Chapter Text
Lev Glebov liked to think he had no part in what the world had become. But that would be a lie.
Every morning he wrapped himself up with the shreds of clothing he had left on him from that fateful day and whatever he could salvage from the streets. Constant memories of an unsuspecting fever dug into his brain at all times, even now as he cleaned his plastic mask from blood and whatever other substances had dried on it overnight. It had yellowed over time but now it shielded more than just pucks and shards of ice from Lev's face. Or rather, it shielded Lev's face from the consequences of his own recklessness, the state of the current world.
The old office buildings' lights flickered unreliably. The structure may keep him protected but sometimes it felt as though it was trying to banish lev from the inside out, as if punishing him for his actions and letting him know that he didn't deserve a place of safety.
He was used to being alone, even when he had friends. He was surrounded but always by himself, he thought those days would train him to withstand the solidarity that comes with living in a world of animalistic instinct and the smell of decay. A small part of him always wished the solitude he felt would eventually be inflicted on others, but never like this.
He tightened the last strap that crossed over his chest, holding what little supplies he had left. He clutched his old hockey stick wound up with barbed wire stolen from the top of some gate in his free hand, his muscles straining from the constant tension in his body and his fingertips trembling as he made his way to the double push doors out of the office building.
The office building held a comforting musty scent that lingered from life before the outbreak. The sweat of underpaid employees and the stench of coffee never stopped clinging to the peeling wallpaper of the building. Lev found comfort in the little things he could, still trying to hold onto the final remnants of his previous life. That smell disappeared as soon as he hit the humidity of the outside city. He put on a surgical mask over his hockey one - something he probably should’ve done on the day he got his virus - to cover up the stench of decaying bodies. He wasn’t sure what differentiated the lifeless corpses from those that walked upright. They both still decayed, their flesh slipped off their bones as if they were clothes a few sizes too big, and they both still gargled momentarily, leftovers from a human life trying to escape the decomposing prison it’s been left to suffer in. The only difference between them was the white light in the moving zombies’ eyes that seemed to burn with a passion of rage.
Lev imagined it to be directed at him, for he was the cause of the virus. Not every zombie that charged at him would know that but levs guilt held him in a purgatory of his own doing.
One step from Lev's living body disturbed the thick dead air all around him, it was suffocating to breathe, not to mention the two masks he had on. His silhouette was rugged from the sharp edges his torn clothing and sharped weapons gave him. If you didn't know him personally you would've thought of him as the reincarnation of Jason Voorhees. He knew the rules to the outside world by now: bite back or be bit.
There was a sudden shuffle behind some junk tossed out onto the streets. Lev raised his stick, his muscles already locking into position as his head whipped round to the source of the sound. Nothing. He let his guard down and sighed, disappointed that he let his paranoia get the better of him.
Seconds later he felt a hand on his shoulder, he swivelled his body around and instinctively smashed his stick into the head of whatever had grabbed him. It was a girl. Her ponytail had come loose with the hairband weaved into the tangle of her hair. The red strip of dye she had was faded but it was undoubtedly her. Lev had noticed her in the audience of his matches holding a sign with his face on it. How long had it been since he’d scouted her face out in a sea of moving and bustling fans? They’d talked a few times after the games, both their awkward personalities bouncing off of each other, but they bonded over a keychain on lev's duffle bag, some anime character he'd refused to forget the name of. They swore they’d talk again someday.
Lev knew for a fact her face was in the crowd on the day of the outbreak. Despite his vision being blurry and his eyes refusing to focus. He managed. For her.
The next time he saw her was now, two feet away with hooks from the barbed wire latching onto the side of her face, tangling with her hair, refusing to let her go. Her arms were still outstretched towards lev, trying to fulfil her promise even after death.
Lev had to remind himself that this wasn’t the same girl he met months ago.
He didn’t want to get anywhere near her but he needed to shake her off of his only weapon. As he winded back his hockey stick to get more momentum her body reluctantly followed, it continued to follow when he smashed the stick against the brick wall of the office building, her head in between the wood and the stone, an explosion of dark crimson following. He needed to keep reminding himself to destroy the brain to keep himself from crying. More blood splattered on the walls and on Lev with every hit. The red blanketed every surface within eyes distance. The blood eventually turned to a pink mush, flopping pathetically on the ground rather than decorating the walls.
Her head, now only a bag of flesh with shattered skull fragments in it, splattered to the floor, like a waterlogged rag, the final spray of blood coming out like a desperate attempt at one last act against lev. The white glow from her eyes had been snuffed out as easily as candlelight. He looked down at the mangled body of a girl he used to know and walked away, his mind still focusing on the thing he came out to do in the first place; supplies.
Lev hadn’t always been this indifferent to death. He thought back to that first day when everything changed.
He couldn't remember the events leading up to where he was, he only remembered his breathing deepening, taking more steps backwards, until his foot slipped. It felt like the first time he slipped on ice, he landed on his butt with his hands trying to support him. Although this time instead of the cold mist from the ice engulfing him it was the warmth of freshly spilled brains on the floor. He could feel it on his hands and the back of his legs where he touched the contaminated floor. The blood started to soak through his clothes and travel to areas that hadn’t been dirtied yet. He shakily looked up from his position to see that he had slipped in a puddle of what was once in Styopas head. He could only describe it as raw minced meat floating in a puddle of crimson.
He couldn’t find it in him to scream. To yell. Not out of frustration nor confusion nor disgust. A blurry figure that his memory had blocked out held a hand out to him and Lev almost took it, before seeing his own stained hands. He scrambled up by himself and bolted for the doors, not caring that the blades on his skates were dulling with every step or that he left behind his duffel bag and everything he held valuable in it. He needed to get out.
Lev walked by his own house. His fingers tightened around the strap on his chest, his heart rate immediately picked up whenever he passed by this area. A small voice within him yelled at him to go inside and run into his parent’s arms. But he knew there were no parents to return to.
As soon as he left the school building he ran. He lived a considerable distance from the school so the journey dragged on. His hands shook as he paid the bus fare, he hoped the red of his uniform would mask the red of the blood, but nothing could mask the undeniable sickly and metallic odour that would become his permanent stench from now on. His stuffy nose made it hard to take deep breaths to calm himself as he sat on the leather seats. As soon as he reached his stop he sprinted for his house. Approaching the front door, he reached towards his duffel bag for his keys but realised he left it at school. He resorted to pounding on the door, waiting for any sort of response.
Only when he had the chance to breathe he realised he was still wearing his hockey boots. He bent down, about to untie the laces to let his feet breathe, when the door aggressively swung open, banging against the wall of the entrance doorway.
Lev's dad had answered, but he was different. His skin had transformed and moulted into a deathly green, it had sagged so much since lev last saw him in the morning. It was so surreal to see him age about seventy years in a few hours. His death had become past overdue, like God was playing a cruel prank by keeping his soul alive when his body was withering away.
Lev didn’t say a word, he took one step into his driveway and ran. He never looked back. He couldn’t look at the result of his own doing, because even through the gaps of his memory and the blurry faces and muffled speech, he knew this was his fault.
His feet pounded with the same intensity as when he first reached his doorstep. The blades had been taken off on that first day, when he realised he had no one left to fight for him but himself, and he turned them into nun chucks of some sort by tying the two ends with industrial string that he stole from a hardware store. They hung around his waist, clattering together with every step like knives in a draw.
His eye drifted to a supermarket in the distance, maybe there would be something edible in there? Not in the fridge section, as the city had lost power weeks ago, but perhaps some more canned food. He had raided all the shops near his office building so he had to go out for longer distances to get to shops further away, meaning a bigger strain on his feet.
He was practically limping by the time he got to the doors, he used the first aisle he saw to steady himself, although immediately pounced back up once he got a face full of expired lettuce. He wondered through the store, the expiry dates were stuck in time to when the outbreak first happened, like the world had stopped spinning and lev was the only one still left moving. He made his way to the canned section. Admittedly, he was tired of eating baked beans and tuna for every meal but he’d rather eat that for a million years than join the horde out there.
Simultaneously, he listened out for any footsteps, he could always tell the dead from the living. Not as if he’s heard a living for the past few weeks...months? The dead always dragged their feet across the ground, creating horrible scratching noises that occupied a special part of your brain. Every step was accompanied by a drawn out and agonising groan. They weren't stealthy but that didn't mean they wouldn't be able to kill you in one move
Lev looked at the cans. He felt like treating himself to some canned peaches that didn’t expire for another two years, so he put them in his bag with a smile while also grabbing a handful of other cans.
“Hey, Glebov. Catch this!”