The next second, the entire room shudders. There's a deafening crack from somewhere under them, like thunder resonating from the earth. And the floor undulates, bowing and rippling as if it were only half-solid. It nearly rips Etho from his feet, sending him tumbling into Gem. She crumples against the wall with a yelp, forearm scraping against the brick as she fights to hold the two of them up.
There are too many people for Etho to see anything, but even so, his good eye is currently pinned against Gem. He couldn’t see anything going on if he tried. All he knows is that there are limbs everywhere, and his entire body quakes violently with the floor. He thinks fleetingly that it might be an earthquake, but he’s never seen an earthquake here. Maybe there was one once; he thinks of the rift, cutting the city into two, but that happened before Etho and Gem got here.
He has no time to think about it. The ground is splintering beneath his feet into jagged chunks of marble, ripping into his calves as he tries and fails to shove himself backwards. It isn't until the heel of his hand catches on the rough edge of the windowsill behind him that his body acknowledges the need for higher ground. He swings himself away from Gem, fighting the tidal wave of people slamming into each other like pool balls.
It sort of works, if only in the sense that he’s able to fling out a hand and dig his fingers into the crook of two boards. His heart plummets as the board pops loose, but he holds on for dear life, even as the stark white sunlight blinds him. With his other hand, he impetuously fumbles in the direction he knows Gem was in; when his fingers press into the peak of someone’s shoulder, he just assumes it’s her, yanking her to his side. When he heaves himself onto the windowsill, it’s remarkably ungraceful; the sinew of his arm twinges and aches with the pull of the crowd as he grits his teeth, heaving Gem up with him.
Once she catches her breath she kicks her way up the wall, pressing herself in the nook. She takes the board from Etho’s hand and pries it from the window with ease. When he glances out, though, the sunlight disappears, suffocated by the cloying cloud of dust billowing in the room like smoke. It isn't until he glances down and sees nothing remaining that he realizes the floor is sinking.
Next to him, Gem looks over her shoulder to the outside world. “There’s nothing out there,” she shouts over the cadence of screams and the cascade of rubble. “It’s just the building!”
From the sea of bodies and wreckage, an arm flies out, fumbling wildly against the brick wall for purchase. Their fingers dig into Gem’s leg, yanking on her pants desperately as they try to wrench themselves free.
“Shit!” Gem cries out, but it doesn’t drown out the anguished pleas for help. Etho can’t tell if it’s from the person holding her, or the person holding them, or if it’s everyone all at once. All he knows is he’s feverishly clutching Gem’s cloak but he’s losing ground, his mind set to a broken and helpless soundtrack of please, please, please, please; he doesn’t know what he’s begging for, but he knows he needs it.
But he blinks. When his eyes reopen, the heel of Gem’s blood-stained boot is digging relentlessly into the hand that pulls her. Three brutal kicks are all it takes for the fingers— bruised and broken now— to wrench themselves free. He blinks again, stunned, and the arm is gone, sucked into the vortex of the shattering floor. If the person is still screaming, he can’t hear them. Etho grimaces as Gem sighs heavily, drawing her knees to her chest and shifting back.
The ominous roar thrumming in through Etho’s veins dies down, dust settling into something more stagnant; the floor has stopped collapsing, he figures. He stares out and sees in its place a body-lined cavern, wriggling and squirming and alive with the sound of people, frantic as the floor swallows them. There are hundreds of them piled one on top of the other, crushing each other. His heart pounds violently in his chest, so ferocious he worries it might just snap his ribs into two.
And then the building groans again, booming, sinister. He doesn’t know why it occurs to him, but he looks up: deep cracks span the wall and ceiling over their heads, ripping further and further with no foundation to stop it. Forebodingly, a chunk of the roof tears itself free of its jutting metal and web of wires, plummeting somewhere into the crowd. He glances to the barely-visible open door they came from just in time to hear the gargling cacophony of zombies pouring in. He whips around to look out the window— the next escape route on his mind— and flinches when a swarm of them slams into the building in a grotesque cliffside of flesh, nails, and bone. He understands immediately that their only chance is up.
Gem moves first, but Etho isn’t far behind. Treacherously, they pick their way to the stairwell, keeping to the edges of the room. It’s the first time Etho has ever trekked over a floor of human bodies, and he prays it’s the last.
There are other survivors, too, safe from the avalanche and far enough from the encroaching zombies; they follow Etho and Gem’s lead. Etho glances back only once, and regrets it when the first survivor he sees is a little girl, sobbing as she tries and fails to keep her footfalls delicate for the bodies underfoot.
They find solid ground in the stairwell, though it's a bit unsteady. Gem keeps a brisk pace as she climbs, and at the door to the second floor, she pauses and nudges it open. Etho peers in from over her head, taking in the concave slope of the floor and the pipes ripping their way through the uneven surface. He exchanges a look with Gem, and they keep climbing.
Solace comes in the form of the fourth floor. It's yet to be rattled by the damage that has plagued the floors underneath it; even the furniture is relatively intact, if a little decayed. It's almost uncanny how the cubicles have managed to remain standing. Etho very gingerly sits down at one of the dusty, rickety tables in the little bullpen area; Gem sits atop the table right next to him.
Settled, he watches quietly as the handful of other survivors comes trickling in from the stairs. On the whole, he doesn't really recognize them. Now that he's getting a better look at her, the little girl looks familiar, with her dark curly hair adorned with a ribbon; he realizes she was part of the last drop they raided. So was the woman that stands with her, with her broad shoulders and ever-present scowl. He knows she leads one of the groups over this way, but he doesn't know which. That sort of thing has always been more up Cleo's alley. He thinks not for the first time that he might take them for granted.
The moment the woman’s eyes land on him and Gem, she bristles. “You gotta be kidding me. Of course we're trapped with the vultures.”
“We appreciated the supplies,” Etho says and means it, but he lets it come out as more of a taunt anyway.
She doesn't deign that with a response. “No wonder this happened. Death follows you assholes wherever you go.”
“For good reason,” Gem lilts, voice dripping with honey, her smile dangerously jagged.
The two of them lock eyes. They have a conversation that Etho can't decode, and it ends with the woman relenting entirely, walking off toward a cubicle. The little girl, though, lingers; she shifts closer to them, wordless but visibly curious.
Well, the way Etho sees it, they might be stuck in here for a little while. Once they do get the opportunity to escape, they're all going to have to work together. It's this simple truth that has Etho asking the girl, eyes crinkled in a smile, “What's your name?”
She stirs, blinking wildly. She glances around, like she's convinced he must be talking to a ghost. And then, plainly, she answers, “Dawn.”
“What a pretty name!” Gem coos, absolutely beaming. The sound of her voice has Dawn's shoulders dropping a couple notches as she shuffles closer. “I'm Gem.”
“I know,” Dawn mumbles, pressing her thumb into her palm and kneading anxiously. “Everyone does.”
The effect of the words is immediate; Gem swells with pride, eyes glittering like frost-coated grass. Still, there's something familiarly wicked in the tight line of her smile. Gem has always been enamored by her infamy, never cowering in the face of the reputation that precedes her. This is not something Etho particularly enjoys about his sister; maybe it's because, to him, she will always be the scared little girl who cries too much and makes beautiful mud castles. The two versions of Gem that live in Etho's mind exist solely to juxtapose one another, he thinks, but he knows which one is just a front.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Dawn,” Gem says, smiling. She glances to the cubicle in the distance, where the woman had tucked herself in; her gaze lingers, smile faltering. “That girl you're with. What's her name?”
“Ivanna,” Dawn supplies easily, and cautiously sits down at a nearby table. “She took me in.”
Gem hums. “That’s so sweet. Now, do you think she would work with me and my brother here, so we can all get out of here?”
Thoughtfully, Dawn frowns, but stands. “You killed her girlfriend,” she drops very shamelessly. “But I’ll try.”
Etho grimaces, watching as the girl retreats. That’s… not ideal. When he glances over at Gem to verbalize as much, she’s glaring at him viciously, accusatorially. He can’t help the indignant way his jaw drops. “Wh— don’t— it wasn’t me!”
She rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh.”
“Her group was gone by the time we stepped in.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I know better,” Gem says loftily, crossing her arms as she pointedly looks away.
Etho’s hands shake. “This isn’t eating the last of the jelly, Gem. This is murder.”
Her eyes meet his, steady and searing. “What isn’t?”
Dawn reappears before he can find a response, so suddenly that Etho actually startles. She wastes no time in relaying, “She said no.” She glances around, scratches her cheek. “...Plus some other things.”
Without hesitance, Gem clicks her tongue, swings herself to her feet, and storms across the room. It's all Etho can do to scurry after her, feeling more than a little pathetic in his desperation. Even so, the last thing they need is Gem making this even worse, and he just knows that's what's going to happen.
“Which of them was it?” Gem demands, inches away from Ivanna, half a foot shorter than her, and unwavering nonetheless. “Which of them killed her?”
Ivanna does not look shocked, nor does she back down. She just scowls, hand gripping the gun holster on her hip so hard her knuckles turn white.
“The little winged one,” she answers heftily.
Etho immediately sighs in dismay. Of course it was Grian. Etho loves him, but out of the four of them, he definitely has… well. The least regard for human life feels a little… bad. But Grian is without a doubt the most merciless, volatile one of their bunch. He’s sure that Grian had a reason, but Gem already hates him. This is the last thing anyone needs to deal with right now.
Meanwhile, Gem does falter— not out of fear, but sheer incredulity, so potent she actually laughs out loud. “Grian? Listen to me,” she starts, breathless, half-laughing. “I hate that guy. Hate him! Don't trust him as far as I could throw him! So when I tell you there's no one on Earth I associate with less, I need you to understand that.
“I'm sorry for what he did. I really am. But you're alive,” she declares. “Don't waste that by letting yourself die here. I can tell you're stronger than that, and you know she wouldn't want that for you.”
Silence permeates the air in the wake of Gem's speech, practically surging with electricity. Etho doesn't know what parts of her monologue were hand-crafted to get what she wanted, and what parts were real; he finds that realization to be a sour one, polluting everything it touches as it nestles in the pit of his stomach.
He can't comprehend how or why, but it works. The man sitting next to Ivanna— Jesus, Etho didn't even see him, he's so out of it— nudges her thigh and says quietly, “C'mon, V.”
And Ivanna’s fists miraculously uncurl. “Okay,” she murmurs begrudgingly and takes a deep, steadying breath. “What's the plan?”
The plan, for now, is to wait. Which is to say that the plan is that there is no plan.
Etho needs to parse out these zombies in order to understand what they're dealing with. He's been hearing them make their way up the stairwell, but they fill out each room on the way up, so they have some time. It does mean, though, that an undead confrontation is inevitable. Etho wants to be ready for it.
As he sits on the floor, straining to hear any identifying information from the creatures downstairs, Gem delegates. She's sent Dawn and the man— Sam, his name is apparently— to walk the perimeter of the room in search of other escape routes. There was a brief bout of hope in the form of a fire escape, but when Sam looked outside, he'd realized that 90% of the staircase had been completely dismantled. It was unusable. That was many, many hours ago.
Etho just keeps wishing that Cleo and Grian were here. Cleo would calm him down, would press little circles into his back until he’d actually able to focus on what he needed to do. They'd help keep this delicate alliance with Ivanna stable. Grian would be tirelessly and wordlessly finding a way out of this, through brute force if necessary. Maybe he could even fly them out of here; Etho knows he's strong enough, but he's never done it before.
He misses them. He doesn't do much without them anymore, and this is stiflingly obvious now; it's like his brain just doesn't know what to do in their absence. It stubbornly catches on how much better this would be if they were with him now. Because if they were here, he would be confident. He would be himself. As it stands, he's uselessly trying to decode the muted footfalls of far too many zombies, efforts sullied even further by Gem's interrupting.
She keeps poking and prodding, asking him if he knows anything yet, what he's learned. Between the continual screams of the people still dying three floors under them, Gem's incessant interrogating, and Ivanna's loud complaining about his character, he's learning next to nothing. All he knows is that there are too many of them for five people who hardly know each other to take out on their own.
Right. If he can’t hear, he’ll have to try and see. Somehow.
The second he’s on his feet, Gem is in his face. “Well?” She prompts urgently. “We haven’t got all day.”
The line of his shoulders is tauter than a bowstring when he answers, “I need to get a look.”
Ivanna shoots him a look from across the room where she watches the stairwell. “You’re going downstairs?”
Stupid. Why would he do that? “No,” he sighs, and wordlessly walks over to the window.
He shudders at the sight of dozens of zombies shambling along the outskirts of the building; he knows they don’t even scratch the surface of what lurks below them. His eyes aren’t the greatest since he lost one of them, but it’s immediately obvious that these things are old. There’s a horrifying silhouette just down the street of three humanoid bodies, melded together in a tangled web of thick bone, crusted over in countless layers of dried blood. Zombies don’t get that way overnight.
Yet, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t see any sign of radiation. It’s usually a lot more obvious in old zombies, with their hulking bone formations; in irradiated old zombies, their bone growths are visibly porous, as if something had been burrowing tunnels through their bodies. They’re always chalky and brittle from the wear of their own toxic blood, so fragile they don’t quite get to form those imposing, sharp peaks of ivory the way young zombies too.
It doesn’t make sense. Herding zombies have to be irradiated. That’s how it’s always been. If they aren’t irradiated, he has no clue what to expect; that’s a terrifying concept even without the weight of four other lives on his shoulders and an undeniable time constraint he can’t ignore.
Etho doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know anything. All he keeps thinking is that this would all be so much easier if his family was here. The other part of it, anyway.
Still, he relays what he knows to an expectant Gem, who purses her lips. “Okay. So… our only option is to fight.”
He doesn’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that she hasn’t listened to a word he’s said for the past hour. Maybe it’s her demanding aura, or her stubbornness, or her borderline suicidality. Maybe it’s the little girl watching them earnestly, with her curly hair and curious, fiery look that perfectly mirror Gem’s. Maybe it’s the fact that all he wanted was the chance to spend time with his little sister, and instead, fate has placed them in a building full of enemies and the undead.
Maybe, though, it’s a horrible concoction of these things that has him dragging Gem across the room by the sleeve of her shirt.
“Gem,” he hisses, yanking his mask down. “We don’t know how many of them there are, or what’s happening on the first floor. We don’t have guns, or medical supplies, or backup. We don’t know these people.”
Gem spits, wrenching her sleeve free. “I don’t want to fight this. But sitting up here and just hoping something changes is suicide,” Gem spits, wrenching her sleeve free. “I mean, do you think I’m stupid?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” he snaps back, stepping away from her. Because it’s true. Even one old zombie is dreadfully hard to kill without a gun, nevermind tens or hundreds of them. He doesn’t want to sit up here and die, but he needs a plan, and she has no interest in helping him make one.
Without missing a beat, Gem unabashedly laughs in his face, bitter and cold as she jabs a finger in his direction. “ I’m stupid? We wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you getting all sentimental and dragging us out here for no good reason…”
“Because you don’t talk to me,” he implores.
“You want to talk? Fine,” she says dangerously, steadfast and decisive. “I think leaving is an awful idea. I think you’re stupid for planning on it, and I can’t think of anything I’d want to do less. A cross-country roadtrip in the middle of the apocalypse, and for what? Some guy we’ve never met? We’re safe here, established.”
“Who cares, Gem!” He pleads, overcome by the sheer unadulterated distress that has been raging inside of him for weeks now. “This is just a place! It doesn’t matter to me! We could make a name for ourselves anywhere.”
Gem gestures wildly around them. “Well, what about the evacuation plan failing? We helped write the last one, and we need to be here to write the new one.” She sighs, and lowers her gaze. “Etho, we owe it to this place to—”
“No!” Etho shouts, the word ripping itself from his chest like a dagger, so loud it leaves him a lightheaded. He only half comprehends that Gem is backing away from him as he pushes on, “We don’t! This isn’t our home, Gem! You are my home!”
She slams her fist against a cubicle and cries out, anguished, “No, I’m not!” She swings her shaking fist to point across the rift. “They are!”
Her voice, melting with her desperation, rings in Etho’s ears even after it no longer echoes across the room. Her nostrils flare with every breath, loud in the silence that stretches endlessly between them. There are seven feet between them, Etho counts, but he’s never felt further from her than he does now.
The door to the stairwell slams, and Ivanna screams, indistinguishable but urgent. Gem’s sword is drawn in an instant as she practically skids across the room.
“We gotta hold this position,” Gem orders, shoving Ivanna out of the way to behead the single zombie that clambers to the top of the staircase, surely at the front of the pack. Then, over her shoulder, sword ready as the footsteps grow louder, “You three have guns?”
All three of them nod; Etho stands next to her, his own sword in hand. He doesn’t like that they’re the first line of defense, but he’d rather it be both of them than just Gem.
Gem takes a few steps back, and everyone follows. “They’re going to funnel in. We need to get down the stairs later, so we can’t let their bodies block it,” she calls out, crouched and ready. “Take care of what gets past me.”
A series of affirmative shouts soundtracks the explosion of the next wave: four of them this time, climbing over each other all at once, bone spurs catching on the door frame. He searches briefly for soft spots, places where the bones end and flesh begins. Gem lunges forward first, sinking her sword into a zombie’s thigh. It collapses, and the others trip over it; Etho whirls around to sever one’s spinal cord, blessedly unprotected by bone growth. When two gunshots ring out, he instinctively lowers his body to the floor. He gets front row seats to the other two zombies as they crumple beside him, blood leaking over the floor. He exhales in relief.
From there, it’s less of a “wave” situation and more of a steady, progressive flow. Gem looks at home in the flurry of gore she leaves in her wake. She is an unyielding force of calculated strikes landing one after the other, a whirlwind with her blade. Even as her muscles tremble with exertion and blood coats every surface of her body, she shows no weakness.
On her own, she's a force of nature. As it stands, though, she can't help but overwhelm Etho. Mistimed swings send her sword colliding with his, or they bump into one another in the pursuit of the same zombie. When Gem kicks one to the ground, Etho is over top of it on autopilot; he narrowly misses getting skewered on her sword as she finishes it off herself.
“Watch it,” she barks and whips around; even hair drips with blood as she goes.
They fight like this until, little by little, the stream of zombies trickles to an end. Etho is panting, hands trembling tenfold from his exhaustion. His eyes flutter closed, just for a moment, and he pretends Grian and Cleo are here, pretends he's leaning on Grian's shoulder, or following Cleo's lead home. He has never felt more alone than he does now.
When he opens his eyes again, he's greeted with Gem's back. The mangled corpses of dozens of zombies litter the floor at her feet, creaking with the push of their growing bones, swimming in the pool their own blood has left. It covers Gem, too, from head to toe, so thoroughly that her skin is ruddy and wet, and it drips from her sword still pressed tightly in her palm.
And then she's turning her head. Blood adorns her face, smeared like war paint, and she wears it proudly as she levels Etho with a glare sharper than any sword, eyes impossibly green. Her back heaves with every breathless gasp she takes, standing tall despite the way she shakes against her own weight.
The other three survivors have surged forward now, and they stare at her with wide-eyed, unabashed awe. It overwhelms him with a sort of fear he can't put a name to, to see the devotion this side of Gem inspires. He feels like something has been dislodged within him, as if one of his organs has shifted out of line, and he doesn't know how to put it back in place anymore.
They end up making their way back down to the second level; the rest of the stairwell down to the first floor has collapsed, swallowed by rubble. Nothing is coming up now, and nothing remains on the second level, save for the smattering of holes left in the floor.
The five of them end up dropping into the grass from a second floor window, unscathed save for the fatigued ache in all of their bones. He doesn't know where they came, but there are tons of people outside, surely responsible for the carnage covering the ground; every zombie that remained outside has since been slaughtered. By the time they've escaped, night has long since fallen, and all he wants to do is sleep.
He doesn't want to start walking home without Gem, but she's several yards away, chatting with Ivanna and Sam. He's not sure what she could possibly have to talk to them about after they spent nearly twelve hours locked in a room together, but he's hoping she wraps it up soon.
Someone shouting his name drags him from the vivid vision he's having of his warm bed, and he looks around, trying to decode all the blurry images around him. He doesn't have to try for long before a figure is dropping from the sky in front of him. It takes all of two seconds for his tired eyes to focus and comprehend that Grian is in front of him, wings puffed up behind him.
Grian, he thinks distantly as he watches Grian's lips move. He doesn't hear a word of it. His body moves entirely on its own; he practically tackles Grian into a hug, falling into him, because God , is he happy to see him. Grian's arms wrap around him without hesitation, thumbs pressing gently into the tensest parts of his shoulders.
“Are you hurt?” Grian asks faintly, feebly, and it's code for were you bit? Etho has no words to share, so he just shakes his head against Grian's shoulder. He feels the fear drain from Grian's limbs as they pull him in closer, until Grian's body is practically curled over his. When he opens his eyes, he realizes Grian's wings surround them like a shield.
“You alright?” Grian prods, but doesn't move.
Honestly, Etho hums softly, “Better now.”
Grian laughs lightly at that and shifts back. His clean hands find Etho's cheeks, cupping him so gingerly, uncaring of the blood surely splattered across Etho's face. Whatever he was going to say, though, is ultimately lost when he abruptly flinches, wings folding against his back so quickly Etho catches the wind from them. He opens his mouth to say something, but fingers dig into his shoulder— not pleasant and warm like Grian's, but aggressive— and bodily yank him out of Grian's hands. He stumbles against the force, blinking blearily at the loss of warmth, only narrowly avoiding toppling to the ground altogether.
Grian is not so lucky; he's been shoved to the concrete, and Etho realizes the figure over top of him is Ivanna. She's screaming at the top of her lungs, a nonsensical string of violent insults and enraged profanity, but he hardly hears it over the ringing in his ears. It takes Etho’s fatigue-addled mind five straight seconds to process the frantic kicking of Grian's legs, and a couple more for him to realize she's strangling him, she's strangling Grian .
Etho's exhaustion is all but forgotten, washed away so quickly it's actually jarring. His sword is in his hand in an instant, pressing firmly enough into the back of Ivanna's neck that blood wells against her skin.
It gets her to stop; he can hear Grian gasping for air, legs limp against the ground as he focuses on filling his lungs. He finds that his chest is heaving too, as if he were the one pinned under Ivanna's hands.
He doesn't notice that Gem is here too until she's kneeling on the ground, gaze trained evenly and coolly on Ivanna. For a moment, she's quiet. Her mere presence drags Ivanna's attention off of Grian, until Ivanna's wild eyes find hers.
A crowd has gathered, circling around them from a safe distance. All of their focus lies on Gem, on her expressionless face and her unwavering stare. Etho doesn't let himself take in the awe that they so unabashedly wear; he would rather die than take his eyes off Grian right now.
Firmly, Gem's hand settles on Ivanna's shoulder. “Don't let him kill you too,” she says simply, like some sort of instruction. Etho's spine quivers against the chill of the words.
And it works. Ivanna moves to stand, so Etho carefully sheaths his sword, letting her clamber to her feet; Gem guides her a couple steps away with a gentle, caring hand. She holds up Ivanna's weight with relative ease.
Grian sits up, still breathless as he holds his throat in his hands. Etho is at his side in an instant, grunting as he heaves Grian to his feet. They lean on one another, unwilling to part. Grian's voice is hoarse as he asks, eyes narrowed, “What was that ?”
Etho blinks, shocked momentarily, but really, of course Grian doesn't know. He just shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Hey!” Someone shouts, concealed in the crowd. Grian immediately jumps, glancing around feverishly like he's half expecting something to appear. It unsettles Etho, even as he tries to chalk it up to reasonable paranoia, because it isn't a fearful thing. It's a crazed thing.
He doesn't ask about it, because suddenly there's Cleo, bursting their way through the crowd of people.
“Oh, Cleo,” Grian croaks, relieved.
“I saw you flying, then the commotion… Wasn't hard to put two and two together,” she says with a grin. And then to Etho, more genuinely, “Are you okay? We've been looking for you for ages.”
Etho glances over at Gem. She's several feet away, pulling Ivanna closer, a comforting hand on the woman's shoulder. “I'm fine,” he lies, and knows that Cleo isn't fooled. One of those open secrets, he guesses.
With his panic subsided, every last ounce of energy has drained from his body; he’s entirely pliant when Cleo shifts him around to share his weight with Grian.
“Can you walk?” Grian asks, still a little raspy. He just nods.
He casts one last look to his side and this time, Gem meets his eyes. Ivanna is still tucked against her as she states simply, “I'll meet you later.”
Etho doesn't respond. For once, he has no desire to protest. Cleo and Grian's bodies are warm against his, and he can't remember the last time he felt this exhausted. When he turns away, he catches the two’s matching ferocious glares pointed squarely in Ivanna's direction. The looks are gone as soon as he sees them, though, replaced instead with plain, unadulterated worry as they look him over. He's sure he's in a sorry state.
Honestly though, he can't even bring himself to spiral. Grian and Cleo are here, and all he really wants now is to sleep.