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Martyn tosses his jacket over his door and kicks his shoes off into corner before practically falling face first onto his thick floor-mattress of a bed. The sole but large window in the half-decorated room is already starting to let in rays of the morning sun but the eventful night had exhausted any energy and care the young man had left. Scott would probably shut the blinds after sorting through what they'd brought back.
Just a couple nights back, a group of outsiders had raided their settlement while most of the rangers and melee fighters were shutting down a newly scouted infected bunker a good bit away that required most of their good gear.
That night they lost a majority of stocked up ammo and dried proteins they had started saving for winter. After working themselves to the bone to build their own little Home, that may as well have been a war declaration.
Twenty something survivors after days of tackling the source of their latest problem, returning while still in fight-or-die mode, full of pent up aggression and adrenaline, being told by a frantic and injured Scott what happened is uh... not a very family friendly situation.
Safe to say when Martyn's team returned with their missing - and some extra - loot while covered in red and split knuckles, nobody would comment, or even ask who's blood it was. At the end of the day, they couldn't afford to lose a single resource anymore. Not with the world in the state it was.
Martyn constantly wished that the infection turned people into just zombies. Undead wandering around with not a lick of conscience left. It would make his stomach churn from the rot, but at least the zombies wouldn't cry out at him to kill them, to end their agony. To cut the strings of the puppeteering black parasitic... void-like substance they called sculk mutating their limbs and breaking their bones from the inside out.
Former scientists Cub and Zed together with former nurse Gem had attempted to learn more about it, but never managed to get close close enough without being discovered and Scar or Impulse had to shoot them down. Whenever an infected died, the parasite would spread in a radius on the ground and eat away at any life within reach, so going close to that nightmare was out of the question, despite the complaints of their dangerously curious friends. At least it spread quickly, so there's not really any time to hide that you're infected. It sounded mighty painful though.
The bunker they had discovered were inside a nearby ore mine, part of the lime quarry that most of the nearest town were built around. The locals referred called it 'The Perimeter' according to Doc. Most likely the miners had just been told on the radio there was an emergency and to bunker up, but hadn't taken it too seriously.
Martyn could still hear in the depth of his ear the remains of their wails and prayers for mercy echoing off the cavern walls, deep dark tunnels and massive chambers they had traversed when getting to the bunker. And having to deal with raiders straight after that? Not ideal. For the raiders, that is.
His hands sting harshly from split knuckles and antibiotics. It was only after Xisuma's harsh insistence that he let Gem treat his hands at all. When he saw Scott making his way over, though, he practically booked it out of there, knowing he'd immediately be sniffed out for any hint of pain or mental toll from his old partner.
They two had dated in high school and a bit into college, but eventually figured they were headed towards two wildly different directions in life and decided to end it on a bit of a dull and anticlimactic note.
Two years ago, however, when the world fully went to shit, they had each found themselves in their hometown, though in two different groups at the time. There were a good few smaller groups that had made it and eventually roamed in the same downtown area, sparse of the infected. Essentially all groups had someone who knew someone else from the other groups, so naturally the groups merged together on a trusting note.
One group led by Grian and Scar, one by Bdubs and Etho, one by Xisuma and Keralis, one by Joel and Lizzie, one by Skizz and then Martyn's group. The more leader types of the merged group quite quickly organized different categories of people who were good at different things. A few stealthy scouts found a cluster of buildings that looked to have been a summer-camp a bit into the more suburban area that had plenty of rooms for current and future teammates and was easy to build defences around. After that, a few heavy lifting builders managed to set up a concrete wall around most of it with barbed metal fences for the entrance.
When they spent that last winter together as one big group, Scott quite dramatically declared - more like whined - constantly to Martyn about how he was nearly freezing to death every night. Martyn knew he didn't mean it in a proactive way, more venting rather than asking for solutions, so he'd always be around to lend an ear, agreeing with him.
Though, he remembers vaguely one really cold night where he'd hidden a half full vodka bottle away for Scott while out an expedition, intending to put it in his friend's room after returning in the middle of the night. When he got there though, the room was empty, blankets and pillows gone. Even more surprising, he found him in Martyn's own room, buried in two people's worth of blankets on his stomach while reading a book perched against the wall.
When offered the spicy juice, Scott insisted they'd share the bottle so they took turns taking a swig out the drink. They didn't get very drunk off it, albeit a bit warmer and slightly tipsy, but neither of them said anything when they spent the rest of that cold night cuddling under their blanket mountain. Not even when they were very, fully, sober and Scott just appeared in his room at night like clockwork, whether Martyn was there or not, blankets and pillows in his arms. Even the decorations appeared out of nowhere like he did, and Martyn eventually got the memo that Scott had just decided to move in with him. Not that he would complain. Scott always had a special way of bringing color into his life.
And currently, that color is fear.
SLAM! "Martyn Littlewood!"
Uh oh.
Martyn forces his eyes open through his exhaustion and sits up, trying to focus on his roommate. At the door is the familiar figure covered in blue, head to toe, making the red face of anger even more unmistakable. That wasn't new. But the heavy bandaging hiding under his jacket, is. He struggles to not stare at them for too long.
"Do I get pity points for being tired?" Martyn tries weakly.
"You ran ahead?! What were you thinking?!"
"Okay look, sure, that wasn't great, but I made it back in one piece, right?"
Scott laughs manically, rubbing his eyes and looking like he's not sure whether to toss Martyn to the infected or get his own pretty hands bloody.
He honestly doesn't want to make excuses. Really, he doesn't. But the truth is that he had a debt to collect. Even now, seeing the visible remains of injuries on someone he cares more intensely about than anyone else in camp, not to mention their history, he knows he'd do it all over again. Martyn had always been confident in his own limits. Though he wasn't fully sure if that's what this outburst was about.
"I can't even, right now," Scott begins, running his hands through his hair and groaning. "You KNOW that's stupid to do."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Sorry, coral."
At this rate, Martyn is barely holding himself up against his fatigue, which makes it all the more sweeter when Scott only huffs and walk over to indeed shut the blinds and let the room go into relieving near pitch black darkness. Martyn hears footsteps before getting shoved back onto the mattress with the weight of arms around his neck.
"This isn't me letting you off the hook. We'll talk about this again when you wake up."
"Wouldn't have it any other way." Martyn turns to pull Scott to his chest, hugging him close.
In his half asleep state, he barely recognize fingers running through his hair and a vague mumbling resembling something along the lines of "I can't do this alone...”