Chapter Text
Max has always been a protector, it’s just who he is.
Ever since he was five years old and his mother placed a bundle of blankets in his arms with his tiny baby brother nestled inside, Max knew, deep down in a place no one could ever reach, that he was never going to let anything, or anyone, hurt him.
And he didn’t.
He stopped Lando from walking face-first into furniture when he first started toddling around. He hugged him close when nightmares clawed their way into his dreams. He checked under the bed for monsters and made-up silly voices in stories until Lando’s giggles filled the room like sunlight. That was their world, small, safe, full of warmth and laughter.
Then the world ended.
They called it a virus at first, something about a mutated strain, a mix of rabies and something man-made that should never have seen the light of day. One moment people were getting sick, the next they were tearing each other apart in the streets.
The news stopped. The screams didn’t.
When it hit their town, it hit fast. Max was nine when he had to shut the door against the world and pretend everything was going to be okay.
He was ten when he had to kill his mother.
She didn’t even look like herself anymore, glassy eyes, mouth smeared with blood, something not-human living inside her bones. He did it with shaking hands and tears pouring down his face, and he didn’t let Lando watch. He told him it was going to be okay even when it wasn’t. Even when their world ended again.
At eleven, their father walked out, said he was going to find supplies. He never came back.
By twelve, Max was dragging Lando through the ashes of what used to be cities, moving from burned-out camps to broken shelters, scavenging food, fighting off the desperate, dodging the infected. Lando was seven, still too young to carry a weapon but old enough to cry in silence when things got too hard.
Trusting people became dangerous. Letting anyone in felt like inviting death to their door. Every day was a fight, not just for Max’s survival, but for Lando’s. For that soft-hearted, bright-eyed little brother who still looked at him like he was the safest place in the world.
Because in this world of monsters, hunger, and betrayal, Max wasn’t just Lando’s big brother.
He was his everything.
---
The screaming started just after sunset.
Max had just finished bartering a dented can of peaches for a half-loaf of stale bread when the first alarm went off, three sharp clangs of a metal pipe against the watchtower rail. He froze, bread still in his hand, as the second and third rang out.
A herd.
“Lando,” he breathed, shoving the bread into his coat and spinning around.
The small, makeshift settlement was already dissolving into panic. People shoved past each other, grabbing packs, weapons, children. Someone knocked into Max’s shoulder hard enough to send him stumbling, but he didn’t stop. His boots pounded against the cracked pavement as he sprinted toward the tent where he’d left his brother.
“Lando!” he shouted.
He found him crouched by the cot, clutching his battered stuffed dog to his chest. The little boy’s eyes were wide, but dry. He always tried to be brave. Max’s chest clenched.
“We have to go. Now.”
Lando stood, still holding the dog, his backpack already slung over one small shoulder. Max didn’t waste time asking who packed it, he just took his brother’s hand and started running.
The night outside was lit in flashes, fires being lit for visibility, gunshots popping in the distance, shadows moving like water. Moans echoed over the walls. Max didn’t look back.
“Stay close, okay?” he said, glancing down.
“I’m right here,” Lando whispered, breathless but steady.
They weaved through the maze of tents and crates and crumbling concrete, Max holding tight to Lando’s bony wrist. A woman screamed off to the left. Someone dropped a lantern and flames licked at the side of a supply shack.
The front gates were already open. People were pushing through, others climbing the chain-link when the way was blocked. Max hesitated. The crowd was thick. Too easy to get separated.
“We’ll go around,” he said, yanking Lando behind the back of a water truck.
“But the gate’s right there,”
“It’s not safe. Just listen to me.” His voice came out too sharp. He regretted it immediately when Lando flinched.
“I’m sorry. I just…you have to stick to me like glue. Promise?”
Lando nodded solemnly. “Like glue.”
They ducked into the shadows, slipping along the edge of the fence line. Max could hear the dead now, closer. The low, wet groaning that never stopped, the shuffle of feet against gravel. He pulled his knife from his belt, jaw clenched. His free hand never let go of Lando’s.
“Are they coming in?” Lando asked softly.
Max didn’t want to answer. But he never lied, not to him. “Yeah. They’re coming in.”
Lando’s hand tightened in his. “Are we gonna make it out?”
Max looked down at him, at the messy brown curls, the oversized jacket swallowing his tiny frame, the scared but trusting eyes.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said.
“You promise?”
“Promise.”
And in that moment, with death closing in on all sides and the world falling apart all over again, Max meant it with everything he had.
They ran until Max’s lungs burned.
Until the sound of screams faded into the wind behind them and the moans of the dead grew distant, swallowed by trees and darkness. The dirt road ahead was uneven and scattered with branches, but Max didn’t slow down until they were at least a mile from the settlement, maybe more. He only stopped when Lando stumbled.
Max caught him just before he hit the ground.
“Okay,” Max said, kneeling beside him. “Okay, that’s far enough.”
Lando didn’t answer right away. He was breathing hard, hands on his knees, the stuffed dog still tucked into his arm like it was a real one. Max scanned the forest around them, every shadow a potential threat, every crack of a branch a reason to pull his knife. But for now, just for now, it was quiet.
“We’re safe here,” Max said, more for Lando than himself. He didn’t believe it, not really but his voice needed to sound like something solid.
Lando looked up, cheeks streaked with dirt, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. “I left the flashlight. In the tent.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know, buddy.” Max crouched and gently took the backpack from him. “You remembered everything else. That’s what matters.”
Lando sat on a flat rock and hugged his knees. “Did the others get out?”
Max paused. “Some of them.”
“You think Mr. Javier made it?”
Mr. Javier had given Lando extra apples from the supply tent. He let him sit on a crate and pretend to be a guard. Max didn’t have the heart to say what he really thought. “Maybe. He’s smart.”
Silence settled between them. Max opened Lando’s pack and took stock, half a bottle of water, two granola bars, the cracked compass, the frayed scarf their mum used to wear before everything. He made sure Lando didn’t see his hands shaking.
Lando stared at the trees. “Where do we go now?”
Max rubbed a hand across his face. He was thirteen. He should’ve been in a classroom. He should’ve been doing homework or getting grounded for sneaking cookies. Instead, he was planning escape routes, rationing food, and teaching his brother how to run from corpses.
“We’ll find another place,” Max said, quietly but firmly. “There’s always another place. We just keep moving until we find it.”
Lando nodded, like it made sense. Like he believed it. Max hated how used to this he was getting.
“I’m not tired,” Lando lied.
“Good. Because we’re gonna walk another half mile and find somewhere to sleep.”
“Like a cave?”
“Not if we can help it.”
Lando slid off the rock, clutching his stuffed dog again. “Max?”
“Yeah?”
“If one of them gets me…” He hesitated, looked down. “What’s going to happen to me?”
The world tilted. Max swallowed the ice forming in his chest.
“Nothing. I won’t let that happen,” he said.
“But if it does?”
Max reached over and pulled him close, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “Then I’ll be with you the whole time and I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.”
Lando leaned into him. “Okay.”
They didn’t speak after that. They just walked, step by step, into the dark.
Together.
---
By the time they found the cabin, Max couldn’t feel his fingers.
The weather had turned fast, late autumn ripping into the world with wind sharp enough to sting and nights that bit straight through threadbare jackets. Max had wrapped Lando in every layer he could find, his own scarf, an oversized hoodie from a looted trailer, even strips of cloth from a blanket too shredded to use whole. But the cold still crept in.
The cabin sat at the edge of a dried-up riverbed, tucked between sloping hills and thick pines. It was barely more than a box with windows, half-collapsed porch sagging under its own weight, but it had a roof, four walls and a wood stove.
It was home, for now.
Max pushed the door open with his shoulder, one hand gripping Lando’s. Dust exploded in the air like powder. Inside was dark, but dry. No fresh tracks, no blood, no smell of rot.
It was empty and therefore safe enough.
They moved in quietly, the way Max had trained them to, no loud steps, no sudden movements, no turning your back to a corner. Lando held his stuffed dog tight and scanned the room like a little soldier. Max checked every window, every door, every closet. Just like always.
When he was sure, he let out a long breath and sank down beside the stove. “We can stay here a few nights,” he said. “See if anyone else is nearby. Keep warm.”
“Will it snow soon?” Lando asked, setting his bag down and crouching beside him.
“Maybe,” Max said. “The air smells like it.”
“Are we gonna be okay?”
Max looked at him, his too-thin face, the way his lips were already a little blue, the pink scrape healing across one cheek from their last fall. He hated how little he could give him.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re gonna be okay.”
But later, after Lando fell asleep curled under a coat on the floor, Max sat up with the map and the firelight and stared at the calendar they’d scratched into the back cover of a book weeks ago.
Four days.
Four days until Lando turned eight.
Max rubbed a hand over his face. In another world, there’d be cake, presents and balloons. A morning where the biggest worry was whether to go to the zoo or the arcade.
Now he didn’t even have socks to give him.
He glanced at the backpack near the door. Maybe he could find something. A book. A flashlight that worked. A scarf that wasn’t falling apart. Something to make the day feel like more than just another cold morning in a ruined world.
Because Lando still believed in things. Still talked about birthdays like they mattered. And if there was even a sliver of that light left in him, Max would do whatever it took to protect it.
Even if it meant freezing his ass off scavenging a ghost town for a toy.
Max reached over and tugged the blanket tighter around Lando’s shoulders. The boy mumbled something in his sleep and burrowed deeper.
Max whispered, “I love you kiddo.” and stared out the frosted window, already planning tomorrow’s route.
---
The morning of Lando’s birthday broke grey and brittle, the sky heavy with snow that hadn’t quite fallen yet.
Max woke first, as always. The stove had gone cold in the night, and his breath fogged in the still air. He pushed himself up slowly, muscles stiff, back sore from sleeping on wood planks but he didn’t complain.
He looked over at Lando, still bundled tight in their patchwork pile of jackets and threadbare blankets, one arm sticking out to cradle the stuffed dog under his chin.
Eight.
Max couldn’t believe it. He still remembered the way Lando’s fists used to curl around his finger as a baby. The way he used to mispronounce “breakfast” as “breckist” and demand chocolate on everything. He was growing, even here, in this nightmare world. Max was scared to blink in case he missed it.
He got up quietly, careful not to wake him, and moved to the bag by the stove. Inside, wrapped in a piece of brown cloth, was everything he’d managed to scrape together over the last week.
A small tin box he’d found under the floorboards, polished clean. Inside, a few pieces of hard candy, still sealed in plastic. A pair of fingerless gloves that almost fit, made of thick wool. And a comic book, faded, pages yellowing, but intact. The cover showed a superhero in a tattered cape standing on a ruined city, fist raised.
Max had read it first, of course. Checked every page. It was dumb, funny and brightly coloured. It was perfect.
He set it all out on the floor beside Lando’s bedroll and then crouched down beside him.
“Hey,” Max said gently, nudging his shoulder. “Hey, birthday kid. Time to get up.”
Lando stirred, groaned a little, then cracked one eye open. “Huh?”
“You’re officially eight.”
That woke him up. He sat up fast, eyes wide, hair a bird’s nest. “It’s today?”
Max nodded, trying to play it cool, even though he’d barely slept from checking and rechecking the stupid tin. “Yeah. And guess what. The Birthday Bandit left you something.”
Lando blinked, then spotted the gifts. His mouth dropped open.
“For real?”
“All yours.”
He dove on them like a raccoon, tearing the cloth open. When he saw the gloves, he let out a whoop and immediately shoved his hands into them, holding them up proudly. “I look like a bandit!”
“You are a bandit,” Max said. “A sugar bandit, too.”
He handed him the tin, and Lando opened it like it was treasure. His eyes lit up at the sight of the sweets. “Is this…is this actually sweeties?”
“Only the finest pre-apocalypse luxury,” Max grinned. “Don’t eat it all at once or your teeth’ll fall out.”
Lando was already unwrapping one. “Worth it.”
He devoured the first candy and then flipped through the comic, stopping every few pages to show Max something, his favourite panels, the silly lines, the weird villain with tentacles for arms. Max pretended to read over his shoulder, but really, he just watched him.
Watched the joy. The light in his eyes.
For a little while, it was like things were normal.
Later, when the fire was going again and the wind howled outside, Lando curled up beside him, comic clutched to his chest.
“This is the best birthday ever,” he said sleepily.
Max didn’t speak. Just rested a hand on his head and kept watch as the snow finally started to fall.
Because for today, Lando was happy.
And that meant Max had done his job.
---
The cabin gave them a few quiet days, but quiet didn’t fill stomachs.
By the fifth morning, Max knew they had to move. The last granola bar had been split the night before, and even that had felt like breaking something sacred. The firewood pile was dwindling. The riverbed offered no fish, the traps came up empty, and the snow had started to fall hard now, blanketing the world in white silence.
They packed everything worth carrying, blankets, the comic book, the scarf their mom once wore, and the last bottle of clean water. Max double-checked Lando’s boots, retied his laces, and pulled his hat down tighter. Lando didn’t complain, but his stomach growled loud enough to echo.
They left at dawn.
The forest swallowed them quickly, bare trees crowding close, their limbs crusted with snow. The cold turned their breath into fog, and every step crunched loud against the silence. Max had plotted a path the night before: northeast, past the broken bridge and along the ridge trail. If they kept steady, they could reach the outer edge of Hallow Market by dusk the next day.
If nothing went wrong.
Max walked ahead, cutting through the drifts with practiced steps. Lando followed close behind, one hand always brushing the back of Max’s coat. They didn’t speak much. Talking wasted breath. But Max kept glancing back, checking, always checking.
Snow clung to the bare branches above them, and the forest around was silent, broken only by the crunch of boots and the rustle of a pack being adjusted.
Max’s gloved hand reached back, checking on the boy trailing just a step behind. “You okay, Lan?”
Lando looked up at him, cheeks red and eyes wide under his hat. He gave a nod, but his voice cracked. “I’m hungry.”
Max didn’t answer, just gritted his jaw and kept moving.
They didn’t get far before two figures emerged from between the trees ahead, Tall, alert and armed but not threatening. Not yet, at least.