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The zombie apocalypse is, much to Peter’s surprise, pretty boring. It isn’t always, of course - there’s the horrifying moments in which Peter fears for his life, hairs standing up on the back of his neck, blood drained from his face. In those moments, he wishes for the boring. Or, he wishes for the before.
The apocalypse was not always boring, at least it didn’t start that way, but once every day turns into an actual, waking nightmare, at some point, it just becomes plain old reality. And reality will always have its lulls.
There’s the achingly long stretches between supply runs, spent spread out in the book room with Cassie, or MJ, or Cassie and MJ. There are the days they invent their own entertainment, the games Peter comes up with to get them sprinting through the halls or drawing chalk shapes blindfolded on the tarmac outside. The outside games are less frequent, because they make May nervous. And Peter knows she’s been through enough.
There are also the grey days. The days when everyone in the base at once seems to realise, for the thousandth time, that this is their life now; that most of their loved ones are dead, their old cities in ruins, apartments torn up, future almost certainly non-existent; when they remember that monsters linger at the fence, the shadows of the echoes of human beings, ready to tear them apart with one wrong move.
On those days, Peter stays with MJ. She doesn’t admit her feelings, isn’t good at that, but Peter can tell that sometimes, she feels like she’s suffocating. It’s the same way he feels, sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night, shrouded in darkness. The blind panic that this is their life. That there’s no way out, no exit button, no magic word or adults to take them home when they get too tired. There’s just this. The nightmare, the reality. So Peter holds her hand on her bed in the little room they share with May, lays with her, reads to her until the sound of his voice slows her heartbeat.
He doesn’t know what they are to each other yet - they haven’t put a label on it, or had any serious conversation about their feelings. At first, he was afraid to, for the same reason every seventeen-year-old is afraid to, but then he was afraid because some stupid part of his brain told him that if he did, MJ would be taken away from him. Like some kind of curse. Because everyone he loves goes away. His parents, a long time ago, his uncle, two years before the initial wave of zombies, his friends, sometime between then and now. For all he knows, Ned is gone too, though the last time they spoke he was somewhere secure. And now there’s no way to get in touch, probably never will be again. So Peter’s down to two people, the two he escaped New York with. If he loses them, he’ll lose himself too.
So, mostly, they stay inside where it's safe.
Until they don’t.
It’s a bad day, the kind where the base is turned quiet, a wash of despair sucking all of the colour out of the hallways which, a day earlier, bubbled with laughter. The atmosphere is heavy, crushing, stifling.
MJ doesn’t get out of bed, head buried under the pillow, blind to the food May sets in front of her, the new book Peter unearthed from under the bookshelves. Peter gets it. He gets the weight of the guilt that sits in her chest, roots digging into her heart the day she made a split second decision to leave her empty apartment for Peter’s.
MJ had no way of knowing whether her parents were still alive, whether they were five minutes from home or whether they’d crossed the threshold for the last time. She made a decision, on the day of the outbreak, which helped her survive. It also meant that she’s unlikely to ever see her parents again. She’ll never know if they’re alive or not. She’ll never know if they were alive on that day, if they went out to look for her, stumbling around the horror of the city calling her name. MJ did what she needed to do, but some days, Peter’s pretty sure that she wishes she ended up wherever her parents had. From what she’s told him, they were dysfunctional and messy, her home a place she didn’t totally feel wanted. But family is family, and she had loved them nonetheless.
“Em,” Peter kneels by her bunk, knees against cold tile, his chin in his hands.
She’s still, face in her pillow. May is off doing something with Hope, and Peter’s making it his mission for the day to make MJ happy. He’s determined, maintains his stance through all of this - this hell, this strange new life - that human beings can still find happiness.
“MJ,” he pokes her, square between the shoulder blades. “Wanna go do something?” He tries. He’s making it up as he goes along.
“No.”
“We can do anything you want!” He tries again.
Then, it hits him. Fresh air. The sunshine breaking through the clouds. The horse. MJ being sad outside has to be better than MJ being sad in her bed inside the stifling old air of the base.
“I have an idea,” Peter says, leaning in close. Her hair muddles against her bright white t-shirt.
“Good for you,” she says, words into the rough cotton of the pillowcase.
“It involves you too,” he sing-songs, enticing her. He runs a thumb over the shape of her shoulder blade.
“ No ,” she insists, and Peter’s heart aches in his chest. Nothing makes it ache more than seeing her on days like this. He’d fix this whole damned earth for her, if he could.
“Em.” His voice is soft now, words barely above a whisper, thumb carving circles on her back. “C’mon. You can’t stay here forever. Let’s go do something, let’s...let’s go be seventeen.”
She sighs, her back rising and falling beneath his hand, a shudder. “What’s the point?”
Once upon a time, MJ was the smart girl who Peter sat across from in academic decathlon, who doodled in sharp pointed pens in the margins of her exercise books. She had a purple streak in her hair in sophomore year, filled her sentences with dry humor, and carried at least six types of tea in her backpack at any one time. They became friends, she, him, and Ned. They sat in the corner of the lunch room and watched the world go past, and studied together in Peter’s kitchen over cartons of leftover Thai food. (Peter would kill for Thai food right now. He’d kill for three day old stuff from the worst rated place in Queens.) Point is, they were friends, and maybe Peter had a crush on her. Maybe a large portion of his thoughts focused on what her hand would feel like in his, and whether or not fireworks would pop in his head if he kissed her.
And then, the world changed, some virus released, genetically modified monkeys or radioactive who-knows-what. The world changed, and they fled the city, and jumped from school friends to only thing they have left in the world. It’s a big jump, and Peter’s trying to adapt as best he can, to make sure that both MJ and May are as okay as they can be. And amongst it all is the lack of definition of his and MJ’s relationship. They haven’t talked about it - they just fell into this new dependence on each other, this unconditional trust and understanding. And maybe sometimes they fall asleep in the same bed.
“The point is that this is our life now. It’s different, and scary, but it’s still a life. And we’re stuck here, so we need to make the best of the situation.” Peter wants to crawl into the bed with her, wrap his arms around her and scatter her face with kisses until she feels better.
Instead, he waits.
“Like how?” MJ asks, but she turns her head a little so that he can see an eye through her curtain of hair.
“Like we could go sit outside. We can find something to do out there.”
“Or,” MJ leans up one elbow, “we could go find ourselves some new music. For the CD player.”
Peter stalls, trying to read her expression, but there’s nothing much to read.
“From where?”
“You’re the one who goes on the supply runs. Where do you suggest?” MJ asks, tilting her head to one side.
“It’s not safe out there. You can’t,” Peter shakes his head, his gut reaction to protect, protect, protect . It’s hell out there. It’s not somewhere MJ needs to be.
“You do it,” she shoots back, “why can’t I?”
“I - I’m…” Peter struggles. “I'm agile. I know how to use a slingshot.”
“More like you annoyed them into letting you go out,” she raises her eyebrows. “Besides, have you seen me with a knife?” Peter has. And she’s damned good with it. But he’s not about to admit that. “Peter, c’mon.There’s got to be some place not totally dangerous we can go. I haven’t been out there for months , I - I need to see it with my own eyes, I need to breathe actual air. I just need to be...not here. For an hour .” She pushes herself into a sitting position, eyes pleading. Peter retracts his right hand from her back and folds it awkwardly with his left.
“I don’t know, MJ.”
“If you don’t come with me, I’ll just go by myself.”
Peter pauses again, mind working overtime, trying to think of a way out of this.
The first time a zombie was shown on TV, before they knew this meant the end of the world, Peter, MJ and Ned had been sitting around the TV in Ned’s room, and MJ had been fascinated by the science behind it. She wanted to know everything about its physiology, its brain, its diet.
Now, they’re just the monsters that make the outside off limits.
“There’s some houses. Like, really not that far away from here. I’ve been in a couple of them on supply runs, and they’ve all been cleared of zombies. They’re the safest ones I know. But I guess they might have something cool in them,” Peter shrugs.
MJ studies Peter for a second, gauging how serious he is. “How far away are the houses? How do we sneak out of the base?”
Peter swallows. Something in his stomach tells him he’s going to regret this. But logically, he knows a route that's safe-ish. He knows houses that are empty. He knows that this is better than watching MJ rot away with sadness in this bed. “The houses are fifteen minutes away, at a fast walk. And we sneak out of the base around back. There’s a loose piece of fence.”
“Okay. So let’s go.”
“MJ, are you sure ?” Peter checks again.
“Yes, nerd. I’m sure .”
MJ shoots him a teasing smile, eyebrows raised, and damn, he thinks he’d do just about anything for her at this point. So Peter jumps to his feet, and searches for the weapons he’s concealed around the room.
Peter leads MJ out of the room, treading lightly ahead of her, checking carefully along the corridor that it’s empty. They’re both quick tongued, so he’s pretty sure they could come up with an excuse for where they’re going (i.e. not outside of the base fences), but it’s going to be a damn sight easier if they can just get out unnoticed. They creep along the hallway, dizzy adrenaline pumping in their veins, the kind that they don’t get to experience much in the apocalypse. Here, it’s the real thing, life and death, not the stupid fun they used to have in the school hallwaysas they tried to avoid the gaze of teachers.
The main door is off limits, propped open a little. Carol and Valkyrie’s quiet voices drift through from outside. They’ve been gardening a lot lately, Peter watching Carol becoming lighter day by day, dirt making a home under her fingernails, eyes lighting up around Val.
Peter leads MJ to the back bedroom of the base, to the window he knows how to jimmy open and slide out of, leading right to the back fence. They pass Hope, Scott and Cassie’s room on the way, and Peter’s remembering the quick exchange with Hope over breakfast a couple days earlier, about how the apocalypse has brought people together as well as torn them apart, about how it brings out the good in people, makes the humans more human than ever. He knows that she’s right.
The grass at the back of the building is brilliantly green and reaches their knees, Pegasus chewing on it and eyeing them carefully as they pass. The sky is blue and cloud dappled, fluffy and round, devoid of the white streaks of airplanes.
“Do you miss airplanes?” Peter asks MJ, the grass blades poking his exposed ankles, tickling his knees through his jeans.
“Like, to watch or to travel in?” MJ asks, tilting her head back.
“Both.”
“Sure. Maybe if we had one we could go find some zombie-free island or something.”
“You think there’s one out there?”
“Must be,” MJ concludes. “There are islands that were uninhabited, undiscovered, too inconvenient for big corporations to make money out of. There’d be no zombies there.”
They reach the fence and pause, peering into the trees behind the base. Beyond them, there’s wide open road, less chance of being ambushed by zombies. Peter digs a rock out of his jeans pocket, his slingshot ready in his waistband, fingers twitching, just in case. The slingshot has been his weapon of choice since the start of the apocalypse, his accuracy better than most of the adults he knows with a gun. He sees MJ tighten her grip around the knife she keeps looped through her belt, her eyes roving the trees.
“We can turn back if you want,” Peter suggests, in a whisper. “We can just sit out here, with the horse.”
MJ hesitates, looking back at the base. “No. I’m not afraid of this world.”
Peter nods, watching her for a second to check that she’s serious. The determination in her yes tells him that she is, and the trees seem clear, so he carefully lifts the bottom of the fence. It’s secure enough that zombies can’t break in through it, but with a little wiggling, easy enough for a small-ish person to slide underneath. Peter goes first, dusting himself off on the other side and then holding the gap open for MJ. She’s eager, climbing through as fast as she can, and then standing up and looking around. This is it. They’re out. There’s half actual terror and half of that teenage adrenaline Peter felt earlier in the hallway, knowing they’ve broken a rule, the rule, the one rule no one was supposed to break. Knowing they’ll be in trouble if anyone spots them.
“You ready?” Peter asks.
“As I’ll ever be.”
--
Somewhere between the base and the houses coming into view down the hill, they find each other’s hands. Peter isn’t sure how it happens, but one minute they’re walking quietly, a reasonable distance apart, the slap of the soles of their shoes on the road the only sound to be heard, and the next, his hand is knotted with hers. They’ve done this a lot since the apocalypse hit, this touching-for-comfort thing. It’s sleeping on each other’s shoulders, or sitting with legs across each other’s laps. Sometimes, they hold hands. Once, Peter laid with her on the rec room couch in the early hours of the morning after a nightmare. He held her until she stopped shaking. A month later, she did the same for him.
Peter doesn’t get used to it. There’s still the swoop in his stomach when they touch like this, the way his thoughts tangle up in his brain, the way he kind of wants to giggle even in the middle of all of this.
It makes him feel safer, if nothing else, and he hopes it does for her too. Maybe it means as much to her as it does to him, maybe not. It’s nice either way. (And he’s holding out hope that it means a lot.)
“How much further?” MJ asks, quietly. Everything needs to be done quietly in the zombie apocalypse. Too much noise and they risk attracting a hoard. One day, there’ll be one so large they won’t be able to escape it.
“Maybe a half mile,” Peter estimates, squeezing her hand. She squeezes back. He rubs his thumb against hers, wondering if this is ok. She’s holding on to his hand so tightly that he guesses it must be.
“Peter?” MJ asks, after a beat.
“Yeah?”
“What’s the, uh...the closest call you’ve had? With the zombies?” She asks slowly, carefully, like it's a subject she doesn’t know whether to bring up or not.
And Peter can’t say it’s his favourite topic. But he’ll talk about it for her.
“Um,” he thinks, mentally rifling through a Rolodex of near death experiences. The zombies at school and on the way home, the zombies after, when they thought the army had the situation under control, the zombies when he, MJ, and May left the city.
But those weren’t the worst times. Those times, he’d still felt like he had some control over the situation.
No, he knows the time it had been at its worst. The time he’d been sure he was going to die. So sure that all he could see were the faces of his loved ones he’d never see again. May and MJ and Ned, right at the end. Their warmth and love, his gratefulness that they loved him unconditionally and that he had the chance to love them in return. The clawing desperation in this chest that he’d never get to see them again. All of the things he would never get to say. All of the things he still hasn’t said.
“It was in the town where we usually go for supplies. You know, the one with the giant potato?”
“ Stupid giant potato,” MJ snickers.
“Yeah,” Peter nods. “I got surrounded by zombies out on a supply run. You know, the day I bought Hope and Cassie back? They saved me; Scott and Hope. I maybe wasn’t being the smartest about it. I was sort of, uh, screaming a lot,” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.
“Oh yeah, that sounds like you,” MJ teases.
“It does not !” Peter objects. “I’m brave. I’m a straight up Gryffindor!”
“Hmm. Maybe. Maybe not,” MJ shrugs, and Peter frowns at her until she smiles. “But seriously, I’m...I’m glad you didn’t die, or anything. For the group. You’re useful to have around.”
“Wow, thanks MJ.”
“You know what I mean ,” she pushes him with their joined hands so he veers left on the road, deliberately almost walking into a hedge on the roadside until MJ rights him again.
“I’m glad Scott and Hope were there to save your ass. And I’m glad you’re not dead. Okay? So don’t...don’t die,” she tells him, and he knows this is hard for her. He’d never expect some kind of grand speech about her feelings. He knows she cares. He also knows that she wasn’t raised in an environment where they talked about how they felt much.
“I’ll try not to,” Peter says softly. “I’m glad you’re not dead, too.” They swap smiles. They walk onwards.
They reach the houses soon after. It’s a rural strip of homes, set apart from one another, clustered together along the road. Peter’s been in a couple of them before, came home with a backpack filled with consumables, knows their layouts well. They start with the peach house on the end, Range Rover in the driveway loaded with bags. This family was leaving. They didn’t make it. Peter doesn’t stop too long to think about why.
Instead, he jimmies open the side window, pokes his head through the space and listens. It was quiet last time, but that doesn’t mean it will be now. Everything is a risk at the end of the world. Some zombies may have found a way in, or still human people might have made this their home. And sure, maybe they’re friendly and scared, or maybe they’re murderous. There’s no way of knowing. Things have never been less predictable. But it seems quiet, so Peter slides his way in the window, pulling MJ with him.
The peach house is good. There are oreos only slightly past their end date in a cupboard, and they sit on the kitchen floor and eat the whole box in large handfuls. There are two bedrooms upstairs, and Peter guesses one of the house’s inhabitants must have been a metal fan, because MJ appears at the top of the stairs in a giant Led Zeppelin t-shirt, shooting him finger guns. There’s an electric guitar which they take it in turns to pluck at, barely making a sound, but playing a concert for a thousand in their heads.
They dig through cupboards in their search for music. MJ finds books she hasn’t read, stuffing them into her backpack. Peter finds a bright pink sparkly baseball hat, which he pulls on backwards.
They find sentimental stuff too, the stuff that’s never really stuff , but the solid fabric of memories. And suddenly it’s not just going through someone’s house, it’s a grave site. It’s a shrine. It’s a reminder that tomorrow isn’t promised.
There’s a banner from a twenty-first birthday party, and Peter wonders if he’ll even make it to eighteen. There’s an order of service from a funeral, and Peter wonders how long it would take to have a funeral for everyone who’s lost to this world. There’s a baby book, an old picture of a tiny baby on the front. MJ flips through it whilst Peter watches, looking at small footprints, handprints, a record of date of birth, weight, length, full name. Babies aren’t something they see anymore. And Peter had never really considered whether he would want kids of his own one day, before the apocalypse, always having had complicated thoughts about family. But he wants kids now. He wants to grow up into an adult and go to college and then have a normal adult life. The most boring life to ever be lived. Wife, kids, dog, cute house in the suburbs.
MJ shuts the book. They leave the peach house.
The yellow house is next on the street. It’s better, no stopping to look through personal belongings. It’s full of fake plants, and MJ stuffs a plastic fern into her backpack. There aren’t any CDs, but there is a fully charged iPod with headphones, the cord wrapped tightly around it on top of a desk. MJ snatches it up, and they flip through the catalogue of music excitedly. Peter’s about to suggest they listen to something now, but there’s a bang outside as they’re scrolling past the ‘T’s. It could be nothing - Peter knows it probably is nothing - but it’s a reminder of where they are, how dangerous this is. Better to listen to music where it’s safe. They wrap up the iPod and it goes into MJ’s backpack.
The next house over is a sickly lemon colour, the smallest yet, spread over just one floor. They figure they’ll clear all of the houses on this small street and then head back, music or none. It’s quiet inside, house decorated in drab florals, carpet and assorted ceramic ornaments thick with dust. There’s a dead plant against one wall, a weird smell coming from the kitchen which they don’t dare to investigate. This house feels different to the other two, but Peter can’t place a finger on why. He’s pretty sure it belonged to some older people, judging from the decor. There’s a faded wedding photo propped up on the mantle. It’s in black and white, a little sun bleached, a date of 1952 inked at the bottom. The couple are smiling so brightly, so honestly, that it makes Peter’s heart stutter in his chest. And he can’t leave it here. He can’t leave something so pure in a house like this, rotting and forgotten. MJ’s looking through the cupboard under the TV, digging through plastic, so Peter carefully places the small photo into the front pocket of his backpack whilst she’s otherwise occupied. He can’t memorialise everyone, it would be impossible, but this was someone’s life. He can take this one little piece of them.
“Got some!” MJ announces, triumphantly holding up a stack of thin CD cases.
“Yes!” Peter fist pumps as MJ raises her eyebrows at him. “Any good ones?”
“Hmm,” she sorts through them. “Kids Christmas sing along. Now that’s a classic,” she holds up the brightly coloured album, complete with Santa and reindeer.
“I don’t know how we ever lived without this CD,” Peter snorts. “Totally worth risking our lives for.”
“Definitely,” MJ agrees.
She sorts through the stack of ten or so CDs, pausing at the last one and holding up a faded post-it note.
“What’s it say?” Peter asks, scooting closer.
MJ reads it aloud. “Emily, if you’re looking for your Queen album, I took it back downstairs with the rest of the music.”
“Queen? I love Queen!” Peter says, re-reading the note as MJ passes it to him.
“Of course you do,” MJ snickers.
“What does that mean?” Peter asks, mock offended.
“Nothing,” MJ smiles innocently. “What it means is that there’s a rest of the music downstairs. And some of it might actually be good.” MJ jumps to her feet, so Peter follows.
The problem with this house is that downstairs means the basement. Peter’s no expert on the apocalypse, but he’s seen enough horror movies to know that during one, you probably shouldn’t go down into a dark, claustrophobic, limited-escape-routes basement.
But MJ’s already searching for a door down, and Peter knows how much she wants this. They can take it slowly, be super careful about it, he reasons. Peter tries to push away the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, tells himself it isn’t rational, just a consequence of having lived in this world for too long.
“It’s unlocked,” MJ says, pulling the white door of the basement open slowly. Before the apocalypse, there was surely a light down there, maybe making it into a cosy extra room or a safe space for storage. Now, there’s nothing but pitch black darkness.
“Be careful, MJ,” Peter warns, as she takes a first step in.
“Until you said that I was planning to be extremely reckless about this,” she quips, “I think I saw a flashlight by the front door. Go see if you can find it?”
“Okay. But don’t move anywhere until I get back. You don’t know what’s down there,” Peter whispers.
“It’ll be like I’m rooted to this step,” MJ says, a little sarcastically.
“MJ, I’m serious.”
“So am I, nerd. I won’t go down there, ok? I can’t see anything, anyway.”
“Okay. Okay, good,” Peter nods, taking one last look at her, framed in the blackness of the doorway, before turning and heading back through the little house towards the front door.
There’s a coat rack by the door, stacked with thick winter overcoats, light jackets, and everything in between. On a shelf behind, beside a bowl of keys and a bronze clock, is a heavy looking black flashlight. Peter pushes the coats aside and reaches for it, shaking it a little before clicking it on. Nothing happens. He shakes it again, clicks it again, taps it against his other hand, twists open the back and checks the batteries are in correctly, takes them out and puts them back in the same way. Finally, it works, light beams pouring into the hallway.
Peter turns to head back into the main room of the house, draws in a breath to announce to MJ that he’s found the light. Only, she’s not there. The basement door is still wide open, still pitch dark inside. But she’s gone. Peter stops in the doorway to the room, frozen. He’s about to call out to her, check that she’s just out of sight down the steps and not somehow been snatched up by a zombie in the minute he was gone. And he’s a little mad at her, if he’s honest, for risking herself like that, for going down into the dark basement without being able to even see down there.
But then there’s a sound - a clattering, a thump. Peter holds his breath. There’s a scream.
“MJ!” Peter springs into action, almost dropping the flashlight, fumbling with it, clicking the on button repeatedly until light spills out, aiming it at the basement doorway and skidding to a halt at the top of the steps.
“Get off me!” MJ is screaming, kicking at something below the stairs, and it takes less than a second for Peter to realise what’s happening.
The basement stairs have gaps between them. Gaps for feet to slip through and hands to grasp up through. Dead hands. The kind belonging to the two dead faces of the zombies trapped under the stairs.
Peter’s blood turns to ice, the breath leaving his lungs, blinking against the dark of the stairwell. He stumbles down to reach her, almost falling over the assortment of garden equipment littering the steps, arms reaching for her to pull her up.
“ Ow !” MJ objects, pulling one foot up back onto the stairs. The other is still stuck, and one of the zombies is wising up, rounding the corner and starting to walk up the stairwell.
“ No !” Peter fumbles for his slingshot, hands shaking, useless, as the zombie draws closer, and MJ’s still trapped, there’s no way for them to run.
MJ stills for a second, pulling her knife from her belt, the hilt shining in the flashlight beam, and sinks the knife into the skull of the zombie holding her ankle. She’s struggling to tug it out as Peter frees his slingshot, dropping the flashlight, loading the shot with the rock from his pocket. Focus. He’s shaking too much, the zombie’s too fast, and he aims at its head.
Peter does not like to kill. These things were people once, with whole lives, loved ones and dreams and a history. These monsters didn’t ask to end up like this, snarling and rotting, killers. Some day, maybe there will be a cure, enough to turn them back into humans again. Peter doubts it - he’s a man of science, doesn’t see how it would ever be possible - but still. Killing them has never felt right.
Only this time, it’s different. This time, it’s kill or be killed. No escape. No second chances. No saving himself. More importantly, most importantly, no saving MJ.
Peter takes the shot. The rock hits its target. The zombie falls. Peter waits, fingers enclosed on another rock in his pocket, just in case. But both zombies are down. No groaning or twitching. Just dead.
“MJ, what the hell were you-” he starts, about to ask her why she came down here in the pitch black, alone.
“Peter?” She cuts him off, still sitting on the step below him, her voice quiet.
“What?”
She’s holding her ankle, and when Peter picks up the flashlight to aim it her, he finds a hot wetness seeping through her fingers.
“MJ? What...what is that?” Terror. White hot terror, burning away the ice in his veins, takes over.
“I-I don’t know. I don’t...I didn’t…” there are tears in her voice. She’s afraid, so afraid. More afraid than Peter has ever seen her.
And it would be so easy to join her, to melt down, to scream. But she needs him.
“MJ, stand up. C’mon. We need to look at it in the light.” Peter pulls her up, helping her up the steps. They collapse at the top onto the drab floral couch, Peter slamming the basement door shut behind him.
He wastes no time, pulling the cuff of her jeans up further, rolling down her sock. Her ankle is flooded with blood, so much so that Peter can’t find the source of it.
“What happened?” He asks softly, trying to be rational and calm, trying not to think about the fact that this might mean MJ only has twenty-four hours left. It’s an unbearable thought. It’s agonising. He has to take a breath and shake it from his mind.
“I-I don’t know . I just heard something down there, I took a couple steps down to try and look and I...I think I slipped on something. One of the rakes, maybe?” There are tears dotting her cheeks, her breathing fast and erratic.
“Hey, hey. Em. It’s okay, it’s okay,” Peter assures her, pausing in his search for the cut for a second, pulling her close, stroking a hand through her hair. She leans against his shoulder and takes a series of deep breaths. “It’s going to be okay. I - I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I brought you here.” He feels guilty, a new emotion added into the mix.
“It’s not your fault,” MJ says quickly. Peter begs to differ, but now isn’t the time.
“I need to clean your ankle, okay? I need to see it properly.” MJ nods, so Peter gets up and walks to the small kitchen, finds a semi-clean dish cloth in a drawer. There’s no water to help clean it, so this will have to do.
Peter mops her leg carefully, cleaning away the blood until he can see the wound. It’s a slash, crescent shaped, tracing the curve of her ankle.
“What is it?” MJ asks, eyes clamped shut.
He wants to tell her it’s nothing, a graze from some of the garden equipment. But he can’t. He can’t be sure. It could just as easily be a claw mark, a bite done at an angle. He doesn’t know , and it’s killing him.
“MJ, I don’t...I need you to think about this. Did either of them bite you, or scratch you? Do you remember feeling anything after they grabbed you?” Peter talks quickly and calmly, still trying to stay rational even though he mostly wants to cry.
“I don’t know, I don’t remember. I think...I don’t think I felt any pain until after they got me but I don’t know, I don’t know.” She's panicking again, breaths speeding up. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“It’s okay!” Peter stops her, tells himself there will be time for him to freak out later. “We need to go back to the base, okay? Carol and May - they’ll know what to do. They’ve been here before.”
“They’re going to be so mad,” MJ realises, her voice shaking.
“We can deal with them,” Peter assures her. That isn’t his priority right now; it’s MJ’s life. “Can you walk?” He asks, standing and pulling her with him.
“Ow,” MJ tests her weight on her ankle, a pained expression on her face. Peter isn’t certain whether or not it’s because of actual pain, or the fear that comes along with her injury. “I think so?” She takes an experimental step, slowly, carefully. It’s too slow. It’s going to take too long, and MJ is going to be in too much pain. Peter wants to know if she’s going to be okay right now.
“Okay. Okay, new plan. Get on my back,” Peter turns his back to her, motioning to her with his hands.
“What? It’s too far, you can’t carry me that far,” MJ protests.
“Yes, I can. They let me go on supply runs for a reason, MJ,” Peter reminds her, and after a few more seconds of hesitation, she puts her hands on his shoulders and jumps up, Peter’s hands under her knees. MJ carries her backpack, Peter holding his under one arm.
They leave the lemon house, the quiet street, which feels lonely and desolate now rather than exciting, and make their way along the road as fast as they can. Peter’s moving at half a run, feeling more and more desperate with every step. He knows that it doesn’t really matter how quickly they get back. They could take it at MJ’s injured pace and it wouldn’t matter. If she’s been bitten, or scratched, that’s it. She gets twenty-four hours, no matter the angle you look at it. Twenty-four hours can’t change shape dependent on location. It doesn’t matter if they spend it back at the base or on the side of this road.
But still, there’s a desperation clawing at Peter’s chest. He needs to know . He needs answers, he needs...he needs responsible adults who can take care of MJ. People who can take charge of the situation and make more informed choices than he can.
And he kind of wants a hug from his aunt.
Eventually, they make it back. They crawl back under the fence, not because they’re trying to sneak anymore, but because it’s closest and quickest, and then Peter is pulling MJ back up and striding towards the building. Her breathing is heavy, interspersed with sniffs.
“Peter?” She stops him, right by the front door.
“Em? Are you okay? Do you feel weird, is it hurting you, is it-”
“I’m just...what if they tell me it’s a bite?” She stops him, and he doesn’t have a reassuring enough response to that. He wishes he did, wishes he could promise that no one’s going to tell her that, that it’s not true.
“Then we’ll deal with it. Okay? We’ll deal with what’s thrown at us.”
“There’s no dealing with this!”
“We will find a way to deal with it.” Peter assures her, voice low and determined. The apocalypse has taken away enough of the people he loves. No more. “It’s okay. You’re okay,” he squeezes her knee, gives her a second to breathe before they go in.
The door is unlocked, which some distant part of Peter’s brain says is wrong - it’s never supposed to be unlocked - but right now he doesn’t care enough to question it. Right now, he’s stepping inside and following the voices of the building’s inhabitants. They’re eating dinner around the long kitchen table, conversation monotone, typical of a day like today. Peter fleetingly wonders if they’ve noticed they’re missing. And then he steps into the room, and everyone goes quiet.
“Peter?” It’s May who stands up first, and Peter knows her well enough to know the slight edge in her voice. She knows something is wrong, something bad went down.
“It’s her leg. It’s - it’s, May I’m so sorry. We left, we needed to go outside, we - I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. She… MJ…” Peter doesn’t know how to convey the enormity of the situation. He doesn’t want to put it into words, make it real.
“Peter? What’s going on?” Carol approaches as MJ jumps to the floor, standing on one leg and holding Peter’s shoulder for balance. Peter watches as MJ wordlessly pulls up the left cuff of her jeans, showing the deep, crescent moon shaped wound on her ankle.
MJ doesn’t have to say anything. None of them do. They’ve lived in this world long enough to know what that means.
“MJ? What happened?” May asks, voice several pitches higher than it usually is.
“I fell, in someone’s basement, on the stairwell. I - I…”
“There were two of them. They grabbed her,” Peter can feel his eyes burning, tries to blink back the wetness. “But there was loads of sharp crap blocking the stairs. We don’t - we don’t know if… if it’s…” there are tears falling now, and he pushes them away angrily with the heel of his palm.
MJ takes a deep breath. “We don’t know if I got bit or not.”
The adults freeze. This is not how they were supposed to react. Peter wants action, wants definitive responses, wants to know what the hell is happening and how it can be stopped.
“May?” His voice is much smaller than hoped. His aunt looks between Peter and MJ, and there’s an emotion crossing her face that Peter can’t quite read.
“Okay. Okay, come on. MJ, come with me,” May claps her hands together, getting to her feet.
“I’ll help,” Hope stands up too, Cassie following. Peter avoids her gaze, avoids all of them. He knows what he’ll see reflected in their eyes - pity. He doesn’t need pity. MJ doesn’t need pity. They need solutions.
May and Hope sling MJ’s arms around their shoulders and leave the kitchen, Peter right behind them.
“Parker,” Carol stops him. “Wait.”
“MJ needs me!” He insists.
“She’ll be fine for two minutes,” Carol insists, and Peter turns to face her. Scott, Gamora and Groot file out of the kitchen, the former two squeezing his shoulder on the way.
“I’ll make some tea,” Thor declares, pushing his chair back and walking over to the stove. That leaves Carol and Valkyrie, and Peter standing in front of them, heart thudding in his chest.
“Please don’t make me explain myself to you right now, okay?” He runs a hand through his hair. “MJ needs me, she's terrified. She doesn’t know...we don’t know what’s going to happen. I know what I did was stupid, and you can punish me for it later, or whatever you wanna do. I just need to be with MJ right now.”
“Peter,” Carol shakes her head.
She swaps a look with Valkyrie and then gets to her feet, makes it to Peter in three sharp steps. She stops in front of him, and then pulls her arms around him for a hug. It’s unexpected, and Peter isn’t totally sure how to react at first, but after a second he realises this is exactly what he needed. He rests his chin on her shoulder and tries not to cry.
“I know what we did was stupid,” he tells her.
“Peter, stop. I just want to know what happened. How likely it is that she was bitten,” Carol explains. She lets go of Peter, and pulls him to sit across from her and Valkyrie.
“Just tell us what you remember,” Valkyrie coaxes, so Peter does, as carefully and accurately as possible. One part of his mind stays along the hallway with MJ, silently begging the universe to let her live.
Once Peter’s done, and Thor has placed a steaming mug of herbal tea in front of him and given him a pat on the back so hard it makes him cough, Carol leads Peter into the side office where May and Hope are examining MJ’s injury. She’s sitting atop a desk, tears streaming down her cheeks silently.
“Hey, hey, MJ,” Peter moves to join her on the desk, careful not to disturb May and Hope, and pulls an arm around MJ’s shoulders.
“What do you think?” Carol asks the older women.
“Shall we talk outside?” Hope suggests, nodding at the hallway.
“No!” MJ protests. “This is my life. I want to be included in this discussion. Just because I’m under eighteen, it-”
“Okay! You can be included. We’ll talk about it right here,” May stops her, squeezing MJ’s hand.
Hope nods. “Well, we were thinking that the cut looks pretty clean. Uniform. The zombie bites and scratches I’ve seen have always been a little messier. They tear the skin rather than slice it.”
“It’s true,” May agrees. “Some of the bites I saw at the relief centre, on the first day were...not like this,” she gets a haunted look in her eyes whenever she talks about the first days. Peter likes to steer clear of the topic with her.
“From what Peter told me about the incident, could be either way,” Carol shrugs, and there’s an audible gasp from Cassie in the doorway. “Can I see the wound?” Carol asks MJ, who nods quickly.
Peter squeezes her shoulder tighter.
“Yeah,” Carol concludes seconds later. “It’s a pretty clean slice.”
“So it’s not a bite? Or a scratch?” Peter checks. MJ is shaking under his arm.
“It doesn’t look like a bite or a scratch. I can’t...none of us can guarantee that it isn’t,” Carol tells him, like she’s wishing with every fibre of her being that she could guarantee it.
“What - What does this mean for MJ? What to do we now?” Peter asks.
It’s MJ who speaks. “We just have to wait. We just have to give it twenty-three more hours and see if I become one of them . See if I die or not. That’s how we play this.” Her voice is dripping with resentment.
“MJ, it’s -” May starts, but she’s cut off before she can finish.
“No. No, this is the only thing we can do. Unless one of you has magically discovered a preventative overnight? I didn’t think so.” MJ hops down from the desk, Peter’s arm drops to his side.
“MJ?” Peter jumps down too, moving to follow her from the room.
“MJ, where are you going?” May asks. “You don’t have to go anywhere, you can stay right here with us.”
“I just want to be by myself. Just for a little bit,” she shrugs them off.
“MJ! Wait!” Peter starts after her, but he’s cut off by May, a hand on his shoulder holding him back.
“Let her have some time, hon.”
“She...I…” Peter’s fighting the lump in his throat and the dull ache of his calf muscles and it’s all too much.
It’s too much to be seventeen in the apocalypse, to have dumb mistakes which, once upon a time, would have only led to a grounding, now leading to this. To the idea of maybe losing one of the most important people in his life.
May moves her arm, pulling Peter in for a hug instead. If he closes his eyes, he’s small again, barely up to her hip, and she’s hugging him after his first day at his new school, the one closer to her and Ben’s house, and telling him she’s so proud of him.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into her shoulder.
“We’ll talk about this later, alright?” She says back, voice soft, and Peter can hear footsteps clearing the room. “Are you ok? Did you get hurt?” She steps back and holds him at arm's length. Peter opens his eyes and tries to focus on not letting the tears spill over the edge of them.
“No,” he shakes his head. “Just MJ. I wish it was me.”
“Don’t say that. That wouldn’t solve anything,” May frowns.
“I don’t...I don’t know what to do? Is she...is she going to…?” Peter hates how helpless he feels. Hates how there’s nothing he can do to fix this.
“I don’t know,” May shakes her head, tears shining in her eyes. “God knows I love that girl. But I don’t know.”
“What…what should I do?” Peter feels dumb asking his aunt for direct instruction on what to do right now. But honestly, he has no idea. This isn’t something they taught him in school, there wasn’t a YouTube tutorial or a binder in the city library on handling loved ones getting zombie bites.
“Just be there for her. She’s terrified, she needs a friend right now,” May tells him, smoothing back his hair. “Give her some time alone, and then go hold her hand for a little bit.”
“Yeah. Okay, I can do that,” he nods. May lets him go.
“You come find me if...if you need anything.” She tells him, and Peter gets the impression that’s not how she wanted to end that sentence.
Peter swings by the kitchen, drinks some of the tea Thor made, and picks up the stack of CDs from his backpack, stuffed in hastily at the lemon house. He hates the sight of them a little bit, these little squares of plastic with mostly terrible music on them. Mostly, he hates the post it note with the cursive handwriting that sent MJ down those stairs.
He also finds the old picture of the wedding, the couple from the yellow house. It makes his chest ache, the injustice of the way they likely ended these long, winding lives. The injustice that his life doesn’t get to be like that. That they got eighty or ninety years of good life, and he got seventeen.
It takes Peter a while to find MJ, panic slowly rising up in his throat, terrified that she’s turned before her hours were up, or else left the base of her own volition. He finds her eventually, her voice clear through the deafening silence.
“I’m in here. Stop freaking out.” Her voice travels through the solid wood of a door to an unused bedroom on the hallway they don’t venture down much.
“MJ?” Peter tries to push the door open. It doesn’t budge. “I think the door’s stuck? Can you try pulling it from your end? What are you doing in there anyway?” His voice shakes a little, though he’s feeling better by the second now that he’s found her. There’s nothing like the dizziness of panic at not knowing where she was.
“No. I’m not - I can’t open the door. I’m staying in here. Until...until it’s safe.”
“What? MJ you don’t need to do that, you don’t - just open the door. Please, Em. You can’t stay there for twenty-three more hours.” Peter tries to jimmy the door open again.
“I’m staying right here. And if… if I don’t make it then just make sure this door stays shut. Okay? Peter?” There’s no uncertainty in her voice any more.
“ No ,” is Peter’s knee jerk reaction.
He can’t stand this. If MJ stays in that room and changes, then he’ll never see her again. At least not alive. Peter knows, rationally, he wouldn’t forget her face. But he wants a chance to memorise it, to focus on the spectrum of colour in her eyes and the angle her lips curve upwards at when she smiles. He wants a chance to remember the exact weight of her hand in his, the temperature of her body when he hugs her close.
“Just let me in, at least,” Peter pleads.
“No. I can’t risk you,” MJ tells him, and Peter closes his eyes, presses his forehead against the cool of the door.
“MJ. Please.”
“I’m not going to open this door, so you can stop arguing with me.”
Peter takes a deep breath. As much as it hurts to admit it, he realises this is a fight he isn’t going to win, that she isn’t going to open the door. He isn’t going to get to see her again, at least not for the next twenty-four hours (he can’t - won’t consider the alternative). And he doesn’t want to spend what might be the last hours of her life arguing with her.
Instead, he turns, and slides down the door until he’s sitting with his back against it, legs stretched out in front of him.
“Okay, but I’m not going anywhere,” Peter tells her, leaning his head back against the door.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m staying right here. So you’re not alone.”
“I’m perfectly capable of being on my own, Peter.”
“Yeah, I know that. But you shouldn’t have to be.”
Behind the door, MJ sighs. Peter shuts his eyes and wills them to another time.
Hours two and three, post maybe-bite, pass by in relative silence. There aren’t any windows in the hallway, but there are some at the ends, and Peter watches as they grow darker, the light growing weaker and then fading out altogether. There are battery powered lights filling up the main hallway, but there are none here. Peter lets the darkness wash over him. He talks to MJ about books.
Hour three ends with May finding him, lighting her path with a flashlight. She brings him water and leftover dinner, makes a feeble attempt to get MJ to open the door. When she refuses, she slides a cereal bar under the gap below the door, and tells them both that she loves them.
“Hey, May?” MJ stops her, right before she stands up to walk away. She’s sitting next to Peter, shoulders pressed against each other.
“What is it, hon?” May asks, pausing.
“I, uh...you know I’m not too great with talking about my feelings?”
May gives Peter a sad, knowing smile at MJ’s words. “We know. We still love you,” May assures her.
“No, I just...I wanted to tell you, uh, thank you. In case I don’t...in case I don’t get the chance to? Later? I wanted to tell you now. So thank you for taking care of me, for getting me out of New York.” Peter’s sure he can feel his heart crumbling in his chest.
May goes oddly still beside him, and when he looks over at her, he finds tears spilling down her cheeks. She’s breathing very slowly, he realises, trying to steady her voice before she speaks.
“You don’t need to thank me. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for sticking with us. Once this is over, what do you say we just keep taking care of each other, huh?”
“I’d like that,” MJ agrees.
They sit a while longer. May plants a kiss in Peter’s hair and leaves him with the flashlight. He angles it under the door so MJ isn’t left in blackness.
Hours four and five are a little painful. Peter can hear the rest of the group in the rec room, and while it doesn’t exactly sound like they’re having fun, it hurts that they’re together. That none of them are sitting and waiting to see whether someone they love is going to die. Whatever happens today, they’ll carry on with their lives. This will just be a bad day, and maybe they’ll mourn for a while, but Peter knows they, with the exception of May, will be okay.
Peter also knows that he won’t be. A chapter of his life ended on the day of the zombie apocalypse. Another chapter will end today, if MJ is turned. The next one will be significantly bleaker.
“Stop worrying so loudly,” MJ tells him, somewhere around hour six. Peter’s been tapping his fingers on the ground. The rec room has grown quiet now, and the silence is making him nervous.
“Sorry,” Peter curls his fingers into a fist.
“You know you can go? Get some sleep or something. You being here isn’t going to change anything.” She sounds sleepy now, a little distant. Peter’s scared, unsure whether she sounds like that because she’s exhausted from the day, or because she’s getting sick.
“I know I can,” Peter says, “but I’m not gonna.”
“Ground must be pretty uncomfortable,” MJ comments.
“Mmm. It is.”
“Your back’ll be out of commission by the time you’re thirty-five.”
“Well, if I make it to thirty-five, I’ll worry about it then.” It’s an offhand comment, something apocalypse survivors would generally take into their stride, accept as normal.
Life expectancy, before, was long, and taken for granted. There’s no more statisticians around anymore to tell them the average lifespan of a U.S. citizen, but Peter’s pretty sure it’s decreased significantly.
Today, the comment hits differently.
“What did you used to want to do with your life? Before?” MJ asks.
The question catches him off guard. It’s not like they haven’t talked about their old selves before; there are jokes about all the homework they won’t have to do now, the college tours they won’t have to go on, the resumes they won’t have to spend hours crafting. But all of them, everyone on the base, tries to avoid talking seriously about the world before. It does no use to dwell on the past.
But it can’t make things any worse right now.
“You know what, I hadn’t decided yet,” Peter admits. “I wanted to help people, somehow. How about you?”
“I,” MJ says, pausing for dramatic effect, “wanted to change the world.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“You know me too well.”
“You would have done it, too. Changed the world,” Peter tells her, and he means it.
“Yeah,” MJ swallows. “Maybe. World’s already changed now, though. Just not in the way I was rooting for.”
“There’s still a world here. And I’m pretty sure it needs changing now more than ever. You could still do it,” Peter points out.
MJ is silent for a moment. “How about we see if I survive first. Take it one thing at a time.”
Peter wants to tell her that of course she’ll survive.
He wants to tell her he loves her.
He stays quiet instead.
During hour seven, they play twenty questions. During hour eight, they quiz each other’s general knowledge, MJ rattling off old AcaDec questions. During hour ten, MJ gets a headache, and Peter spirals into panic, cataloguing the rest of her symptoms body part by body part.
During hours eleven and twelve, Peter falls asleep, lying flat on the ground, eyes slipping closed against his will, despite his fighting them. In his dream, he’s opening the door to MJ, in the bright sunshine of the day, certain she’s alright. Only, the MJ who stands on the other side is not the MJ he remembers. She stands with her back to him, glowing golden in the light from the windows, illuminating her. She looks otherworldly, dressed in white.
Peter reaches for her.
When she turns around, she has the face of a monster. One of the monsters standing at the base gate every day, skin slimy and tinged green, eyes misty, dried blood under their noses, teeth bared, hands stretching out towards their prey.
MJ is gruesome and terrible. She’s no longer herself, no longer human. No longer keeps the memories of Peter or holds his hand on bad nights. She doesn’t care about their history, the potential of their future, doesn’t differentiate him from any other person left alive. Instead, she just sees his flesh, hears his beating heart, smells the sweat beading on his skin. MJ reaches for him with a rotting hand. Peter screams.
He tears his eyes open, certain it’s some kind of premonition.
“MJ? MJ?” Peter stands up on shaking legs, fighting against his urge to throw up, hammering on her door, not caring if he wakes the entire base up. There’s no reply from behind the door. She’s dead, he’s sure of it, or almost there, slipped into the coma to await the final hours of the transformation. Surrendered her body to the virus. “MJ? Wake up, please wake up, Em, you have to wake up ! Please, please don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me like this, MJ, don’t go, please wake up.” There are tears, hot and salty, marking his cheeks, and he’s pushing the door with everything he’s got left in him.
“Peter?” A voice. MJ’s voice. Thick with sleep and confusion.
“MJ?” Peter pauses, wondering if he imagined it.
“What’s going on?”
“MJ.” Peter’s half sobbing now, sinks to his knees in front of the door, palms pressed against it.
“Peter?” She sounds worried now, an element of urgency in her voice. “What happened? Talk to me.”
“Nothing. I - it was just a dream. Just a stupid nightmare.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay, it wasn’t real, Peter. I’m right here, I’m fine. My head doesn’t even hurt anymore.” She doesn't ask him what the dream was about. She doesn’t need to. “You’re okay, we’re okay.”
Her voice is calming and steady, tethering him back to reality. He registers, somewhere in his brain, that it should be the other way round, him comforting her right now.
“Breathe with me, Peter. Can you do that? Listen to my breathing,” MJ tells him.
So he does. He presses his ear to the door and listens to her exaggerated breaths. The miraculous lungs drawing in air and pushing out carbon dioxide. In and out. Her wonderful human body keeping her alive. His Michelle, still fighting.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her, quietly, seconds or minutes or an hour later. His vision has stopped swimming, his heart has stopped threatening to beat out of his chest.
“What are you sorry about?” She asks. Peter keeps one hand pressed against the door. He’s picturing her hand on the other side. Skin pressed again skin, inches of door in between.
“Freaking out. That’s not helpful.” He’s a little embarrassed about it now.
“Don’t be stupid. Nightmares are awful.”
“Yeah.”
They return to silence. Peter hears MJ’s breaths turn to soft snores, is glad she’s finally getting some sleep. He watches the sky turn light.
Groot visits and stuffs a drawing of a rainbow beneath the door.
Thor comes by with tea.
Carol visits and tries to make Peter go to bed, runs through a catalogue of MJ’s symptoms. There’s nothing but exhaustion and a little queasiness, which Carol says is reassuring. It only makes Peter feel a little better.
Cassie brings a book by and reads aloud to MJ.
May arrives shortly after with a blanket, and wraps it around Peter. He falls into a light sleep against her shoulder. Afterwards, they trade stories of her younger days, adventures with Ben and Peter’s parents. MJ asks questions and laughs at the right moments. Peter watches the seconds tick past on his uncle’s old battered watch, affixed to his wrist.
After May leaves, around hour fifteen, they sit in silence for a little longer. Peter’s getting more and more antsy as the time ticks by, because while MJ says she doesn’t have many symptoms, a part of him is worried she’s lying to spare them. That she’s actually slowly dying just behind this door, and at any moment she’s going to fall quiet for good. He needs the physical confirmation of her survival, the weight and the warmth of her in his arms.
“Hey, Peter?” MJ asks, after some quiet.
“Yeah?”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course.”
She takes a breath. Peter can see Scott wandering around at the very end of the hallway with a tape measure.
“I actually don’t hate them,” MJ says slowly, and Peter doesn’t quite understand what she means.
“Who?”
“The zombies. Everyone hates them. And yeah, I hate that this happened, of course I do. I’d give anything to go back. But...I don’t hate them.”
Despite everything, Peter bites back a smile. “Why don’t you hate them?”
“They just want to live. They’re just trying to survive, same as us. And they were people once.”
Peter doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more. Really, if he thinks about it, he doesn’t hate them either. It’s part of the reason he can rarely bring himself to kill them. They’re just trying to survive, just like everything else in this world.
“Yeah. They were,” Peter muses, and wishes he could hold her hand.
Hour sixteen melts into hour seventeen, and Peter can’t sit still any more. He takes to pacing the hallway a little, never more than five steps each way, but enough to stop himself from completely breaking down. If it’s a bite on her leg, Peter knows that MJ could fall into a coma anytime between now and hour twenty-three. He’s weighing things up in his head, deciding whether or not he should start pleading with her to open the door again. He’s also evaluating whether now is a good time to talk about his feelings for her, as complicated as they might be. A near death experience wasn’t the catalyst he wanted for the conversation, and the last thing he wants is for MJ to think he’s only telling her about his feelings because of high running emotions and adrenaline. He needs her to know he means them.
“Stop pacing,” MJ grumbles. “Go or stay, pick one.”
“How do you feel? Are you feeling okay, honestly , MJ? You wouldn’t lie to me about this, right?” Peter asks, standing still beside the door.
“What? No, I’m not going to lie to you about this. Why would I? You’re not...I’m not going to lie to you. ” Peter’s distracted from his worrying by the way she emphasises ‘you.’ Like he’s special. An exception to the rule.
“You’re not?”
He’s not stupid. He knows they’re not just friends, in either of their eyes. He just isn’t sure what, exactly, they are.
“No. You’re too...you’re too smart, you’d figure it out.” Peter remembers what MJ had said to May earlier. That she has a hard time talking about feelings. Peter’s always known that, doesn’t want to push her in any way. But he also doesn’t want MJ to die without telling her what she means to him. He’s realising that she isn’t just going to magically know - that if she dies, there will be no telling her later, no do-overs or sending a carrier pigeon to the afterlife.
“Just promise me you’ll tell me if anything changes.”
“I’ll tell you.”
Peter sits down again.
More people visit. Scott has Peter help him measure the hallway for some lighting system he wants to rig up. MJ takes notes of the measurements from the other side of the door. May brings cereal bars for them both again. Cassie reads some more.
Twenty hours have passed. The base mostly falls silent, aside from the pattering of heavy rain at the windows.
“Hey, MJ?” Peter’s tired, the delirious kind of tired that makes his eyeballs and bones ache.
“Yeah?” MJ sounds like she feels the same.
“Have you ever been in love?”
MJ coughs. “Uh, what?”
“Love. You ever been in it?” Peter’s curious more than anything.
“N-no. Why are you asking that? Have you ever been in love?”
Peter bites his lip. He’s not sure how to answer that one. Before MJ, he hadn’t. He’d had crushes, maybe been in like with a certain Liz Allen. He hadn’t been in love until after the apocalypse started. Until there was a girl he was waking up next to and fighting his way cross country beside.
Life’s too short. It’s so very short right now. Peter can conjure up the names of fifty dead people he knew without even having to think that hard.
He doesn’t want to die before the age of thirty-five. In all likelihood, he knows he will. But in that case, he doesn’t want to die with regrets.
“Yeah,” he answers, definitively. There are butterflies in his stomach. They feel like remnants of his old life again, something that doesn’t belong here.
“Oh. Really?” MJ sounds a little disappointed. “Like with Liz?”
“Huh?” Peter realises that she isn’t catching his drift. “No, no. Not with Liz.”
“Some girl before?” MJ guesses.
“No,” Peter’s heart is quickening again. This time, it has nothing to do with fear.
“Then who?”
He takes a breath. “I need you to know that I’m not telling you this because you might have been bitten. I’m telling you this because, uh, because I’ve wanted you to know for a long time, and because I don’t want my short, zombie-ridden life to be filled with regrets.”
“So? ...Oh!” MJ draws in a sharp intake of breath. “Oh. Oh. ”
Peter bites back a smile. “MJ, I-”
“No!” MJ stops him. “Don’t. Don’t say anything now. Don’t do it like this.”
“Oh,” Peter’s the disappointed one now. He’d been so sure she liked him back. He guesses she doesn’t want to spend what might be her last hours rejecting him.
“No, I don’t mean...it’s not like that! I just want to, uh, see you when you say it.” She sounds shy and unsure. “I-I get why you’re saying it now . But it’s okay. I know, okay? I know. I’m not going to...I won’t die not knowing,” she swallows. “For what’s it worth...me too. I don’t want to leave you without you knowing. Me too, Peter. For everything you want to say.”
Her voice is tear clouded again, and Peter quickly feels the familiar lump rising in his own throat. Peter pushes his fingers under the door as much as they’ll go, ignoring the slicing feeling from the edge of the door. Seconds later, he feels warmth, MJ’s fingertips against his own, pressed up tight.
“Thank you for staying with me,” MJ half whispers.
“Where else was I s’posed to go?”
The final four hours are so slow that Peter’s sure the earth has started to rotate on its axis more slowly. It’s the only logical explanation. The zombies outside of the fences must be waiting in slow motion. The wind in the trees and the sun’s path across the sky must be moving like treacle. It’s the catch-22 situation again, of Peter half wanting the time to go faster so he can know , and half wanting it to stop altogether so that if she is bit, MJ doesn’t change.
He’d stop time for her if he could. Live in a little pocket of time with her. Just the two of them. They could grow old in it.
They talk about school, about the kids they secretly hated and the big scandal involving the algebra teacher the year before the apocalypse. They play another round of twenty questions. They sit quietly for a while, Peter asking her periodically how she’s feeling. Mostly, she’s fine.
The rain continues to fall outside. It’s calming, sitting in the low light of the hallway to the drumming of the water. It floods down the small window at the end of the hall so quickly that it makes Peter feel like he’s underwater. He doesn’t quite fall asleep, but he’s calm enough that time washes over him, falls through his fingertips, so that when he focuses on his surroundings again, scrambles to look at his watch, almost twenty-four hours have passed.
And then he realises he hasn’t heard from MJ in a while.
“MJ!” Peter jumps to his feet in one swift, fluid motion. “MJ it’s time! You can come out now, you’re good! It wasn’t a bite, it was just a regular cut on your ankle!” He’s afraid to be excited. Terrified that she’s not going to open that door. “MJ? Em?” He knocks, hard.
There is silence.
Peter’s seconds from yelling for someone, any adult properly equipped to fix this.
And then, there’s a clicking sound, the best sound he’s ever heard, and a creak, and the door is opening.
On the other side, the only thing he’s wanted to see for the past day, is MJ. She’s shaken, tears in her eyes matching his, but she’s ok. She’s still her. Still MJ.
They stand and look at each other for a second, checking they’re really okay, real, solid, alive, here. A snapshot of each other in a frozen second.
And then, MJ is stepping forward and throwing her arms around Peter’s neck. Peter’s arms wrap around her waist. Her face is in his neck, tears burning his skin, his nose lost in her hair.
“MJ, MJ, MJ,” he whispers her name like a secret, rocks her back and forth, kisses her hair and her temple, scatters them like stars along her brow and her nose and her cheeks. Kisses away her tears.
“I’m okay,” she says in disbelief.
“You’re okay,” he confirms.
Life feels different now. Worth more, somehow. Like maybe the zombie apocalypse isn’t the worst thing that could ever happen.
“I love you,” he tells her, and he likes the way the words taste, so he tells her again.
“I love you too,” she’s half laughing, and they’re holding each other in the hallway of an Air Force base in a rain storm in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.
Hope cleans and binds MJ’s wound, Peter sitting on one side of MJ, arm around her waist, May on the other, gently working the knots of MJ’s hair. Thor makes more tea, and raises a toast to Michelle Jones, who lives to fight another day. They eat vegetable broth around the messy kitchen table, all of them packed in so tight that their knees bump together. Valkyrie lights candles. MJ loops her good ankle around Peter’s under the table.
After dinner, they’re both so exhausted they head to bed, Peter pulling MJ along by the hand. Neither of them wants to be without the other right now, so they squish into Peter’s bed together, MJ against the wall, head on Peter’s chest. He wraps his arms around her and relishes the feeling of her chest rising and falling with her steady breaths.
“Hey, MJ?” Peter whispers through the dark, unsure if she’s asleep or not.
“Yeah?” She tilts her head up a little to look at him.
“I just...I meant what I said before. About...you know, loving you.”
She leans over to press her lips to his, once, quickly, soft and gentle. “I know.”
“Did you just Han Solo me?” Peter asks, mock outraged, cheeks turning pink from the kiss.
She kisses him again. “Maybe I did.” She settles back against him. “I meant it too,” she says quietly.
Peter’s heart does backflips. One of these days, she’s going to give him a heart attack.
“Do you want to listen to that dumb Christmas album tomorrow?” He asks.
MJ groans. “Do we have to?”
“It feels obligatory.”
“Fine,” she sighs, “let’s do it, weirdo.”
Peter rubs circles on her shoulder with his thumb, and wills himself to forget about the zombies outside, the fact that tomorrow isn’t promised.
But when he thinks about it, really remembers the world before , he realises that tomorrow was never a sure thing. Time felt different then, felt concrete, a solid thing, not like the granules of sand slipping through his fingertips now.
But it’s no different, really. It’s just life. Humans will continue to live and die, to hurt and love in the spaces inbetween. Time’s just as sturdy as it’s always been, and right now Peter’s pretty sure that it belongs to him and MJ. That the universe is giving them all of it they need to love each other right here, at the end of the world.
Peter closes his eyes, and falls asleep to the sound of MJ’s breathing.