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Five’s too prideful to admit out loud that he’s glad Vanya stayed with him.
Even when he looks over and sees her, dressed in a tattered, now grey shirt, and relatively high quality jeans, exhausted, ready to sleep. He’s glad she stayed with him.
There was a moment, at the beginning, when he didn’t want her there. When dragging her through abandoned suburban streets,watching out for both Vanya and the threat of zombies, and rationing the limited food they could find was too hard, too stressful.
Back then he never slept, never got along with her. Didn’t understand how it all fell apart so quickly. How they managed to argue so much. They were out of sync, he supposes.
Now Five understands her, gets it. Knows that she, too, stayed awake at night, holding to god that this would all be worked out by the government. That her and Five could return to their small little apartment in New York and continue to live their inconsequential lives.
Both of them gave up on that possibility well and truly when they’d watch the first group of people they’d stayed with be torn to shreds by the bullets of soldiers who had been overrun by zombies themselves.
Five still thinks about that at night, when he wakes up in a cold sweat, and Vanya has to practically smother him until he’s calmed and they’re sure they haven’t altered anyone to their position.
Another reason he’s glad Vanya stayed.
They’re walking across what feels like miles of once cared for paddock. It’s empty and overgrown now, the grass long and wild, any animals that once grazed there long gone. A strip of the grass has been trampled into a pathway for them to walk through. It feels endless. They don’t have a destination in mind, they’re just walking.
Vanya’s hair is tied up in a high ponytail, a layer of sweat covering her skin. She looks beautiful even though Five can see that she's practically ready to fall over. He is too, but they both want to attempt to get through this field before night falls.
Five hated to walk anywhere when he was younger. A product of his parents always being around to drive him to wherever he needed to be. As he got older he somewhat grew out of it, but he still hated these long, endless walks that he and Vanya are on.
It was a survival thing now, walking. They had to walk from one place to another all the time.
Initially when Five and Vanya had gotten out of the city, Five had tried to get away with driving where he could. It would save energy he’d claimed to Vanya, even when they found it was actually more effort to get the car past certain areas. It would be a good place to store all their stuff he’d claimed, even when all they’re important possessions could fit within two backpacks.
“You should’ve made me get rid of it,” Five had commented one night after he and Vanya had ditched the car in a shootout with another group, betting that the group would think they had run out of ammo, and not simply abandoned their vehicle.
Vanya had laughed, softly, ready to pass out. “I understand that you wanted something normal in our lives.” Five had bristled at her words. Now though, he understands. Vanya has always had this understanding of him, the same way he has this understanding of her. They can see right through one another.
“There’s a fence,” Vanya comments. Five looks up forward, and yes, there is a fence, stopping just short of the main road. On the other side of said road are more fields.
The open road is dangerous, but the fields are worse. They can’t sleep in the fields, they’re too vulnerable out in the open.
Of course, like every lesson they’d learned that the hard way. People died, Five had been shot, and Vanya had spent weeks caring for him in some high rise building that made Five anxious simply by being inside. That had been what? A year into this nightmare. When they’d allowed themselves to become complacent. Vanya had stayed by his side through it all.
Five loved her more for that, when she could’ve easily left him. When Five had been encouraging her to leave, and free herself of him. To attempt the search for an end to this situation of her own.
Yet Vanya had stayed.
Five can’t help but touch the scar the bullet had left.
They reach the fence, and he and Vanya stop.
“Huh,” she says, nodding towards the ground. Five looks over.
The creature is without arms. Smeared in blood, skin turned black from rot. Eyes that pale white that Five has stared into so many times.
“It’s been a while,” Five states, because it has, weirdly. Years into this you’d think the whole world would be crawling with them. There had been at the start, survivors and zombies alike fighting for their lives. Then there had been less survivors. Now there wasn’t anyone. No zombies. No survivors. Sometimes it felt like Vanya and Five were the last people left in the world. Wandering endlessly.
Vanya taps her gun and Five shakes his head, she’s got less bullets, and while they haven’t had to use them in ages, he’d rather not take the risk.
The gun firing echoes out, but Five doesn’t feel that sinking sense of dread he used to feel. When every misplaced noise meant he and Vanya had to get out of wherever they were as soon as possible.
The body continues to lie dead on the ground while Vanya and Five hop the fence.