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In this world, scars were a blessing.
Hell, the biggest nastiest scars were a goddamn godsend.
They meant there was at least something left to scar.
That it hadn’t all been ripped and torn away.
Kai had many scars. Long stretches of skin that burned an itchy red vengeance, some old enough to have faded a soft, pallid white. They dug into his biceps, hung from his lower lip, stood in bold, burning fury across his eyebrow.
In this world, scars meant you had lived. That there was enough left of you to have something to show for it.
Kai had lived, and he had the scars to prove it.
But that certain part of him, the part that fueled the fire in his belly, that ignited his sharp tongue and his willingness to keep going, to keep moving, to keep keeping on – that part of him which encompassed his being, that made him human – that part was already dead.
…
His feet felt heavy against the forest floor as he barreled forward, slowing only to turn on the balls of his feet and slash out his katana with sloppy, reckless abandon. In times like these, there was no room for theatrics.
The blade sliced through an arm, messily chopped through dead skin and sliced open an ambling shoulder. He had spun back forward too quickly to gauge the creature’s reaction, but he didn’t have to look to know it was still in mindless pursuit, oblivious to the open gash in its shoulder that was pulsating with spurts of blood.
This one had caught him off guard. He should’ve known better than to take cat naps in the open forest. He’d survived long enough to know it was the stupid thing to do. But he’d been more careless recently, less cautious and mindful. In that moment when he lay with his fingers curled against hard soil, roots poking up from the ground, jabbing dully into his side and the cloudless sky a graying, empty space, he just couldn’t find it in himself to mind if he closed his eyes and never woke up.
That thought was quickly hurled out the window when he woke up to a leering, putrid face hovering over his own and loud, rasping breaths wafting over his head.
In an instant, he’d bolted up, sword in hand. He’d managed to get in a quick jab in his mad roll to get away, which accounted for the advancing monster’s crooked jaw, but he was sloppy. Not only was he drastically low on sleep, but he’d been rudely awakened from a very good nap.
Needless to say, Kai was tired and cranky, with his senses dialed up to eleven and his fight or flight response in combat with itself, but the only thing running through his brain was that out of all the ways he could go out, he would not let it not be this. Not today. He at least had enough self-respect to give himself that.
And so he ran. As he did day after day.
Running had become the only thing he had left.
Suddenly, the creature lunged for him, and filthy, cracked fingernails dug sharply into his arm. Yup, that one was going to leave a scar. He swiped his sword and twisted away thrashingly, and the dull, dead fingers slipped from his skin.
Too close. He’d been cutting it way too close as of late.
Rows of tall, looming trees watched him as he passed them by, and clumps of wet dirt kicked up from where his boots bounded against the ground. He was gaining distance between himself and the creature, but its pace remained steady. Unlike Kai, the flesh-eating beast didn’t have a working set of lungs to tire out, didn’t feel the burning grate that Kai felt clawing through him as he forced his body to his limit then pushed beyond it.
He couldn’t let himself run too far. All his supplies were back in that clearing. He had to go back. But the creep wouldn’t let up.
As always, the best he could do was keep running.
…
The poor boy scrambled against the ground, dirt digging into his fingernails as he scrabbled backwards, ass in the dirt as the zombies zeroed in, their faces shriveled and lolling. They groaned and hissed as they shuffled closer. The boy was surrounded and alone.
After weeks spent rummaging through dirty alleyways for food and slumming it in rusty, old fire escapes, after all the sneaking and running and surviving, they’d finally chased him into this vast, endless forest, had cornered him in his death.
He clenched his eyes shut tight and waited as the groans drew so close that breath like death stunk up his nose.
This was the end.
Might as well embrace it.
That was the boy’s last thought before a loud shink echoed through the air and there was a sound of something thumping to the ground. He heard panting. Though it was different from the mumbling groans he was used to. It was lively and frustrated, animalistic in a way no undead could mimic.
His eyes burst open to the sight of a lean and tall body fighting the zombies like it was a dance. His shoulders were broad, drawn up tight as he carried some kind of crazy-awesome sword between his scarred hands, swiping out at anything that moved. He stood with his back to the boy, a fallen corpse with a large slash straight through its eyes laying motionless at his feet.
He panted and grunted, breaths sounding harsh and raspy, as though every inhale had his lungs grating together, shredding them into little cheese bits.
Speaking of, Lloyd couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.
“A little help would be nice, kid,” the guy grunted, and his deep, rasping voice had Lloyd stirring from his daze and scrambling to his feet.
“I, uh, don’t really have a weapon,” the boy said sheepishly, and the guy had the nerve to crane his head around and level the kid with a nonplussed look. “I’m sorry?” the young boy offered.
A loud groan had the tall guy turning back to the current onslaught, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword and swinging out in a way that somehow managed to look both tactful and impulsive, both wild and controlled. Strange guy.
Lloyd couldn’t see his face, but he heard the frown in his voice when he said, “How are you even alive?”
It was meant to be a rhetorical question, probably, but it had Lloyd glancing down at where marred skin lay hidden beneath the sleeves of his ragged hoody. The familiar sense of guilt blossomed, greeting him like a long-lost relative.
The man grunted as a particularly bulky corpse hurled itself against his waiting blade. The sword sliced through its stomach and stuck out the other end, but the corpse still reached for him with thick, bloated arms, swiping at open air.
And, uh, this was a problem. Because there were still two other zombies steadily advancing, and the guy, his sword knee-deep in zombie, was a bit too preoccupied to deal with them.
Gut churning with anxiety, Lloyd cowered behind the guy.
“On your right—”
“I know,” the guy grunted through his teeth. He struggled for a moment, tight biceps straining as he scrambled, trying to wriggle his sword free, but in a quick moment of inspiration, he kicked out against the zombie and pulled back with his arms, sword slipping slickly from the corpse’s stomach just in time to literally behead one of the other approaching creatures.
Lloyd tried not to gape at the lone head on the ground, still opening and closing its jaw as if it were the only thing it knew how to do. He didn’t even look at the guts that dripped to the ground from the stomach of the burly corpse that the guy had shish kebabbed.
With only two left, one of them scrawny and slow, and the other stumbling over its own entrails, the guy easily dispatched the rest of them.
When it was all over, they stood there for a moment—Lloyd wide eyed and dazed, and the other guy doubling over in a fit of rasps.
It took them a minute to regain their bearings, but once they did, the guy raised himself to his full height and turned towards Lloyd with a confident slouch and disbelieving, mystified eyes.
For the first time, Lloyd could really see him, could account for the guy’s lax, withdrawn frown and his bright chestnut eyes that stood out against his hooded stare.
It had been so long since Lloyd had seen eyes so bright and lively and, well, alive.
He’d grown so used to the cloudy gray of the undead.
It was almost a kind of relief, an intense something that hit the poor boy like whiplash because he didn’t realize before how much he’d missed something as simple and innate as eye contact.
“Thanks for all the help,” the guy said dryly, and despite himself, for the first time since he’d woken up to a world of once-men who ate other men, Lloyd laughed. And it was a special kind of laugh too. The kind that bubbles up from somewhere out of reach and just spills into open air, starting as a low, bumbling sound that just barely slips past the lips in short restrained spurts, and spiraling into a crescendo of heaving gasps that vibrate in your gut and shudder through your core, that leave a person feeling warm in a way they thought they couldn’t.
It was the first time Lloyd had laughed in months, and it was one of those.
And slowly, just so warily, the guy’s frown seemed to loosen, and one end of his lips quirked up ever so slightly, reaching his eyes and turning the sharp hazel of them to something warm like honey.
Lloyd’s laughs died down and he mulled over the absolute absurdity of it all in the resounding silence, before the guy said, “You should really get a weapon, kid. God knows how you’ve managed to live this long without one.”
The boy shrugged. “Where can I get one of those?” he said, nodding towards the sword that hung lazily from the guy’s hand.
The guy smirked, wiping the blood and guts from the blade against his jacket, before sliding the sword into some kind of sheath at his hip. “You couldn’t handle it,” he said, and the hint of playfulness in his tone had Lloyd grinning. “A stick, maybe. Or a lead pipe. But not Skylor.”
“Skylor?”
“It’s what I call her,” the guy said, patting at the sword through its covering. “Every good sword deserves a pretty name.”
Lloyd looked at him a moment, thoughtful. “And what’s yours?”
“My name?”
Lloyd nodded. The guy seemed to mull it over a few seconds.
“It’s Kai.”
Lloyd grinned. “Nice to meet you, Kai.” He reached out a hand, and for once, he wasn’t worried about the marks beneath his sleeve. “I’m Lloyd.”
…
In this world, scars were supposed to be a good thing. But Lloyd’s scars were quite different. Lloyd’s scars were a freak of nature. A glitch in the system. His scars signaled a survival that should not have been.
Lloyd’s scars made him dangerous. Or, at least they should’ve. Instead, they more-so made other people a danger to him. And he didn’t blame them. In this day and age, anyone would freak out at the sight of the hastily scabbed-over teeth marks in his arms.
That’s why he always wore his oversized sweatshirt. He was always so careful about not rolling up his sleeves, even on the hottest, stuffiest days. He avoided large groups of people. Group panic was even worse than singular panic.
But he’d been on his own for so long… He hadn’t even been in contact with another human being in such a long time that when his sleeve snagged on a loose branch and tore straight off—the thing was getting rattier than he’d thought—he didn’t think anything of it. He’d looked at the torn fabric with the flat pull of his mouth and simply shrugged. The sweatshirt had been old anyway.
He was quickly hurled back into reality when Kai offhandedly glanced at the ripped sleeve with a teasing grin, before his eyes caught on the skin there and nearly bulged out of his head before narrowing like daggers with burning alarm.
“Lloyd, what is that?” he hissed in a single, rushed breath, and Lloyd didn’t even have time to blink before a sharp sword was pointed at his throat.
Lloyd stilled, veins cold as ice. He was cornered against a tree, nowhere to run. A chilled sense of betrayal and regret slithered through him as he threw his hands up as though Kai was a police officer who would even think to give him a chance to prove his innocence.
There were no laws anymore. Kai was a survivor. And no matter how good of a guy he was, a survivor would do whatever it took to keep themselves alive—it was the very reason survivors survived.
Lloyd fought the urge to close his eyes in self-anger and scream at himself until the world burned up.
He’d been so careful for so long, had picked up too many survival pro tips to make such a rookie mistake.
As Lloyd stood there, blood frozen in his veins and hands rigidly suspended at either side of his head, Kai’s burning gaze narrowed more acutely. Lloyd eyed Kai’s hands, noting how his fingers gripped tighter around his sword hilt.
“I said,” Kai continued through gritted teeth, and there was a clinical anger in his voice, a resonating hatred that, against his own will, made something inside Lloyd crinkle up and wither. “What. Is. That.”
Lloyd stared down the blade, meeting Kai’s burning, dangerous eyes at the other end. It took a closer look to note the subtle hints of fear in them, the extremely faint tremble to his sword. Still, Lloyd gulped, eyes shimmering with a much more obvious and blatant fear. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind Kai would kill him right then and there, no hesitation.
“Did you get bit?”
Lloyd hated the bite to Kai’s tone.
“I can explain,” Lloyd began, but Kai growled, inching the sword closer to his face, its tip nearly resting against the skin at Lloyd’s forehead.
“How long ago? Were you going to tell me, huh? Or just wait ‘til you turned in the middle of the night and bit out my throat in my sleep?”
“I-I’m not sick,” Lloyd started.
“Yeah, not yet,” Kai said, “And I’m gonna make sure it stays that way.” Kai’s muscles tensed, and icy panic washed through Lloyd as, for a moment, it really seemed like Kai would just pierce his sword right through him and that would be the end.
“Please,” Lloyd pleaded. He gazed up at Kai with wide, trepid eyes. “Please let me explain—I can explain!”
“Well you better do it quickly,” Kai rumbled lowly, and his hands still cupped his sword in a choking grip, but the tension in his arms loosened just so slightly, his sword withdrawing just a hair. His eyes still burned with a deadly fury, as if to say, Try anything and I’ll kill you within seconds, but he wasn’t stabbing Lloyd through yet, and that was enough for Lloyd.
“I’m not sick,” Lloyd urged.
“Yeah, you said that.” Kai’s eyes narrowed. “Try again.”
“No—you don’t understand. I’ve never been sick!”
Kai was near snarling, eyes periodically shifting to glare at the bite marks sitting starkly purple and red against Lloyd’s skin.
“Look,” he said, and on a whim, he pulled his sleeve up higher on his arm, revealing more bite marks; ones more faded and healed, tinged a pale white instead of itchy red. “These are from months ago. They’re nearly healed. I didn’t turn.”
“Maybe not yet,” Kai said, and his tone was still unkind, but his eyes swam with newfound uncertainty.
“It never takes more than a week,” Lloyd said. “Before all the medical facilities got overrun, they’d at least figured out that.” It had been a big deal during the early days of the breakout. Everyone should know about it.
Based on the wavering of his burning gaze, Kai seemed like he did.
“That’s not possible,” he said sternly. His eyes looked hard, but his expression was hesitant, the grip of his sword unsure.
“I didn’t think so either. But I’m still alive.” Lloyd bared his arms, laying it all out. “I’ve been bit five times. None of them have turned me.” Lloyd’s fearful eyes hardened. “At first I thought it was a fluke. But they’re healing. All of them. They’re not supposed to heal.”
“No,” Kai said. Lloyd admired the way he could keep his eyes so hard and focused when the rest of his face looked so unsure. “No they’re not.”
“I’m not gonna turn.”
Confidently honest green eyes locked onto resolutely harsh brown ones. For the first time since a sword had been pointed at Lloyd’s head, Kai’s gaze softened and wavered.
A wave of indecision passed over Kai’s face but through it all, Lloyd’s confident gaze didn’t break.
Slowly, hesitantly, as if he almost knew he’d regret it later, Kai lowered his sword.
“You better not.”
Lloyd’s eyes shone with relief. “I won’t.”
Kai backed off, posture hunching, before he dropped to the grass like dead weight, landing on his ass with his feet splayed out in front of him and his knees in the air. Lloyd stood rooted to the spot by the tree Kai had cornered him against.
“So you’re immune.” He seemed to have some trouble computing that.
“Guess so.” Lloyd shrugged almost nonchalantly, despite the tension still wrought through his body. Just a moment ago, a sharp sword had been in near cahoots with his skull.
“Huh.” Lloyd didn’t know how the tension could leave Kai’s body so quickly. Now, Kai just looked confused, maybe a bit stunned—but the trace amounts of hatred, anger, and fear that had burned in his eyes just moments ago were all but gone.
“This is…” Kai continued, “this is big.”
Lloyd said nothing, lips pursed.
“Shouldn’t we, like, do something about this? Get you to some research facility or something?” Kai scratched his head, seemingly at a loss. In the short time Lloyd had known him, he’d never seen Kai at such a loss. It was almost refreshing, enough so that Lloyd’s body finally began to relax. Calmly, he edged forward from the tree to stand before Kai.
“What research facility?” Lloyd said softly with a hint of teasing in his voice. Like Lloyd hadn’t already thought of that after the third bite and no sign of turning.
Kai chuckled dryly. He sounded exhausted, his hair frayed now that the tension was over. “I guess you’re right.” He looked up at Lloyd with eyes returned to soft brown, trace amounts of honey-gold interspersed within. One corner of his mouth quirked up. He had the audacity to look somewhat amused. “Sorry about pointing a sword at your face.”
In spite of himself, Lloyd found the good humor to respond, “Better than rank, snapping teeth.”
That had Kai’s forehead wrinkling in thought. “Does it hurt?” he said.
Lloyd nodded slowly, eyeing the healing bite marks all across his skin with a subdued grimace. “Yep.”
A look of curious understanding. “Like hell?”
“Worse than that.”
A thoughtful hum. “Sucks.”
“Better than dying.”
“Got me there.”
“Mm.”
A beat of pensive silence.
“Maybe this means you’re not the only one.” One of Kai’s knees drew up towards his chest with the other stretching out as he leaned back, fully opening himself up like some invisible weight had suddenly been taken away. “Maybe there’s a real way to end this. People who will live.” His brown eyes swam with thought, softly guarded as though from his own thoughts. “Maybe even a cure.”
Lloyd hummed, plopping down beside Kai with his legs criss-crossed. He almost forgot the missing half of his sleeve and the scarred skin beneath the tattered remains. “Maybe.”
Kai’s eyes still swam. Though his body language was open, he looked straight ahead. “At the very least, maybe it’ll give people hope.” His lips drew into a firm line. “Maybe that’ll be enough.”
Lloyd hadn’t really thought about it like that before.
“Yeah,” he said. Despite it all, a smile pulled at his lips. “Yeah, maybe.”