Chapter Text
It starts with the music.
Low melodies wafting through the air, and he is lost in their beauty.
The notes almost seem real, like something he could touch with his hands; trail his fingers through with gentle caresses.
His eyes are closed, and he breathes in the music, impossibly soulful, impossibly soothing.
The cold bites his skin, seeping into his bones, but he couldn’t care less.
He opens his eyes, watching the falling ashes; like grey snowflakes, fluttering down with a beautiful twirling dance.
Smoke trails from broken rooftops, fire burning defiantly in the shattered windows, growing where no life would.
There’s a twisted, dark beauty to the shattered landscape.
He’s barefooted, and the path is littered with glass and metal, and they cut his feet, but they make him feel so alive.
Like the pain is anchoring him to this reality.
His breath clouds before him, white and warm, and he can smell flesh and fire and smoke and blood. It scares him, but his body doesn’t seem to have any reaction to it.
He catches sight of the gramophone (who even owned a gramophone?), and he’s struck by the sheer poetry it represents.
All alone in a destroyed home, on a beautifully carved table, the spinning record played on.
He almost laughs at the absurdity.
He’s filthy, his clothes torn to shreds, he’s covered in blood (with no idea if it’s his own or someone else’s) and he doesn’t know if any of the people he loves are still alive, but somehow that just seems pointless to wonder about.
(He knows, somewhere in his mind, it’s possibly hysteria setting in)
The sun’s rays suddenly shine through a dark-grey cloud of smoke and soot and something terrible, streaming down with harsh intensity on his face.
With each blink he sees orange, then red, then black.
He warms up if only for a minute.
In the corner of his eye, he spots movement.
He turns, facing his entire body towards the movement, tensing his protesting body for immediate flight.
He can tell that it’s a hopeless case though, too many are there.
The empty shells of humans, twist almost grotesquely, this way and that, snarling and snapping at one another, at him.
They are similar to him; clothes ravaged, hanging off of their torn, broken bodies.
But what makes them different are the wounds, gaping and most undeniably fatal to a normal human, adorning most of their chests, heads, more.
And the fact that he has a pulse, beating erratically in his throat, his hands, and they do not.
It almost seems surreal, a dream, a nightmare.
He can see the saliva drip from the closer ones mouths.
He was never one to believe in faith (he was a man of science; his breed of science had no place for ridiculous, illogical faith) but he feels the fear press against his veins, and the prayers his mother had taught him as a child flood his mind.
Our Father who art in heaven….
He trembles, gentle shaking initially, but they progress to body wrecking tremors, uncontrollable, unforgiving.
Then he sees her.
She’s in the rear of the group, the least filthy of the pack (that makes sense, she despised dirt), her movements strangely more controlled, more graceful than her undead peers.
Her progress forward is much more hesitant than the rest.
Something aches inside him.
He can see in in her eyes, still clear, still bright, still her (no, he’s just deluding himself), the same hesitancy.
Every forward shuffle is dragging (perhaps that was because she had a broken leg, but he couldn’t be sure, she was the one with the degree closer to medicine, she was biochem, and he was engineering-).
Two narratives exist in his mind; the one before him, a pack of zombies moving forward in his general direction, and then the past: her leaning away from him, head thrown back with mirth bubbling from her lips.
Hands clawing at him.
Her coy smile as she winks, before leading him into their bedroom by his tie.
Rotting flesh and gleaming teeth.
Her eyes glowing in the half-light that filled their living room in the morning.
Groans and snarls from dead lips.
Her fingers twining in his hair, hissing his name in a mix of ecstasy and frustration as he brushes his lips against her collarbone.
(He’s getting a headache, but it seems to be worth it; he’s not afraid anymore, but that just seems strangely worse, so much more horrifying)
He never takes his eyes from her; he doesn’t think it would be wise to.
----
He threads his hands through the strands of hair at the nape of her neck, worrying her lip between his teeth.
She huffs a silent moan.
“Marry me.”
She pulls back from him, eyes still half-lidded, panting for breath.
Her lips twitch into a smile.
Promise me something.”
Anything.”
He presses his lips to the spot below her ear that made her sigh.
----
He keeps his promise.
He always does.
----
“You’ll stay with me forever?”
----
She shuffles into the sun, skin turning alabaster in the light.
----
“Always.”
----
His breathing slows to shallow puffs.
He sees her hair, shining in the light; brown turning orange, brown turning red, brown turning bronze (like it always did when she was alive).
Like fire and gold.
Always.
The pain is momentary, but the black that spreads is infinite.
Always.