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“You look different now”
Tommy wasn’t sure whether he’d been halfway between sleep and wakefulness or if he’d just been completely zoned out, but either way the other man’s voice was enough to make him jump. In turn, the sudden movement had Philippe’s hand flying to the rifle laying alongside his thigh. In another time, his partner’s shock would’ve been met with warm laughter, but now it could only be a precursor to hurt, to strife. Tommy’s face it seemed was not the only thing that changed with the dawn of a new era.
“Sorry” he mumbled, shuffling himself where he was pressed into the corner, rolling his shoulders and rubbing at his eyes, they hadn’t claimed much sleep for the past 6 months- couldn’t, deep sleep was numbness, and numbness was death.
“It is fine… but your skin, it is darker, and I had never thought you could get any skinnier…” he trailed off, then there was the soft drag of the backs of fingers against Tommy’s cheek, thumb following the sharp jut of his cheekbones, “you might grow a beard yet- that would be a sight to see,” he chuckled at his words, and Tommy felt his heart give a tired kick of affection in his chest.
The apocalypse hadn’t been as kind to Tommy as it had others. Where Philippe had grown strong and firm, Peter unassuming but heavy with muscle, and Alex broad and intimidating, Tommy had sunken in on himself, grown lean but instead of muscle he could provide only bone. No matter how much food they came across, no matter how much of it Philippe pushed in Tommy’s direction he still looked like one of the corpses that crawled the streets and scratched at closed doors in the night, wheezing and retching and groaning. Not even in times of strife could his body give him a break.
“I’ve seen zombies that look better than me” Tommy huffed, throwing a chuckle on the end to try and avoid the smothering that came with statements like that in front of those who love you. It worked to a degree, but instead of smothering came a warm arm around his shoulders, bringing him into the warm gap between Philippe’s arm and his side, cosy and inviting and hot where his jacket had clung onto every degree of body heat like it was saving it all for Tommy.
They hadn’t chosen the warmest of hideouts- a large store, packed with gondolas that were once stuffed with food and now sat bare, the remainder of their loot quickly packed into bags upon the dwindling groups arrival. Perhaps if they still had their previous numbers, they could consider this a ‘safe’ space of some degree, but the gondolas hid everything, and the store was large enough that they hadn’t seen or heard from Peter nor Alex since they’d barred all the exits. It stunk of rotting fruit and mould, if zombies could smell, Tommy supposed they were rather safe from detection on that front.
“You think they left? Alex and Peter?” Tommy found himself asking, sliding a hand around the back of the other man, fingers dragging over his lower back until he could cling to Philippe’s hip, holding the leader of their little posse impossibly closer.
“No, even Collins needed more time than they have had to mill over that decision” Philippe sighed, staring blankly ahead at the empty shelves. He was right- after Farrier had vanished, seemingly without a trace, Collins had begged for them to go back, even after seeing their apparent stronghold filled so thickly with zombies they broke the windows to get out of the crush he still wanted to return, as if the oldest of their gang would be sitting there waiting for him. He’d cried and pleaded for days until he vanished one morning too, except this time he left tracks in the mud out of the building they’d slept in the night previous. Tracks that they’d had to ignore and keep on in the right direction if they had any conceivable hope of survival.
Alex and Peter had had barely a day since their moment- their moment of realising that their lives truly only hung on by a thread, a thread that could get cut at the slightest of mistakes. In their case, Alex missing a vital clue- a red flag that nearly cost him his partner and what had become his closest friend. When you’re on watch, you never look down, never lose the focus that sat between you and them. A deer- it had been a deer that tricked him into looking away, mottled with white and prancing through the thinner line of trees that sat only metres away from where Peter had been setting a snare, like a hundred times before. Except this time Alex looked away, and that goddamn cervine had nearly cost him fatally. The thing with zombies, some of them are mighty quiet, for all the screaming, spluttering ones there were always those that had had their throats ripped out before they’d risen from the dead, ones that couldn’t make noise even if they tried, and those were the ones you had to look out for, particularly when paired with sundown and a rather thick tree line.
It was arm’s reach from Peter when Alex had seen it, had caught it in the corner of his eye and fired a shot that had Peter’s ears ringing hours afterwards. Times like that made folk question, question whether this was all too much, whether they weren’t enough. Alex had never cared for many people, but he was crazy enough to consider loneliness over jurisdiction of those he truly cared about, those few people. He was crazy enough to vanish rather than deal with the mantle of being the only thing standing between those he loved and death, and Peter was desperate enough to follow.
Desperate in the sense that he couldn’t stand leaving, couldn’t abandon Alex like he’d had to abandon George.
Rotten business that had been, an ambush early in the morning from a bigger, stronger group- turns out zombies aren’t your worst enemies, your worst enemies are the ones that look, think, and feel just like you. Most of them had made it out in the gunfight- after all, without supplies, one would usually perish, why waste valuable bullets mowing down every soul? But not George. They’d left him screaming and crying. They’d never heard the gunshot, never heard the final shout, perhaps it was because they never killed him, or perhaps it’s because they couldn’t hear anything over Peter, wailing and kicking as Alex hauled him away from the building they’d thought safe. Not even at their largest could they protect everyone, one man down and supply-less they’d thought nothing worse at the time.
But then the numbers dropped, and the bodies piled up- Collins, Farrier and George, alive or not, were as good as dead for the four remaining men- except if they were dead, Tommy wondered whether or not one day he’d have to shoot a corpse that looked just like an old friend.