Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Max walked along the highway, shoes scuffing against cracked asphalt. The road was clogged with abandoned cars in every direction, like a traffic jam that just never ended, everyone having gotten out and run before things got properly bad. He’d tried to make it as far as he could in the 2011 Toyota Camry he’d found three days ago, but the wall of vehicles eventually won.

He had liked that Camry. Reliable. Quiet. Better fuel economy than anything he’d driven professionally. Which was hilarious, in a depressing way.

The air smelled like rot, sweet and sour, heavy in the back of his throat. It clung to everything now. He tried not to think about what the rot was. Some questions answered themselves.

He adjusted the straps on his backpack. It was lighter than he wanted it to be and heavier than he could comfortably carry. He’d had to leave things behind in the car. Useful things. Potentially life-saving things. But weight was survival. If he had to run—and he usually did—he couldn’t be slow.

So goodbye:
A half-toolkit
A barely working portable radio
Three canned peaches
And, tragically, his expensive hair wax

He tried not to think about that last one too hard.

His hair was currently doing whatever it wanted, which felt symbolic.

He stepped around a rusted SUV with claw-like dents in the door. Zombie damage. Fresh enough that the metal hadn’t fully rusted around the gouges. He kept his pace steady. Not too fast. Not too slow. Running drew attention. So did stillness.

He had one knife.
He had two lighters that only worked when the universe was in a generous mood.
He had four protein bars.
A different tool-kit, a few rounds.
And no hair product.

Honestly, the apocalypse was personal.

He shifted his pack again, the shoulder straps digging in hard enough to bruise. He wondered, just briefly, if he should’ve brought his race suit. It was thick. Fire-resistant. Possibly bite-resistant. He imagined a zombie trying to gnaw through Nomex and getting frustrated.

That would’ve been nice.

He pictured it:
Him, in a Red Bull race suit, in the apocalypse, being entirely uneaten.

It started the way ridiculous things usually did: with a dumb headline on social media.

Man in Croatia bites neighbor after “flu-like illness.” Doctors confused.

He remembered scrolling past it in the hotel room, half-listening to GP argue about wind tunnel allocations. Everyone had laughed. Someone had made a joke about cannibal mosquitoes. There was a meme. Several, actually. The internet was very fast when it wanted to be stupid.

Then the headlines changed.

Clusters reported in hospitals. Patients aggressive, unresponsive to pain medication.

Then:

CDC: DO NOT APPROACH INFECTED.

The first time Max heard the word zombie on the news, it came from a newscaster who sounded like he was trying very hard not to laugh. 

A week later, no one was laughing.

The sun was going down soon, which was always great news. Nothing said “you might die soon” like a dramatic orange sunset. Max adjusted the strap of his backpack, which had probably lost the will to live before he did. He needed shelter. Preferably something with four walls and a door that could still close. A truck full of food would have been ideal, but life hadn’t been in the business of giving Max nice things for a long time.

Buildings appeared ahead, silhouettes of what used to be convenience and comfort. Now they looked like props from a stage play no one wanted to watch anymore. The road was empty. Too quiet. The kind that presses against the eardrums and forces your breathing to sound louder than it should.

He hated this kind of silence. He’d take one shuffling corpse over invisible fear any day. 

He walked into a 7-Eleven. The automatic doors had given up halfway, which honestly, same. The air smelled like spilled soda, old instant noodles, and the kind of despair you couldn’t Febreze away. He worked quickly, grabbing what he could fit. He wasn’t greedy, greedy people died early, just efficient.

He was doing well until something on a shelf decided to be dramatic and fell over.

Max stopped. Slowly turned.

There, slumped between the chips and the refrigerated drinks, was a zombie. Skin like wet paper. Joints hanging wrong. The thing looked like it was halfway through decomposing and halfway through regretting its life choices.

It hadn’t seen him yet. Good. He could just—

A bottle in his bag clinked.

The zombie’s head snapped toward him like it had just remembered it had purpose in this world.

“Kut,” Max sighed.

It lurched forward with that signature I forgot how knees work gait, reaching for him. Max grabbed the nearest object, a metal thermos, and swung. It made the kind of sound that suggested the zombie’s skull was mostly empty space. Max hit it again just to be sure, because if there was one thing the apocalypse had taught him, it was follow-through.

The body dropped. Max waited. Nothing twitched. Good enough.

He stood there, breathing hard, staring at the mess. Some goo splattered on his hand.

“Fucking shit,” he said to no one.

He wiped it on his shirt anyway. Hygiene standards were conceptual at this point.

He picked up his bag and stepped back outside. The sky was darker now. Which meant he had maybe twenty minutes before the world turned into a live horror soundtrack.

“Just lovely,” he muttered, already walking.

The gas station looked abandoned in the “obviously” way, cracked windows, sun-bleached posters for energy drinks that probably expired before the world did. But the garage door was half-closed, stuck at an angle like it was trying to shrug.

Max didn’t love the idea of mystery rooms. But the sun was sinking, and being outside after dark was basically volunteering for flesh removal.

He ducked under the metal panel. Inside, it was dim and smelled like motor oil, dust, and that faint metallic tang that suggested something had bled here at some point. Nice.

And then there it was,

A Ford Raptor. Not even old. The kind of car posters used to pretend were for “outdoorsy thrill-seekers,” but in reality were mostly driven by men who said things like “I could’ve gone pro.” He remembered commercials. Big grin, dusty desert shot, someone enthusiastic talking about torque. He remembered thinking, Yeah, sure man. Very convincing.

This one looked… intact. Clean-ish. No blood spray, no obvious dents, no previous-owner-was-eaten-in-the-driver-seat energy. Keys weren’t visible, which meant they were either:

1. In the truck,
2. On a conveniently placed hook,
3. In a pocket of someone who was now decidedly not alive.

Max rubbed the bridge of his nose. Of course.

He approached slowly, checking corners the way the internet had once told him to. The silence was too big. It pressed against him. He actually missed the zombie in the 7-Eleven. At least that situation made sense.

He tried the driver door.

It opened.

Immediate alarm. Nobody left a working truck unlocked unless they planned to come back for it. Or couldn’t.

Inside the cabin: clean seats, glove compartment slightly open, a half-finished bottle of water in the cup holder like the world hadn’t ended mid-sip.

Max sat. Just for a second. Just to feel like a person again.

The leather was stupidly comfortable. Of course it was. He remembered someone, some interview, talking about how this model handled terrain like it was built for survival. “Yeah, well,” Max murmured, “guess we put that to the test.”

He tried not to think about how much of his life had been spent hearing engines, smelling heat, feeling speed. He tried not to think about starting the car. Because wanting something was a great way to guarantee disappointment.

He leaned over, checked under the sun visor.

A key dropped into his lap.

Max stared at it.

“…Okay,” he said. “Yeah, that’s normal. Keys just fall from the sky. Why not.”

He didn’t start it yet. Not until he checked the rest of the garage. One zombie surprise attack today was more than enough.

He got out, grabbed a wrench off the workbench, not elegant, but solid, and walked toward the back room door. The door was shut. Which was suspicious. Everything closed was suspicious now.

He pressed his ear to it.

Silence.

Which, as he had come to learn, didn’t mean good.

Max tightened his grip, exhaled once, steady, resigned, like a man clocking into a job he didn’t like, and pushed the door open.

The door gave way with a soft groan, not loud, but loud enough to feel like a mistake. The room behind it was small. Light filtered in through a single dirty window, catching dust in the air like snow in slow motion.

And on the floor, slumped against a tool cabinet, was a body.

Not a skeleton. Not long-gone. Recent.

Clothes still intact. Skin not yet sunk into that strange gray collapse. Eyes half-open in that unfocused way that meant gone, but not long gone.

He took a slow breath through his mouth, because smelling was optional and regrettable.

The man looked like a mechanic, oil-stained shirt, calloused fingers. His hands were curled inward, like he’d been holding onto something that wasn’t there anymore. His face was slack but not peaceful.

Max hated how he recognized the expression anyway. He’d seen it enough times now to call it familiar. There was no bite mark visible. Which meant something else killed him. Or… he hadn’t turned yet.

Great. That was a fun mystery.

Max crouched, careful, watching for any twitch. Any breath. Any sudden “haha, surprise.” Because the universe loved that kind of joke.

Nothing.

He checked the pockets, because sentiment didn’t fill a stomach. Wallet, useless. A photo inside, a kid, maybe seven, toothy grin. He didn’t look at it long.

Humanity was already a scarce resource.

He slipped it back carefully anyway.

The man had a key lanyard around his neck. Different from the car key. Probably for the garage. Or a lockbox. Or something that would matter later.

Max hesitated, just a breath, before carefully pulling it off. “Thanks,” he said softly, because saying nothing felt wrong.

He shut that door in his mind hard. Later. That was a later problem. Maybe never.

He glanced back at the Raptor through the cracked doorway. Light was fading fast. The edges of the world were starting to blur into that unsettling dusk blue.

He needed to move. He walked back toward the truck, keys in hand, heart steadying into the kind of calm that only came from accepting survival was just routine now.

Max closed the door behind him.

Max didn’t stay.

He knew he should. Walls, a roof, a door that could be barricaded, that was survival 101. He was exhausted enough that the concrete floor would’ve felt like a luxury mattress. But staying meant settling, and settling meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering, and that was inconvenient.

So, good idea or not, he didn’t stay.

He siphoned gas from the station tanks, hands smelling like fuel and metal, trying not to think about how this had once been something people were warned not to do on YouTube.

He found a couple of sealed jerry cans in the back room, stacked near the body, probably the mechanic’s last project. He took those too. Pulled two car batteries off a shelf, tested weight, nearly dropped one, muttered something aggressively Dutch under his breath.

He loaded everything into the bed of the grey Raptor. It looked ridiculous, like a commercial for rugged independence someone forgot to turn the sound on for. He half expected a camera crew to walk out and ask him how the suspension felt over rough terrain.

The sky was purple-blue by the time he climbed into the driver’s seat. The sky was slipping into that deep, bruised twilight. The kind that made everything look like watercolor, soft edges around sharp truths.

He turned the key.

The engine came alive, smooth, deep, confident. Like it was built to outlive everything.

The truck was easier to focus on. It gave him steps:

Turn key. Shift gear. Press pedal. Go.

He pulled out, tires crunching over gravel and old glass. The fading light stretched shadows long across the road, turning abandoned cars into silhouettes that looked a little too human.

He drove.

Not fast. There was no point. No track, no pit wall, no finish line. Just miles and miles of broken road and a world that felt too big now. He picked a direction the same way he had picked breakfast cereal before all this, by instinct and mild apathy.

He passed fields going wild, some grass reclaiming everything. Trees leaning over the highway like they were curious. Houses in the distance with lights long gone out.

And a bunch of zombies in sight.

Three months in, you'd think there’d be fewer. That they’d starve or wear down or run out of things to rot. But no. The world had the audacity to remain inconvenient.

He drove through the dark, headlights carving the road into something knowable. Every once in a while, one of them wandered out of the field or from behind a stalled delivery truck, drawn to movement, sound, whatever their rotting brains still fired signals about.

They would run, or, well, try.

Some sprinted like they remembered how legs worked. Some stumbled like puppets operated by someone drunk. Some just flung themselves forward with pure emotional commitment.

Max watched one particularly enthusiastic corpse break into what might’ve once been a full-speed chase.

The truck didn’t even break pace.

It was like watching someone try to push open a pull door. Except that the person was dead. And the stakes were technically life or death.

Because how were decaying ligaments, collapsing lungs, and joints that probably sounded like bubble wrap supposed to outpace a completely fine, fully operational Ford Raptor?

Max rested one hand on the wheel, the other drumming lightly against his knee, leftover habit, something his body still thought mattered.

He didn’t know where he was going.

Just away.

He drove for hours like that, headlights tunneling through the dark, the world reduced to a corridor of asphalt and the occasional corpse with unrealistic cardio ambitions.

Eventually, outlines of buildings began to rise out of the horizon. A city.

The city rose up in front of him like a held breath,  quiet, tight, waiting to exhale. The skyline looked the same as it probably did three months ago: glass towers reflecting the last smear of dusk, smooth and modern and painfully normal. But down where the streets were, it was wrong.

Storefronts shattered, black scorch marks climbing up the sides of buildings like someone had taken a torch to the world at random, cars abandoned in the middle of intersections, some crashed, some just stopped, doors open, possessions spilled, as if everyone had simply evaporated mid-errand. A mattress lay in the road for no reason at all. A stroller without the child.

Not old enough for vines or mold. Just… paused, nothing moved.

He kept driving slowly, tires crunching broken glass. He’d seen cities on fire back in the early days, endless lines of cars trying to escape, screaming, panic. This was the aftermath of panic. The vacuum that comes when panic runs out.

He turned into a suburban street because the highway felt too exposed. Houses lined up neatly on either side, modern, boxy architecture, clean facades, big glass windows, beige walls, the kind of places that were probably overpriced even before the world ended. Lawns still trimmed. A few garden lights still on, somehow. A soccer ball in one driveway.

It looked like people were going to come home any minute.

There were signs, of course. A smear of something dark trailing down a garage door, a door hanging off its hinges, a child’s bicycle laying sideways in the street, the front wheel still faintly turning in the breeze.

Max swallowed, jaw tight.

He should find a place to sleep. He’d been driving for hours.

He shut the headlights off a block before the houses got too close together. It felt instinctual now, like checking mirrors before changing lanes. You didn’t have to think about it anymore. Just did it.

The truck rolled forward almost politely, engine quiet enough that for a second Max felt grateful to whatever engineer designed it. Imagine surviving the end of the world because some guy in a lab somewhere decided the combustion cycle should sound nicer.

There were zombies, not a horde, not the dramatic swarm the news anchors had whispered about, just scattered ones. Here and there. Standing. Leaning. Like bad lawn decorations. Their movements were slow, sluggish, like they were dreaming and hadn’t quite remembered to wake up. One was just staring at a mailbox, head tilted, as if trying to read.

Max kept his eyes forward.

He turned into a random driveway. No car. Garage door closed. No immediate signs of “someone recently died here horrifically.” A win.

He put the truck in park. He didn’t move.

The silence hit him again, heavy, close, almost sticky.

He turned the engine off, and the quiet somehow got even thicker.

Max wrapped his fingers around the door handle. Paused.

Okay.
If something jumps at me, I’m going to die looking stupid. 

He inhaled, held it, then opened the door.

The night air was cold. Too cold. Like it had teeth.

He stepped out slowly, gently shutting the door instead of letting it click closed. One of the zombies down the street shifted slightly, not toward him. Just… swayed. Like a drunk man on the edge of remembering he left the stove on.

Max scanned the driveway. The sidewalk. The yard. Nothing moved.

He glanced back at the street. Two zombies were slumped near a parked car, heads down, like they fell asleep waiting for a bus that would never come.

Another stood in the middle of the road, arms hanging limp, as still as a statue. A mannequin dressed in something once human.

Max felt his skin crawl.

He exhaled through his teeth.

“Should’ve brought the damn race suit,” he muttered under his breath.

He took another step toward the house. His footsteps felt stupidly loud against the concrete. No zombie turned, no heads snapped around, no groaning chorus rose up to chase him.

That should have made him feel better.

It didn’t.

He swallowed, forcing the tension down.

The house didn’t look welcoming. The windows were dark, but not empty. The glass, reflecting him back.

Up close, the siding had scorch marks near the gutter, like someone tried to burn something off the wall and got interrupted halfway. The welcome mat was crooked, like someone had left in a hurry, tripping over their own life on the way out.

The front door paint was chipped around the handle. Not old damage, rushed, frantic scratches. Fingernails or keys. Probably nails.

He stood there.

Hand hovering just above the doorknob.

He released his breath, slow, controlled, like he was still sitting in a cockpit trying not to spike tire temperature.

The door gave under his hand without any resistance, no lock, no chain, no barricade. Just open.

The dark inside was thick. Not pitch black, just unlit enough that the shapes of furniture were vague, outlines instead of objects. The only real light was bleeding in from the yard across the street, thin and diluted, filtering through the front window and sketching everything in low contrast.

The place wasn’t wrecked.

No overturned chairs, broken plates, or smeared blood handprints that spelled GET OUT like a bad horror film.

Just… still.

Which was so much worse.

Max stepped in, slow, careful, quiet. His shoes didn’t squeak, didn’t scrape. Even breathing felt rude.

His eyes adjusted, couch, coffee table, and TV still mounted. A mug on the side table.

He was halfway toward the hallway when he heard it.

A sound.

It wasn’t loud, not dramatic, just something.

A shift of weight. A subtle scrape. The whisper of friction somewhere deeper in the house.

Max froze. Pulse spiked. Muscles locked.

He moved without thinking, back pressed to the wall, knees bent, breath silent. One hand wrapped around the gun. Thumb rested against the safety, finger outside the trigger. The way instructors drilled into muscle memory years ago.

He was sure he’d made a sound. A floorboard, a shoe, an inhale too sharp, something. But it didn’t matter, because whatever was in here had made one too.

And it was close.

Close like other side of the corner close. Close like if he reached out he might brush it close.

The kind of close where instinct didn’t bother with fear or strategy or plans, just prepared to kill.

Either way, only one of them was walking out of this fucking hallway alive.

This is stupid.
Everything I’m doing is stupid.
I’m a race car driver.

His heartbeat was a slow, hard hammer against his ribs.

He shifted his weight — almost imperceptibly — preparing to round the corner.

He counted in his head.

Three.

Two.

Max stepped forward—
Gun raised—
Body ready—
Eyes sharp—
Looking down—

He blinked.

Why the fuck are you looking down, Max? Literally zero survival instinct. 

Because there, just barely visible past the corner, was—

Is that… A fucking cowboy shoe?

One—

He swung around the corner—

And there was the barrel of another gun, already aimed at his head.

“Max?”

“Daniel?”

Chapter Text

For a second, nobody moved.

Max stared at Daniel. Daniel stared back. Two guns. Two idiots. One apocalypse. And apparently no plan for what happens when you run into your ex-teammate in a hallway of a house mid-apocalypse.

The gun felt heavy. Stupid, suddenly. He lowered it. Not because it was safe—just because his brain didn’t have the bandwidth to be shocked and ready to kill something at the same time. One thing at a time. Survival, then feelings. Unfortunately, feelings were sprinting ahead.

Daniel lowered his too. Same timing. Same angle. Like they’d practiced it once.

Silence stretched. Long enough for Max to hear himself breathing. Long enough to notice Daniel’s hair was longer now, messy curls brushing his jaw like time had been passing without Max’s permission. His face looked thinner. Worn down. But his eyes, those were still the same, somehow.

Max hadn’t seen him since the retirement. The quiet one. No goodbye post, no press tour, no emotional montage. He’d just… disappeared. People said he went off-grid. Max never asked for details. He just assumed the worst.

Apparently his body had never believed that.

And now here he was.

In cowboy boots.

Daniel exhaled, shaky, even though he clearly wanted it not to be.

“…Mate,” Daniel said, voice rough and trying for casual, “you scared the shit out of me.”

Max blinked. His throat felt tight. Could’ve been adrenaline. Could’ve been something worse.

“You scared me first.” It came out softer than he meant. Not accusatory. Just true.

They stood there, both breathing too fast, both pretending they weren’t.

Max looked at him again, slower this time. Boots. Shirt. Face. Eyes.

Alive.

It hit him straight in the sternum.

“You’re alive,” Max said. The words felt small for what he meant.

Daniel’s mouth twitched—not a smile exactly, but close enough to remember what one might feel like.

“Yeah. You too,” he said. “Though honestly, I was like two seconds from shooting you, so it was about to get complicated.”

Max didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe this was happening, here, of all places. Three months of the world ending and somehow they both made it through. What were the fucking odds that they’d meet again? What were the odds that they’d survive long enough to do this?

Actually, better not think about odds. The odds had been shit from the start.

Max found his voice eventually. It sounded like it had dust on it. “What are you doing here?”

Daniel blinked at him. “Uh. I live here.”

Max stared. “…This is your house?”

“Yes, mate. That’s what I said.”

Max let that sit. Of course it was his house, made perfect sense in a way he didn’t want to think about too deeply. Like Max didn’t spend the one free week after Singapore flying to Australia, for no reason. Like Max didn’t end up driving out to Perth—

Which could mean nothing. Obviously.

They’d already done the small talk part—I’m glad you’re okay, How did you make it here, Max bullshitting something about a collaboration meeting he had to personally oversee. Max thought about mentally awarding himself a medal for subtlety. A flawless lie. If you ignored the fact that it made zero sense.

In his defense, the apocalypse did not come with a script.

Max sank into Daniel’s couch, his body basically folding in on itself. He let out a long breath that felt like it had been waiting months to escape.

“So,” Max said, “how have you survived this long without moving?”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “Like. Water. Where do you get it?”

Daniel shrugged. “I have my own tank. Installed it when I got the house, just in case. Turns out it was a good call.”

Max nodded slowly. Of course Daniel had a tank. Meanwhile, Max had been surviving on whatever water jugs he could pry out of abandoned convenience stores like some post-apocalyptic raccoon. He remembered how quickly the stores had gone dry, and how most water sources had turned contaminated just after the two-month mark since the apocalypse.

“I have a generator too,” Daniel added.

“I only use it for charging, radios, and lights sometimes,” Daniel said. “I wanted to stay put, so… yeah.” He gestured vaguely. “Prepared. Or paranoid. Depends on the day.”

Silence again. Not awful. Just heavy.

Max’s eyes flicked downward. He couldn’t help it. “Why are you wearing that, anyway?”

Daniel made a face like someone who knew this conversation was inevitable and was already exhausted by it.

“In… my neighbour’s garage…” he muttered. “You want something to eat? You hungry?”

Yes, he stole the boots. And possibly the attitude that came with it. As if anyone cared now. The world ended; morality had taken a long vacation. They were conveniently his size, surprisingly comfortable to run in, and honestly kind of fun.

Max nodded. “Yeah. I brought food too.”

He said it casually, like he hadn’t nearly died three times today getting it.

Daniel headed to the kitchen, pulling open a drawer like this was just a normal evening. He grabbed a microwavable meal. Rotisserie chicken with greens and mashed potatoes, like civilization hadn’t packed up and left.

Max blinked. “Wow. Shouldn’t you save those?”

Daniel didn’t look up. Just shrugged. “It’s fine. I have a lot stocked.”

Max tried not to stare. Real food. He’d been living on protein bars and canned beans. Occasionally eggs, if he was lucky and brave enough to get close to abandoned farms. Still worked out every day. Extra strength and cardio might just save your ass, he always told himself. His muscles were still solid under the skin, proof that a little discipline went a long way.

He’d even tried hunting down something real, meat, fresh ingredients in abandoned restaurants or commercial kitchens. Mostly inconvenient, sometimes fruitless, and always nerve-wracking. There was no time to cook when the undead could wander in at any moment.

Watching Daniel heat up an actual meal, on a plate, felt surreal. Absurd. A little like time travel.

Daniel slid the food onto two plates and joined him at the table. Max didn’t bother with the chair; he just perched on the edge, plate balanced on his knees. Daniel sat across from him, elbows resting lightly on the table. A candle flickered between them. A candle. Like they were on some kind of post-apocalyptic date.

He glanced at Daniel, letting his mind drift back to when they were younger, the days when helmets and fireproof suits were the biggest worries, not the end of the world. Days when a lone scrap or a spilled drink could ruin a race weekend, but nothing really mattered beyond the next laugh. When Christian scolded them for the tiniest mistake, and they’d just grin, shrugging off the consequences because they were invincible. Life had felt absurd and light.

He pushed the thought away before it settled.

The silence stretched. Too full.

“So why was your door unlocked?” Max asked.

Daniel winced. Just barely. “I was outside and about to lock it. Then I see a truck pulling in. Thought it might be—” He gestured vaguely. Zombies. Bandits. Whatever.

Max imagined the timing of that. One second later and he might’ve shot Daniel. Or Daniel might’ve shot him. The thought sat heavy in his throat.

“How’d you survive this long?” Max asked, quieter.

Daniel leaned back. Looked tired in a way that wasn’t physical.

He lived alone. His family was a few cities away from Perth, and he hadn’t been in contact with them since the first days of the outbreak.

Max could see the worry in his face, could feel it in the set of his jaw and the brief hesitation before he answered.

Daniel tried to drive out to them once, finding roads blocked, a swarm waiting, adrenaline carrying him through a near-death escape back home. Since then, he only scouted for essentials. In and out. Unseen.

Max asked if there was anybody else around here. Daniel shook his head. “Not anymore.” Some had tried, a few days, maybe weeks, storming out in panic, fully unprepared. Since then, he had been alone for a month.

Max studied him for a moment. The way his jaw tightened. The exhaustion in his posture.

He didn’t say I’m sorry. It would’ve sounded stupid. Too small.

So he took another bite of chicken instead.

Max let his eyes wander around the living room.

It looked different now than it had in the dark earlier. Less like a place you break into, more like a place someone actually lived

It was… homey. Cozy. Shelves sagged under the weight of souvenirs and knick-knacks: tiny sculptures, mismatched mugs, a stack of old vinyl leaning at an angle, and a random toy car he could’ve sworn was more than ten years old. Posters of sleek cars, Enchanté, obviously, adorned the walls, some framed, some curling at the edges, mixed with abstract prints and a few bands Max didn’t recognize. A lone Ford Racing cap slouched over the arm of the couch like it had been dropped mid-thought.

Picture frames caught the candlelight, glinting just enough to reveal smiling faces, family gatherings, childhood birthdays, friends frozen in mid-laugh, blurry photos of people who mattered once. The room smelled like wood and dust and something warm. Safe. Like the apocalypse hadn’t quite made it through the door.

And yet there were almost no reminders that Daniel had ever been in racing. No trophies, no helmets, no signed posters screaming past glories. Just this quiet, ordinary home, the life he had built, carefully curated and almost painfully normal.

Max was standing there, in the middle of it, the living reminder of that world. A world Daniel had left behind. He could almost feel the smell of burning rubber, the rush of wind past his helmet, it was all ghostly now, intruding into this calm, warm space.

“It’s pretty late, mate,” Daniel said, cutting through Max’s thoughts. He glanced at the clock among the souvenirs on the shelf, the soft tick confirming it was around 1 a.m.

“You wanna hit the hay?” Daniel added.

Max didn’t fully understand the expression, but he assumed it meant hitting the bed. He was exhausted anyway. Every muscle felt like it was filing complaints.

“I’m fine here,” Max said, nodding toward the couch. He wasn’t picky — it was someone else’s house, and it just made sense to settle where he was.

“Nah,” Daniel said, already shaking his head. “I’ve got a spare room upstairs. Put new covers on it.”

He said it like it was no big deal, like he hadn’t done it while Max was wandering around the living room silently reorganizing his entire emotional history.

Daniel shifted on the couch, shotgun across his chest like it was just a blanket. “I’ll stay out here. Keep lookout. You get some rest.”

Max frowned. “Lookout? What have you even been doing all this time?”

Daniel shrugged, small and tired. “Well. There’s two of us now. Better to be safe than sorry.”

Right.

Max nodded. He didn’t love the idea of someone else staying awake while he slept. Felt rude. Intrusive. But Daniel didn’t leave any room to argue.

So Max sighed, small and resigned, and headed upstairs.

The carpet softened his steps. The hallway was lined with framed photos—landscapes, family moments, blurry happiness that felt like it belonged to another lifetime. Everything smelled like wood polish and faint candle smoke. Domestic. Almost too normal. Shadows from downstairs flickered across the walls like they were moving.

The guest room was at the end. Simple, neat, but still in harmony with the rest of the house. No flashy posters or over-the-top decorations. Just a sleek lamp, probably chosen to entertain guests. The sheets were clean, a series of blue and grey stripes, tucked in neatly. Max stood there for a second. I should probably take a shower, right?

He padded back to the stairs. “Daniel,” he called quietly. “Water okay?”

“Yeah,” Daniel answered. “Everything you need’s in there.”

Back in the bathroom, Max undressed quickly and locked the door out of habit. The room felt unreal. Tiles clean. Counter spotless. Everything organized, shampoo, soap, creams, lotion, razor. Tampons in a little box. A space designed for guests. A life Daniel had set up before everything went to shit.

Max stood under the warm water and just let go for a second. Muscles unclenching one by one. He’d forgotten what a real shower felt like. Being warm. Being clean. Being a person, not some half-feral thing planning every escape route.

For a few minutes, there was no door to barricade. No undead moaning outside. No inventory check running in the back of his head. Just water and heat and the kind of quiet that felt impossible now.

When he finally got out, hair damp, skin smelling like Daniel’s soap, he pulled on boxers, padding back to the bed. The sheets were cool, neatly tucked, faintly scented with detergent. He climbed into bed, staring at the ceiling. The day’s exhaustion weighed heavily, but for the first time in a long while, he felt secure.

Blanket pulled up to his chest, Max let himself sink into the mattress. 

Max lay back against the neat pillow, cool sheets tucked around him. The room was quiet, the only sound was the faint hum of the wind outside and trees gently rustling. He let his eyes wander to the ceiling, tracing the shadows the candlelight threw along the walls, letting his mind drift where it wanted.

Daniel. Alive. Safe. Here. Somehow, against all odds, he had survived three months of chaos, and now Max was standing, lying, in the same house, in the same world, with him. It felt absurd and almost laughable, if he allowed himself the humor.

He let himself linger on that thought, the relief and disbelief settling into his bones. A rare sense of normalcy in the middle of the world gone sideways. Someone familiar. Someone he trusted.

Max exhaled slowly. Thankful. Thankful for the sheets, the warm water, the food. Thankful for a quiet room where he could finally stop running for a while.

Most of all, thankful it was Daniel.

He let the exhaustion take over, letting his limbs sink into the mattress, letting the tension of the day slip away. Tomorrow, the streets would still be crawling with death. Tomorrow, everything outside these walls would still be insane.

But for now, this was enough.

And Max let himself drift, just a little, into sleep, the absurdity of survival softened by the rare, stubborn comfort of having someone he knew beside him in a world that had almost forgotten what that meant.

Max woke up out of habit. In the apocalypse, sleep was a luxury, staying alive was muscle memory. His body had sprawled over half the bed, one arm hanging off the edge, one leg twisted in the sheets like he’d fought someone in his sleep.

For a moment, he forgot where he was. Right. Safe house. Real bed. Daniel downstairs.

He lay still, listening. No noise. Which, ironically, made him anxious. The silence could mean safety… or something waiting. He pushed off the sheets and sat up, body still heavy but looser than it had felt in weeks. Real mattress. Actual rest. He’d forgotten how much difference that made.

He got up quietly, feet hitting the wooden floor, moving like he might wake the world. Downstairs, the clock on the shelf blinked faintly in the dark. 4:03 a.m. Barely three hours of sleep, but he’d take it.

Daniel was still on the couch. Awake. He looked like he hadn’t moved much, legs spread, elbows on his knees, gun resting between them. There were small rolls of gauze and half-torn bandage wrappers scattered around him. He was stuffing first aid kits like it was the middle of the afternoon instead of the dead of night.

Daniel must’ve noticed him in the corner of his eye. “What? Up already?”

Max shrugged, voice low. “Figure we could swap. You watch, I rest.”

Daniel let out a short, tired laugh. “You sure you’re not just saying that ’cause you can’t sleep?”

“Maybe,” Max admitted. “But you look worse than me.”

That earned a huff, quiet but real. Daniel leaned back against the couch. “You planning to do a watch in your underwear, though?”

Max blinked, looked down. Right. Boxers. He hadn’t exactly thought that part through. “Yeah, well. Guess the undead won’t mind.”

Daniel’s mouth twitched, something like a smile, though his eyes stayed tired. He turned back to the medical kit, but not before his gaze flicked up again, brief but enough.

Max was lean, but solid. Built from constant movement. The kind of strength that wasn’t for show. It was earned, one sprint, one close call at a time.

There were scars scattered across his skin, pale lines that caught the warm candlelight,  reminders of everything they didn’t talk about. His shoulders were broad, back still tense even when he looked relaxed. Always ready for something. Always half on guard.

Daniel reached for another pouch

He wasn’t looking. Not really. Just… noticing.

“Go back to sleep,” Max said, moving toward the couch now, quieter, steadier. “I’ll take it from here.”

Daniel hesitated. but only for a second. Then he nodded, setting the gun down with a soft thud.

“Wake me if anything breathes wrong,” he muttered, already half on his feet.

“Sure,” Max said.

Daniel passed him on the way to the stairs, shoulder brushing his just slightly. Then he was gone, steps fading upstairs.

Max sat down, the gun across his lap now, watching the candlelight flicker against the walls. The quiet didn’t seem so bad anymore.

For once, the night didn’t feel like it was out to get them.