Chapter Text
On the third yanked left, Declan fears he’ll be sick. The rented Tesla, tires whimpering, seems to agree with him.
The man driving has no regard for the road, weather, good sense, or human decency. Henry Cheng takes the winding corners like he wants to skate off the too-near mountain edge. The tires scream every time, as does the sympathetic keen of the pounding in his cerebrum. The blank white slate of snow outside the windows does not ease his tension: No stop signs, no other drivers, even the railings invisible in the storm. His worry clearly goes unshared, since his driver is unbothered by the growing natural disaster. In this environment, they should be crawling along at a sensible three miles an hour, not stomping on the accelerator like it’s possible to outrun ice. For a singular, upsetting moment, Declan misses Ronan's driving.
He sighs. Something high-pitched blares from the speakers, ostensibly words sung by a human, though they’ve been sped-up to chipmunk and back. All he can make out is the same five lines, looped to a jaunty note. Cheng’s not looking at the road at all, now, choosing instead to keep his eyes three centimeters away from the massive iPad of the GPS. Declan curses his body for betraying him, curses his chronic migraines for loathing him. He curses Henry, and then Christ too, just for good measure. What a dreadful situation.
The car shudders violently as it stumbles over something on the road.
Declan clutches his head tighter. Sharp ache rocks his body, or his brain stem, or his spine. He’s used to pain; it rocks him sideways regardless. “I don’t think this thing is working,” Henry complains, loud over the music, barely less high-pitched than the screaming Chipette vying for attention.
(That’s not what he sounds like. Declan knows what he sounds like. He knows that he’s not been this high pitched since his voice dropped, a decade ago. The only reason for his voice to be so awful right now is that he hates everything good in the world, and wants Declan to die, and this has been a too-elaborate murder scheme this entire time. He would have preferred another bullet.)
The car sways wildly in another turn, rounding a massively blank, snowy wall. His stomach churns with the motion. “Because we’re knee-deep in rural Fucksville mid-Winter, Cheng. Please, for the love of Mary, just go slower, and look at the ro⏤”
The thing about a really good headache is that it skews time. It gives Declan a prolonged second to appreciate, and then resent, his narratively appropriate admonishments. I knew it, I told you so, nobody listens to me in this damn house. In other words, it offers him enough time to yell; " Watch out! "
Cheng glances up too late, flinging his phone in his haste to wrench the wheel sideways. It smacks in heavy impact, specifics drowned out by the tires screeching. There’s ⏤ a flash of dark wood and snow right ahead⏤ a blockage of some kind⏤ and the guardrails are suggestions of metal⏤ useless⏤ they buckle under the weight of the crumpling hood ⏤ the car slips off the edge of the hill pass without a whisper more of resistance.
They’re falling. Everything is loud, surprisingly silent, flashing white; and Declan thinks, I fucking knew it, and Declan thinks, fuck, I’m going to die in fucking Wyoming, and Declan thinks, I hope Ronan remembers the taxes exist. There’s a distinct lightness to the air, a horrible swooping in his stomach, and his tie is in front of his face. Ronan is entirely incapable of paying bills. Two decades of keeping his family together, and the IRS will take it from him. They’re falling, they’re still falling ⏤
The car lands sharply, jolting him from cervical to ankle, slamming his head into the dashboard, crushing his brain. Or would have, if his seatbelt didn’t keep him firmly lodged, only making his teeth rattle in his skull. They crunch through something lighter, a fence, or a shed⏤ and then they roll to a stop, almost too abrupt. The music still plays, mockingly upbeat.
There are no airbags in the car. Of course there aren't. It’s old and rented, barely ready to drive to the grocery store, let alone go hiking. Maybe he should’ve just let Cheng drive the new Volvo. Fuck, no, of course not. That’s the concussion talking.
He needs to turn the radio off. The action hurts, but the relief is instant. Declan takes in his shaking hands, aching and bruised. That’s right⏤ his head knocked into the window at some point; the back of his palm taking the brunt of the impact. “Jesus Christ,” he wheezes out, glancing to the driver’s seat, expecting the worst. He's surprised. Cheng hasn't been lucky enough to escape dash damage, mournfully clutching his bleeding face. But the rest of him seems unharmed, just like Declan is, for the most part.
“Fuck,” he complains, nasal yet miraculously normal-pitched. Oh, now he speaks normally. Fuhngk. He repeats it in Korean, too, delving into a prolonged string of curses that make Declan wince. When he moves his hands to gingerly unbuckle the seatbelt Declan forced him to wear, I told you so, his nose is gushing blood. In any other circumstance, it might have been a sympathetic sight, in the same way a spray-painting oil painting might be. In this one, Declan is too furious to be kind. “I knew I should’ve gotten my face insured. Gah. Man-shit-fuck.”
A nerve in his face twitches. Rolling his eyes any further will cause another delayed concussion, so he focuses his attention on forcing the door open instead. It’s not quite caved in, but it protests being moved, jammed in place. Declan braces himself against the seat and forces it open. The world outside is both too bitingly cold and too bright to catalog yet. He’s grateful his jacket is well-buttoned.
He picks up the laptop bag he keeps his gun in, squinting out of instinct to make sure his box of spare bullets is in there. It's easy to be ignored as a man with a briefcase, no matter how eccentric his choices of ties have gotten now. Besides, keeping it off his person feels a little safer than what Cheng is doing, prying up his too-tight waistband to shove his pistol up against pale skin. Declan pats himself down for good measure--makes sure his phone is still snug in his suit pocket, the weight reassuring as he moves. He takes a few steps back, shaky in the still-strong wind. It picks up biting snow to smack it into his face; but he can see a few feet ahead. It's just barely enough.
Henry joins him, whistling lowly at the crumpled front of the car. He’s zipped up his jacket, too, jaunty even though his assaulted nose is turning frostbite purple. A haphazard wipe paints half his face red, blood following the curve of his open mouth, staining his teeth. It's satisfying to see. He glances up, as it for sympathy, and Declan immediately gives him the most sour look he can muster. For his own sanity, he hopes there's a tissue somewhere. "Your phone?"
"Nope," Henry says, pulling it out of his pocket, waggling the crumpled screen at him. It's bent irreparably.
"Jesus. Bee?"
"No, it's too cold for her out here. You?"
It takes his numb fingers too long to grab hold of it, but Declan manages to pull his own phone out. A crimson 7% lights up the screen. “No signal.” He still sends a short text to Jordan all the same. He'd like his frozen corpse to be found, at least.
He moves ahead three steps. 6%. Declan sighs, glaring at the mist over his face. The wind is dying, finally, turning the place around them from white and ow into a passable representation of a backyard. It’s attached to a looming house. When he looks back, Cheng is still stuck where he was, ankle deep in snow and frowning. He's turned toward the crumpled hole in the fence, where the remains of the car hood smolder in misery. The wind buckles the dry trees just beyond it; a storm with no sound raging outside the property line. It’s unnatural, the difference in wind pressure with no discernable borders to cause it. Cheng’s eyebrows twitch, something complicated passing over his face, flitting away in an instant. "You know,” he says, jovial like a piece of shit, bloody teeth bared, “it was pretty fucked up of this shithole to interrupt my road."
There is no more dignity to waste with a response to that. Declan stalks toward the house. The closer he gets, the older it looks, a suburban place left alone to suffer the weather. It’s a place that should be matched with several identical twins. It's unsettling to see it alone in the middle of nothing. On its rotting walls, millennial-gray paint chips in swaths; the wall inside coated in splatters of mold. The snowed-in balcony is missing a hefty chunk of both railing and floor. Pieces of stubborn glass cling to the edges of the upstairs windows, sealing off a blanket of pure darkness. There’s a growing sense of wrongness that only worsens as he moves closer, reaching slowly for his gun as he squints through the foggy kitchen window. Declan opens his mouth to speak, to warn, but a catastrophically loud sound interrupts.
Cheng has managed to kick through the innocent back door; its splintered wood swinging ruefully as he barges through. “Let us enter, Lynch,” he calls out behind himself. “Door’s open. Broken. Whatever.” Declan tuts loud enough to be heard, but follows him through to immediate relief. It’s not warm, by any means, but not snowing is close enough to it. It’s painfully dark, even though the scarce pale daylight does its best to cut through the haze of dust. They catch their breath as they wait for their eyes to adjust. The lingering smell of summer mildew makes the air thick, nauseating.
The kitchen island is haphazardly laden with long-rotted food, stools toppled over and rotting into cracked tile. He’s glad the rock-hard breakfast is beyond smell, at least, since the kitchen window still stands strong, perpetually trapping all odors that don’t escape through the missing chunks of drywall. It feels wrong to disturb the eerie air of the place, to move too fast and break its spell. He’s grown up learning to trust intuition: he does not trust this place.
Declan’s stomach swoops lower, steps wary. Being stranded in a place like this with zero resources and zero phone signal and a non-zero chance of hypothermia and tetanus will make him spiral if he starts to think about it, so he doesn’t. Henry does not share the thought. He busies himself with throwing open the cabinets and rifling through every drawer, tossing spoons and screwdrivers alike to the ground.
It is painfully loud. “Cheng,” Declan snaps, barely able to cut through his incessant, childish clattering. He’s still trying to keep his voice down. It’s barely learned self-preservation that keeps him quiet, too used to dealing with wayward brothers to start yelling so soon.
Cheng huffs, pulling his hand out of the seventh kitchen drawer he’s desecrated. His trail of record-speed destruction is apparent, three broken handles swinging in his wake. The wood is swollen, splintered ー something tugs at the edges of Declan’s stomach again, discomfort at the brand of coffee machine that sits on the counter.
With a shrill sound, the other man pulls out a once-sodden cardboard packet, logo and text obscured. It looks more like an oversized, decomposing matchbox than anything else, but a prolonged squint lets him recognize the brand under the grime. Henry shakes it violently, makes another too-loud sound of satisfaction, and then tosses it at Declan without warning. “Here, it’ll fit yours, John Wick. I know damn well you can’t afford bullets after the last Market.”
It’s been nearly three years since Boudicca had taken over the market, but the boy refuses to let it go. Declan pockets the extra ammo.
“Thank you. Now, who in Mary’s name gave you a license? I would have thought Gansey would’ve taught you how to drive right, at least. What the fuck was that?”
Henry makes a face, crossing his arms tight. This is his thing now, deflecting everything, worse now than he’d been in high school. Part of it feels like the road trip’s fault. Gansey is a contagious experience, but whatever chemical reaction he’s had with Henry has turned the latter into a nuisance at best; a danger at worst. “If I had not swerved, we would’ve been shish-kebabed and crunched up, D-Day. Is it my fault your American roads are garbage? Is it my fault you do not get holes drilled into your head to help all that air inside of it, so that you may drive instead?”
Lynch exhales through his teeth. “Cheng,” he snaps. All we had to do,” he says, seething further, suddenly furious, “was get from point A to Goddamned B, and now⏤”
He’s leaned back too much. He jerks to dodge as a cabinet door next to his head crashes down. It’s loud enough to make them both jump, not loud enough to make them stop. “And who gave you the contact you came here for! I didn’t have to be here, I could have let you get shot on sight by men who do more for less, and yet I did not. I have done you a favor, and⏤”
Declan’s voice rises to contest. “Favor! If I’d known a damn business dinner was charity to you I’d have asked for a tax brea…” Something clatters in the distance, probably the storm closing in. He swallows his spike of anxiety: it’s an old house, bad weather. Nothing else to it. “I’d have asked anyone. Else!” The house shakes again, the wind picking up.
“Who would you even ask? You’ve already pissed off the entire Market! You’re finished!”
“That is not the fucking point! ”
Henry’s shrill again, high and defensive. “What is?”
“It doesn’t⏤ Apologize! Say you’re sorry! You could’ve killed us,” Declan’s breathing hard now, hands fisted, matching the blazing fury in the other man’s eyes, roiling with feeling ⏤if he dies here, who the fuck is going to take care of anything? Who is going to tell Jordan? He sounds whiny now, plaintive and miserable to his own ears. “And you ruined my week.”
“Oh, with me you have a spine! Where was it three years ago? I wouldn’t have had to do anything if you didn’t keel over in the middle of Kansas City Wonderland! I don’t… driving stresses me the fuck out, man, you know that, and just because your bitch brother won’t apologize, youー” Declan stops listening.
It can’t be the wind. There’s been no wind since they made it past the porch.
The dull howling.
The wheezing breaths.
The crackling.
It is not the wind.
They’ve been loud, reaching every corner of the decrepit place. Nearly begging for attention.
Something has heard them.
He thinks about the looming blackness of the upstairs windows. The glass on the sill: a force from the inside shattering it in a bid to escape. The missing railing, but the untouched ground. Something unable to leave.
Something that has heard.
Something that is coming.
The swinging door to the living room slams open, a figure hurtling out. Henry’s the closest to it; tackled to the ground with superhuman aggression. Declan should have his gun out, but reaching into his bag is taking precious seconds. Cheng’s sharp bark of fucking shit! keeps looping, hanging in the air, in his ears.
Awful last words, to say or hear.
They’ve vanished behind the counter, and he can hear the scuffle, he can hear awful, groaning breaths. Cheng’s sharper, panicked grunts. Growling. Gasping. Everything is syrup slow, honey-trapped. They’re going to die here. Declan flicks the safety off, finally.
The gunshot is deafening.
He hesitates, his finger uncertain on the trigger.
Henry's shot first.
Everything heaves back into sharp focus. Cheng’s stupid fucking revolver’s hit something wet, something squelching. He sprints to look around the corner, but the garage door is shaking now, something attacking it violently from behind. Tension wrecks his focus, the edge of the marble island gouging into his weak side. Declan eyes the other end of the room nervously, but gives in to the impulse to help.
It’s a nasty sight. The stranger is dead. He’s been dead for a while. His blackened mouth hangs open, beige-red growths crowding his teeth. His eyes are black and purple, as bruised and deformed as the rest of his ⏤ of its ⏤ face. It’s burly enough to make the thinner man under him flail, struggling to heave the corpse off. Declan grabs it by the plaid collar and pulls it away. It’s been shot in the neck, close enough to the brain stem to be stopped entirely. Rust-black blood ruins Cheng’s fancy jacket; the edge of Declan’s sleeve. Its neck ragdolls to the side. Henry curls over, palm pressed to his ear, face scrunched in pain.
“What the fuck,” one of them says. Maybe both.
“Garage,” another says after that, far quieter.
The rattling hasn’t stopped, he notices. There’s solid, unrelenting pressure from the other side of the garage door. It’s been blocked so well by the lopsided refrigerator that it’d become irrelevant; they’d chalked it up to general destruction. But now it’s clear that the wood is weak, already splintering. The entire frame buckles inward when another human-shaped thing leaps out, screaming through her mouthful of fungi.
Declan’s ready to shoot this time. He squeezes the trigger. One, miss, two, done.
She looks more like a corpse than the other man, bloated and shambling and crumpling as the second bullet neatly bisects her skull. It looks jarringly human as it falls, but he’s killed many people who’ve tried to kill him. It only makes it easier when they aren’t coherent enough to beg or complain. He crouches for a closer look. She looks like her counterpart, except there’s a film of discolored white over the bruise of her eyes. It is swollen horribly, nearly an allergic reaction. Her mouth juts with a mockery of teeth, distinctly mushroom-shaped protrusions overtaking the space of her gums, ripping apart the skin of her cheeks to make room. He slowly pats down the remains of her clothes, wary of any movement.
There’s a decaying, crumpled note in her pocket. He unfolds it. The paper is lined, ripped out of a notepad, stained with blood and fluid, but legible. He clears his throat to read aloud. “Chris, I hate that youre not here right now. I’m scared. Everything is going to shit ⏤⏤ theres no cell & no net & i keep hearing everyone fighting --rioting?? so loud outside / neighbors kid BIT me?? / im praying they dont get into the house. i dont know what all this means but i feel ill & 911 isn't working either and… I miss you. I wanted to let you know just in case. I’ll be out in the garage till you get here. Love always, Maria. ”
Cheng sounds like he’s holding back a laugh. There’s an edge of hysterical delight to him, even as he shakes out his hands, mystically not deaf. He mouths the word bit to himself, eyebrows disappearing into his overgrown hair. He scrubs at the drying blood on his cheek. “Zombies? Are we doing zombies now? What is this? Also, never put on that girl voice again. I think I got a rash.”
“I don’t know,” Declan answers, refusing to think any further about any wider implications whatsoever. The thing that attacked Cheng looks largely the same. He doesn’t have anything useful on him. There’s an embroidered Christopher R. on his collar, soaked through with the rancid smell of fresh rot. He swallows his discomfort. They ought to clear the garage, find anything that can help them, but the gaping maw of the door isn’t inviting. Cheng doesn’t offer to go inside, and Declan has no doubt of the kind of race-related commentary he’ll hear forever if he tries to scope it out. “I think she meant to put this in the kitchen, but didn’t get the chance. He was in the living room… Let’s see what it’s like outside. I don’t hear anything.”
They pick their way through the remains of the living room in dead silence. The walls are plastered with peeling wallpaper, its patterns faded and worn. A tattered sofa sits in one corner, its stuffing spilling out of the ragged tears in the fabric. There’s an ancient backpack next to the smashed coffee table; possibly belonging to the creature that attacked. Every window is boarded up, the door blocked with a loveseat on its side. It’s distinctly blackened with mold. Declan puts his strength into heaving it off, wincing the whole while.
“I couldn’t figure out why this place felt weird,” Cheng says quietly, hovering. His head is at an angle like he’s on the phone, warming Robobee with the heat of his skin; desperately trying to wake it up. He rifles through the rucksack in the meanwhile, tossing out wrappers and pocketing a stray bullet. He’s been trying to keep his jacket on, but Christopher's putrescence floats in the air every time he moves his arm. “Like. Heebie-jeebies on meth. But you can feel it too, can’t you?”
His dress shoes slip on the rotting floor. He tries again, finding purchase at another angle. “We’re on the ley,” Declan agrees, grim, reluctantly meeting Cheng’s worrisome gaze. “But I don’t know what that means. Everywhere else was fine.” The seat dislodges, finally, so abrupt it nearly topples him. Henry stalks forward to yank open the door before Declan can, stepping outside in the second it takes to wipe his hands off of moldy fabric.
His frozen, rigid body blocks the door. Expecting him to move on, Declan collides with him, back to front, breath ghosting over his deteriorating ponytail. The shorter hairs at the back of his head are dried down with blood, which will be a pain to wash off, so he really should… not be thinking about this. He steps back. It takes a hefty shove to his outstretched arm to be able to squeeze in beside him, and witness civilization, finally.
He corrects himself: witness a dead town. The seemingly lone house is situated on a sloping hill. The door opens to a street lined with houses, all boasting various stages of decay. The streets are empty. It keeps going until the horizon’s fog overtakes the taller buildings in the distance, a mile of debris and stopped cars. It feels both too massive and too constrained, strange and complicated in the way of dreams. It feels like his father’s failed objects, masses of items that make his head hurt. Henry’s pained whimper is a running drone in the background, low and constant. He nearly pats him in sympathy, palm hesitating centimeters away from the small of Cheng’s back.
“Fuck, Lynch. This doesn’t look like Kansas. You sure you don’t just want to freeze outside?”
Declan groans.