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Mark is sixteen when the world ends.
It seems as if it only took a split second for it all to come tumbling down. Probably because it does.
Humanity crumbles like a cookie. Rabidity acts as a recessive gene as it surfaces in nearly every human being, either in their attempts to stay afloat, or their tries at taking others down. Mark’s family is no exception.
It was unsettling, to say the least, for Mark to wake up to a world on fire.
There’s his neighbor Kun walking his dog outside, then his neighbor Ten climbing onto his back and biting his ear off, eyes glazed over and skin peeling. There is a pounding on his bedroom door.
His parents are not his parents. His mother doesn’t tell him it’s time to wake up and his father doesn’t invite him down for breakfast. The air smells too putrid for pancakes and syrup. His eyes stay on the scene just outside, of Kun’s guts spilled on the concrete of where he used to skip rope and draw his name in chalk. Ten’s growling is heard even from a street away. Mark just closes the blinds and goes back to bed, the unhuman banging on the door lulling him back to unconsciousness.
Mark is seventeen when he takes his first life.
Taking a life is taking a life because he is the one taking control. His life for the taking. Although he doubts there’s truly much life left to take nowadays.
The dull thunk of his bat against a rotting skull is anything but satisfactory. In fact, it gives him the chills. The not-so-good chills that linger even when he’s in his bunk that night, scratchy quilt pulled all the way up to his ears. Even when he’s shoving everything he has into a backpack and running into the vast unknown at the break of dawn. (Nightwatch scheduled that day doesn’t mind—actually nods to him as he passes.) Especially when he’s swinging the same silver bat over and over and over mindlessly until he can no longer count and the stench no longer bothers him.
Mark is also seventeen when the thought of taking a life stops being so morbid and starts being survival.
Mark is eighteen when he’s sure he’s fallen in love.
The boy is not just a boy. Despite how scrawny he is and how knobby his scraped knees are, or how shaggy his hair is, or how youthful his face must look without the grime and the hollowed cheeks. Mark can tell his dulled out skin was once something softer, possibly golden. There is a jagged scar running across his left cheek creeping down to his jaw. As much as he tries to not stare, it’s inevitable. He’s got a gun, too. Mark’s in a staring contest with the barrel.
“Take off your backpack,” he demands. Mark’s bat has long since been placed on the ground and kicked two yards over to the other boy’s feet. He complies with him, slowly pulling the backpack off his shoulders. He does the same thing he did with the bat and slides it over to the other boy. There’s a half-assed rummaging before he realizes Mark is in an even worse position than even he is. He sighs.
“You look young. What’s your name?” he demands, zipping up Mark’s backpack and throwing it back at him. His gun falls to his side.
“Mark.” He scoffs at him.
“Stupid name. Mine’s Donghyuck.”
Mark learns a lot in not a lot of time.
Donghyuck is seventeen. He hasn’t always been alone—his group of three was split up a couple weeks back if he can remember right. He hasn’t exactly given up hope that they’re still out there, but he wasn’t searching for them either. The scars from climbing to the top of a fence and falling down the other side. He mentions that being the aftermath of his group splitting in the first place. Doesn’t say much about it asides from that. Mark doesn’t mind—he knows what it’s like to open up a barely healed wound. The boy’s been scavenging alone, not that that’s been very fruitful with the state of the world. He says there’s a residential area not too far where he’s been staying. Says he trusts Mark enough to take him there and allow him to stay for a while cause he looks pitiful, or something.
Donghyuck likes to talk. Mark thinks it’s probably because he’s been so lonely.
Mark is eighteen when he has his second kiss.
It’s awkward, and he kinda misses the target by a centimeter.
His first kiss was back in junior high, stolen at a formal by a girl named Chaewon who he hated because she had made fun of him for his braces. He relays this all to Donghyuck after he kisses him, who just laughs and kisses him again. He can’t help but think that these kisses are a million times better than Chaewon’s despite the inexperience and Donghyuck’s cracked lips. Doesn’t mind it because his probably feel the same; the water’s been sporadic lately.
They’ve made something of a home. It’s just them, Mark’s bat, Donghyuck’s gun (which he learned hadn’t had any bullets to begin with, but his bluff had gotten him out of a scuffle once), a few cans of those nasty vienna sausages in that slimy congealed juice and the promise of something better in their abandoned suburban house. When not going on escapades for more food, they’re sleeping and sharing their entire lives in anecdotes. It makes it all feel less dire, less like they’re fighting every day for their lives. Donghyuck is Mark’s best friend, his only friend.
“Promise me you’ll never let me turn into one of those monsters,” Donghyuck proposes through cracked lips one stormy night when the food is sparse and the heat has stopped working. Huddled by the dying embers of the fireplace, Mark can only whisper that he promises, he crosses his heart and hopes to die, and hold him a little closer.
Donghyuck is only seventeen.
The flu is something Mark used to know as something you got a vaccine shot for every year. Now it’s something horrifying, now he has to experience firsthand.
Donghyuck’s skin is even more sickly than when he first met him. How it all seemed so long ago. In such a short time Donghyuck’s conditioned had worsened immeasurably.
He’s weak. So weak that he had collapsed last week while they were out trying to find food. Mark had been so terrified as he ran back to their house with a knocked out Donghyuck on his back, his skin burning. He forbid Donghyuck from coming out with him again.
So Mark goes alone. Tries his best to find anything that could help him, but they’re both malnourished, both dehydrated, both losing faith in anything but each other.
One day Mark finds Donghyuck in a coughing heap on the floor next to the dresser. He’s coughing endlessly, hacking his lungs up into his hands.
Mark sobs as he sees his palms splattered with his blood.
Donghyuck chokes. Chokes on his own blood, his own life force. He gags and heaves. Mark pulls him into his arms as red pours out of him in waves and waves, paints his dry lips red. With one last wheeze, his jaw goes slack and Mark knows the pulse that used to lull him to sleep is ceasing.
His eyes are cloudy as he looks up at Mark.
“Do you remember your promise?” Donghyuck asks through his last breaths. Mark nods weakly. Donghyuck’s brings his hand up to point at the top drawer of the dresser before he loses consciousness.
When they had first rummaged through the dresser, it had only contained stuffy clothes. Stiff dress shirts and khaki slacks. Mark goes through it now and his hands find Donghyuck’s gun, cold and heavy in his hands. The barrel’s got a single bullet.
He laughs. Laughs cause first the world had to end, and now it was making him kill his best friend. Laughs cause Donghyuck had a bullet all along, could have killed him in the torn apart gas station where he had first found him. Laughs cause it’s all pointless in the end. It would all just lead to this.
The click of the hammer resonates. With shaky hands and eyes closed tight, he pulls the trigger keeping the last promise he can. The shot echoes so loudly afterwards, he can’t do anything but drop to the floor, his hands held tightly over his ears. He’s pretty sure he’s crying, but he can’t hear his own sobs.
His bat stays propped by the front door where he always keeps it. He leaves everything he ever knew behind.
Mark is eighteen when he stops believing in love.
It’s a long time before he runs into another living being. He had almost started believing he was the last person alive, which was both crushing and terrifying. He surprises himself with how long he survives just drifting aimlessly as if he were undead himself. He doesn’t think he’s too far off.
Mark can’t exactly say he feels relief when he sees him.
There is hurt, so many wounds, so much hatred, alive in his dark eyes.
“What are you doing in my house?” he spits out. He’s got both hands gripped on the long handle of an axe whose blade is crusted with blood. Mark gulps.
He’s small, so small that the worn leather jacket he wears nearly falls off his narrow shoulders and Mark thinks he could break him, but his arms are steady with the axe regardless.
Mark’s hands go in the air, the hose falling to the dry ground with a thump.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks midway from the lack of moisture in his throat. “Just wanted some water.”
“Well, you’re not gonna get any around here.”
The boy regards his lack of supplies, lack of resistance, lack of heart.
“But I could take you to some.”
Renjun brings Mark back to life.
The entire first week they spend together he drones on about how skinny Mark is, how he looks too weak to make it in a world like this. Gives him rations of food for nothing in return. It’s not until he’s gained ten pounds that he finds out Renjun’s been giving him more than half the rations he had every day. (How Renjun manages to swing his axe so well despite being so small is still beyond him.)
Mark is still a kid.
He was too young when it all broke loose. He was never even given the chance to grow up proper, like going to university, like making bad decisions and learning from them, like falling in love under normal circumstances. Mark’s never really learned how to do his laundry or do his taxes. Never worked a job or even got to slow dance at his senior prom.
Renjun finds a radio. None of the stations are anything but static, but it can play cds.
Renjun’s favorite song is something obscure, something Mark’s never heard of. From what he remembers of music, he liked it, he liked the groovy songs with the hard hitting beats. Renjun’s more into smooth vocals and oldies. There’s a collection of dusty tapes in the basement. It’s not long before they tire themselves out from dancing too hard, falling together into a heap on the floor and laughing at how absolutely ridiculous their lives are. The music almost makes them forget the world, draws them away from how twisted it all is.
It’s a long time before Renjun’s walls break down. But the same goes for Mark, too. They both know too much pain, have wounds unhealed and traumas left to lurk. Though, when they’re left with no one but themselves, it’s inevitable.
It’s a scorching summer’s night when Renjun tells him his story. How his grandmother was cuckoo, always rambling on about the end and the undead, how they all called her names. Laughs as he says they all ate their words. Cries as he tells him that they’re all dead now regardless.
Mark tells him about Donghyuck. About how they would’ve gotten along. Renjun tells him he’s never kissed anyone before. Hesitantly, Mark offers to fix that.
Mark promised himself he wouldn’t love again.
But Renjun makes it so easy.
Attributions could be in that they have no one but each other. Or maybe they’re really soul bound. Mark tries not to overthink it.
Huddled under a tin roof that’s so loud against the early August rain it makes his brain rattle, they surround an old candle stuck in a muffin made of cornmeal and raisins with their two-person circle. Renjun’s eyes are achingly bright when he tells Mark to make a wish, so he complies, wishes for the first time since this all began.
The second the flame is blown out the Earth is quiet, not even the sheets of unforgiving rain are enough to permeate their little birthday bubble.
Renjun is eighteen when he has his second kiss, Mark is nineteen when he has his fourth. It tastes like cornmeal, raisins and summer rain. It tastes like hope.
Raids can go any which way. Which means they can go sour, and quick at that, too.
Sometimes they won’t run into anything, won’t find anything. Other times they’ll be forced to slash through a few stray undead to get to a bunker, a cabinet, a pantry. Very rarely will they run into an entire mob of the monsters.
They all moan and groan endlessly like the mindless creatures they are. It’s hard for Mark to believe that they used to be real life people, with lives and consciousness just like him. There must be at least twenty of them hobbling around the block.
The target is the biggest house in the cul-de-sac. The discrete sneaking around to get there is easy enough. The doors aren’t locked. It looks like it could have been lived in recently, but the entire area is clear of signs of actual life. Renjun whispers to him to be careful anyway.
There’s an attic. Renjun discovers the opening to it on the ceiling of the main hallway. The sound the ladder makes is so creaky and loud, they both fear the undead outside can hear it. The dust that comes along with the ladder makes Mark sneeze. Renjun chuckles at him before climbing up first.
“Renjun?” Mark calls up at the opening when Renjun stops giving him commentary on what he sees. He doesn’t respond, at least not immediately. Mark is nervous, but he trusts Renjun. Renjun is capable of holding his own.
“Gah!”
A hard thump is heard from above, then Renjun groaning. Mark calls out to him again. There’s scuffling and a loud thunk.
“Fuck, fucking shit.”
“Are you okay? What happened? Should I come up?” Mark asks with his foot already on the first rung.
Renjun hisses in pain instead of responding and Mark decides he isn’t going to wait around anymore.
Renjun is on the floor of the attic. He’s clutching his own bloody hand, his axe laying beside him. The blade is bloody, too.
Mark’s still only partially up, his legs still on the ladder as his torso peers over. His eyes rake over the attic searching for pieces of the puzzle.
There’s a zombie.
It’s formally dead now. There’s a Renjun-axe sized gash in it’s rotting head. It’s halfway under a blanket and halfway over the side of the mattress in which it was probably resting when it died and turned.
Renjun is taking heavy breaths.
Mark’s on his knees, taking Renjun’s hand into his own.
There’s only two known methods of transmission: dying and being bitten.
Mark doesn’t really know the science behind it all. Just knows what he’s picked up from the first group he was a part of. He also knows infection spreads fast. It’s supposed to contaminate your entire bloodstream and make your organs decay at an alarming rate. The virus kills in minutes, and then the dead body is nothing but a vessel for bloodthirst and an intense cannibal hunger.
“It’s nothing. It’s okay, I swear. You’re gonna be okay.”
“Mark, it-it hurts,” Renjun huffs out, a grimace painted on his features.
“It’s okay, Renjun. Let’s just…” Mark trails off. Honestly, he’s not sure. His adrenaline is just breaking in, the panic flooding in like a broken dam. He doesn’t know if it’s okay. He doesn’t know anything.
He goes down the ladder first.
“Okay, Renjun. Can you come down? Maybe we can fix it. I think I saw a first-aid kit or something.” He’s rambling at this point, nerves spiked and he’s broken into a cold sweat.
Renjun’s leg on the top rung is shaky and he nearly misses it. Mark’s heart lurches in his chest.
It’s fine, he tells himself again and again as Renjun goes down another step and another and another. He’s halfway before he teeters backwards. Mark holds his breath until he stabilizes himself.
The next step, however, snaps with a ear-splitting crack that is surely heard all down the block as soon as he puts his foot on it—and if that didn’t make enough of a ruckus, the bone crushing bang of their bodies crashing onto the floor does.
The undead are roused.
Mark is nineteen and scared.
There are plenty of things to be scared of in a world chasing after his heels and eating away at his shadows. He’s afraid of the dark. He’s scared of being hungry. He’s terrified of the undead. He’s scared of being alone. Mark’s learned that he can’t let them get ahold of him—his fears—learned it the hard way. Although, it’s all easier said than done. Much easier when it isn’t facing him head on.
Mark’s hands shake as he murmurs reassurances to the frail boy in his arms. Renjun looks up at him, looks at him like he hung the moon and all of her stars. A fit of coughing takes over him, blood dribbling out the side of his cracked lips. It’s really getting him, and it’s getting him fast. That’s how it works—it spreads, kills, then turns . Why couldn’t good things ever come as easily?
“Don’t worry, it’s gonna be okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he whispers over and over and over and over. He hopes and he prays. He doesn’t know what god he is pleading to. Is there a god? Would any god be so cruel to him? What god would strip him bare and leave him hopeless? What god would make everyone he loves suffer so?
He can’t even feel his own pain despite clearly seeing the awkward angle his foot is at. Renjun’s suffering enough for the both of them.
“Mark…”
“Please. I love you. Please, I’m so sorry. I promised,” he repeats until he his head is swimming and he can’t hear himself anymore. He can only feel the grip on his shirt loosening with every passing moment, can only feel the way the floorboards quake with the impact of the pounding on the front door.
Mark can only watch as Renjun smiles at him from his lap, can only watch as the light pours in as the door finally bursts open and countless undead flow inside their space.
He doesn’t fight, sees no reason to struggle back. Not as his flesh is ripped from his limbs or as his eyes finally let go of the tears still clinging to them. He doesn’t need to. Now that Renjun lies limp in his arms and he knows he’s moments away from becoming soulless. There’s nothing left to fight for.
Mark is nineteen when his world ends.