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Colby's lungs burned. His legs hurt, his feet hurt, his heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest it was pumping so hard.
But he couldn't stop. Couldn't take a break.
If he did that, they'd get him.
"Fuck!" Colby swerved hard to the side as another one stumbled out from behind a car. It must have been alerted by the hoard of them already behind him, snarling and gnashing their teeth. It was maybe five, but it only took one of them getting you to get you dead. Colby had seen that happen way too many times.
The last few hours were never pretty.
He picked up his walkie talkie, pressing the call button. "Elton, get ready, I'm coming in hot."
"Copy that," Elton's voice came back over the radio, "How many?"
"Uh..." Colby didn't really want to break his sprint to look. "At least five?"
"Shit, okay. Gate's open for you."
"Okay..." He swore he felt fingers graze his back, and adrenaline forced another burst of speed out of him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck... the swearing was all internal this time. Colby didn't have the breath to spare.
The trap house coming into view, front gates open, was the best thing Colby had seen all day. He'd picked up another few stragglers, and had maybe ten Z's on his back. He saw Elton and Aaron at the gates, Elton with his katana and Aaron and Sam with their baseball bats. Colby knew Devyn was watching from the upstairs window, a silenced rifle at the ready if Elton and Aaron and Sam couldn't control them. But they didn't want to waste the ammo if they didn't have to.
As soon as Colby was through the gates, he heard the beautiful sound of eviscerated body and squelching brain matter. Elton tore through three in rapid succession, while Sam and Aaron caved in two more skulls apiece. With the herd thinned a little bit, Colby was able to pull the knife from his belt, and dive back into the fray. A quick blade through the brain was all that it took to kill the things.
In the six months since the zombie outbreak, the traphouse members had gotten very good at dispatching the things.
They'd had to.
It was only when the gate was fully closed and everyone was standing in the foyer that Colby finally let himself relax. His legs gave out, and the heavy backpack he carried pulled his body to the ground. The cold tile felt amazing against his super-heated body. "Fuck, Colby, are you okay?" Sam was kneeling at his side almost instantly, his hands falling to Colby's chest and shoulders.
Colby was momentarily surprised that Sam even seemed to care. Nonetheless, he answered. "Fucking... fucking assholes... shot at me..." Colby gasped, "Called... called all of them... on me..."
Sam shuddered all over. "Fuck, I thought you were..." Sam leaned in closer to Colby's face, but Elton pushed Sam back.
"Wait!" Elton's voice was hard. "They didn't bite you? Or get you?"
That did it. Colby watched the defensive shield close over Sam's features, and swallowed down the regret in his throat. "No... no..." Colby shook his head, but started stripping off layers of duct tape reinforced clothing. It was a lot harder for the fuckers to bite through duct tape, and even adrenaline-fueled Z's still took a few seconds. It bought them, the non-diseased humans, time... It just made getting undressed a little bit more complicated.
Elton and Aaron watched anxiously as Colby disrobed, ripping the layers of clothing off until he stood naked in the entryway. Even Devyn watched carefully from the second landing on the stairs. Colby sighed, and held his arms out and spread his legs so that they could see all of his skin. It had used to be embarrassing, but that was until they had been doing this for six months, because after Corey, they didn't trust each other to tell if they had been bitten.
Corey had told them eventually, but it had been too close for comfort.
"They didn't get me," He said, looking at the faces watching him, praying that they didn't see anything, that he hadn't missed some kind of wound or bite or scratch in the panicked sprint home.
Elton was the one to call it. "Okay," He nodded. "You're good."
The tension in the room immediately lessened, as everyone seemed to release a breath.
He got back. Without getting bit. That was a success in his book. Which was really some sort of goddamn miracle. He was the only one who had dared to break into the pharmacy down the street, despite knowing that it was in range of another group of survivors who had already made their stance on the traphouse clear.
They would be killed on sight.
Devyn was the first to remember the backpack on the floor. "You get anything good?" Devyn asked, not looking at him as she knelt next to the backpack, pulling it open to examine the contents.
"Found a stash of some medicines in the back of this pharmacy," Colby said, reaching for his pants while still trying to catch his breath. "Looked like antibiotics, maybe some painkillers. I had to smash a glass container to get some of them, so I think they're serious meds."
Elton joined Devyn at the backpack, glancing at the bottles as they pulled them out. "Cephalexin and doxycycline are antibiotics..." Elton murmured, "I think this is a cholesterol medication..." He discarded a bottle reading 'atorvastatin'.
"I think I grabbed some oxy," Colby knelt next to them, looking as they pulled the bottles out. "Not sure when we'd use it, but..."
"If someone else gets bit," Sam commented darkly, and Colby winced, meeting Elton and Devyn's eyes. "It'd be good for the last stages."
Colby could still hear Kat's screams in his mind. "Yeah," He agreed quietly. Sam looked away impassively.
"Here it is..." Elton pulled out the bottle, reading, "Oxycodone-acetamidophen... we got Percocet. Cool."
Thank God Elton had some idea on all of these medicine stuff. Colby would probably just overdose on something and get himself killed.
There were enough things out there that wanted him dead without him adding to the count.
Finally letting himself breathe and take a moment, Colby realized how fucking tired he was. He'd been hopped up on adrenaline for almost four hours and his body was starting to remind him that he was not nearly getting the nutrition that he needed for that to be sustainable. "I'm gonna go lie down for a little bit," Colby stood, wandering to the stairs. "Been a long few hours."
"Sounds good," Elton said, not looking up from the backpack.
"Come down for dinner later," Aaron said, "We've got canned food surprise again."
Colby cracked a brief smile. "Sounds good, dude." Aaron had kinda taken over making sure everyone got fed at least one meal a day. They couldn't afford to eat too much at one sitting, but Aaron insisted on everyone having at least one meal where they all ate together.
Sometimes it would be the one time all day that their little ragtag family saw each other. When they weren't all too busy fighting their own demons.
Sam's eyes followed him up the stairs, but he didn't join Colby.
That was okay. He knew he would see Sam later. That was one guarantee these days. There were so few of them left that Colby took them where he could.
The sun would rise and set, and Sam would be in his bed tonight.
It was just... how things were now.
He pulled off his zombie reinforced clothing, making sure that all of his weapons were put in the right places before he flopped backwards into bed. He scrubbed at his face with his hands. It was really a fucking miracle that they had all survived as long as they had. In all reality, they should have probably been dead months ago, or at least... infected, diseased... running around out there with the rest of LA.
He had to keep reminding himself that technically, the "zombies" weren't dead. Just humans who had been infected with some crazy variant of the mad cow disease. It was the reason why they could be killed with enough damage to the brain. Colby remembered watching the news story on it before the power had gone out for good, before the cell towers had stopped transmitting signals. Before Colby's world shrunk down to the trap house, and the six people who lived there (seven if he had counted Kat).
In the first few days of the blackout, it was really hard to know what was going on. Elton had stocked them with enough food to get through the first few weeks, and after the windows on the first floor had been boarded up with wood, none of them really ventured outside. The screaming had been a deterrent enough. They were YouTubers, not survivalist junkies. It was sheer chance that Elton had been able to stock up on the essentials because he watched the news before anyone else.
With everything they had, they probably would have been fine for a few more weeks.
Fine that was, until Kat got sick.
It started easy enough to ignore. In the first week or so she was more forgetful, and would sometimes lose her train of thought in the middle of her sentences. Nothing immediately worrying, until she woke up one day and attacked Sam because she didn't remember who he was. The screaming woke the whole house, and Colby remembered sprinting to Sam's room to find him in the doorway, trying to talk down a furious and crying Katrina. It took a few moment of crying and yelling, but Kat eventually dropped the knife, before falling into Sam's arms, crying because she had truly forgotten who he was.
That was when they had all finally seen the red, swollen bite mark that marred the skin of her upper arm. She had gotten bit on the way to the traphouse, and hadn't told anyone.
But then, they hadn't really known what that meant back then.
It didn't get any better from there, and the whole traphouse was forced to watch as Kat slowly lost everything that had made her, her. The hallucinations and memory loss got worse, and by the end of four weeks, there was nothing left, just a shell that would attack anyone who got near. She was a body in perpetual fight or flight. By now, Corey and Elton had ventured outside the traphouse, and seen the chaos that was taking place out there.
The zombies of human beings that wandered the streets of LA.
That was when they had realized what they were really up against.
Corey had been the one to finally do the deed. They'd already locked her in Sam's room, and no matter what Sam said to her from the other side of the door, they only got screams in return. Elton had to help Colby hold Sam down and back while Corey... took care of it.
"Sam... I'm so, so sorry..."
Watching Sam scream at them as he cradled his dead girlfriend's body was an image and a feeling Colby wouldn't soon forget.
Sam didn't talk to them for two weeks. Even "family dinners" were ignored. Sam stayed up in his room, alone, not talking to anyone. Colby heard him come downstairs for food at night, but any time he tried to initiate contact, Sam ignored him and just returned to his room, door closed and locked.
Colby felt awful, of course, but what else had they been supposed to do? They couldn't have just left her like that. In Colby's mind, that would have been worse.
It wasn't until Corey had been bitten (it was such a dumb mistake, it shouldn't have ever fucking happened, god, if Colby had just paid a little bit more attention), that anything changed. Corey didn't tell anyone until he had already started to deteriorate. But it was with sound mind that he told Elton to pull the trigger, because he didn't want to turn into one of them.
That last kiss between Corey and Devyn was the last time Colby saw Devyn smile...
That night was the first time Sam came into his room since Kat's death.
It had been dark, and Colby had started violently at the figure at the foot of his bed.
"Colby?" It was Sam's voice, dry and cracked.
"Sam..." Colby was sure that Sam was never going to talk to him again, and when Sam finally did... his name was all that could escape Colby's mouth.
Luckily, Sam didn't seem to be looking for anything else. Colby barely had time to register what was going on before Sam was on top of him, staring down at him for a few moments before he leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. Colby blinked, body tensing in shock as Sam broke the kiss to look at him. "Is this okay?" Sam asked.
And Colby nodded, because if this was what Sam needed, then of course it was okay.
It was the goddamn zombie apocalypse. What did he have to lose?
They had sex for the first time that night. Colby felt like he should feel something in the aftermath of it, lying there on his stomach as Sam cleaned himself off. But he didn't. There had been no love in what they did. Not really. Not the kind of love that Colby thought he should associate with sex. It was just Sam, his best friend, his brother... and a deep, aching void that he didn't know how to fill.
But the sex filled that void, for at least a little while.
It was what they had, because some things were never coming back.
But at least they still had each other.
Sam and Colby versus the world, right?
Sam came to his room later on the night of the supply run, as he expected. It wasn't something they did slowly anymore, and Colby had the breath knocked out of him by Sam as he practically tackled him into the bed, kissing him with a heated desperation that Colby had come to know from whenever Colby went on scouting missions.
Because sometimes he needed away from this damn house, and his roommates.
At least the zombies didn't blame him for his girlfriend's death.
Sam broke the kiss to speak. "I thought you were dead," Sam breathed, "We heard the gun shots..."
"Hey, hey..." Colby wrapped arms tightly around Sam, murmuring out against Sam's lips, "I'm okay. I'm okay, I promise."
"Fuck..." Sam hugged him so tightly he almost squeezed the remaining air out of Colby's lungs. "I was so scared."
"I'm okay, Sam," Colby said, stroking Sam's hair where he rested his face against Colby's chest. "I'm okay..."
"You'd better be," Sam whispered accusingly, "I don't know what I'd do if..." he pressed against Colby again, and dammit if Colby hadn't evolved almost a Pavlovian response to Sam kissing him like this. Sex would follow, he was sure.
That was okay, it was what they both needed.
It would fill the emptiness, at least for a little bit.
Sam never really held him, in the aftermath, and this time was no exception. They weren't a couple, weren't in love. This was a means to an end. Sometimes, Colby even wondered if Sam still loved him, the way he had before everything went to shit, or if that too had died with Kat.
Sam was his bestest, his closest friend.
At least... he had been.
Sometimes Colby wondered if that was still true.
"I don't like it when you go out alone," Sam broke the silence that had sat between them in the aftermath.
Colby glanced over at him, a little surprised that it was Sam who spoke first. "I know," He said simply. He did know that.
The desperate, toe curling, mouths covered with hands or pillows so that they didn't bother the roommates sex told him that. It was like every time they were afraid it would be their last. Colby always assumed that it would be. He couldn't let himself believe otherwise.
"Then why do you go out there alone?" Sam asked, and there was very little emotion in his voice. He could have been asking about the weather.
Rainy. It was always rainy these days.
"I need it," Colby said. "I... I need to get out of here, sometimes. I'd go crazy."
"It's dangerous out there," Sam said, staring at the ceiling. "Someone... something could get you."
"I know," Colby repeated, looking up at the ceiling with Sam.
"You could be killed, eaten..." Sam's voice had gained some emotion, but was still far too hollow. "It's not just the zombies that we have to worry about."
Colby scoffed, biting back the first response that had wanted to race from his lips.
I don't care.
"I'm not worried about that," Colby said instead, dismissively, honestly.
Sam turned to look at him then. "I am." Colby turned his head, meeting Sam's eyes. It was hidden behind the mask he had constructed over the past few months, but there was pain in Sam's face. He almost would have missed it if he hadn't spent years knowing Sam.
"You don't have to worry about me," Colby looked back at the ceiling, a weird feeling sitting in his stomach.
"Yeah, I do," Sam continued, "Because I don't think you worry about you enough."
"I'm alive, aren't I?"
"Because of sheer, dumb luck," Sam said dismissively. "Some of the shit you do, dude... Makes me wonder if you care if you live or die."
And Sam's looking at him, and fuck, if that didn't hit just a little too close to home. "I'm not suicidal," Colby said defensively.
"I'm not saying you are," Sam said, and this is the longest conversation Colby's had with him in months, "I just don't think you care if something gets you. I mean, that supply run you did today, you know how stupid that was. I know where you went. The chances that you would get shot or bitten..."
"But I'm fine," Colby cut him off, raising his voice just a little bit. "Jesus, dude, it's not a big deal."
"It is to me."
"Yeah, I'm getting that."
They glared at each other for a few long moments, and Colby was prepared for another outburst when Sam's shoulder's slumped, and he looked away. "I just... I can't lose you, Colby," He said quietly. "I already lost her and Corey and fuck knows about our families and I can't lose you too."
Colby stared at Sam for a few, long seconds,trying to figure out how to even begin to address this. "I'm not... I'm not trying to die," Colby said, firmly, assuring himself as much as he was Sam. He could see the protest forming on Sam's face, so he kept talking. "I'm not trying to die," He repeated, "But... I'll try a little bit harder to live, okay?"
Sam chewed on the inside of his lip, before nodding. "Okay," He said, "I'll take that."
And it's not much, but it's the zombie apocalypse outside.
And he'll take what he can get.