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Scar really hated mornings.
Most of the time they’d wake up to some inconsiderate dumbass having to preserve his own life and firing off enough rounds to make everyone nearby wish one of the bullets just hit them.
Sometimes Scar considered putting themself in front of the spray of bullets but they never did. They didn’t know why. They had no family, they were wiped out long before the virus, they didn’t have any friends, they had to put bullets in their skulls.
Four friends in one night.
Scar went from having a great group of friends to four bodies they buried in shallow graves beside their headquarters that now only housed one.
Their base at the end of a subway line. They had graffitied it to look less depressing. All of them were hopeful that someone would find a cure. That they’d be able to lead normal lives again. Scar now realized what a pipe dream that was.
Why would those in power care about the poor dying whenever the rich could afford to have bodyguards and never leave the house? Zombies couldn’t destroy a penthouse if they weren’t able to operate an elevator and they’d fall apart on the stairs if they tried to journey up them.
The teen was sitting there whenever they heard something. Faint rustle of the papers along the long abandoned subway line that Scar slept at the end of.
“Okay what asshole is trying to get in?” The teenaged survivor asked as they grabbed their gun of choice. The same weapon that was still stained with the blood of Vivienne, Jupiter, Lorelei and Ben. And now would carry the weight of another death.
“Where…where am I?” Came from about twenty feet down in the tunnel.
Scar continued to slowly step forward.
What they saw was an avian stretched out on the ground.
The other’s blue shirt pulled around as if he’d been grabbed, his suspenders on one side hung off his shoulder, and on top of his mop of brownish blondish hair rested cracked headphones. Scar could even see the wires coming out of the black wire that led into something in the kid’s pocket. Probably an iPod.
“Who are you?” The teen with a gun demanded, his eyes narrowed into slits.
At the sound of somebody acknowledging his existence, the dirty blonde kid’s eyes lept up to the one wielding a weapon.
Grian patted at his pocket where he kept his pocket knife.
“I’ll ask my question one more time before you become the 5th person I’ve shot in the past week. Who. Are. You?”
The gun was now raised to, if the trigger was pulled, blow the brains out of the other teen.
“Grian! I’m Grian…” the dirty blonde replied, listening as he wasn’t inclined to enjoy the experience of having his brains blown back to wherever he came from.
“Gotten bitten anytime recently?” The gun wielding teen asked, not relaxing yet.
“I’m not sure why that’s important but…no.” Grian’s voice murmured into his arm.
“You’re not sure why that’s important?” Scar chuckled, but it wasn’t a humorous laugh.
“It’s not like I’m a zombie or anything. We all know zombies aren’t real.”
The brunette teen looked Grian up and down. The avian’s wings were pristine. Most winged people in the apocalypse either had them bound to their back—Like Scar did—or had them burnt off, like Vivienne had opted for.
But that remark about zombies not being real was what really bothered the survivor, Scar’s eyebrows went up behind their overgrown bangs.
“Zombies aren’t real huh? Riddle me this then, how come my friends came at me demanding I let them bite me? You see this? This gun? This gun has killed my friends.” The nonbinary teen had no idea why they chose to start talking about them.
Maybe some piece of them still miss their friends. Their laughter didn’t echo. It rang like a death knell.
Scar didn’t notice their eyes were watering until they felt their nose leak a bit.
“Oh…” the avian mumbled as he rubbed his wings.
“…uh…anyway. You got any weapons or anything?” The nonbinary guy asked, finally pointing the gun at the ground rather than the other teen.
“No. My boyfriend took my knife.” The dirty blonde haired kid responded, as his eyes glued down onto the ground beneath them. He still hadn’t gotten off of his knees yet from where he had tumbled through. As if he fell through the walls of the tunnel.
“Okay.” Scar walked back towards his base. “Come with me; I got plenty of weapons. Not a lot of food. But it’s hard to get food at the end of the world.”
The clearly scared avian followed, still stroking his matted wings. Feathers stuck together with blood. The blonde teen reeked of alcohol despite appearing to be stone sober. He had glass poking out of his cheeks as if someone had shattered a bottle on him.
Alongside glowing purple eye shapes up and down his arms and across his chest.
“Where you from?” Scar asked as they grabbed some of the lunch meat they’d managed to score.
“Japan. I was born in the UK though.” Grian replied, his eyes on the ground.
“Huh. I’m American. You speak Japanese?”
“なぜ？あなたは警察ですか？”
(Translation: Why? Are you the police?)
“Huh. No clue what you just said.” Scar chuckled.
“Figured.” Grian’s eyes widened slightly as he laid against the walls of the tunnel.
“Yeah.” The brunette sighed into their hands, their entire body felt tired and their head heavy. They hadn’t gotten proper sleep ever since they killed their friends, they could still hear their screams…
“Scar! We got bit…” Jupiter said in a very shaky voice.
“No…y-you didn’t. Please tell me you didn’t.” But the serious expressions on everyone’s faces confirmed their deepest fear.
“You gotta do it, Scar. I’m sorry.” Vivienne said, flicking her smoldered wings. There was a bite mark on her cheek. She still held her nail studded bat in one of her hands.
“Please…no…not all of you—“
“Scar! Just do it!” They all lined up.
The shots rang out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Two shots per head. Making sure they weren’t gonna reanimate themselves any time soon.
“I’m sorry…” Scar whimpered.
“What?” Grian asked, his wings tucked behind his back. He had big dark brown eyes, hidden behind bigger black normal glasses. Though they had a crack forming at the glass on the left side closest to the bridge of their nose.
“Oh oh nothing! Heh! Nothing.” The brunette teen said unconvincingly. Their eyes were too fidgety for it to not come off as suspicious.
“Okay…” The avian mumbled.
“What hybrid type are you? You got the bluish skin of an allay but you don’t have wings.”
“I do have wings. Nobody has their wings out and about besides wealthy people. Too easy to grab onto by zombies or a traitorous friend.” Scar handed Grian two slices of ham between two pieces of bread. Not much, but something.
“Oh yeah…Sam—my ex-boyfriend—grabbed my wings when I was misbehaving. One time he popped it out of the socket and I had to put it back into the right spot myself using a wall.”
“Oh shit.” Scar choked on their own sandwich. They didn’t expect this random guy to walk into their tunnel—
“Yeah…” Grian’s eyes fell back down to the ground.
They sat there for a while, Scar grabbed a wing binder used by Ben for Grian to use, and let the smaller teen have his choice of gun. It turned out Grian was pretty good at using the weapons. Something about fighting with the yakuza or something.
And when Grian woke up in the morning, he knew it’d be to Scar laying there on the ground because he rolled off the bed, or maybe Scar would have breakfast ready.
And if the brunette teenager smiled a bit whenever they saw their new friend using something their old friends used to use, then that was between Scar and whatever horrible god had forced their meeting. And if Grian started smiling whenever he saw Scar stop hiding as much, stop fussing with his gun whenever they sat beside one another on the smashed couch cushion.