Chapter Text
The strange boy emerged from the woods like a bright ball of noise. He had tangled, fluffy blond hair and a beat-up t-shirt, his arms tucked into a long hooded red jacket that was a bit too big. He was tall. Clutched in his hand was a lead, towing a small brown cow behind him. “What do you think, Henry?”
For the first person Wilbur had seen in exactly six months, he was overwhelming and invigorating at the same time. He was also completely unaware of Wilbur’s presence. Better to keep it that way, for now.
Wilbur ducked into the ditch.
Observing the boy was amusing, for a while. He chatted with the small brown cow as if the calf could respond, laughing as it ran a slobbery tongue up his arm or pushed him with its massive head. The withers of the cow were laden with saddlebags that clinked as it walked, and from what Wilbur could tell, the pair were on the way home from an expedition. They seemed friendly, carefree even. The boy’s cheerful expression was tempered only by the bandages lining his arms and the three large knives strapped to his hips.
Wilbur knew he was weak and malnourished, probably dehydrated as well, and he carried no weapons. Any child would have posed a threat, but especially one heavily armed. But the boy likely had food. He looked scrappy but not hungry. The cow looked brushed.
Of the three, Wilbur knew he was the most desperate.
Crouched in the ditch, he gripped his long stick with two hands, and stood.
“Fucking hell, man, where did you come from?” The boy’s voice wasn’t hostile, but a deft hand drew the longest knife from his waist. It was curved and spanned the length of his forearm at least. He held it comfortably.
Wilbur was sweating. Fuck, this boy could kill him easily. And he had what, a long, likely rotten stick to defend himself? He could barely raise the thing in the air. His arms shook. Did he say something? Wilbur couldn’t remember.
“Alright there?” The voice was closer now. Everything had gone a bit spotty, but Wilbur was sure the dots would go away in a moment. He just stood up too fast.
“Uh oh.” That was right in his ear.
Then it all went black.
Six months is a long time to live in a tiny cabin and bunker. When the world fell apart, Wilbur had been holed up already, spending a week or two away from society. (Away from a failed relationship with a beautiful girl who broke his heart, but he would rather refer to Sally as society . It was easier to place blame this way).
But then the world ended, and a week or two turned into a month. The landowner, a buff, outdoorsy type named Jared, had told him to “sit tight” until he could come back for him, and Wilbur had anxiously taken his word for it. For a few weeks, he had moped and worried around the small cabin, bereft of cell signal and internet but also too scared to venture far to find it. Jared hadn’t returned.
The panic room was an accidental find. Wilbur had been searching for hidden food, hidden anything really, anything to keep his mind off of reality, when he had found a loose panel in the birch plank walls. Tucked behind like a lost city of gold were enough cans and supplies to last Wilbur for, well, exactly five months.
By all accounts, Wilbur had been very lucky. Hell, by the time he found the boy, he hadn’t even encountered a zombie.
The biggest threat he’d faced was his own mind, and after six months of isolation, he was sporting some bandages as well.
If the boy didn’t kill him, Wilbur would try his best to keep those scars a secret.
As far as Wilbur could tell, he had ended up on a boat. The world was rocking and swaying to a gentle rhythm, a quiet bubbling and rumbling beneath his body. Something tickled his face. A warm boat, maybe, he thought as feeling creeped back into his limbs. A warm boat that was dragging the toes of his boots on the ground.
That didn’t make much sense. Wilbur forced his eyes to open.
His fingers were dangling just inches from the pavement, a cracked surface that was sliding steadily beneath him. His head was hanging against the taut stomach of a small brown cow, which explained the noises at least. Folded in half, it seemed he was just a tad too tall for the calf to carry.
A tail slapped him in the face.
“Oh, is he awake, Henry?” That voice appeared again just out of Wilbur’s sight, and the cow lurched to a halt. Worn, gentle fingers brushed over his hair and settled under his arms, pulling him to an upright position. Wilbur struggled to steady his head, it felt far too heavy for his fragile neck. The boy tucked a fist under his chin like he knew. “How are you feeling? Ready to walk yet?”
Up close, his face was kind and welcoming despite the myriad of scars and filthy plasters that covered it. His matted hair was in need of a trim, and he wore a locket with a green stone around his neck. Seeing Wilbur’s eyes travel to his throat, he snatched his hand away and tucked the jewel beneath his shirt. Without the support, Will’s head dipped beneath its own weight.
“Who are you?”
The kid laughed. “I don’t know if you’re in the position to ask questions.”
Will stared at him for a moment, fully aware that the boy was correct. “Dick.”
Shrugging, his peculiar guide turned away and urged the cow ahead, leaving Wilbur stumbling after his makeshift vehicle. “Well, I’m Wilbur. And, um, thank you. For not killing me.”
“Why would I, dickhead? You’re not really much of a threat.” As Wilbur found his footing beside the ambling pace of the cow, he added, “you can call me Tommy.”
Tommy idly plucked a knife from his waist, spinning it in his fingers while Wilbur leaned on Henry. Noticing how Wilbur flinched away from the weapon, he grinned and tucked it back into his belt. “Can you refrain from swinging that so close to my arm?”
“Nope,” the boy said blithely . He flashed a smile at the man hobbling beside him. “So, how the hell have I never seen you before? I thought I’d checked every house in town. You don’t look much like a seasoned traveller.” The “no offense” came as an afterthought.
Wilbur shuddered. “I was… isolated. Since the beginning of all this. In a cabin,” he winced as he thought back on the past six months of loneliness and constant terror. “In a cabin all alone.”
Unperturbed, Tommy nodded as if this made perfect sense. “That was lucky. We have a lot of people who started out in cabins. They tend to last longer that way, but you must have had a good store to wait it out this long.”
“Uh, yeah, I did. Or Jared did, I guess.”
Tommy paused at this, dark emotions crossing his youthful face. “Yeah, I knew Jared. He was one of the first.”
Wilbur didn’t ask for elaboration. He’d had a windup radio in the cabin, and for the first few months he had heard through a scratchy speaker all of the ways the world was falling apart. Then the radio had gone silent. He could piece together the fate of his host.
“Anyways,” the boy said, voice cheerful once more, “I’m sure you’ll be happy to meet the community. Just a ways to go.”
“The community?”
Tommy grinned again. “Oh, you’ll see.”
As it turned out, “just a ways to go” meant about 9 kilometers, and Wilbur was dragging by the third. The terrain was surprisingly smooth, pavement well-maintained without the stress of daily traffic. Overgrown weeds encroached from the shoulder, and the road lazily followed the winding path of a river. Despite the easy walking, Wilbur’s legs were weak from months of near disuse and he hadn’t eaten in days. Wobbling on his feet, he called out to Tommy to wait a moment as he dropped to his knees by the ditch. The gravel clattered as he hit the ground, the boy hovering over him.
“Are you okay? Should I put you back on Henry? I think he could take your weight a bit longer, he’s a strong cow.”
Wilbur groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m alright, Tommy. Just need a moment, I’ll be back on my feet in a second.”
Tommy’s hands fluttered at his side, and Wilbur was suddenly touched by how concerned this strange child was for his well-being. He would have had every right to leave Wilbur to die in the ditch, or even to kill him himself. This was the end of the world, after all, and surely the boy had a hard enough time caring for his own family. “The community,” whoever that was.
Reaching up to grasp his shaking fingers, Wilbur tried to project as much sincerity as he could into the words. “I’m gonna be okay, Tom. Thank you.”
The kid pulled his hand from Wilbur’s weak grip, blushing, and looked away into the woods. “Yeah, uh, whatever.”
Breaking the moment, Tommy let out a stifled gasp, and Wilbur followed his gaze to the edge of the spruce woods, picking out a spot of artificial purple leaned up against a tree. “Shit,” the kid swore under his breath, before scrambling down the ditch with a shower of scattered gravel. Wilbur pushed himself to his feet to follow, almost tipping over into the ditch as he gingerly followed the boy.
He stumbled over to where Tommy knelt on needle-strewn dirt. His hand was wrapped around a pale wrist, but it was clear at first glance that they were too late to check for a pulse. The body leaned against the tree was wearing a blocky, mostly purple sweater. Its fluffy brown hair was caked in blood, and it looked like the man had been shot between the eyes. A long cherry branch and various flowers were tucked around his body and circled in a crown around his head.
It looked like a hasty burial.
“It’s Karl,” Tommy whispered shakily, “he must have been bitten. They would never have killed him.”
“They?”
“The others. If only they had – I should have convinced them.”
Wilbur watched the skinny, shaky boy gripping the arm of an hours-dead man. “Tommy, man, you haven’t given me any context, but there’s no way this was your fault.”
He gently adjusted the crown on the dead man’s brow, straightening it. Two rings glinted on a stiff finger as Tommy laid the hand back on the corpse’s lap, rigor pulling the muscles back in place.
From a few steps back, the twin roses framing Karl’s face almost made him look alive.
From a few steps back, it looked like love.
Starting slowly, Wilbur asked, “Karl was married?” as they hobbled along the street.
“Engaged. Last time I checked, anyways, which was months ago. I hope they married in the end.”
Henry flicked his tail at a cloud of flies that seemed to have followed them from the body. The road was winding and narrow, now, following the path of a fast river. Tommy promised that the destination was close.
“And who are the others? Who was Karl with?” It was clear to Wilbur that Karl’s corpse had shaken the boy. He was silent and jumpy unless Wilbur asked him a question. Despite his hunger, his exhaustion, and the mounting panic that was manifesting as a watermelon in his windpipe, Wilbur was trying to keep it together for the child. Trying to piece things together and maybe instill some logic into this world of dead bodies left by the roadside.
Tommy sighed. “There was a crew of them, they didn’t want to join the community. Thought they could make it better on their own. I don’t know if that’s true, it seems like they just wander through the town. That’s not exactly a sustainable plan, innit?”
“I can’t imagine anything being a sustainable plan in this world,” Wilbur said quietly.
Tommy cut his eyes back at his companion, but he ignored the comment. “Dream and the others, they didn’t like some of our rules. No open weapons in the community, sharing the work, stuff like that. But without a protected home, you’re bound to get bit,” he faltered, the words shaking, “looks like Karl learned that lesson.”
“He was bit? It looked like he’d been shot.”
“Mercy kill.”
When the world ended, Wilbur had always expected a quick fiery blast. A meteor, a nuclear bomb, something to make him burn up and disappear. He liked the thought of going out in an explosion. A final spark before he’s gone.
This end of the world was more like burning out. Slower. Poison moving through the planet’s veins. It wasn’t gone, it was twisted into something that almost looked the same when he squinted.
He’d prefer to take the bullet.
Wilbur’s feet were dragging by the time the sun had slipped into the trees. He leaned one hand on Henry’s stocky hips, trading the support for a rhythmic whipping from the calf’s white-tipped tail. At some point, the road had changed from a gentle slope to an outright hill, and Wilbur wasn’t sure his ribs could make it much farther.
“… and we have a huge garden, all sorts of vegetables, which is really lucky because the seed orders never came in the spring. Jack, he’s a bit of a prick but you’ll like him, he’s the grunt labour in the garden, but Hannah’s in charge of the actual plants.” Half an hour’s walk between them and the corpse, Tommy seemed returned to his talkative self, although Wilbur didn’t quite buy his chipper mood. Something about the way Tommy pulled at his bandages and flicked his eyes along the ditch belied his endless chatter.
Wilbur shut his eyes and trusted Henry to lead him the rest of the way up the hill.