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Blue.
Their dreams were bathed in a brilliant blue.
Like a boat lost at sea/With no sails, not a breeze
It swirled before them. A vortex of azure, cobalt, and lapis. It rippled through the air in a twisted current of color.
I am drifting, cold waters/No stars to be seen
The colors surged and slowed in waves. It spun like the gales of a thousand winds and lapped at the ground. Every brush against the asphalt sent splashes of sapphire spiraling into the air.
All the steps I didn’t take/And paths proved untrue
It whirled around them, drawing closer and closer until all they could see was blue. Blue like the sky, blue like the sea, blue like their mother’s eyes or bloom of flowers awaiting to be crushed under feet.
It skirted across the edges of their skin, streaking scarred limbs with cerulean and indigo. The whirlwind of hues drew closer, pressing in on them and molding to their skin.
(Thought I’m about to wreck) / (You still have your life ahead of you)
Blue brushed their lips, pushing at the seams of their mouth until the seal broke and every breath was consumed with color. Navy poured down their throat, filling their lungs until they choked.
There is no inertia/In the ocean
Ranboo coughed and gagged, gasping for air as more blue flooded their system. Aegean and periwinkle and unending. It clogged every orifice until they drowned; hacking, and sputtering, and helpless.
Maybe if I paddle hard enough/I’ll fight the waves, try to be tough
Blue consumed their vision, cloaked their skin, claimed every fiber of their being until-
Can I belong to the sea?
“Ranboo!”
Grey eyes snapped open.
“Ran!” a voice shouted. Reality crashed down on them with the force of a hurricane. Their lungs ached and their skin burned. The woods were loud around them. The constant murmur of chirping birds and skitter of wildlife was fresh in their ears, all sounds chased by the singing of a radged river.
A breath fluttered out of their chest.
“Ran?” someone said. Ranboo turned slowly, their neck twisting to face a figure. Shaggy brown hair brushed her shoulders and wide eyes watched the taller with bated breaths. “You back with me?”
“Aimsey?” Ranboo tried. His head felt like it was filled with lead. Thoughts were clouded by the roar of rushing water. The high, tense line of Aimsey’s shoulders fell as they watched his eyes.
“Hey,” they breathed. In slow seconds Ranboo’s gaze cleared, the last wisp of blue fading from his mind. Dawn was peaking through the trees. Long twisted branches shrouded in leaves had pools of gold and soft oranges straining through the foliage’s gaps. The last thing Ranboo remembered was turning off his lantern and calling it a night. The sky had been a pitch speckled in stars.
“What time is it?” he asked. His voice croaked thick and dry, drowned in sleep. Aimsey shrugged, and for the first time, Ranboo noticed their hands. Their hands were wrapped around his arm, clutching him tightly. The older scavenger was missing their cane, the weight of their injuries set aside to keep a hold on Ranboo. Water was still rushing in his ears. “Where are we?”
“Early, and not too far from camp. I didn’t want to wake you up, but you didn’t look like you were stopping and we're gonna try to go in headfirst.” Aimsey nodded his head and Ranboo’s gaze snapped to look over their shoulder where rolling, white-crested water awaited them.
“Oh,” they breathed. Guilt swelled in the back of their mouth, and they swallowed it down its bitter taste. “Thank you.” Aimsey nodded, making a small noise from the back of his throat, and pulled at Ranboo’s arm again.
“Back to camp?” he asked. Ranboo couldn’t ignore the desperate lilt in his voice. “Please?”
If anyone could remember if the dreams or the nightmares came first, they weren’t telling Ranboo. He knew they had the same roots. Grown from the same unfavoured grave, blossomed with a similar armada of thorns and consequences, all things the teen was barely equipped to handle.
His past was mainly a haze of color. Moments blurred over a thousand times over until they became unrecognizable swirls doused in shadows. Before he’d met Aimsey, he’d tried to put the pieces of his history together, tried to map out any clear memories, and parse through silhouettes but it often made things worse. Too much time spent trying to sketch out a scene of his past, resulted in headaches so violent they were blinding. He’d open his eyes after unknown periods, vision too blurred to make sense of anything, bones heavy with a renewed sense of grief.
It took years to settle with the truth that he’d never get back what he lost. He’d never know a life before the apocalypse. The only path left for him was one forged in the future.
“Careful,” they cautioned, watching Aimsey nervously as she climbed up the rocks. Ranboo winced as she pushed off one rock face and grabbed another, pushing herself up until she was within distance of Ranboo’s outstretched hand. “Come on,” they grunted, pulling Aimsey up as she gave one final push off the jagged hillside.
She stumbled onto the path, leaning into Ranboo’s arms as the two caught their breath.
“I walked through all of that?” the younger asked. Aimsey nodded, still sucking in gasps of air. She pushed off her companion and switched to leaning onto a nearby tree. She lifted her right leg off the ground, face contorting in pain with the movement. Ranboo bit their lip, bouncing on their heels as they watched Aimsey stretch her leg out in practiced movements.
“You sure you don’t want me to run to the camp and grab your cane for you? I’d be right back,” Ranboo offered. Aimsey shook their head.
“You know I’ll be alright. Plus you don’t even know how to get back to camp, you’re just gonna end up getting lost and I’m gonna have to come find you, and you’ll be whining like a baby the whole way back.”
Ranboo rolled his eyes. “I’m surprised you even remember the way back. Your sense of direction is just as bad as mine. How do you know we’re not going in circles?”
“You went head-first down that hill and almost broke your neck, right after falling over that tree stump. So, find rocky neck-break cliffy-hill-thingy to find the stump, and then just follow the rest of the shit you tripped over, all the way back.” Ranboo groaned into their hands as Aimsey broke into a peel of laughter.
“I hate you,” they whined. Aimsey flashed a smile, shooting out a hand and waving for Ranboo to come help him.
He gripped their arm and balanced their weight against them, tentatively putting his foot back on the ground. Ranboo winced as Aimsey let out a hiss of pain. They waited for the older scavenger to get adjusted, then Aimsey tugged at Ranboo’s sleeve.
“I know,” he grinned. “Let’s go.” Carefully the two trudged off into the woods.
The movements were slow as they usually were when Aimsey was missing xyr cane. The teens walked through the gradually warming woods, crossing tree stumps and bones. Burrows and bushes. Carefully swerving around anything else that blocked their path. Ranboo dedicated the walk to his usual questions for a night after sleepwalking. Where was he going? Did he say anything? Any animals or zombies around?
In response, Aimsey asked about his dreams. Were they any different than usual? No, just a lot of color. Was he going anywhere, cause he was walking fast? I don’t think so. I just remember feeling really scared. Like I was dying. Walkers? No… I think I was drowning. Aimsey had paused then, brows pinching as xey took in his words. Xyr frown deepened but xey shook it off, directing Ranboo through a little thicket that was vaguely familiar.
Their camp was the same as it had been when Ranboo had left in a haze of dreams. A small fire Aimsey hadn’t bothered to put out in the xyr haste to go after xyr friend. A green pop-up camping tent they’d stolen a few weeks back when two had committed to scavenging for Niki’s compound full-time. Aimsey’s cane propped up against the rock that Ranboo had designated as ‘his chair’ and was swiftly stolen by Aimsey the second he turned his back. And if he tried he could see through the camp’s door where two scraggly backpacks rested.
Aimsey’s mudd-crusted blue-brown bag that she usually shouldered onto Ranboo. And the red and grey bag Ranboo’s hand since their first day of clear memories. The day their head burned as they lay on the ground of an abandoned street. Cadmium orange had glowed behind the clouds, the color so rich it threatened to become red.
Brain burning, wisps of red were infused into their gaze. They’d returned to their world with their heart in their throat and a broken key chain a few feet away.
Everything I’ve set upon/Unravels at my feet.
Red had lingered on their bones, twisting and turning as it roiled inside of them. The color was caked under their fingernails. If they pressed down it would spill, dribble down dirty palms in a path of ruby carved through ashes. Red was always on the tip of their tongue, waiting to be bitten, to be carved open, and spilled. To be set free-
“Ran?”
Ranboo blinked, snapping back to reality. He tore his eyes away from the tent. Clearing his throat he swung his head to look down at Aimsey’s curious gaze. The bunny hat they wore had slipped back during their walk, revealing more of Aimsey’s tangled brown locks.
“Hmm?” he replied. Aimsey frowned. They pulled their hat further up their head.
“We’re almost back,” they said. “Stay with me a little longer.”
“I’m here,” Ranboo promised. “I’m alright.” The pinched expression on Aismsey’s face deepened. They both knew not to trust it. Ranboo couldn’t promise that.
Ranboo had gotten used to their days not really being… days, a long time ago. Their life existed between punches of color. Dreams they couldn’t remember and nightmares drenched in hues that shook them to their core. Sometimes time moved in snapshots, standing one place one moment, somewhere else the next. It was hard to remember what things were missing when it never felt like they were there to begin with.
Aimsey had started keeping a journal for them. He'd sit by the fire every night and record their entire day so if the younger managed to croak out a jumbled question the next morning, Aimsey could hand them the book.
Ranboo had taken to adding their own notes to the journal on clear days. Jokes Aimsey cracked that were bad enough to remember, places they wanted to check out, things they wanted to find. There were a surprising amount of notes dedicated to things they thought that Niki would like. There was a less surprising amount of pages dedicated to unintelligible nonsense in Ranboo’s scraggly handwriting.
Ranboo lowered Aimsey onto xyr rock and handed xem xyr cane.
“I’m going to patch up,” he said, sending a smile before climbing into the tent. Aimsey’s slight grin was the last thing he saw before pulling the zipper closed. The process of patching up took longer than expected. Ranboo peeled off layers of clothes and examined the various scratches and bruises a night of sleepwalking had awarded him. There were the usual cuts and nicks on his palms. Pebbles and small twigs scattered through his hair and splinters in the few pieces of himself that were left uncovered during his midnight stroll.
Ranboo winced as he searched and cleaned. Progress would probably go faster with some water, but he didn’t feel like going back to the river and wasn’t about to use their drinking water or send Aimsey off into the woods after xey’d just spent the night scrambling through the underbrush.
They hissed as they pressed on scrapes with antiseptic and pulled splitters from their skin until eventually, Ranboo had rid themself of the night’s adventure. All its souvenirs lay in a pile on the ground. The teen dragged their jacket back on, hissing when it rubbed against one of the fresher cuts.
They grabbed the can lid where the handful of rock and wood was heaped and pushed into a half-stand. Light hit their eyes hard when Ranboo exited the tent, streaking their vision with stark white. Ranboo groaned and dropped the can lid to cover their eyes.
“Shit,” they groaned, shielding their gaze. “Aimsey?” Ranboo called out, stumbling out of their tent. They clumsily climbed out, barely managing to keep from tripping over the tent’s flaps.
“Really,” he heard Aimsey laugh, they sounded unimpressed.
“Leave me alone,” Ranboo whined. He went to zip their tent back up, eyes slowly adjusting to the day. When he turned back around the older brunette was bent over a map, tracing a path scribbled in Sharpie. They lifted their head, smiling brightly as they watched Ranboo’s face. He took no offense to their inquisitive look and quickly shoved himself into their space, peering at the map.
“Watcha looking at?”
“A map.” Ranboo glared. Aimsey snorted and smoothed the paper out on their lap. “If you’re still up for it, we aren’t far from the city Niki wanted us to check out.”
“City?” Aimsey nodded. “I thought she just wanted us to run through the town near the compound and get some stuff for winter?”
“That was last week,” Aimsey said with ease. “She asked us to meet up with Micha’s group and exchange some supplies for them since they're going pretty far out. It’s in the journal.” Right the journal, damn it. Ranboo knew they needed to check something else after they got dressed. Shame felt hot on their spine. They swallowed down a sudden bitter taste.
“Right, my bad,” they pushed out. Aimsey shrugged and pointed to the circled place on the map.
“This is where Niki said we should probably be able to find her.” Ranboo nodded.
“Micha’s the cartographer, right?” Cartographer was a loose term but Ranboo was pretty Micha was related to maps. Something about her going around tracking new settlements and which paths were super infested and which ones were safe. She had more knowledge of hordes and navigating them than anyone Ranboo knew. If tried he could almost remember her Gift being the reason why she was permitted to go on runs as long as hers.
“Yeah, she and James are going out East with a few people.”
“We don’t have to go into the city? We’re just meeting up outside?”
“Yep.” Aimsey adjusted the map, xyr brow wrinkling. “The walk’s only a couple miles, you wanna head out today or later?” The sun gleamed above them. Grey clouds hung in the sky, drifting in the breeze.
“Probably more rest first,” he replied. Aimsy shrugged. Xey rolled the map back up.
“If you say so.”
In all honesty, the call for rest wasn’t for Ranboo. He’d been pushing through the nightmares and sleepwalk exhaustion for what might have been years, no need to slow down his life for something that unending. Getting more rest wouldn’t make him less tired, it would just burn more daylight. Truthfully, the foggy-headed brunette was concerned about Aimsey. Xyr trek through the woods had taken a toll on xem and getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to search for a friend who was wandering through the wilderness like a lost puppy wasn’t very much fun. He wanted to make sure xey got some more time off xyr leg before they went on a several-mile journey. “Though,” Aimsey said, “we should probably get going before that smell gets worse.”
“Smell?” Ranboo raised their head and sniffed at the air. If they tried they could get the slight whiff of… “Smoke?” Aimsey nodded, pursing her lips.
“I think so.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
With nothing more to say about the smell, Aimsey’s gaze returned to the map. “I think we’re here-ish,” she started, “which means the city’s only a few miles east. Is your compass…” Her words faded into a blur as the day moved on. Time shuddered for Ranboo. The sun was high in the sky one moment before clipping the tops of trees the next. Sometimes Ranboo would blink and go from chatting with Aimsey to feeding spare twigs into the fire.
They watched Aimsey make soup and then were suddenly staring at an empty bowl with warmth filling their stomach.
Ranboo pulled their sleeping bag up and tucked themselves further into it. Aimsey had just wished them goodnight, and now she was hunched over a familiar little notebook, dutifully recording their day in the light of a dim lantern.
Ranboo rolled over, pressed his face into his jacket-turned-pillow, and let his eyes fall back shut. The sound of Aimsey scribbling lulled him to sleep like the kindest of lullabies, but even their murmured recount of the day followed by the scrape of pencils, couldn’t shake the scent of ash from the air.
Yellow.
The world around him was consumed by a yellow glow.
Is the world too much/Or is it just me
Its appearance arrived slowly. Long moments stretched between waves of darkness that gradually grew brighter and brighter until the light took on a honey-warmed glow.
It spread, leaking into every piece of his periphery until yellow was the only thing he could see. Its vibrance rang through him, pulsing under his skin as the canary color gleamed.
Everything I’ve learnt/Wasted on a girl
He watched tendrils of gold dance along his arms, curling around his scars until they pooled in the groves of marred skin. Yellow puddles shimmered like the light of a thousand fires. Like the crests of dawn, or the petals of a sunflower.
Who doesn’t know how to be free
And then the color shifted, twisting and churning until the lakes grew teeth sharp enough to bite. They snagged him, clamped down, and tore through flesh. Ranboo watched unmoving, his breaths caught by the hold of a dream, while amber spilled from his skin.
With a fire furious/I have burned my tongue
It rippled and burned as it spilled from him, molten and magma. Aureolin blood twisted into the beams of citrine light and blended into the unending yellow sky.
Grief from all the promises/Too many dreams unsung
The yellow absorbed the ichor leaking out of him, spinning and sculpting the new hues until the color formed burning pointed rows. He watched numbly, helpless and enraptured, consumed by multiplying agony as more yellow tore into him, punctuating his skin with searing light.
All things that lose their way/Can find it again
The color pouring from him bled his body dry. His skin grew tighter and the grind of muscle on bone was like sandpaper, like grains of rocks and glass had meshed with his nerves and were trying to saw through them. The heat leaked him out until every gasp was reduced to sandy coughs. The yellow blazed on, jaws continuing to snap, unending, uncaring, all-consuming.
Is there any path through?
“Ran?”
Aimsey was gripping his shoulder. Air filled his lungs in one sudden moment, his head pulsed with the noise of the woods and his thoughts reeled with the return of the world. Ranboo coughed, rolling over and pressing his forehead to the nylon draping the ground. Underneath their tent, the press of dirt of leaves formed soft shapes.
Another hack pushed out of his lungs. Ranboo felt Aimsey’s hand shift dragging down his spine and rubbing slowly as Ranboo’s breaths stuttered out of him and condensed against the floor.
“You’re okay,” Aimsey murmured, their voice dragging him back to reality. “You’re okay. You’re awake. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” Ranboo sucked in deep breaths, savouring the drag of his lungs in his chest.
They stayed face-down in the tent listening to Aimsey’s calming words as their heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm. “You’re alright, I promise,” he continued. Ranboo let the tension bleed from their muscles, the tightness coursing through their body slipping away with every laboured breath.
“Is it still…” The question was trapped behind their lips, the lanky teen unsure how to choke the words out. They clutched at the pieces of yesterday that flickered through their thoughts. “Did we go to the city yet?” Aimsey’s hand stilled, his gentle ministrations pausing. Ranboo's heart leapt to their throat. Oh shit. Oh god. Oh no. How many days has it been?
“No,” Aimsey said. “Not yet. I was finishing packing our bags.” Hot air collected on the nylon, Ranboo’s shoulders slumped.
“Okay,” they replied. Thank god, they thought. I’m not missing anything… not yet. That was good, two nightmares back to back wasn’t, but maybe today would be better than he was expecting. Two days in a row were usually bad signs, but if they remembered most of last night and were still here this morning, then maybe this–
and then he was sitting up. Chin pressed to his knees with his arms pressing his legs tight to his chest. Aimesy’s face was pulled into a pensive expression. Xey were no longer crouched beside him, but sitting cross-legged a few feet away –wouldn't be as intense as other aftermaths tended to be…
shit.
“Yellow,” xey said, “again?”
Ranboo's sleeping bag was rolled up and he’d traded sleep shorts for pants (apparently). But they were still in the tent and it still smelled like morning.
Ranboo paused to rub at their ears. Missing moments always made them feel so waterlogged. What had Aimsey asked? Oh. Yellow, right.
“Yeah.”
“Was it the brightness, like last time?” Brightness? Ranboo pulled scraggly memories of dreams together.
“I don’t think so… more like hot? I think it just made me feel dry, like jerky.” Aimsey snorted at the crass comparison before she smoothed her face over into a more solemn expression.
“Any worse?”
“No.” Thankfully. They just wished there was an option for it to get better.
Aimsey sighed and threaded their hands through their hair, frowning when they reached the ends and realized how much it was splitting.
“Do you still want to go out today?” they asked. “Or…” Take it easy, was the unspoken alternative.
Ranboo shook his head, “No, no, I’m good to go.” He was undeniably, anything but. He moved to stand. “What’s left to pack?”
They moved with phantoms. Ghosts lingered in their fingertips distant memories of moving objects, clouded around their palms. Moments bled together endlessly, words from one conversation would find themselves in another. The movements suited for one task would appear carelessly in another. Ranboo held their hands close to their chest as they watched Aimsey put out the meager fire. Time was molasses. Time was a hurricane. Time was made of echoes.
Time was something they had no sense for anymore.
Yet every fleeting moment was laced with smoke. The smell thickened and thinned, but never strayed. Ranboo felt themself repeating questions about fires to Aimsey. The answers never stuck, simply turning to water in their ears the second after Aimsey replied to them. Where was it coming from? How long had it been burning? Was it going to be in their way? Did Micha note it on the map?
He eventually just choked the questions down. There was nothing Aimsey could do to know the answers, and asking xem over and over again wouldn’t make anybody feel better. Not Aimsey, who was bound to get tired of his broken-record-like behavior, or Ranboo, whose mind seemed to fill the spots of Aimsey’s attempted replies with images of wrecked cars billowing smoke and roads streaks with blood beneath a red sky.
He just slipped on his pack as xey snuffed out the fire, clipped the bunded tent to the bottom of his bag, and nodded cordially when Aimsey declared xey were good to go. He trapped his words under his tongue and focused on staying anchored to the present as Aimsey winded through the woods. He followed xem diligently, endlessly, with every ounce of trust that resided in him. Xey hadn’t led him astray yet.
So he walked. And kept walking. And mumbled concerns about the ash-hazed air, to the teen in the bunny hat who agreed. And follow someone else’s map and compass through the rapidly depreciating air quality. Taking whatever path Aimesy declared was safest until they could walk no further. Until the source of the smoke loomed before him in a blaze unlike any other.
It started with heat.
A growing burning that rippled across the ground, before it climbed up their skin.
Ash dusted the pavement in thickening layers.
Sweat lined Ranboo’s neck. Heat.
Aimsey cursed under her breath. The words were muffled by the bulk of her gas mask, “Shit.”
The thunk of her cane continued to echo through the base tunnel.
The air rippled. Embers floated past in still-warm orange lights. Heat.
Fire, Ranboo thought. Warm light flickered across the ground. He could taste the heavy smoke. The air in the tunnel through the ridge grew hotter.
Ranboo’s breathing grew harder under their mask. The heat was almost enough to wither away in, ready to wring dry him like the maw of a yellow dream. He shuddered at the similarities. Heat. Aimsey’s cane kept its steady tap against the ground. Hesitation brewed in Ranboo’s bones. They crept closer to the tunnel's exit.
“Maybe we should- oh.” Grey eyes went wide. He looked to Aimsey's brown ones. Gold and orange were reflected in them, bright and unmistakable.
Before them, a city burned.
Plumes of smoke poured from columns of fire. Orange, red, and yellow consumed the city. The fires shifted and shuddered, shattering glasses and tearing through anything wooden as they burned hotter and hotter until skyscrapers and street lamps melted like sugar. The ground rippled with heat. Ash smothered the air in a thick haze. The embers dancing through the blazing sky looked like lightning bugs, against the deep grey that choked out the sun. And every part of it was hot. The flames grew with each second; their glow stretched wider as fires jumped from cars to shrubs to the sides of buildings. It crawled down the road, consuming the underbrush in brilliant orange agony.
Heat rising.
“ Fuck.”
Ranboo agreed. Thoughts of molten rock shrugging through their veins seemed a little more real. For a moment they just stood. Their silhouettes harsh against their raging landscape. The sweat dripping down Ranboo’s back was cold.
“What do we do?” they asked. Aimsey refused to tear his eyes away from the fire. There was something enchanting about the destruction.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled after several long, hot breaths. Ranboo pulled their gaiter mask a little higher over the cloth one.
“Should we say something to Niki?” Ranboo suggested. The ground seemed to crack and split under the intensity of the blaze. Ranboo watched enraptured, feeling distant memories of blazes rise to the surface. Fires weren’t uncommon sights, especially at the beginning of the end. With nobody left to turn off stove tops, or power down machinery, and more pressing issues than reflective wrappers being left in dry summer grasses, his world was bound to burn.
Heat growing hotter.
Aimsey shrugged, xyr next words wrapped in a palpable voyeuristic awe. “Probably. What do you think caused it?”
He didn’t know. “Anything really.” Zombies taking out power lines, abandoned campfires, arson? “What about Micha?” Ranboo asked. What about Micha? Was she safe? Dead? Wandering aimlessly through a burning city?
“Shit,” Aimsey breathed. Ranboo couldn’t tell if it was shock or frustration in her voice. Her hand curled tighter around the grip of her cane.
‘“Do you think that-” they started. The curtain of fire shifted, giving way to something blackened by the blaze. With it came an ear-piercing scream. Ranboo’s head whipped, tracking the horrendous roar that followed it.
Heat climbing up their skin.
One of Ranboo’s first real memories was made of fire. Hot coals and a steady stream of smoke. It was a campfire created by a stranger who Ranboo could only remember in streaks of blue and a laughter that broke the white noise of their Gift-deficit brain. As the campfire flickered in front of them, heat radiated through the air from the violent burn of a flaming town.
In the earlier days of the end, a little while before Ranboo got his head screwed on right, flames were constant. A warped trend of thinking had convinced people that the best way to quell their problems was with fire. Arsonists, led by some masochistic cult leader, ran rampant. Swaths of the last symbols of civilization were turned to ash by their hands, guided by the knowledge that zombies didn’t do well with fire. They brought another layer of hell to Ranboo’s waking nightmare. But as fast as they had appeared the group was snuffed out. No one knew exactly why the arsonist had dropped off, the only answers to their absences being the scars they’d left on the landscape. All Ranboo had gathered from between blurred memories was that the cult hadn’t found what they’d hoped to in the settling embers.
The orange glow broke open as something stumbled out of it. It hit the ground with a smack, like a body hitting the pavement. The noise stood sharp against the hazed air.
Heat. Endless rising heat.
“What the-” Ranboo blurted. The body on the ground clawed at the road, nails digging into the cracks and juts the heat created, and dragged itself further from the blaze.
Heat. An all-consuming heat.
Ranboo felt Aimsey’s arm loop through his. They pulled him against them, hard.
“Is that?”
For a moment it felt like everything jolted. The body scrambled faster. Ranboo’s hands shot out to stabilize Aimsey.
“I think that’s-” a growling watery roar burned through their ears, “James,” Aimsey finished flatly. Their breath hitched, the inhale felt against Ranboo’s arm.
The fire pulsed, its tendrils stretching higher as another roar echoed through their bones. James? It could’ve been them but the body was too covered in soot and some other black substance for Ranboo to tell. James(?) pushed onto shaking arms, elbows buckling as they attempted to stand.
The ground shook again and Aimsey was pulling Ranboo. They stepped farther from the flaming city as a shape slowly grew behind the wall of fire.
Heat. The kind that would eat anything to fuel its flame.
Heat still held the air, heavy and oppressive. It gripped their bones, locked Ranboo’s mind in a trance of confusion and shock and yellow mixed with pinches of orange and flashes of red and blood . So much blood.
The kind of heat that would Eat Them.
It gurgled from his lips, ran down his throat, his skin, stuck him to the floor until he was trapped and-
H e a t.
“MOVE!” Aimsey barked.
Ranboo jolted back to life, stumbling over his feet as Aimsey dragged him to the edge of the road and practically shoved him into the bushes. Xey climbed in after him, ducking down and pressing a finger to xyr lips as xey peeked xyr head out of the greenery.
Another roar tore through the air. The fireline split, giving way to a hulking heavy shape, drenched in flames as it pulled itself from the blaze. The ground shook as it moved. Out of the corner of his eye, Ranboo watched James bolt into a stand nearly collapsing before they started running, tripping over unsteady feet and the cracked ground.
The shape heaved forward. Ranboo’s confused words died in his throat. From the heat. From the blaze. From the endless rising, incinerating, burning, consuming, and encompassing fire. Came a monster.
It lumbered out of its orange cage.
Nausea and bile rose to the front of Ranboo’s throat, fast . They choked down the acrid with unmoving eyes.
From the light, wrapped in fire, born from heat; a creature loomed. A mess of crooked towers and crumbling buildings framed it. And Ranboo remembered, suddenly, why the arsonists had stopped.
Because zombies were all drawn by the same things. By movement and sound. By noise. And what was louder than a burning man? Crying out in pain as his flesh slipped off his skin in thick bloody pulp. Slick with heat. Writhing in agony in the fire. Zombies would cry out as the fires consumed them. They would scream and roar and shout and their anguish would be a beacon for all other undead. So one would follow to the source of the noise, get snagged by the fires, and be forced to join the symphony. Adding its own cries to the scorching air.
Until another zombie sought them. And another. And another. Until the horde of nightmares stood together in the scalding, broiling, organ-baking heat. Bone and flesh melting together, thicker than glue, stronger than spider silk. Welding and merging and fusing.
Arms on top of arms on tops of arms stood stark against flames. Faces fused into each other. Heads knit into arms, burned into torsos. Mouths and jaws attached to another zombie's ankle. Bleeding and bloody. Flesh pulled and stretched with each movement. Some of the bodies convulsed, shaking and screaming as they sloughed across the mound. Sucked deeper into the mass as it bludged and shuddered. Sliding down the road, it hissed when hot-liquidy flesh met burning asphalt.
The shape twisted and groaned with every jerky, heavy movement. Its bulk fell over itself in order to tumble down the road. To reach James who was barely running away. But there was no head or tail. No end or beginning to the creature. Just faces fueled by teeth and a stomach All of itself shared. Barred jaws roared while bloodied limbs scrambled in whatever way they could.
A line of entrails, of organs and bones, ran behind it.
H e a t.
The ground shook as it fell forward. The Earth seemed to groan. James caught a mouth full of asphalt as their legs gave out. Their yelp was bright against the dull crackling fire. Ranboo pressed a hand to their mouth fighting the horrified sounds that welled in their throat.
The thing sagged for a moment, mass sinking to the pavement like a deflating balloon as it tried to find the noise. Aimsey froze in front of Ranboo, her body suddenly coiled tight. Dread crept down Ranboo’s spine. Slowly they wrapped a hand around her wrist, shaking their head when she looked back at them. James grunted again, loudly. Aimsey’s head whipped to the road, she leaned forward in the thicket. Ranboo’s grip drew tighter, pulling her back to them.
He could hear it seize. Pinpoint the moment when the stilled mess of flesh came to life, dozens of matted, twisted, limbs hellbent on making their distant compound member a part of it. There was a blur of movement, a strangled gasp from Aimsey–barely stifled–and a horrible cracking. Ranboo pressed his eyes closed, he held Aimsey tight. They pushed into his arms, whether it was in an attempt to break his grasp or find comfort in them, he didn’t know.
James’ screaming was woven around a series of crunches. The strangled gasping sound mangled around wet clattering was permanently etched into Ranboo’s brain. Ranboo squeezed his eyes tighter. Aimsey thrashed against him. A choked sound spewed from their lips. Tears brewed in his eyes. They dribbled down his cheeks as he waited for the noises to stop. The tortured and pained, gluttonous, and inhuman noises. After a moment Aimsey stilled, and James’ shouts were only echoes. Ranboo swallowed down a sudden wave of bile. He felt his arms go loose. Aimsey made no attempt to move from them.
Heat dragged on around him. The grass digging into his legs only grew more biting. Ranboo didn’t move from his spot cramped between bushes, caught in a haze of revulsion and shock. The smoke only grew thicker. Aimsey eventually pulled themself away, their hands shaky as they tentatively let go of their sharp grasp on Ranboo.
Ash dusted Ranboo’s skin. The heat raged on. The heavy lumbering of a monster began again. Leaving no sign of James behind as it lurched down the road. Aimsey’s movements came in bouts of rustling leaves. Slow prodding at bushes and eventually metallic clack of their cane.
“Ran,” he whispered after a while. Ranboo didn’t move, trapped behind the walls of their mind, layers made stronger by the lingering terror. “We uh… we have to go,” Aimsey choked out. “We need to tell Niki.” Ranboo’s head lolled forward, almost resembling a nod. Grey eyes remained unlooking. Pinned on the pieces of grass before them, the slight shift in the ember-crested breeze. Thoughts of heat held their mind in a gridlock.
They felt Aimsey’s arms loop through theirs after a short sigh. And mindlessly stumbled to their feet when he pulled them to.
“Ran?” xey asked. He wanted to move. He doubted he could. “We gotta go back.” Everything felt like swimming through molasses. Like drowning in it.
He raised his head against all odds. Blinked and took a deep breath. His lungs burned.
He turned to Aimsey.
“Home?” Speaking was so hard. Why were the days that followed dreams so hard? They could still hear the monster sloughing down the road. Their skin crawled.
Aimsey nodded. “Yep.” They pushed their legs to walk, following Aimsey’s slow crouched pace with ears attuned to any new movements, any unseen zombies.
Any other monsters.
Aimsey’s hand shot out, catching Ranboo in the stomach and making them pause. They followed her other hand. Her cane, held in a shaking hand, pointed at the mass of flesh and fury squeezing itself through the tunnel. It’s swollen form, bulging and contorting in order to fit through the hole.
“It’s going through the tunnel,” they breathed. Ranboo tried to force his way to the front of his brain. Colors clawed at his spine, begging to drag him back. “If it goes straight, it’ll lead directly to the compound.” It was the main reason Aimsey had chosen this path. The map had drawn out the route in a straight line. It was an easy path for lost people to follow.
“Unless something intercepts.” The words were hard to spit out. Cotton wool threatened to push down his every word. Aimsey shook their head.
“No, remember? Micha took this road because it’s clear.” With wide eyes, Ranboo breathed in. The monster stretched and pulled until it could fit the rest of it through the tunnel. The heads still facing the burning city, gnawed at the air. The echo of James’ voice came with acid in his gut. He pulled his thoughts away from the screaming.
“Shit.”
…lost at sea/
With no sails, not a breeze/
I am drifting-
No star to be seen…
His thoughts were wound around green.