Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Errors, like straw, upon the surface flow …” – John Dryden, ‘All For Love’, prologue

When the chemical backlash came and singed the Earth, everybody was in a bunker, and for a few wasted moments, a world that for centuries had been absolute in its segregation and its loathe was united before it was turned to an ashen and acidic wasteland. Whether science or religion predicted it was coming it was already too late; had it been a year, a hundred years foreseen, it would always be a scintilla too late, and the metal reinforcements of the bunkers sang with the heat that in less than a second wiped out Ages, civilisations, empires and cities, and rendered humanity’s efforts in creating life with as much imprint on history as Lehnsherr’s sole boots left in the perpetual ash – it was gone in moments, and the ash kept falling.

It had been coined “The Silence”, because the pyroclastic flow of heat and gas and chemicals that permeated the atmosphere until there were no more pockets to fill made not a sound as it sank into the pores of the earth, and found sanctuary in the lungs of those who believed in retribution over refuge. Bunkers were built in every city of each country, as many as possibly could be constructed; but radiation in the air had only been detected when planes began to burn to the ground for seemingly no reason, and by that time – there was none. As such, the bunkers that only housed five-hundred people at most were sparse, and filled to capacity at the same speed as the Silence came. Humanity was cut down, and tapered out as more people left their enclosures, and left their sanity and their health within the metal shelters.

Everybody knew that people who left the bunkers did not survive long, but Lehnsherr knew that for anybody who stayed in the bunkers accepted it as their temporary home, and then their permanent, and then welcomed it as their resting place. Others disregarded the inevitable and took comfort in the fact they weren't alone; but alone or not, makeshift ragtag family or no, nobody opted to bond by the ever-warm communal pyre.

People began to die five or six months into their isolated tenure, but by that time the air filters governments had invested every borrowed dollar into had been running for long enough to purify the air – to a degree. It was deemed safe by the guards to stand outside the shelters when the chemicals didn’t fuel fire to the point of it dancing aloft in the air – no wood, no material supporting it. The crematorium was nothing but a pile of stones and wood ten metres from the bunker entrance, but as time progressed as did the effects of the claustrophobic and insalubrious conditions, and the crematorium ran day and night.

Lehnsherr left Melnik six months after the apocalypse, and crossed into Germany six months later. Three years was the most he’d ever heard of somebody surviving outside, before cannibals or the ash wrought their body, and after a year of the searching for any other Lehnsherrs and his right eye went out, the German gave up hope and marked himself terminal.

**

Rumours were the hope that the dregs of humanity thrived on, and at the moment the rumour was that there was a ship in Rotterdam that went to England, where the ash didn’t fall so heavy, the air filters had been designed to run off the chemicals they inhaled, and life was re-budding. With no majorly disastrous run-ins with cannibals (they had overtaken the south, but were spreading, he learnt from a less-than fraudulent lady at a trading post somewhere in Siegen) Lehnsherr spent his final months freely navigating ghost country sides to the Netherlands, which sported a new shoreline of Arnhem and maybe should have taken the third name ‘Atlantis’. He kept a map in his boot, but the ratio of land it was representing to land that wasn’t there anymore was slowly dwindling. The more he travelled the more redundant it became.

He’d welcomed the remnants of Holland with disregard for its stagnant, filmy canals in lieu of the abundance of bikes that lay littered across every street. Most had rusted, and shattered into brittle little diamonds under his touch, but some did not relent to Lehnsherr and so passage to Rotterdam was made that much faster. He had found bikes, and even cars that were salvageable, during his venture through Germany, but engines were loud and alien, and so disrupted the people that chose to live outside – the cannibals; thus, Lehnsherr did not favour them terribly. 

Rotterdam did not have an air filter, surviving on the cleaner oxygen that flowed from The Hague; but a ghost city in a ghost country did not need unpolluted air. Half of the nation was drowned, and the German hadn’t found any bunker entrances or funeral pyres. He supposed there would be a bunker in The Hague, if that’s where the air filter was, or maybe even Delft. It was irrelevant all the same.

Lehnsherr was as detached from humanity as the dead, grey trees were uprooted from the earth. Crumbling facades reinforced his own made of impertinent nonchalance; so much so that the eroding skeletons in the street slowly adding to the expanse of ash underfoot were as alien to him as the four people stumbling down the street. From his vantage point just past the rise of the hill he could make out the goggles, kerchiefs, and wraps around their heads that mirrored his own, and the brief spike of an emotion he didn’t remember how to place vanished. He slinked to the side of the street taking refuge behind the shell of a car. Waited.

The humans faltered on past him as if he was part of the debris, and Lehnsherr noted their heavy breaths and sodden clothes. They didn’t have packs. He could make out a sliver of the Rotte past the horizon. Had they swam from somewhere? Why weren’t they heading towards the port? The tallest of the troupe stopped abruptly and held out their arm, ceasing the troupe’s collective slow progress. The tallest turned their head to him, and in a second’s succession he’d given control to the instinct for confrontation he’d been building for two years, and stood with his gun greeting the end of the leader’s machete. Locked in time the pair stood, until one of the members, a man, called, “Are you a cannibal?” in English.

“Yes.” Replied Lehnsherr, voice coarse and starting from absence of use, but even at his distance he could see the way the man’s eyes crinkled in amusement behind his goggles. His hair was light brown and long, and hung in a wet heap about him

“Just had to make sure,” he said with good humour as he stepped forward, gloved hand touching the wrist of his companion. “We mean no harm to each other, then.”

Moments passed until his companion moved with a sigh and weak arms, and Lehnsherr slipped his pistol into the side of his boot. These people were waterlogged, but they were the first he had seen since the last trading post two months behind him.

“How long have you been in Holland? Are there any cannibals?” continued the man, and Lehnsherr frowned.

“There are cannibals all through the mainland. I have not saw them yet here.”

“Seen,” corrected the tall one, a woman. Lehnsherr frowned again, but ignored her. Language was as useless to him as his map. Yet he was curious as to why his acquaintance looked as spent as if they had tried to out swim the Silence.

“Why are you coming from the port? Why do not you have packs?”

“Why are you going to the port.” Interjected the woman, challenging. The two others stood close.

“You are German, aren’t you?” asked the man with the trepidation of an over-sensitised cat; as if to diffuse whatever tension was building. Lehnsherr was becoming annoyed, his questions were being replaced with more in lieu of answers.

“Yes, and you are English. Why would you leave England? Everybody knows it is safe place.”

The brumous atmosphere that was slowly filling with charged tension flat-lined as the troupe fell silent, save for a quiet ‘oh’ from a girl near the tall woman. Confusion and anger spiked behind Lehnsherr’s eyes.

Before the man could convey the truth with benevolence, the woman let words fall from her mouth bluntly: “What isn’t under water is on fire. England is gone. Scotland burnt to nothing with the chemical fires. The only people left are food for each other.” 

Lehnsherr looked to the Rotte, each sliver of ocean representing an eternity he would never reach, and an expanse that represented the last hope, the last fallacy he would hold on to.

The man spoke but Lehnsherr ignored him in favour of telling himself he was angry. “Would you like to join us? We’re going to find an abode for the night, then carry on …”

He was in need of an up-to-date map.

**

“My name is Charles,” said the man as they searched for shelter, finding it in a moderately well preserved grocery store, of which the cellar had a lower radioactive reading than any of the other places Lehnsherr had scanned with his device when he took refuge. A large dustless nook in the corner served as their camp, and while Charles sat with Lehnsherr, the others dredged the shop of non-perishables. “My younger sister Raven accosted you earlier. Marie is the American girl, and Hank is our last companion.” The German supposed it was courtesy to respond. He could hardly remember.

“My name is Lehnsherr. Why are you wet?” The ceiling had a hole fit to serve as chimney, and Charles found a chair that could be put to better use.

“We had a small boat, it sank. We swam the last kilometre or so here,” said Charles nonchalantly. Quiet followed that Charles knew how to fill. “The boats stopped coming when England got bad. We had no choice.” Then, softly, “we didn’t all make it.”

The flicker of something that Lehnsherr felt in pity was quicker than the Silence itself. Everyone was dying. “You swam. Are you fools? The ocean is more chemicals than salt. Are you fools?”

“We had no choice,” repeated Raven as she stomped down the stairs.

“The chemicals will burn you. Take off your clothes.”

“We will, once we get the fire started…” said Charles, and Lehnsherr caught on, zipping his pack and finding some matches and a small jar of petrol he’d siphoned from an abandoned truck.

Hank brought down some more wooden finds; they each sat with a tin of fruit in hand, and for the first time in nearly two years Lehnsherr took off his gas mask and goggles for longer than refreshing. The clothes dried by the fire on a rack found in the store above, and Lehnsherr relented his coat to Marie and any spare clothes from his pack to the others. “There’s a submarine arriving here in two weeks. It’s going to Russia. Things are better there.” Marie told him. His rumour hadn’t been too far off.

Charles sat close to him, and talked to him of what he’d seen long into the night, and when the others fell asleep, on fresh cots they’d discovered in the store, Lehnsherr told him what he’d seen, too.

He told him how Czech had been too small a country to sustain adamant hiding spaces, and so when more people went Outside after he’d left, he’d found out that the chemicals had done something to the people – their skin changed to sickly hues, and their minds dehumanised –in a way more toxic and insidious than his own – to the point where the tins of non-perishables no longer satiated them, and they turned to the flesh of their kin. Czech Republic was gone, and when he found no family in Bremen, or Berlin, or Munich, he took the paths through the countryside, avoiding the main trade posts and bunkers. But that didn’t stop the other effect the noxious air and ever-falling ash had – Charles never looked into Lehnsherr’s right eye, but the German knew everyone in the party had seen it when he removed his goggles.

“The chemicals are causing mutations, we think,” said Charles. “Henry was studying genetics with me at university, before. Radiation and mutation goes hand in hand, and so the discolouration stems from this. But it’s hard to know, with no science labs in function, and there are no more governments, even if we were able to contact them.” Status was nothing when there was nothing; presidents were plebeians and water was worth more than royal blood. “But… Raven,” continued Charles softly, and Lehnsherr looked to her sleeping, furled form. “Her skin. She has the beginnings of the discolouration.”

The German grew hostile, and made to reach into his boot but Charles gripped his wrist hard before he could grasp his pistol.

“No, stop, please- she isn’t. She isn’t gone yet. She told us to- stop her, when she’d left. Raven’s still with us. Please, Lehnsherr.”

Please. Having survived two and a half years on his own, Lehnsherr was taciturn to the notion of dying as soon as he accepted company.

“She is hostile, but only because she has to be. Please, believe me.”

Moments passed before Lehnsherr grit his teeth and snorted. Shook Charles’ grip from him. A small part of him reminded him that it had been the first time in three years he had been touched. He ignored it. 

“Thank you, my friend,” and Charles smiled softly at him, his crinkly eyes blue, sending a scintilla of familiarity through Lehnsherr of something he couldn’t quite remember, couldn’t quite grasp. He hadn’t seen blue in such a long time.

Their fire, encircled with small bricks and stone, heated the concrete they sat upon, and when Charles fell asleep against his shoulder, Lehnsherr didn’t mind so much as he felt the warmth creeping into his tired bones. Two weeks didn’t seem too long to wait.

**

The German awoke to Charles coughing quietly next to him. His face felt bare without his goggles and mask, but he felt fresh and new. The others had already dressed in their dry clothes and eaten. Charles turned from Lehnsherr and waved him off as he continued his coughing and snuffling. “Just a cold from the Rotte, probably.”

Charles returned the long-sleeved shirt lent to him by Lehnsherr. Charles’ apparent lack for modesty left Lehnsherr feeling a smart in his jaw from the tightness with which he gritted his teeth, and he realised as he watched Charles’ slight arms, head, chest slip into his own shirt; watched the sinews and the thin muscles shift and shimmer under skin which held together an on-the-brink body that had only survival to thrive on – he had forgotten what people looked like at their essence. Their unique and inimitable structure.

He fixed himself on the smouldering heap of the fire and avoided Raven’s slicing eyes. 

Lehnsherr had been fortunate enough to find an adequate travelling pack, with multiple buckles and straps that ensured his weak shoulders no more of a burden than they had carrying his long, heavy coat. The party had lost their packs in the wreck, the only supplies that they had on them were their own weapons; Raven’s machete slipped neatly behind her back into a holster, Marie kept a knife in the belt loops of her pants, Hank had a hammer, and Charles owned a handgun that he’d been unable to save from being submerged, so it was assumed ruined. (“It still looks threatening, though, doesn’t it?” The Englishman offered with hope. Lehnsherr looked at him.)

The German had lugged his pistol to Raven in return, and she’d said, “Only two bullets?” and he replied, “One for emergency.” The understood, palpable silence that fell did not need to be broken with an explanation what the second bullet was for.

Their coats had been too heavy to swim with and the filter paper of their gasmasks had turned to pulp, and were now either at the bottom of the sea or adrift with the debris and slicks of oil that glistened the surface of the water. With no packs, minimal protective clothing and kerchiefs replacing their waterlogged masks, the troupe were lucky to have found shelter close by. Lehnsherr didn’t feel sorry for them, but there was a sliver of necessity that sank in his gut, that he remembered feeling when he first went to a trading post – there was no currency, there was only items of necessity, and a deeply embedded sense of humanity where every person, even though themselves fighting any and all odds to survive, respected the other. 

As such, before they had the chance to make new supply packs, Lehnsherr allowed them to pick and choose from what he carried with him. Most of what he kept in his pack he only carried to swap at the posts, perchance he’d find something that he could use and trade it out. A small rope, pens, cloth, needle and thread – Hank, Marie and Raven all sorted through his stash while Lehnsherr sat and picked at a can of preserved fruit. Charles smiled softly next to him. It changed to a frown when Marie picked up a small box from the pack and pried it open. She made a funny face.

“Why do you have tampons?” she giggled, and Raven asked, “What?” in bewilderment, leaning over Marie’s shoulder. She slipped an elastic from her wrist securing her hair, and with her free hands took the box from Marie and her inquisitive and thrilled gaze. “How did you get these? We’ve hardly been able to find anything anywhere…” Raven’s countenance shifted so suddenly, and she looked at Lehnsherr with an empathy so deep the German wouldn’t have thought she could possibly ever summon. Marie didn’t notice.

“You had a wife,” she muttered.

From his peripheral, Lehnsherr could see Charles staring at their fire pit. Did he have a wife? Magda was… something he couldn’t remember. Magda was from Before, and had left him Before, and whatever notion of holding on to her he had felt when he left Melnik was forgotten in Germany, when he pulled shut the steel door of the last bunker he’d resolved to search; throat and head and heart sore from all the times he had said her name to a flock of people whose throats and heads and hearts were sore from their hope, too.

“Sit easy,” he said. “I did not. Sorry the packet is small.”

Raven didn’t nod, or say a word, but she gazed at Lehnsherr with an understanding that, perchance he’d seen years before, he would wish he hadn’t recognised. Now, apathy set in his right eye, he didn’t really care. Everyone was searching for someone; someone who was probably dead.

“Thank you very much,” said Marie. “Do you have-”

“Marie,” interjected Hank softly.

Raven stood, and her gaze turned hard. “I understand it might be difficult, but if you cannot be honest with us,” she said, “you won’t be able to stay with us.” Then she went upstairs.

Charles quickly broke the ensuing silence, and Lehnsherr remade his pack without saying a word.

The supermarket didn’t stock any back-packs, so they (Raven) decided only the necessities were to be kept in Lehnsherr’s pack, which would be communal as long as they stayed together. Tinned food would be stored in the basement, as well as clothes and any other items they could use. When Hank pointed out that the smoke from the fire had mostly dissipated from the store, they all realised the toxic air from outside had a way in, and they secured new gasmasks and goggles to their faces. Lehnsherr had relished in the brief feeling of freedom that not wearing protective gear allowed, but the comfort and familiarity that came with the tight elastic around his skull and the plastic confine around his jaw brought him back from that ease, and reminded him of the façade of it all; no amount of protection would restore his right eye, nor alleviate him of his mortality.

**

They didn’t leave their abode unless to use their latrine area, which they made outside behind the store. Lehnsherr had thought the close company would have driven him as insane as the bunkers had, but the more Charles talked the more he felt himself assimilate, and unlike in the bunkers, what united them wasn’t a fear of death, but a promise of the future.

Charles always sat close to him, and even through his scratched and smudged goggles Lehnsherr could always find his blue eyes.

Lehnsherr had not realised how untamed his hair was, his beard always behind the kerchief. “A fresh start for a fresh start,” said Charles with a packet of razors and a bottle of water in his hands, and on the sixth night they shaved and laughed like old friends and cut their hair, throwing it to the fire where it crackled and elicited a complaint from Marie about the smell.

Raven eyed them together from across the small fire but Charles still sat so close regardless. He was 27, had been a teacher but was still taking night courses at university; Lehnsherr was 35 and had nothing left-

But the promise of a new start.

**

Everybody knew that the vision went first; and then legs, and then the lungs- as such, it was a harrowing surprise to Lehnsherr when Charle’s coughed his first blood the next morning at breakfast, and they all watched as it sluiced through his fingers and fell in ribbons and splashed over the grey concrete floor.

Laced with urgency came, “How many fingers?” but Lehnsherr’s hand remained a still fist at his side.

“I can see fine, I can see?” It was questioned to an audience that could bear no answer. Before Henry or Marie, or even Raven could move, Lehnsherr strode to Charles, tugging his goggles up and off despite Charles’ confusion, and his own down around his neck. As if there was no poison air, as if there was no sparse ash, Lehnsherr’s glove was on the floor and his fingers against the side of Charles’ face; he pulled the skin around his friend’s eyes, stared until he thought he might have remembered what blue reminded him of, and stayed crouched in front of the Briton until his examination had finished, cataracts intact and irises blue and untainted by chemicals- “I can see,” was Charles’ firm conclusion. The uncertainty in his sound eyes was mirrored by the other man.

Raven’s hostility alerted the German to her presence. She replaced him and even as she fixed her brother’s goggles and secured his kerchief, Charles never looked away from Lehnsherr as he stood far from their troupe. (“Maybe you’re just sick? Maybe it’s not...” offered Hank, replied by Marie in an obligatory snap, “Everybody knows the vision is first, of course he doesn’t have it.)

It would be one week til the submarine returned. 

**

Charles hadn’t caught a cold from the ocean.

Six days to go and Charles spent the morning on his hands and knees, coughing enough black blood to coat the cold grey concrete. He’d vomited, and coughed, and cried, and Lehnsherr didn’t want to look so he spent two hours trying to find an abandoned chemist, pillaging it for a respirator, or filter paper, or a gas mask. He found a spacer, and a packet of canisters which were out of date but couldn’t hurt; he put them in his sack as well as any painkillers. He found several respirators in another store, and there were filters for them there, too. He wore one on the trek back to their grocery store, but when he arrived, Charles was asleep in Raven’s lap, and Hank was clearing more blood with vinegar.

Raven shook her head.

Whether the disease was going backwards, or whateverwards, Charles’ legs were going to start to fail next.  That was at least better than going forwards, which would mean death, they told themselves. Hank said the cancer could take months or days to kill a person, there was no determining it, and Lehnsherr was reminded of his own impending blindness.

**

Of the water they could spare, they filled a pot and let it heat by the fire for bathing. Charles slept for hours, until Marie and Hank had retired, but it couldn’t sit right with Lehnsherr to sleep while Raven, exasperated from stress and weary from care, held her brother and pretended to pray. Not only that, but Charles was Lehnsherr’s anchor to humanity and compassion, and it grew lighter every day. So he sat next to Raven, and got her fresh bottles of water as the water on the fire heated. “You need a break,” he told her, and said he would watch Charles while she washed, but she shook her head.

“Charles first. I’ll wash him first and then I’ll rest.”

The adamant tone to her words left Lehnsherr feeling a little off. He understood she was being controlled by duty and a notion that if she sacrificed herself, her health and her safety, Charles would be saved. For the first time in so long, he could empathise with Raven’s fear of her last thread to anybody snapping and leaving her forlorn and rabid. But Lehnsherr knew there was something else in her words, that he couldn’t understand.

They lifted Charles into a cot, and he stirred a little but his sister hushed him, and she took off his jacket and started unbuttoning the packet-blouse they found in the basic clothes section of the store. Lehnsherr felt he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be watching this intimate act he was definitely not worthy of watching. A lifetime of kinship had solidified the bond that Raven and Charles shared, of childhood secrets and of teenaged protection. Lehnsherr had known Charles for little over a week, and whatever he felt for him was definitely not a loyal connection that should be awarded with his naked friend.

Raven’s fingers slipped with the buttons in anticipation, and her face was set, eyes heavy and jaw lead. Lehnsherr held the pot with two thick clothes, and was left dislocated from Raven’s undisclosed intentions. She took off Charles’ mask and goggles, and then she pushed the blouse off her brother’s shoulders. She sighed in relief at an unknown fortune, bit her lips in thanks and shut her eyes so Lehnsherr couldn’t see the hope that swelled in them and threatened to spill over her cheeks.

“He hasn’t got it,” she whispered in way of explanation, but when Lehnsherr didn’t follow she took off her own jacket, began taking off her own shirt, and the German felt a human notion of panic and misunderstanding.

“Raven, what..”

“No, just wait, I’m not- just…”

She wore a singlet underneath. Even in the poor light that came from the fire and oil lamps, he could see the expanse of dark scales that fanned across her shoulders and disgraced her skin in patches down her arms. Blue and black course diamonds of skin rose from the Caucasian canvas they imposed upon, and the raised ridges and notches in Raven’s skin left horrific disproportions to her body, as if her bones had swelled and were pushing against their flesh cage, trying to break out.

“Charles doesn’t have this.  He isn’t going to turn into… something else. I couldn’t kill him.”

“Yet you expect him to kill you?”

Lehnsherr was well acquainted and accustomed to the discolouration and disfigurement of humans from the chemicals, yet this scene broke his own bunker of fragility and emotion that had remained sealed off for so long. He would never pity Raven, because she was too strong for that, but he understood and empathised with the implications of her condition, and how it affected her.

“You are still perfect,” he said in earnest. Raven snorted and looked away.

“You would tell that to Charles even if he was trying to rip you apart.”

Lehnsherr didn’t understand the implications of what that meant, but he felt he didn’t want to, either.

Raven put on her clothes, and smiled softly in the dark late night. Her inhibitions were sleeping softly, and Raven said to the German, “Can you watch him tonight?” already knowing his answer. She climbed the stairs without looking back, and Lehnsherr heard the jingling bell of the front door before it shut heavily. 

Lehnsherr rationalised with the part of his mind that told him washing his friend would be frowned upon due to his heart’s intentions that were unknown to even him, by reminding himself that they were the last humans left and people were holding onto their weapons tighter than they held to their dignity. Charles was sick, he needed help, and since before the Silence, Lehnsherr felt willing to provide it. Raven had sanctioned his care, so the German left it in her good will to determine if her brother would be safe with him.

Lehnsherr had seen the sick around him, and been overwhelmed by illness and death and depression, but he had never made a move to take a person’s life into his own hands and restore them – had never such deep an empathy for a human soul to care whether they lived or died. But ever since Charles came, and told him the hope he had in the world, and his gentle meliorism warmed his bones that first night he slept on him, Lehnsherr had been opened to a new mentality of care and of loyalty. Charles was his anchor to something he had felt adrift from for so many years.

So he wrung the warm cloth of its water, and gently traced the features of the Englishman’s face. He relearnt the hollows of eye sockets, the strong arch of a curved nose, the bow of sanctioning lips. As Lehnsherr learnt all that he had forgotten in the ashen mists and isolated country – everything he left in bunkers and in trading posts and cities that were filled with ghosts and people more lost than himself – he felt that he was not imposing on Charles’ body; he was a student and Charles was teaching him what it was to be human again.

He did little more than clean Charles’ face and his chest, and when Lehnsherr was done he dressed him in a soft shirt from their pack, combed his hair through with wet fingers and tied a clean kerchief around his jaw. Lehnsherr didn’t love Charles. He had loved Magda. But this, what he had for Charles, was not love. This was what happened when humans were made to adapt. This was an emotional bond that was formed out of necessity rather than will.

While Charles slept, that’s what Erik told himself as he washed his face and wondered if, from his right eye, with its pin-prick pupil and watery yellow iris, he could still cry.

Chapter Text

Raven returned in the morning with her eyes blank, and she didn’t say a word. Erik saw Hank’s worried heart from the corner, but she sat in her cot, took off her boots and lay down, and that was as much as she moved. Charles awoke soon after, and from the crinkles around his eyes Erik knew he was smiling at him, and he said he felt fresher. The ambience was awkward; Erik’s revelations the night before had made it impossible for him to look Charles in the eye and Raven’s mood had dampened the younger two. The air was also filled with palpable anticipation – how long would it take for Charles to start coughing, coughing turn vomiting, to turn dying.

Charles, despite his positive demeanour, seemed aware of this, too. He turned down offers of food, saying he wasn’t hungry at all, but it was clear he simply didn’t want to waste more food than he already had. When he stood and his knees gave out a spike of cold sickness ran through Erik’s gut, and his jaw clicked as he looked away. Hank rushed to help, and Erik didn’t turn his head back from the wall until their bantering conversation of, ‘I can walk, I’m really fine’ and ‘Charles, please let me help you’ had followed them up the stairs as Hank carried a limping Charles to the latrine. Only then did he bring his gaze back from the wall of the cellar. Marie looked at him softly.

“I understand, you know,” she spoke suddenly. Erik’s vision snapped to her as she gazed to the small circle of embers on the floor. “The man I’m lookin’ for… Well, he’s the strongest man I’ve ever met. Before we got separated, he once took down four rabids, no weapons, just his hands. I’d only known him for a few days at the time, so I was awful scared what he could do to me. He’s also the harshest man I ever met; but, he was kind to me. Looked after me.

“We heard the same as you, about England, so we took a boat over early, from America. I don’t know how but they still had them big fishin’ boats going, so we made it to England. But then a month later things started to get bad, and Logan started to bump into things, couldn’t really read things anymore. He’d be talkin’ to me, but I’d be standin’ right at his side but he thought I was a ways away. He was too strong to get it, you know? He was stronger than a wolf, than a bear.”

Marie stopped talking, her quiet voice barely a crackle louder than the popping fire. She couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen, yet here she was. Erik didn’t know how to comfort, had always thought it was a pointless notion. But he imagined what Charles would say, and that helped.

“But you’re still looking for him.”

Marie smiled, eyes a world away, her mind transported to a time before silence and radioactivity and skin conditions. “Yeah, I am. We only got separated is all, when England started to fall apart. Then I met Raven, and she told me, ‘You come with us or you die’, and I was so scared and alone, so I went with her. Logan is stronger than strong, so I knew he’d be okay, I know he is okay… but…”

Marie looked to Erik’s eyes then, her resolve made of steel and ice, something so inherently Raven that he wanted to chuckle. “When your eyes go, the world don’t just go black gradually, does it. You see things. Where there was one person now there’s two, when you think you’re walking up a hill you’re walking off a cliff. Ain’t that right, Lehnsherr?”

Erik paused a moment. He wasn’t sure if to tell her the truth or a lie would be more detrimental to her heart with Logan in mind, but it seemed she already knew her answer.

“It is true. Is like there is always something in the corner of your eye, behind your back. Is like being able to see into two worlds, one where everything you see is a cannibal, one where everything is only grey ash and dust. You can never tell which is the correct world you are seeing. Never.”

He placed his tone as soft and as benevolent as he could manage, but Marie still breathed heavy and shut her eyes, shook her head. Now he knew to lie; “But it is okay on some days. As it progresses, sometimes your eye weeps for an entire day, all the chemicals wash out, and you can see fine. It happens often as the body protects you. Logan is strong, his eyes would be weeping all day, he would be able to see most of the time.”

“That’s right,” said Marie slowly. “Logan is strong. And that’s what I’m sayin’; Logan is the strongest man I ever met, but Charles has the strongest mind. He knows what to say, it’s like he can see in your head what you need to hear to make things alright, to help. So I know what it is to see someone so strong, like God, someone who saved you, need savin’ themselves.”

Erik snorted, half smiled and placed a tin of soup in the embers, lid half rolled back. “We will find Logan. If he had you being smart around him so long, he must have become smart too, and he’ll know where to go that is safe, like you did.”

“I do hope so, Lehnsherr.”

The jingling of the shop bell tinkered in the background, and Charles and Hank came back down slowly. Marie rose, helped Charles over to his cot, and then went up to their makeshift bathroom. Erik stood and got a bottle of water for Charles, opening the stuck lid with his teeth before handing it to him.

“Thank you, my friend. How are you?”

Erik stood in front of him awkwardly, and Charles wriggled to the side, hardly a shift in movement at all, but a welcoming notion for Erik to sit with him.

“Well, and with you?” Sitting on the cot felt like an invasion, the memories of the night before woven in the cotton and solidifying the steel supports.

Charles clicked his tongue and winked, but his dry humour only made Erik’s heart sink more.  He sipped the water in small amounts and nodded to Raven’s sleeping form.

“She was out all night,” explained Erik. “I do not know where she went.” Her last words hit Erik’s mind but his face remained impassive; you would tell that to Charles even if he was trying to rip you apart.

Charles hummed. “She came to terms easily when she learnt that she was dying, but I don’t think she is coping with my imminent early departure.”

“You are not dying, Charles.”

Charles sighed. “Yes, I am, Lehnsherr.”

His reply was quick on his tongue: “Erik. My name. My name is Erik Lehnsherr.”

“Well, Erik, it would be hypocritical of you to be cross with me for dying, when you are dying, too. How should I feel about that?” Charles raised an eyebrow and leant close. Heat came to the back of Erik’s neck and inside his mouth, and he imagined what it was to kiss somebody; to lay them down and touch their shoulders and their wrists, to kiss their collars and their lips. How it felt to lay bodily atop someone, the intimacy of having nothing between two people but love, acceptance and surrender. When the quiet of three am was disturbed only by gradually loudening breath and utterances that came only when one was at his weakest, and inhibition was lost with sense.

Charles, as ever, knew what to say to guide the conversation and to guide Erik out of a state of mind that was even more detrimental to his heart and soul than his isolated, inhumane trance had been before.

“This is your shirt, Erik. Why am I wearing it?” he commented with light cheek, and the flirtatious countenance that radiated from Charles broke with his soft laugh.

“Raven washed you.” It wasn’t a full lie. “The other shirt was dirty, so…”

A sigh, and, “I’m not- I can take care of myself.” He sounded exasperated. “I’ve only been like this for, two days? Yes? Honestly… I’m not that bad just yet.”

Erik’s soup began to fizzle and pop from the fire, thick dollops of tomato rolling down the faded sides of the tin. He didn’t say anything, but he thought about how Hank had to support him to the stairs. The playful, teasing atmosphere evaporated.

He poured some soup into a plastic bowl for Charles, who refused to take it until Erik, frustrated and upset, made a point of tipping the bowl into the fire. Then he filled it again. “Eat. I can get rid of it all. You are not that bad.”

*

Erik needed to get out and clear his head. He had been able to leave the coupe and go for a short walk once before, to quench the innate need for motion that two years constantly travelling had put in him, but this was different. Erik needed to get Charles out of his head, needed nothing but that grey expanse to wash out the colour Charles had put back into his mind, needed it to be gone before Charles was. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he could feel when Charles stopped breathing.

He fixed his mask and shrugged into his coat before nodding to the others, taking his gun, water and map and tucking them into a pocket. “Erik,” called Charles softly as he began to climb the stairs, and there was nothing Erik could do but look back. “Have a good walk, come back soon.” Charles stood up onto watery legs, but nothing more. “Stay safe.”

“You, too,” came raspy and thick through an accent, then a filter, then a mask.

Outside was blinding and starkly familiar; like coming out from the cinema to day time. Leaving a fabricated world of victories and happy endings to what the world really was. He extracted his map, and followed the basic direction of their general area in Rotterdam to The Hague. Raven’s footprints were only just visible in the ash, but Erik thought it an invasion of her privacy to follow where she went. The fresh prints left by Charles and Hank went in the opposite direction, and Erik didn’t want to think, about that, about Charles, about what was ensuing.

Once Erik started walking, he found it difficult to stop. In the beginning it was hard to keep going, but he would say, ‘What is a bit more?’ every time he thought he couldn’t go on. But soon the sore muscles and assaulted lungs were nothing compared to the sense of freedom that came with the rush of pavement, grass, earth underfoot, as towns and cities and capitals were passed through - and then forgotten.

Of course he knew it wouldn’t be a clear passage through the cities, so when Erik came to the filmy black water that met and made new shorelines again and again he wasn’t surprised. It took him three hours, and then half an hour walking through the outskirts of Den Haag before he could hear the cranking of the waning air filter. The ash was still around him – like snow, only the cold came from inside – but it was thinning as he walked on. The sun was easily perceived in the sky now, and Erik determined it was only just past midday.

The blades of the filter were rusted and spun slowly, in a dry svump that produced a grating and irritating noise. Erik knew there had to be people here, there had to be a bunker somewhere. Had to be people who had any idea how to stave off the disease, just long enough til they got to Russia and could get proper treatment. He kept to the sides of the roads and slinked behind cars and debris, but there was nothing. No fires and no doors, only a city empty sans death. Erik’s tongue was heavy and his mouth tasted metallic, his water untouched, but his hand always poised to clasp his gun.

The Hague was a city that infused the modern with the history, with shoulder-to-shoulder terraces foregrounding sky scrapers that once would have been bejewelled with lights and life. Skeletons of trees stood in courtyards, and the cobblestoned pathways were only just visible through the ash coating. But Erik knew this wasn’t a sightseeing trip, and that for every step he took forwards he would have to spend the same amount of time walking back. So when he saw three figures running, and shouting, at a distance not so far that they wouldn’t be able to see him, he felt something was very wrong and his feet moved backwards, before he skulked into the lobby of an empty store. Windows smashed and vantage clear, he crouched in the corner by the sill of the main bay window of the shop front. His gun was cocked, but two bullets and three people, Erik knew, was not a survivable situation.

The yelling grew louder, coupled with the sound of pleading, and Erik sat tight against the wall. The store had been a restaurant, he deduced. There would be knives in the kitchen, a back way out, a dumpster in that back way, he could hide and wait it out. The shouting and the crying and the laughing were right out in the street. People who lived in the bunkers did not shout, and if they ran, it was only to get away from something.

Rabids. They were rabids. They were the people who changed, and then died. Who died with full bellies, full of other peoples’ bellies. Erik shut his eyes. This was no different to Czech, or to Germany. This was no different to the times where he walked through the wrong territory, started a car in a seemingly empty street only to awake those sleeping within. He had outran and killed and survived them then, this was nothing else.

Oh, but it was, because when Erik shut his eyes he saw Charles and when Erik blocked out the laughing and the grating air filter he heard, “Stay safe,” and now – this – was so, so much different to before.

He peaked over the sill, shards of glass like stalagmites, and, Erik hoped, glaring just so from the sun that the rabids outside could not see him.

There were three men, standing with crooked backs and slants in their gaits. One man had skin similar to Raven – only a blue so dark it appeared black, scaled and flecking over his skin. His lips were black and eyes electric yellow. His teeth were stark against his skin, jagged and jutting. Another had skin a deep red, only in splotches against his body however. Erik could not see his eyes, but he assumed that meant they were not as wild. The third man, however, had no visible effects or markings of a rabid, only his hair was thick like a mane and his teeth where so large they stuck out from his mouth. The fourth man, however, that lay between them all was thin and weak and still human, and was begging for them to release him in broken English and broken Dutch.

The blue man laughed more and dragged their captive along the cobbles. It was a game. They treated it like a game. Erik wasn’t sure if they could understand or could speak anymore, he knew that he would be sitting listening to a man beg for help from no one that could save him for a long while.

He was surprised however, when he heard a familiar accent that was thick on all the right vowels and consonants and rang clear in his mind. An accent, a language, which he hadn’t heard for so long, and was sure he wouldn’t hear again.

“You should not leave your bunker, you should not come out.”

German. His language.

Hope was a notion he had long ago forgotten, but the empty feeling that came with the knowledge that there was someone else just right out there that had come from the same place he had, with whom he could recollect about the same happenings he had experienced, in the same tongue that he had forgotten, left his bones heavy.

Their feast was not elegant nor was it merciful. Erik sat as they tortured the man for hours, ripping him apart and breaking him open, scooping him out and smearing him over the stones to mark that place theirs. A contender came during it all, a rabid who did not look rabid, his form strong and his hair and beard black. He crouched on his haunches when he was not running, and he smelt the air like an animal, like a wolf, but his pigmentation was Caucasian, if tan. He and the others snarled and spat at each other, “this is our territory,” versed “I don’t speak your tongue” and when the wolf-man left the one with the mane and the sabre-toothed teeth lying bleeding on the ground the German changed his countenance and allowed him to join their meal. There was no fire, just the sick crackling of bones and tearing of skin that filled the street and echoed off the terraces. Erik sat and tried to think of his mother, of his childhood, of blue eyes and crooked noses and the bows of lips.

By the time they were done the sky was tinged a shade darker and Erik felt a shade more afraid, panicked. He had forgotten what it was to be scared, and he was not glad to remember it. He could hear them talking outside, or trying to, attempting to overcome that language barrier, and then there were more voices, and more again, and more snarling and spitting and yelling. There had to be fifty of them. Stay safe. Come back soon. The world was almost black, no moon could come through the clouds, Erik prayed that the rabids didn’t build a fire because then he knew he would definitely be seen. There was no way he could get out without being spotted.

His throat was so dry it felt like he was taking knives every time he swallowed, but he didn’t dare move to slip off his mask. Wait it out. He had been without water before, what was a bit more? The methodical scraping of the filter filled his mind, and despite themselves his eyes longed to shut, they were so heavy. If he shut his eyes he could pretend to be with Charles, pretend to be in the cellar with a fire and a cot and Charles to smile at him like he had never done wrong, like he could never do wrong. He could relearn lips and eyes and faces, and chests, and other parts of him-

No. No, he had to stay awake. No, he could not think about Charles, because then he would think how he did not stay safe, he did not come back soon, and think about how Charles would be so worried. Erik allowed himself to be so audacious as to think Charles was worried about him, but the rational, re-awakened part of his mind said that it was probably true.

The night was long. The howling and the crowing outside did not cease until faint light drifted down with the ash to coat the world anew. Erik’s body was numb, his mind was aching with dehydration and his jaw was tight from the mask – but he firmed himself, and rid his head of the dark corners of sleep and grit his teeth. There was a bunker nearby, but obviously this part of The Hague was already occupied with humanity’s dregs, and he knew it would be impossible to find it and see if there was any help there for Charles, any cure. It was a blind excursion that left him in a worse off predicament. He knew that the only treatment for Charles was if he was with him, then he would be calm, no panic.

An hour or so after the dawn, Erik looked over at the street. The carcass of the man lay strewn around, grey ash being stained with black blood as it coated him and turned him into the future’s strata. The rabids were gone, had skulked back to their abodes and were hopefully sleeping. Erik crawled slowly to the kitchen door of the restaurant, behind the counter at the back of the room, and didn't stop crawling til the door gave a soft fwump behind him. The first thing he scoured for was weapons. People had already been here before him, however, and the knives he found were poor. He pocketed forks, a knife sharpener, and several butterknives so long as they wouldn’t clink in his pocket. The back door was stuck with years of inactivity, but after a moment he got through to a back alley. Erik’s memory was poor with people but strong with place, and he figured which way he had come into the city.

Torn between walking slowly or running til Charles had him in his arms and his fingers in his hair, Erik adopted a speedy gait between the alleys and buildings and a slow walk when he was forced to the main roads, hurrying past eyes in windows and insatiable madness . He knew he had to conserve the little energy he had, but as soon as he was past the outskirts he couldn’t help but run, fueled by adrenaline and his nervous responses.

An hour or more of running, jogging, and walking, Erik could start to see the Erasmus bridge of Rotterdam in the distance, and the mind-numbing clanking of the air filter that had stuck perpetually in his brain was finally replaced with the whistle of the air as it passed his ears. Erik felt like if he stopped running then he would fall apart, his bones would crackle, his skin would tear and he would be all over the street only to become strata. He had to keep going. So he thought of Charles, and his mother, and he didn’t think about if Charles was vomiting or coughing, or crying because Erik hadn’t returned, but instead what things might be like when he returned. How they both unanimously knew that one had missed the other as much as they had missed each other, and what that realisation would mean.

Like there was a beacon guiding him home, Erik knew which street to turn down and which lane not to take, and soon the silver sliver of the Rotte shone in the distance, the Erasmus stood proud and he was at the brick walls and glass windows of their small convenience store. The bell jingled as he pushed the door through, fell to his knees and felt as his muscles unraveled. Boots were heavy and hard against the stairs from the cellar, and when Raven came through the door and shouted for Hank, Charles came instead, and Erik shut his eyes and let Raven pick him up with Charles taking his legs, despite his own weakness. The cot was warm – though in retrospect anything that was safe was warm to Erik – and Charles brought him water and he drank, he drank until his lips could hardly move. He had to warn him, had to warn them of how many infected people there were in the city over, but the way Charles hushed him, said, voice on the brink, “You stayed safe for me, you’re here, you stayed with me,” and ran his fingers through his hair, was so much better than he could ever think, could ever imagine, and Erik let his mono-vision cloud with the enticement of sleep. Before he fell but, he raised his gloved hand and touched Charles’ cheek, and Charles nodded and said, “It’s all okay now, my friend, you came back to me, I forgive you.”

In his dreams he saw blood run through the cobblestones, and saw the German’s wild eyes lock with his over a window sill as he slowly, so slowly, crept towards him.

*

When he awoke, Charles was dozing with his head on Erik’s cot and his neck bent at an off angle. His hand was clutching on the leg of Erik’s pants and the other was clasped around a water bottle. Erik’s face was bare of his goggles, and a kerchief was tied around his head. Never before had Erik been so glad to be rid of the sharp plastic of the respiratory mask. The kerchief scratched against his stubble as he shifted. His coat and sweater were gone, replaced by a soft tee. Raven sat by Marie, plaiting strands of her hair while soup fizzled and spat from the fire, and Hank watched on with a full heart and full words as he spoke of nothing in particular.

When Erik tried to sit up the subtle ache that resided at the back of his skull swung forward, and his bearings lost out. Gripping the metal frame of the cot, he breathed through his tightly grit teeth. Hank was at his side in a moment, water at the ready and hand supporting his neck.

“How are you feeling, Erik? You’re very dehydrated; here…”

Erik’s tongue was fat and heavy in his mouth, and his words slurred as his eye blurred his surroundings. He gasped and spluttered his speech. “The others, there are… andere…”

 “Easy, Erik,” spoke Hank slowly. “Here, drink this… there you go. Charles, Charles wake up- He’s been at your side all day, you know… Charles?”

The Englishman stirred as Erik fumbled with pulling the kerchief low enough to get his mouth to the bottle Hank provided. Bleary eyes met bleary eyes, and in less than a moment Charles’ countenance switched from delirious to serious, his mind snapping awake with his body.

“Erik? Erik, how are you feeling? Are you alright?”

Questions were fired at him relentlessly until Erik put his hand up firmly in stop, grunting as he tried to form his words and set his lips to create coherent sound.

“Sorry, sorry, take your time, my friend. Hank, thank you for your help,” Charles dismissed, nodding to Raven and Marie as they watched on. It was only Charles and Erik for a moment, even though they were mere metres from the fire and the rest of the troupe but to Erik there was only Charles; Charles smiling softly at him and rubbing his shin, telling him to lie down, that there would be dinner soon, if he needed to use the latrine just let him know; Charles, looking at him in such honest compassion and earnest that Erik felt like he was drowning every time they locked eyes; Charles, who struggled to sit on the edge of the cot, but when he did he ran his fingers through Erik’s damp hair and said how he was so glad, he was so happy that Erik came back.

Erik’s world tilted and shifted, axis loose and giving as he relaxed into the cot again. He needed to speak, needed to tell them that there was a hundred rabids out there, that they would spread, but the way Charles touched his face and his neck and re-tied the kerchief, whispered how proud of Erik he was, rested his hand heavily against Erik’s chest rendering him defenseless from the slew of emotion that that touch had sent sparking through his body, left Erik’s mind victim to sleep once more; only this time when Erik wanted to escape to Charles he could, and when he wanted to dream of him, he was allowed.

*

He awoke again not long after. Charles said he had been asleep for an hour or so, and he brought him a fresh bowl of soup and helped him sit up in his cot. His jaw felt less tight, and after a few spoonfuls Erik readied to tell them what had happened the night before. Charles never left his side as he spoke.

He left his motives for going to The Hague unspoken, instead recounting how these rabids were diverse in their skin mutations, and seemed coherent enough. He had been right in his assumption that The Hague had been the main refuge for the western side of South Holland, with an air filter still functioning.

“There is a bunker there, probably several. However, the rabids control the city. There was a man, they had caught him outside. For the whole evening, they did terrible things.” Erik paused, soup churning in his gut as he remembered the sick popping and squelching of the man’s innards as they were torn from him. Charles put his hand on his knee.

Erik continued. “Some of them could speak. One was a German; he said, ‘This is our place, you should never leave the bunkers.’ Then so many came that I knew I could not get out. Last night- I thought…” He pursed his lips, shut his eyes. “They will spread. Soon the bunker they feed from will empty and the rabids will come here. We need to move somewhere.”

“Well, tomorrow it’ll only be three days til the submarine gets here. What can we do, other than wait?” asked Marie. Raven sat quietly, holding her arms.    

“No one is to go upstairs alone, for any reason. Always take someone with you. We will only use the fire when it’s necessary.” Charles decided. His optimism fell through his commands, and it was so obvious that he had been a teacher – that he was still a teacher. “It’s only for three days, then we’ll be on the submarine and safe from all of this.”

The rest of the night, Raven sat alone with her jacket hugged tight around her body. The flecks and specks of blue that marred her body in such an intricate and perfect way bound her soul, her happiness. Charles went to her on unsteady legs and held her for a while, til she kissed him and murmured something before lying in her cot. Hank went and sat by her, and Erik thought the moment too sincere and intimate for his eyes. He slowed his drinking so as to not need to go to the latrine during the night. He didn’t want to admit he was afraid, but his dream and the night before had penetrated his malleable and vulnerable mind, which had been stretched like skin between ravenous hands and worn down like grinding, monotonous metal scrapes.

Any other night alone, before meeting Charles, would have been an easy feat to survive with no fears and no frets. Now, however, he had been reminded what it was to be human, how it was to feel and to appreciate, and suddenly the idea of that being taken from him, being left with nothing again, burnt a hole through his gut.

While the others retired, Erik felt no drowsiness. He had slept the entire day since arriving back that morning, and then into the evening. Charles yawned by him, then would feel embarrassed and laugh. Erik let Charles murmur to him about all sorts of nonsense, until it became the bed-time for inhibitions and Charles’ innocent mutterings turned to heavy confessions under the pretense of their night.

“I wasn’t sure what to think when you didn’t return by afternoon, my friend. Raven will testify if you ask her – I was a mess,” he chuckled. “Hank would try to reassure me by saying that you were just a free spirit and were simply taking time to yourself. Raven was so mad that you had left, if you had indeed left us, because even though she will not say it she values and respects you. We have never met someone who survived on their own outside for so long. Raven’s like you a little, in that she has been hardened by the world because she has to be hard to survive. She values team work and family, because she never really had a family til she came to mine – and let me say, that was not really what you’d want to join as an orphan.

“I wasn’t sure whether you had died, Erik. I’ve really- I’ve grown quite fond of you, you see, and so, to think that you had been killed was not only troubling for us as a community, for my own person, it-“

Erik hushed him and stroked his leg. He didn’t know what he was doing. He felt lost; but Charles, with his bright blue eyes, was the light.

“I am here now, I will not be leaving again. I thought of you to get me through the night, however, that may have only made it worse.” Erik admitted quietly. The subject grew morose and too truthful for Erik to bear. If it was obvious he was trying to change the subject, Charles didn’t pick him out for it, and for that Erik was grateful. “This is not my shirt, however?” he said in a light tone, and Charles looked away.

“Yes, well, you did the same for me that one night. And you came back so sweaty,” Charles paused, and quickly added, “I didn’t, I didn’t take off your trousers though, don’t fret.”

A part of Erik that had been quashed for so long almost spoke up, but Erik kept that voice only in his mind, and did not say how he wouldn’t have minded if Charles had.

Charles began to yawn more and more, until his eyes could barely open, and Erik helped direct him to his cot not too far from his own.

“Could you fit?” whispered Charles, edging close the brink of his cot, as if the scintilla of room that he provided was enough for Erik to lay his body in. Erik laughed softly, and told him to go to sleep, draping a coat across his body. Without the fire, the nights would become colder. Sharing body heat could become a viable option for the chilled nights. The pang in Erik’s gut meant something, but he refused to dwell on it. He moved his own cot closer to Charles, and when he lay on it he was so close he could see the light twitching of his eyes and the shimmying brush of his lashes. His stubble grew in uneven patches across his face, and he breathed as if he was sighing.

Erik did sigh, because he knew what was happening, he knew what he was feeling, but there was no way he was going to admit it.

*

Erik’s sleeping pattern had been put out of shape due to his recovery the day before, and so when he forced himself awake early the next morning, the bubbly smile of Marie or the pointless chatter of Hank put his teeth on edge and his anger to the brink, too. Raven allowed Charles to sleep longer, but Erik would not stand for it, too fearful of the possibility that Charles mightn’t wake up – might not be sleeping at all.

He had tucked a water bottle against his chest under his coat to warm it slightly. Charles’ morning ritual was to cough, splutter, wipe himself over and sit with a smile on his face as he proclaimed he wasn’t hungry during breakfast – how much of that was due to his guilt about eating from their indispensable stock only to throw it back up again, or due to his bitter-singed and raw throat that left him raspy and tight in his words, Erik couldn’t tell. As he took Charles’ and his own share of their dry crackers, Raven asked, “Are you going to chew them for him, too?” and Erik cut her with an embarrassed glare.

He woke the Englishman by speaking his name softly. He was wary of touching him to wake, all too aware of Raven’s keen eyes chasing his every movement around her brother. After rattling his shoulder softly, Charles woke, smiled in his delirium for a moment as he and Erik co-existed in their own world for but a moment before his features contorted, eyes watered and wrinkled, and he sat quickly to loose the fluid that collected in his lungs, black spittle sticking to his kerchief and dribbling across his lips.

The coughing fit would only last a few minutes in the morning, with more coughing dispersed throughout the day; but those long minutes were drawn out by their unanimous feeling of uselessness and helplessness. There was nothing they could do, except sit tersely in their cots and watch Charles with sorrowful gazes. Charles would apologise, and the talking would incite another fit, and Raven would tell him to stop talking, to shut up and stop being so fucking mindful of everyone else while he was-, and Erik would stand between them, shielding each sibling from the other’s emotions, like a rock between waves or a tree caught in a gust. Impassive, impertinent, steeled. He had been good at not feeling. He had been. But even rocks are worn by water, and trees lose their leaves in wind.

Eventually, Charles grappled for the warmed water – whether it was to satiate his thirst or to satiate his sister, Erik couldn’t tell, but whatever the notion behind the action was, he didn’t care. Charles struggled with the dry biscuit, Raven glared at Erik in lieu of her brother, because she knew that Erik wouldn’t feel it, wouldn’t feel guilty for something out of his control, wouldn’t feel ashamed – but oh, how wrong she was.

Their morning ritual was complete. Raven, encaged in their bunker and in her anger, sat heavily in one corner, glaring at the ashes of their fire, until she pretended to be riffling through the contents of the cellar for lack of better things to do. When her anger burnt out, she went to Hank and he brushed her hair with a scanty comb and they murmured as they did so often. Marie, young, whimsical, and bored, brought a deck of playing cards to Erik and Charles and they lined two cots up and sat with crossed legs and played – however, while before the Silence Erik’s English had been fluent, his language skills over-all now were minimal, and so upon entering a round of ‘Go Fish’ they realised Erik could not name a club nor a spade. His descriptions of “the card that is black, number eight, with the three-” accompanied by a vague hand gesture, had left Marie confused and Charles chuckling, and the trio relented their game. Marie went on to adopt the role of chief architect to a card house.

In the early days of their tenure, Erik had barely spoken of his time before the Silence, or particularly of his time during the Silence. When it was late, Charles would tell him about his childhood – his father’s death, his mother’s drinking, his stepfather’s drinking, his mother’s dying; he would tell him about his life as a student, then a teacher, then a student, and how while he could have secured a millionaire inheritance and a throne overlooking the family business, he cast it away for education. “It’s known that in order to have money, you must be educated,” he had begun, “But that isn’t true at all. Education is not just a narrow pathway followed to stability and monotony; it’s a track that you can jump off and run back onto and fall over on. I wanted kids to grow up knowing that education was not the amount of sums you could memorise but the amount of awareness you have for the world, and the differences you could make. But alas.” Charles snorted with no mirth. “I suppose, an optimistic way to view all of this, is that the world can start again now. Hopefully humanity will be less hateful this time around.”

Erik could listen to Charles talk for days and never grow weary of his lilt or the way his voice, which was rich and inviting, would sometimes crack a little on an off word. Sometimes, Erik didn’t understand a word or missed what he’d said, but he let Charles’ voice carry him on. Charles didn’t expect conversation and for this Erik was so grateful that he thought he might provide it. He did reply, all the time, but his words were less embellished and broke more often.

Erik had told him, “Before all of this, I was an engineer. I can understand your want to teach, because when I touch something I feel what else it could be. When you are with your students, you can feel what else they can be. That word; potential?” Charles had said that yes, that was exactly it.

A travel game of chess had been found several days prior, and Erik brought it over from their stash of items by the back wall – where tins of fruit and soup stood stacked, and boxes of tissues dwindled. Charles had found a dormant niche in Erik for the game, and the two played sometimes during the long days. It was easy to get lost in rounds and matches and forget about the slowly passing time. They hardly spoke, save for times when one took the other’s piece, but they gazed at each other with full and intent eyes. They sat opposite ends of a cot, the tiny board with its tiny pieces separating them, and Charles would adopt a pose that perplexed Erik because how he managed to evade a crick in his back, Erik did not know. Charles would rest his chin in his hand, elbow propped against his knee, and would splay his fingers over his jaw in a way that made Erik fantasize of grabbing the Englishman’s jaw for himself, holding it as he kissed his lips til they swelled and left marks of his adoration upon his weathered skin. When Charles would look up at him from the position he nearly lost it and did.

The time swept together in an expanse of glances that, while once were timid and quick, slowly became confident and long. Erik was caught eying him one too many times, and he gave up his own personal struggle of trying to tear his gaze back to the board before Charles noticed soon after. Erik’s back stuck itself in the stooped position, but he didn’t mind so much, especially when Charles shifted every so often and rattled the board, and their fingers would brush as they remedied the dislocated pieces.

Soon however, as Charles set up the board for a new game, conversation came back to him, as it so often, readily, and easily did. “We should make this round more interesting. Every time a piece is removed, the owner of the piece must remove an article of clothing.” Hank spluttered on the water he drank, and Raven glared at Erik, but she was ignored.

“There is an issue, however,” Erik grinned. Charles looked at him inquisitively, smile small but there and eyebrows raised. “We have sixteen pieces each, but we are not wearing that many things.”

Charles hummed. “I see your point, my friend. In that case, the rooks do not count, only the pieces from the back row.” When Erik agreed and winked, Charles took in a breath and looked away.

Much to the relief of the rest of their group, the duo did not strip while playing chess, but the mood was lightened. Charles continued talking however, and in turn, the happy ambience dissipated with his next words.

“You said one of the rabids spoke German. Was that- how was that? For you?”

Erik chewed his words. How was it? It was awful. The people from the bunkers in Germany were husks, exoskeletons that had been shed and left to rot underground. To be near a German who had been like him, who had wanted to leave and find something better, only to have that German become infected and insane, was like taking a swig of water to find that it had been replaced with ash. He held the canteen, and he was so thirsty, but there was nothing to drink. Erik didn’t say this. Instead, he said, “I have met Germans before. It was harsh, but I am used to it.”

Erik waited for Charles to reply, but none came forth. The other three tuned in as Erik kept talking. “They were not all the same, not at all. The German had very dark blue skin. A man had red skin, like he had been sun burnt but worse; another had no skin change at all, but his teeth had grown, and his hair was long.” Hank piqued at this, and the conversation suddenly turned open from private.

“He had skin mutations? Are you sure he was a rabid?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, his teeth had grown so sharp they were like razors. His hair had grown strongly, on his eyebrows and jaw. I was there, I heard when he, when they.” Erik’s silence emphasised the words he wouldn’t speak. “He was a rabid.”

“Have you heard of this before, Charles?” asked Hank incredulously. When he shook his head, Hank continued. “We only thought it was the pigmentation of the skin that changed with the chemicals. Whatever is out there, in the air… for the radiation to be that strong…” he didn’t finish when Raven made a small noise in her throat.

“Maybe it is a tendency found only in this area,” offered Erik. “Another man came. He was bigger than them all, his skin on his face looked clear, but his hair was thick and black. He acted like a wolf. He spoke fluently, as well.”

“What did he speak?” piped Marie. She had sat quietly through Erik’s story.

“English, but his accent was not of England. American, maybe? Something like this. He couldn’t speak with the German, so he fought the one with sharp teeth and won; no weapons. He did not seem as rabid as the others.”

At this, Marie sat up straighter. Her card house fell. “His hair was black? And long? How tall was he? Like so?”

Her questions were answered with trepidation and confusion, until Marie gasped, and whispered quietly to cupped hands, “Logan was from Canada.”

The room was swamped in palpable silence as they all understood in varying degrees what could happen next. Raven said slowly, ‘there are many men who are strong with black hair, M, it might not be him’ while Charles said, ‘you lost him in England, Marie, and the boats stopped coming. He couldn’t have swum the entire way across.’ ‘There is no survival rate from the rabid disease that we know of, Marie, there’s nothing we could do even if it was him,’ said Hank.

All these loose arguments said in attempts to assuage Marie were ignored by her last question of, “What was he wearing?”

Erik could hardly remember, and he said this, but Marie still gazed at him intently. “Denim jean pants, perhaps?” he offered. There was no point in lying. He could have said the rabid was wearing a dress for all Marie paid mind to it; she was already convinced it was Logan. He took the one last point they had to sway Marie’s conviction: “You said Logan’s eyes were beginning to fail, how long ago was this? Marie, there is a chance he may already be-”

She cut him off with a shrill cry. “How long your eye been like that, Erik?! How long you got? You said it’s been months but you ain’t dead yet!”

“And yet look at Charles, it has been only days and he could die next week.” Something had snapped inside Erik, something Marie had said that ignited the spark of realism that Erik spent every day trying to extinguish. How long did he have? Was he better off than Charles? Any day he could begin deterioration, living with the uncertainty of how long he had left. Charles knew with certainty that he would die. And yet Charles had not lived on the outside for years, Charles had not had the time Erik was given. His heavy words hung in their cellar, and Erik regretted them the moment they left him.

The look that had contorted the welcoming features of his friend burnt into his mind. The horrified expression had only lasted a second before returning to melancholic neutrality but Erik couldn’t forget it. Like dominoes, Erik’s outburst led to Raven’s, and he tried to apologise but the words were stuck in his throat. Charles had said there was no point in dancing around the subject of his death, and Raven had turned to yell at him. Erik pulled on his coat and stood and made for the stairs, and then it was Charles’ turn to shout.  “Where are you going? Erik?” he demanded of ignoring ears, to which Erik finally replied, “Out.”

“You can’t: we all decided that no one would leave alone.” Raven began her yelling again. Marie began to ask, ‘if he can leave, why can’t I?’ and Hank tried to ease the girls back from their rage. As Erik ascended the stairs, Charles’ tone turned hysterical. “You can’t leave again, Erik. You said you wouldn’t leave me.” The fear that laced his crippling words froze Erik in his gait, hand curling over the banister with frightful strength. When Charles stood from the cot and made to follow him he stumbled, but he didn’t fall, eyes wild. “I know you didn’t mean it. It’s the truth, we all know it, but I know that you didn’t mean for what you said to come out like it had. Please, come back.”

When Erik looked over his shoulder, he saw Charles standing by the stairs with his back straight and his eyes sharp. His hands were fisted, breath fast through grit teeth and unsteady knees ignored. When he walked the rest of the way to the stairs and gripped the banister in relief Erik sighed. “Foolish man,” he muttered, and he turned and returned and he grabbed Charles’ shoulders before they could tremble. “You are too forgiving.”

He guided him back to his cot, to where their two cots were pushed together. Marie had begun to cry, and Raven, who was still livid with Erik, held her and stroked her hair. Charles attended her and spoke soft and understanding words. Erik watched on, and remembered why hope was a foolish notion, remembered why he had forgotten it.

Marie screamed. She wailed and she begged for them to go and find Logan, and for a short moment it seemed as if Raven was considering it, but Erik adamantly rejected the idea. “You survived, it was only you, and you managed to come back,” Marie tried to reason, to bargain for a chance. Her voice cracked and broke around her words.

“I’m sorry,” Erik murmured. “I’m truly sorry, Marie.”

Marie wept for the evening, and Raven cooked soup specially for her. Charles held her against his chest and stroked her hair, and told elaborate stories from when he was younger than Erik doubted were even half true – but they subdued the girl, and she gave an empty smile at one tale. Erik, awkward and attempting to clear the air with not only Marie but Raven, taught them German swears. Hank had little to offer, but he promised that in the future when they were safe in Russia, he would help her with her math and science work.

Her tears turned to wobbling breaths, and their makeshift, rag-tag family of sorts collectively gave an inward sigh. Speaking of the future only further brought Marie back from her mourning. “We will all stick together, even when we’re in Russia,” said Charles, with a pointed look at Erik.

“We will.” Affirmed the German. He and Charles never broke eye contact. “We can leave this all behind us, change our names, become new people.”

When it came time for rest, Charles didn’t separate his and Erik’s cots. They lay side by side, facing each other, and Erik brushed his fingers through Charles’ hair. “I’m sorry for how I acted before. I didn’t mean what I said.”

“I know, I know,” whispered Charles, eyes shut. “It’s okay, my friend.” When he opened his eyes again, they were hard, as if he was already preparing himself for an answer he didn’t want. “You will stay with us in Russia, won’t you? I am correct in assuming that you- that we…”

His reply was almost instantaneous. “Of course I will.”

“Good, I just- good. I’m glad, Erik.” When he sighed, Erik felt confused, but he spoke again. “It’s just unfair, isn’t it? That we had to meet like this.”

“At the end of the world?” supplied Erik with a grin. “What do you mean? I think this is excellent. Nothing could be wrong with this situation- sans my eyes and your lungs.”

“Yes, I suppose they are a sub-optimal factor in all of this.”

Their words were quiet sounds to a background of cots scraping and sniffling and Raven making a light hearted joke with Marie about Hank, who playfully overreacted. Marie stayed quiet.

The day had been too long and emotional, and sleep was steadily coming to Erik. Charles was warm near him, so it was no surprise to find that he had tried to subtle wriggle closer to him after ten or so many minutes of quiet rest. Raven, Marie and Hank had taken to their idea and combined cots, with Raven skirted by the younger two. It didn’t take long for slumber to envelope them.

While they slept, Marie hid her knives in her coat and Charles’ gun in her boot.