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“Ready?” Martyn hisses behind him, hefting his bat in both hands.
He hears the sound of Ren shuffling. “As I’ll ever be, my dude.”
“Alright.” Martyn lets out a breath. He can hear zombies shuffling beyond the door—at least one, maybe two—but they can’t just wait trapped in this house forever. Zombies will only attract more zombies over time. “On three.”
One.
The smooth handle of Martyn’s bat is slick with sweat. He keeps his shoulders steady.
Two.
If he can’t keep his composure, god only knows how Ren would manage. Ren’s hands were molded for a paintbrush, not a pipe.
Three.
He shoves the door open—two zombies see him and lunge, teeth bared in reckless grins. Martyn slams his bat at the closer one and raises one boot—it clatters down the concrete steps of the little suburban house. Before either of them can get their bearings back he pushes down the steps. He can hear Ren at his heels. He rears back with the bat.
Bones shatter against asphalt. The zombie—a young woman, once, in a university sweatshirt—makes a sound halfway between a shriek and a cackle.
“Be gone with your bad selves,” Ren declares from somewhere up the steps. Martyn focuses his attention on the fallen zombie, the second one he’d hit.
It tries to push itself up—he hits it once, twice, again. He’ll need to wash his hands before the next time he eats. There is a sound that a baseball bat makes, hitting pavement through soft dead flesh, and nothing could be sweeter or more repulsive to Martyn.
The zombie twitches again, some vestige of brainstem left intact and Martyn growls at it, low through his teeth. There’s no language for fuck off that this thing can comprehend—that Martyn can summon. The sound of the bat again. A heartbeat stronger than Martyn’s own.
The thing is put to rest—
“Martyn!”
Martyn drops back into his flesh and there’s a claw in his calf. Not a claw—a nail. A human nail. Well, once upon a time.
He pulls his bat up because as much as he wants to shout he’ll only call more of them.
There’s a sound, more resonant and ringing than Martyn’s bat. In Ren’s hands even a broken metal pipe is an instrument.
The hand is torn from Martyn’s leg. He bites his cheek until he tastes blood and he does not cry out. Ren makes music, driving bone and meat into the sidewalk.
Martyn joins in and they go longer than they need to. Ren and Martyn stare at each other, wide-eyed and pale, splashed with blood, breathing the heatsick scent of death.
“I think we need to get out of here,” Martyn suggests.
“Your leg, dude, are you gonna be okay to walk?” Ren’s gaze is fixed on the wound, the fresh red blood soaking into the leg of Martyn’s pants. Martyn is a bug pinned to a corkboard, clawed open in literal and figurative senses under Ren’s eyes.
He blinks. They need to move. Who knows how many zombies might already have scented his blood? He laughs. It doesn’t sound alive. “I’ll be fine.”
Martyn is not fine. His leg is burning with each step, the hasty wrapping he put around it while moving not doing much anymore.
“That place looks pretty secure,” Ren comments. “For the night, I mean.” He points to a boarded-up restaurant, the words on its sign long since worn away by time and weather but the wood over the windows still sound.
It takes Martyn a moment to gather enough breath to speak. “Probably, yeah. I’ll—I’ll stand guard while you pick the lock.”
Ren tilts his head to one side and eyes Martyn up and down. “Are you sure, man? You aren’t looking so hot yourself.”
Martyn shakes his head. “I’ll be—fine a little longer.”
“Right.” Ren draws out the syllable. He doesn’t believe Martyn. He picks the lock without protest, at least.
Inside, the space is dark and thick with dust. Martyn coughs hard as soon as the door is closed, and the force of it sets his wound burning and he stumbles into a wall.
“Martyn! Woah,” Ren catches Martyn’s arm and holds him up. His anxious fingers are too forceful but Martyn doesn’t care, wouldn’t breathe a word. “Sit down, dude, let me look at that.”
Martyn nods. “Yeah. Yeah, good idea.” He squints in the thick dim air and finds an upright chair to drop himself into.
Ren settles on his knees in front of Martyn and slings his pack off his shoulders. Martyn does the same to allow himself to lean forward and roll the leg of his pants up to show the full injury. He feels more than sees the shift, the same way he senses Ren even in the dark. Half-dry blood is tacky over his skin and the raw flesh complains as dust begins to settle on it.
Ren flicks on their electric lantern, and on instinct Martyn waves at him to put it away. “The battery, Ren, it’ll—”
“I can’t bandage something I can’t see, can I?” Ren points out with a raise of one eyebrow.
Martyn sighs. “Fair enough. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know about the batteries,” Ren replies. “There’s gotta be a hardware store in this town, right? We could do a little scoutage, find new batteries.”
“Maybe.” Ren’s wetting one of their clean rags with practiced motions, careful not to spill a drop of water. “Depends on how many other survivors have come through here already.” The cloth touches Martyn’s skin and he hisses. His knuckles clench around the base of the chair.
“We’ll find something.” Ren speaks with such confidence. Martyn has no idea how much of it is feigned. He hopes none—he hopes so much it hurts that almost a year of pristine ruins and laughing monsters won’t dim Ren’s flame in a world already so dark. But he knows what they’ve seen. Even the most pure are touched by the profane hand of god someday.
Martyn doesn’t reply, instead gritting his teeth against pain as Ren finishes brushing blood off his skin and opens a precious alcohol wipe.
“Oh, yeah, baby, that’s it,” Ren says to the wipe—or maybe Martyn. “No infections today, shall we? Nice and clean. How’s it feeling, Martyn?”
“Fine.” Martyn’s voice is tight. “Just peachy.”
“Roger, reading you loud and clear.”
Martyn catches his breath as Ren digs through his pack for gauze. “How’s it looking, doc? Think we’ll have to amputate?”
Ren startles. “Heavens, no. Just a scratch, right?” He grins—bares his teeth—he’s not a threat—up at Martyn.
Martyn smiles back, lips closed. “Yeah. Better by the morning, I’m sure.”