Chapter Text
The first step is wanting—wanting to be alive.
Craving that plunge into heart beating, lung twitching, brain weaving liveliness, hungering for a body that no longer rots. All of this was the symbol of living and breathing—being alive. If you had that, anything that came before would be history.
Or maybe for some, the first step tracks a few paces before that.
In some large city in some state of some country that time had forgotten, an airport sat decrepit and filled with the dead. Maybe that’s where he had been when the virus broke out, he mused to himself, although in death he’d lost most reason to think. Instead he preferred wandering around listlessly, waiting for hunger to return.
Oh, yeah, by the way. He was dead.
The zombie didn’t remember his name, but, on the bright side, as he stood there staring at his reflection in an old, half shattered window, he could at least recognize the shambling mass of flesh and bones that he identified as himself. The hair, dirty blonde, was matted and grown out into an unruly mess of grease and grime. He’d been tan once, but now was just sort of… grey. It was part of the rot.
Some had it worse than others. The zombie shuddered at the thought.
For some reason it made him nauseous to think about the wounds of the dead. That made his choice in meals all the more… uncomfortable.
He didn’t want to kill people, but he had to; this was the way of the world.
What am I doing here? he thought to himself. Am I lost?
The zombie turned from his reflection in the glass, glancing around at the airport terminals that had closed with the end of the world. The entire place was filled with wreckage and decay: overturned potted plants lay rotten, entire planes sat abandoned, possibly still fueled. It would be fun to just get out of here, but there was nowhere to go that wasn’t part of the outbreak.
It was hard to know for sure how the world ended up like this, especially with a slowly dying brain that had a tendency to forget things. It could have been a virus, or, a flesh eating parasite, maybe. Dimly he thought to himself, I bet I have mad cow disease.
The dead weren’t really good at telling jokes.
A grunt roused the nameless zombie from his thoughts, attention pulled, and he twisted around. Half lost, he wasn’t sure where or what he was looking for; with the cloudy mind of the dead, everything felt so much slower. His eyes landed on the form of his only friend: Q.
Q couldn’t remember all of his name, just the letter, and No-name surmised that just the letter was good enough for him. He had a massive, grotesque wound on his eye, all dried blood and gunk, and dark hair that was uneven and caked in the gore of the world. He must’ve been hot shit back before the world went to hell, based on how well dressed he was.
What an idiot, the zombie thought, staring at Q. Wearing a suit and tie in the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, he only wore a hoodie that might have been green, once. It was practically brown now, bloodied and strung together with all its loose threads. Underneath, a white shirt was basically caked in red-and-black.
Q waved his arm jerkily, the first stages of rigor mortis making it hard to move fluidly. He tried to say ‘Hey’, but his throat was constricted and half dead, so it mostly came out as, “Hhhhhh,” with a little wheeze and groan as he shuffled closer to meet the other.
They were as close to friends as they could be, for being dead and all. No-name sort of twitched his head in response, an undead attempt at nodding in recognition. The two of them, like most other zombies, weren’t really able to communicate with each other, no matter how much they thought. Perhaps a thousand different things were stuck in their heads but couldn’t come out, millions of words to convey the very secrets of the universe trapped between chapped lips caked in the dried blood of their last dinner.
Or, maybe they were just that far gone. Only communicating as needed. It seemed like that was the case for Q.
“H,” he began, another H word lingering on his lips. The wound of his past life was dragging down, growing wider and wider every day until the rot reached and kissed just near his lip. Gross. He kept trying, though, that want to speak wheezing out a request until finally the word slipped out, “Hungry.”
The other zombie nodded slowly, matted blonde waves falling into his face; it was always about being hungry with him. Never thoughts, memories, questions—that was all gone alongside their heartbeats.
Seeking food—correction, seeking humans—was becoming a much larger issue. Most of the uninfected that remained in the city gathered in what used to be a stadium; the whole place was heavily guarded, but stuffed to the brim with humans. It would be a pipe dream to try to get into there, and as more people migrated to living in the commune, it meant there were less around to feed the growing number of living corpses roaming around.
There was a chance they’d be able to find a straggler or two. That was lame, though. When there was a large hunting party and only a few humans, the zombies would have to fight over eating to survive and eating to stay full—and don’t even think about trying to sneak a bite of the brain. The brain was the best part, because the brain had memories, feelings, thoughts. The brain made the undead feel alive; fighting over it was a death wish. Zombies killing zombies over what could be their final meal.
Q prompted the other by nodding roughly, nudging his zombie companion to follow him as best he could. The two shuffled together away from the terminals and towards the front exit, down busted escalators and past luggage that had never been claimed.
It was a long walk, but as they traveled, others began to follow—it seemed the search for food was something that could be communicated without even a word. It was better to travel in masses like this anyways, three, then four, then seven, then twelve of them. They had better chances to outnumber groups that way, even if they weren’t all that hungry.
Focused thought was a rare occurrence for the undead, and when it came, it was best to follow it rather than stand around groaning waiting for the world to end. It’d kill them eventually. The flesh withers down to bone and without conscience, thought, emotion—they let it. They fall past the point of no return.
The zombie in green, eyes hazy and cold with death, groaned incoherently as the newly formed group slipped through the broken sliding doors and into the midday light. He squinted, body twitching in the sudden brightness, but he kept dragging along one shuffling foot at a time, as did everyone.
A walk to the city might take hours with them traveling like this. Distantly, his foggy brain made one single, sly comment.
Fuck, we move slow.
.
.
.
There were humans digging around somewhere. He could just tell.
The humans may have been walled up, but they had to leave the safety of their shelter eventually, usually on runs for medicine or other supplies. The last time No-name had eaten, he remembered the brain of someone who used to work in the stadium. They left at least twice a month, for food or for medicine that they couldn’t grow within the strongly guarded walls. Maybe this was the case; it made a lucky day for the dead.
As they dragged closer to the city, Q took up the front, and he fell slowly at his side. With a raise of Q’s hand, the entire pack of zombies shuffled to a stop at the end of the street; a lone groan echoed from the back lines, almost completely uncontrollable, and then nothing at all. For a moment, the dead could manage silence, just long enough to listen for where they could be.
Humans had a smell, and a very intense one at that, but the dead weren’t exactly good hunters on that alone. It was the sound—a slightest mumble of voices speaking to each other—that told them where to look: an old pharmacy with the windows boarded tight.
If No-name remembered how to speak properly, he would want to talk to them. For some reason, he was fixated and perplexed on apologizing to humans for what he had to do: kill them, eat them, repeat. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt guilty just coming in, causing destruction, and then moving on to the next victim. If animals worked he would try animals. There was no way around it, he had to eat. They all did.
With a little twitch of the head, Q nodded to move in. This crowd of undead began to slowly shuffle, dragging their bodies towards the boarded-up building that housed their dinner.
“Did you hear that?” A human called from inside, head twisting around mostly empty shelves to look around. “Sapnap?”
“Don’t worry,” The second, evidently named Sapnap, muttered. “It’s nothing, George.”
There was a heavy pause. “No, Sapnap, I think—” George swallowed, every hair on the back of his neck turned completely rigid, “I think we need to go.”
“We can’t,” He reminded him. “We need this stuff.”
“Sapnap’s right, George,” A third chimed in, meek and unassuming.
“But,” George pleaded, wringing his hands out.
There were at least six of them in there; as they got closer, the undead were practically drooling with delight. Six humans all at once—even if a couple got away, even just four would be perfect.
No-name took up the lead at the edge of the door, and bumped into it with a heavy smack. Somewhere, another zombie groaned.
“There! There, right there, Sapnap, we have to get out of here, or—”
“George,” Sapnap interrupted, “I love you, really, but we’ve got to—”
And then the door burst in, and No-name ran stomping into the room. He jumped suddenly and tackled a human with dark hair that went down to his broad shoulders, and grey eyes that seemed fiery and warm with life. The shouting broke out soon, and the rest of the hunting party descended on humanity.
This is so gross, he thought to himself, staring down at the horrified face of the human, I’m sorry you have to see this.
Gunshots flicked through the air like nothing, and as he fought for control over this human, he knew there were fellow undead like him going down. Distantly he hoped Q was not one of them, but the sudden hunger of having a real, live, human person beneath him completely clouded his complex thought. The humans tried running—there was a back exit, and in the total fight at least one escaped, but the second who tried was ambushed by a zombified woman and the two children that followed. They were learning to hunt. The poor girl was destroyed in seconds
The human, George, shouted, no, screamed, “Sapnap! Where are you!” before stumbling and falling to the ground, nearly knocking a medication shelf completely over as he tried to shuffle into safety. He pulled up a gun and fired, and the zombie descending on him fell to the ground in a dead heap.
You don’t wanna know where he is.
“No, no, please,” The human begged, fighting wildly and weakly, but No-name couldn’t stop now. If he refused food—if he refused the brain—maybe the other undead would know what was wrong. They’d take him out for sabotaging the meal. A mere second of guilt echoed through his undead head before he tore through the other’s neck, groaning, feeding, murdering.
If he did refuse the brain, he could be one of them: a new member of the family. Covered in grime and another man’s blood, he thought of it… but couldn’t help himself, weak to his impulses.
He lifted the human by the shoulders and brought his head down onto the bloodied tile once, no, twice, and as the gunfire kept on he dug his way towards the hot and pink organ. And when he found it, he had to dig in.
Beautiful memories, no, beautiful life, ran like a film over his vision.
He is a boy named Sapnap, and he is watching the end of the world.
It starts slow. He is nine years old, no, turning ten, because today is his birthday. He has pizza, and he is Sapnap, and his parents have offered to take him to see a zombie movie. He’s so excited he spits out half his slice. Tomato sauce stains his clean white shirt like hot, wet blood, he’s bleeding, he’s dying, he’s—
He is Sapnap, age twelve, and he is watching the news more and more every day. Today he finds out the president is dead. His parents come into the room with heavy bags and tell him that it’s time to go and relocate, but he’s distracted because his neck hurts and stings like something is tearing it apa—
It moves quicker. He is fifteen, his name is Sapnap, and schooling is now done with weapons. He lives in concrete walls and never sees the sun, but he knows 40 ways to kill a living corpse, and the more brutal, the better. Today he is distracted. Today, there’s a new boy in class who reads books instead of paying attention. The teacher calls him out,
“George,”
And he looks up. His eyes are two different colors, and he is incredible. He is beautiful in a way Sapnap hasn’t found anyone beautiful before. The teacher tells George to pay attention, because one day, he might need this. Sapnap writes him a note on a scrap piece of paper. When he passes it, he sees George smile for the first time.
He is Sapnap, age seventeen, and George is following him along quietly. “What are we doing?” He asks, flicking a flashlight back and forth. It’s dark. George’s voice echoes through the room.
“Come on,” Sapnap insists, tugging at a plastic lining that protected their colony within the stadium. His head hurts but he can ignore it because he’s taking George up to the roof to look at the stars.
George smiles when he sees them, and pulls Sapnap to him. They connect. Sapnap wants to be attached to him and surrounded in him. He wants their hearts to share a ribcage. He wants to fall completely and utterly in love with him.
Sometimes George thinks this is all going to end someday, and Sapnap, age eighteen, knows it won’t. He can make it as best he can, though. He can keep George safe.
And George, George is so beautiful he can sometimes see their future together, shapes and pictures in his head, but god, fuck, his head hurts, fuck, fuck, it’s like his entire skull is being torn in t—
It’s over.
He’s himself again. He’s no one.
The zombie gasped raggedly, struggling for air as if he were drowning in the thoughts of the now dead human before him. Something intense burned inside of him, heartbreak at his own deeds, and he couldn’t cry, but something in him wanted to. Dizzy, he tried to stand up and nearly fell over again, stumbling over the corpse of this human, Sapnap. Memories hadn’t ever been this intense before. A scrap of what had once been this dead man’s bandana stuck around his fingers and he shoved it in his pocket.
He heard a scream and looked around suddenly, spotting the same figure this new corpse had been kissing and loving in his mind. George was there.
He groaned loudly, a forlorn old thing as he tried to stumble to wear he had fallen. No. No.
Another undead was gaining on the poor human, who had to only shuffle around, too terrified to manage to stand back up. He tried to fire once more but his gun was empty; horrified, he stared at the undead as if he had no choice but to accept his fate.
They can’t both die here, No-name thought. He dragged himself over there and grabbed at the dead, shaking them away intensely. The undead, a woman with eyes so dark and dead he wondered briefly if she had ever been alive, snapped at him and the nameless zombie threw her, knocking her into another shelf that began to collapse into itself. “Mine,” He growled, spitting the word out with a snap of his teeth. The woman didn’t return.
He turned to George, and found him even more scared than before. Again he raised his weapon and fired, but nothing came out. Again, again, again, and he screamed, “Get away from me!”
He tried to get up but a crack sent him back down, and he sobbed. “Sapnap!” He yelled, although he knew he had been abandoned.
The zombie slowly knelt down, slowly and carefully inching towards him. Internally he tried to look friendly, but, being dead and covered in blood, there wasn’t much he could do to make that happen.
He held up a hand, staring forward at George, and slowly came to a stop. As the fighting raged on around them, a moment of solace between dead and living developed between them.
“What—” George heaved a heavy, terrified breath, “What are you doing?”