Chapter Text
The sky is orange as the last flecks of daylight scatter along the concrete. Jabber loves when it looks like this, like the whole city is on fire. He would believe it too, if it weren’t for the absence of smoke in his lungs. Jabber coughs and glances around.
The streets are silent, the air filled with rot and distant decay. He can’t escape it. He has stopped trying. Everywhere he looks something is dead and dying, giving way to the overgrowth of the brush–roots and vines crawling along crumbling brick and collapsed wood.
Jabber ducks into an old gas station, his hand trailing along the rusted metal doorframe. Maybe in another life he would have had to check the place for squatters, he would have to fight for rights to the place. But, now, there wasn’t anyone left to fight. Anyone worth anything lived in one of the scattered patchwork communities and everyone else was dead.
Jabber wasn’t worth anything. But he wasn’t dead either. He was a survivor, a cockroach in the desolate landscape of their dying world.
He had fought his way through zombies and, worse, through other people just like him. He had fought to live, had fought to walk these abandoned streets. And, for what?
Jabber hums a lost tune as he squats in front of the rows of food, parsing through cans and looking for anything that might still be good. He turns each can outward one by one to see the expiration date. It was a longshot but he had been lucky before.
The wind kicks the door open and Jabber stands quickly, armed with a can of corn. He imagines launching it at the head of a zombie, the crude crack of its skull and the bright pink of its innards leaking out as it moans incoherently on the ground. His heart races with giddy anticipation.
To be honest, he wouldn’t mind a fight. It had been a few good days since Jabber last had to fight for his life. Gingerly, he pats his pocket where he’s stuffed his claws. They call to him. They want to pick a fight, to feel the cool ooze of thick blood as he rips into the throat of a zombie.
Jabber’s stomach growls and he looks back down at the picked over shelf in front of him. He kneels and continues his search for food, meticulously turning cans until he comes across one that isn’t too out of date. He squints at the faded label and wrinkles his nose. Beans. It’s always beans.
From his pocket Jabber produces the claws for one hand and slides them on, each one clicking onto his ringed fingers. Maneuvering them around the top of the can, he digs the claw into the metal and circles the lid until he’s able to peel it back. Unceremoniously, Jabber presses the jagged edge of the can to his lips and knocks back the entire thing. It’s not warm or good by any means, but it quells the hunger churning in his stomach. Jabber tosses the can to the side and it clatters to the floor.
The shadows of the shelves stretch through the abandoned gas station. Jabber finds a dark corner within one and slides himself down the wall onto the floor. Around his waist, little glass vials jingle together as he descends. He pulls one from its clip and holds it up to catch a stray bit of light coming through the window.
The tip of Jabber’s claw scrapes against the sides of the vial as he slowly dips it in. The light catches on green fluid as it coats the edge of it. He pulls it back out and lowers the claw to his abdomen. He sucks in a breath before slowly pressing the blade of the claw into his side.
The pain tears a laugh from his lungs. He curls forward around his hand. The sting is sharp and sweet as he presses in further. He doesn’t really need to pierce himself that deeply, a superficial scratch would do the job, but Jabber revels in it. He can feel warm blood bubbling around the claw as it drips down his stomach. He’s bleeding, he’s in pain, he’s alive.
“Fuck,” Jabber’s laugh hiccups in the back of his throat as he reels from the sensation. It burns something awful and there’s a fleeting consideration that maybe he went too far this time. Jabber pulls his claw from his side and looks at it, his own blood glistening in the remaining light. He brings it to his mouth and licks up the metal blade of his makeshift claw, the taste of iron sharp on his tongue. It’s at least warmer than the beans.
It would take most of the night to feel the effects. He had learned this after much trial and error. The first time Jabber had given himself a small dose of the infection, he had almost died. He could feel the infection roiling within him. He had sweat it out in the back of an old warehouse, believing the entire time he was about to turn. Jabber had toed the line ever since, playing with the dosage until he burned just enough.
He runs his finger over the scars, like tally marks along his stomach. Each dose was a risk but Jabber had a gambler’s heart. And, more than that, he liked it. He liked the brush with death, the kiss of pain, the sweet, sweet sting of his own blade sinking into his skin.
The adrenaline fades the longer Jabber sits and soon he is nodding off. Sleep was its own gamble, never knowing how or when or if he was going to wake up. Traveling alone added an extra layer of uncertainty, but another person would just be dead weight. Besides, other survivors were just as likely to kill him as a zombie was.
Jabber’s eyes flutter closed as he drifts, dreams sweeping through an infection-rattled mind.
~
Jabber wakes in a cold sweat while the moon is still high. He feels like he can count each of his muscles in the way that it aches. He scrambles to remember the night before, how much of the toxin he had given himself. There wasn’t an exact science to it, he had dipped and stabbed and waited.
Jabber slides further down the wall until he is lying on his side, knees tucked into his chest. His body shudders violently with chills. It was only a taste of what turning into a zombie would have entailed, but it would have to do. Jabber grins, his cheek pressed against the old laminate flooring.
He imagines the decay, creeping through his hands, up his neck. Dead and rotting skin, and the stench—the stench! It wasn’t uncommon to smell a zombie before you could see one. Jabber wrinkles his nose with the memory of it. Everything smelled like death nowadays. The streets were littered with bodies and bones. But there was something extra pungent about the smell of a zombie.
Jabber giggles as he holds a hand out in front of his face. Moonlight glints off of each of his rings as he rotates his hand around. He holds up his other hand with the claw still attached to the rings. He folds each of his fingers down one by one, feeling the weight of each blade. In the bits of light, he can see specks of blood on the metal. It must be his. The zombies didn’t bleed the same. They didn’t have beating hearts, not like people did.
Jabber resists the urge to pierce himself again with his claws, resists the urge to dig out the infection he can feel curdling inside of him. If only he could reach into himself once more, he could pull it out. He rolls back onto his side and squeezes his eyes shut. He always forgot about this part, the feeling of being consumed from the inside out.
His body is sore from the fever, from his laughter, from running. He had been lucky to stumble upon the gas station when he did–just in time for his next dose of the infection, just in time to fill the hollowness in his belly. A crown of sweat encircles his head and he runs a sleeve over his forehead to wipe it off.
Infecting himself had started off as a fun experiment. Jabber had grown bored. Getting kicked out of towns, fighting off zombies, it had all become tiresome. He had lost sight of what he was living for. But playing with death like a toy, it gave him purpose. He could get close, dangerously close. He could almost know what it was like to lose himself to the infection.
Almost.
In this shithole of a world, Jabber didn’t mind being dead. Or, at least, partially dead. He would never be accepted by a community, so he would live in between. Never quite fitting in anywhere, never quite letting himself belong.
He rolls onto his back, unfastens the claws from his hand and pockets them. He would need them again when the day broke, when warm air and the carrying scent of flesh inevitably lured a pack of zombies in his direction.
Bloody thoughts lull Jabber back into light slumber. He tosses and turns with each gory dream–the stink of zombie bodies loitering outside the gas station, the resistance of his claw as it plunges into a zombie’s chest, the sputtering of the zombie’s groans as he guts it. His fever fueled dream propels him through thoughts of decapitated zombies. He kicks the heads down the street with a gratified skip. He hums a jaunty tune, unconcerned with whether or not more zombies can hear him.
When the sun finally rises on his godforsaken hiding spot, when the world is ready to face him once more, Jabber will be ready.