Work Text:
Fire purifies.
Five had read that somewhere, once. People would say that they learned it from the Bible, but they had never been particularly devout. Sara wouldn’t have cared. Sara had never cared about anyone’s past, not really. Everyone was a different person now, she’d told the other runner once.
Before the apocalypse, Sara Smith would have never been able to even fathom killing her family. But afterward she was surprised to find that she didn’t regret it. No one was the same as they were before and no one would be the same after.
That is, if there was even anyone left in the end.
Five watched as the flames grew higher, their light blending with the stars. It was a surprisingly clear night, and the majority of Abel Township slept silently. The wind was still and silent and the Autumn air crisp and clear. Five could almost hear the groans of distant zombies above the dull roar of the funeral pyre, but after two years it was getting easier and easier to ignore.
The fire crackled and the flames grew until Five could no longer see the body within. Taking their eyes off the pyre, they looked around at their fellow mourners. The light illuminated the faces of the few people that had actually showed up to the makeshift ceremony. Sam, Paula, Janine, and a few of her fellow runners stood silently, watching the flames envelop her body. It wasn’t that Sara didn’t have friends in Abel, she had just preferred not to get close to more than a handful of people.
Maybe that was the right way to go about things now. Get closer to fewer people and then you don’t have to worry about recognizing as many zombies. Because that’s where they were all headed in the end, wasn’t it?
It wouldn’t matter how far they’d come toward a cure, or Van Ark, or finding Comansys. If Sara Smith couldn’t survive this, then what hope was there for the rest of them?