Work Text:
Fiona waits.
DC had gone first, and then Virginia. Florida. South Dakota. Wisconsin. New York. The plague and the resulting mess had spread out, spearing itself in as many different directions as it could reach, with no discernible pattern or plan.
It’s difficult to get accurate news.
Access to the Internet is intermittent, a hobbled together connection of hacked networks. No ISPs. No way to track it. There’s WiFi in the Kash And Grab, rickety and weak, but workable.
There’s no food but the smeared remains of broken jam containers and crumbs crunched into the parquet floor, but there’s a signal, enough of one, and if Fiona wants information, that’s where she goes.
There’s less traffic in the earliest parts of the morning.
The creatures don’t seem to like sunlight, although that doesn't stop them from traveling in it. Fiona goes when the sun is just streaking pink and purple across the sky and the air is crisp and frozen.
There are dozens of theories floating around the network, hazy details and half-formed ideas, a sketched out guide for anyone who’s brave enough to combat against the elements.
She straps Liam to her chest, even though he’s been big enough to walk on his own for years now, and she makes sure all the locks and chains are on each and every door and window of the house.
There’s a note for Debs, one for Lip and Karen and Carl, just in case, and a time frame for when she expects to be home. If she’s not back, there’s a list of provisions. There are plans b-z.
If she’s infected, there are guns in the kitchen under the sink, and as many rounds as it might take. She won’t make the kids do it, but Frank’s bound to be back sometime soon. No death virus is going to get him down, not when nothing else could. She’s left a note for that, too. Besides, Kev and V and the baby are there. If anything happens, they'll know what to do.
Fiona waits, she waits for the perfect moment, and then she’s barely seen.
She makes it down through the neighborhood by sticking to the middle of the street. There are no places to hide, and besides, the creatures tend to congregate in darker spaces. She has to pick through hulled out carcasses of cars, used as fire pits, and shelters, and Liam sits quiet against her chest, even though his feet kick out with every step she takes.
The store is empty. The windows smashed to pieces. The registers have been barren for months, and even though the electricity is somehow (somehow) still on, the coolers in the back are devoid of anything but rats.
It’s been over a year of this, although most people have stopped keeping track.
Fiona doesn’t. She won’t. The calendar on the fridge that used to hold all of the kids’ appointments now serves as a marker of how much time has passed. Others might want to forget, but Fiona can’t.
There’s a corner beneath the stairs that lead to Kash and Linda’s old apartment and that’s where the strongest bit of signal strength is. Fiona crouches there, tucking their bodies tightly against the wall, mostly hidden under the counter and out of sight.
It takes a while for her phone to find the signal, and even longer for it to connect. She’s looking at the time, counting down the seconds, regulating her breaths to match.
Nothing in her email. There’s been nothing for days.
Most of the people Fiona knows are dead.
It would be easy, maybe, to assume that others hadn’t tried searching out what remaining technology still worked, but she’s always been practical, Fiona. She’s never kidded herself before. Why start now.
She checks CNN. NBC. Fox. She checks Twitter. Yahoo! News.
There’s nothing new, but in this case, no news is the worst news.
There’s no way of knowing if the virus has spread overseas. A year ago, the word had been, “Small. Contained virus. DC.”
Six months ago, it was: “Manhattan has been contaminated. Good luck and God bless.”
It made Lip, laugh, toneless and flat, sitting on the couch with a bat in his hand and his free arm around Karen Jackson’s shoulder, like she was all the anchor he could need, and if she moved, even just an inch, he be gone.
“God bless,” he’d sneered, but his derision hadn't lasted long.
He’d coughed. This small, hiccuping sound that could’ve been nothing. It was nothing; except for how his eyes were wet when he looked up again, and all Fiona could think about was Ian.
They haven’t even mentioned his name in a year, but every day, Fiona wakes up and searches for him.
He hasn’t emailed. Didn’t when he got where he was going, and didn’t where he could have, and Fiona tries to keep her breaths even, tries not to lose it crouching on the floor of the Kash And Grab with Liam strapped to her chest and reanimated, decaying corpses contaminating everything else.
Quietly, like he can sense her distress, Liam says, “Okay, Fi?”
His voice is thin, scratchy from the lack of use.
They’ve all gotten pretty quiet these days.
“Yeah, baby,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to his forehead.
He sags into it, sags into her, arms coming up to squeeze her shoulders, and that’s when she hears it. Footsteps coming closer, feet crunching on glass and the sick swing of the door being pushed open.
They’re hidden, mostly, but not for long, and not particularly well.
Fiona closes her eyes and prays to a god she doesn't believe in. Presses her face into Liam’s hair and just tries to breathe.
He’s trembling. They’re both trembling, and Fiona can’t remember the last time she breathed when a voice above her says, “Fiona?”
--
She’d know her kids anywhere.
Fiona would be able to pick them out of a lineup from just the quickest view of their skin, their eyes or the slant of their mouths.
She looks up, and then up higher. It looks like Ian. It sounds like Ian, too, but there’s no way it can be, because they’re all on a quarantined rock heading straight to hell and her Ian is thousands of miles away.
“Fi,” he says, coming around the counter. The sun is bright, filtering in through the broken panes of glass in the door, and for a second, she can’t see his face at all, his features erased and diluted down to nothingness.
Fiona looks at him and doesn’t feel anything at all. This isn’t Ian. It can’t be.
Ian is dead, or worse.
“Fiona,” he repeats, dropping down to a crouch and inching closer. He doesn’t reach either of his hands out, doesn’t make like he’s going to touch them, and Fiona is relieved.
Liam is squirming in her grasp, and when he turns, she can see the smile bust onto his face. His cheeks are thinner, now. They’re all thinner. There’s not enough food. There’s never been enough food, but Liam was a happy, chubby baby, and none of that is left. The fat has melted off of him entirely.
He’s lithe and thin, and when he says, “Ian!” the sound rings through the store, as loud as a beacon.
She doesn’t want to shush him, but there’s no choice.
Fiona curls tight around him, pressing small kisses to his forehead and cheeks. She tucks his face to her shoulder, not that it’ll do them much good now, and whispers, “Shh, shh, shh,” against his skin.
There’s a noise outside, harsher and more deliberate. A dragging sound. A rumble.
Fiona stops breathing entirely, focusing all of her attention on Liam and the way she can feel his heartbeat thud against her chest.
“We have to move,” Ian says, and then he is touching her, slim fingers pressing dirt crusted nails tight against her arm.
It’s the touch that spurns her forward. There’s nothing she needs in the Kash And Grab anymore, no secrets to uncover. She pushes to her feet, keeping Liam close, and when she’s outside, she starts to run.
She doesn’t look to see if Ian is close behind her.
On their street, in the neighborhood, she can feel someone behind her, keeping pace, but not overpowering, not outrunning her. If it were a creature, they’d be dead by now. The dead—the undead, the supernatural, the dark—they don’t care about lineage or location or past relationships. They don’t remember enough to care. They’re dead. They don’t have to.
She doesn’t see one until they’re almost face-to-face. It’s coming toward her, decayed feet dragging along the pavement, and Fiona’s breath stutters, heart skipping a beat in her chest.
This is it. This is it—
There’s a blast of gunfire behind her, and Fiona doesn’t duck. She doesn’t scream. She runs, not even bothering to close her eyes as she watches the creature’s chest explode, a mess of guts and graying skin staining the pavement.
Ian’s not too far behind her, and she can hear the rasp in his voice as he says, “Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going,” and she doesn’t thank him for saving their lives, doesn’t ask where he got the gun or how he kept it, just pushes open the front gate and drags herself up the porch steps, slamming her fists against the door.
She can hear footsteps, watches the curtain twitch. The heavy clanking sound of the chains being unlocked permeates the wood, and then there’s Kev, standing wide and imposing in the doorway.
“Fi,” he says, relieved, tugging her inside, and she can’t see his face when he looks at Ian, but she doesn’t much care about it either.
Unhooking Liam from the harness takes all the strength she has left. Somewhere between the store and the house, she’d forgotten how much he’s grown, and the second she lets him go, she’s tipping forward against the banister and almost losing her balance entirely.
“Fi,” someone says—Lip—and then he’s got his arms around her waist, pulling her up like a ragdoll so that she’s on her feet again.
She meets his eyes head on, but the world is still blurry at the corners. She’s not sure what either of them are seeing.
“You look like shit, Fiona,” Karen says, coming to stand in the mouth of the doorway. “When was the last time you ate something?” She’s wiping her palms on the legs of her jeans, voice tight but not unkind, and she looks pale, too, but then they all do, these days.
“Fuck off,” Lip spits back. “Leave her alone.”
The way Karen laughs is low and filthy. Promising. They’re not fighting anymore. What would anybody fight about now?
“Fiona,” Ian says, and all the noise around them stops.
She hadn’t forgotten, but she’d assumed—she’d assumed she'd lost it, finally. She'd assumed he was a hallucination. Some sort of plague ridden fever dream.
“Fiona,” he repeats, and it’s a struggle for her to turn around and look at him, but she does it anyway. Her body feels slow and molasses-ridden.
Ian has blood smeared in the shorn buzz of his hair, down his cheek and smudged behind his ear. His lips are a mottled mess of bites and canker sores. He’s broader than before, and tall, like he started growing one day and forgot to stop. He’s her brother, but he isn't.
He’s like no one she’s ever seen before.
“Ian!” Carl shouts, coming down the stairs, and that’s what starts all the noise again.
He jumps the last three steps like they’re nothing, launching himself at his brother like there’s nothing to fear. Like he isn’t covered in blood and guts and grime.
Lip hangs back, just watching, and maybe his eyes are saying more than his mouth is, but if they are, Fiona is too far away and too exhausted to pay attention.
“I’m taking a shower,” she says to no one and everyone, and ignores the way Kev tries to catch her wrist to push upstairs and out of sight.
“Where the fuck have you been? How the fuck did you get here?” she hears Lip say as she gets upstairs, and she wants to know the answers, too, but not enough to stop moving.
In her room, she strips off her jacket, hoodies and undershirt, catching her reflection in the mirror as she changes the strip of bandages on her belly. It wasn’t a deep gash—a fall against a rusted pipe while she was running for her life instead of the claws of a creature—but it’s oozing and puss-filled. It'll probably kill her just as painfully, but maybe she won't be tempted to massacre her family while she's getting busy dying.
There’s iodine on the dresser, and antiseptic, and she presses both against her abdomen, wincing at the sting and the way her whole body sways with it. The infection is deeper than it was yesterday, last week, and it would be bad if everything around them wasn’t so much worse.
She showers, and she washes her hair, scrubbing a bar of soap through it to try and get all of the grime out, even though nothing is ever clean enough now. She brushes it evenly, taking the time to unknot curls she hasn’t bothered with in months, and by the time she’s done, she feels calmer, even though calm is a relative term these days.
In the kitchen, V’s making pasta sauce on the stovetop, humming along with something on her iPod, and when she sees Fiona, she smiles.
“You look like you just got out of a spa treatment, girl. You steal some bath salts while you were out?”
She’s grinning, easy and wide, and Fiona smiles back at her, at the momentary feeling of normalcy that settles over the scene.
It doesn’t last for long.
Outside, it’s started to rain, dark clouds circling the sky, because this is Chicago, or it used to be. The weather is about as unpredictable as anything else.
She hears Carl hiss, drawing back from the window, and then she hears it, the slow, determined scrape of creatures trying to fight their way inside the house.
They seem to get stronger when it rains, drawn out by the dampness and the shadows, and Fiona closes her eyes, trying to calm her heart rate and drown out the noise.
Meditation doesn’t do much, but then, it never has before.
“C’mon guys,” Fiona says, and eight pairs of eyes swing to look at her.
They’re not scared anymore, not even Liam, and Fiona feels the regret so deep it almost feels like a genuine pain in her chest.
“You know the drill,” Lip says, and they scatter.
Debs takes Liam and the baby upstairs, taking care to slink low by the doors and windows. She’ll barricade them in the closet with the laundry chute, all of them small enough that they can fit without straining.
Kev takes the front door, pressing his bulk against it. V and Carl huddle by the washing machine, crouched with their knees bent, in case anything tries to come through the window over the sink.
The creatures aren’t inventive. They flinch and burn at fire. Their hands can’t cock or carry guns. They should be dying out faster than they are, but the problem is that no one can seem to stop them from coming. No one knows how.
The rifle Fiona grabs is familiar in her hands, and when she shoots, she doesn’t even feel a little remorse at the thud of a body hitting the back stairs and rolling down the rest of the way. It could be gone and dead for good, or it could be back, even more ferocious than before.
There’s no trick to telling.
It’s a riot of noise. Gun blasts. An explosion. Fiona closes her eyes and lets her body be propelled backwards, landing awkwardly on her arm. It hurts like hell. It burns like it’s broken and it feels unnaturally liquid when she touches it.
She can smell blood in the air before the smoke clears and the noise stops, and she swallows hard to keep from retching.
It’ll be a miracle if they survive this. It’ll be a miracle if anyone does.
“Lip,” she shouts when she can find her voice, and he answers, bleary. Kev is next. V. Carl. Karen.
Ian doesn’t say a word, and Fiona feels the hot sting of tears in her throat for the first time in months.
She pushes up to her feet, swaying slightly because of the pain in her arm and the haze in the air. V’s cradling Carl in her lap, his legs curling around her knees, and he’s crying, quiet but violent, his shoulders shaking every time he breathes.
“We got them all,” Ian says, when Fiona pushes into the den. He’s tall, imposing, even standing next to Kev, dust and blood covering him from head to toe.
Fiona hasn’t fainted in years, but she does now, losing her balance entirely and slipping off her feet again.
--
It was only a matter of time.
They’ve been luckier than most. Some people have risked their lives to try and keep heat going for others still holed up in the area. They've provided plumbing. Electricity. Someone’s been looking out for them, but all luck runs out eventually. The fall should hurt less, if it’s expected, but Fiona still feels the burn in her arms and legs, feels it in the tearing seams of her heart.
Ian’s there when she wakes up, sitting so eerily still on the edge of her bed that he resembles a block of stone more than a bag of skin.
“Hey,” she mumbles, rubbing against her mouth with the back of her hand. “Sorry.”
He’s slow to look at her, but when he does, his expression is grim.
“We have a problem,” he says.
Every word is like a punch to the gut.
“I know,” she says, because she does.
She’s been prepared for this possibility from the start, imagines that she can feel her limbs crystallizing from the inside out, skin growing scaly and cold as her nails decay and the moisture from her body dries.
Ian chews at the corner of his mouth and says, “We’ll make it quick. Painless. I’ve seen.”
He doesn’t pause to gaze out into the middle distance, gritting his teeth, even though he won’t continue. She doesn’t need to know what he’s seen.
She doesn’t want to know what he’s seen. She’s seen enough on her own.
“Is it safe for me to say goodbye?” she asks, and Ian nods once, jerky and brisk. He doesn’t offer to help her stand and she doesn’t look to him for assistance.
It’s a job. Survival is the toughest one.
V’s cleaning up shards of glass in the kitchen while Kev uses duct tape to cover the holes where windows used to be.
“These dumb motherfuckers,” he says when he sees them, grinning slightly. “We’ll outlast ‘em. We have plenty of kids to eat to survive.”
V laughs, and then tries to pretend that she didn’t, covering her mouth with her free hand and ducking her head. She leans against Kevin’s knee when their limbs cross paths, and Fiona feels a pang so deep it might as well be hollowing out her chest.
“Guys, I should,” she tries, voice weak and reedy in her chest.
The words come out thick, pressed closer together. She imagines that her lungs are congealing, starting to stick together as her body transforms.
“What’s going on, baby?” V asks, getting to her feet with ease, moving like she’s going to come forward and touch.
“Stay,” Fiona gasps out. “Stay back.”
V narrows her eyes and says, “Fiona, you are scaring me.”
It’s funny, almost. Fiona isn’t scared anymore. Fiona isn’t anything; she’s just waiting for it to be over.
“Fi,” Ian says, quiet and urgent and tight.
If she turns her head, she can see Lip and Karen sitting on the couch, their hands knitted. The kids must be upstairs, still breathing, but not asleep.
“Get up,” Ian says, and Fiona blinks at him, trying to make sense of it, trying to make sense of why he’d be inviting in more people to watch this.
“Is it time already?” she asks, turning to face him, and he shoves her down hard, shooting the gun she didn’t even know he was still holding into the other room.
Bodies make the most sickening thuds.
Fiona opens her eyes, staring at the same splotch on the ceiling she’s been looking at for years. There’s a ringing in her ears that’s distilling the noise. It feels as though there’s cotton packed tightly in her ears. She can’t make out individual sounds, just the dull throb of something she can’t quite grasp.
She closes her eyes, blinking then open again when there’s a sharp tug to her arm. Ian is staring at her, mouth pressed in a firm line.
His eyes are red-rimmed, like he’s been crying, or like he’s wanted to, and Fiona doesn’t have the time to wonder about why, because Lip is charging into the kitchen, pinning Ian to the wall and holding him there.
She can’t hear what he’s saying either, but she should stop this, she should—
Lip is covered in blood.
It’s shiny and dark, dripping in the spaces between his fingers, and he’s yelling, he must be yelling so hard, but Fiona can only hear it in fits and starts, just the briefest snatches of his grief.
She pushes up on her palms, and V’s behind her, holding her shoulders steady, crying softly into the skin of her neck.
“What,” she tries, doesn’t know if her voice comes out as a whisper or a shout.
Lip is pinning Ian, shouting and crying and covered in blood, pinking his skin and making him look simultaneously young and old, battle-hardened and innocent.
V helps her stand, and Fiona forces her feet to move, one in front of the other. Her shoes slide on the floor, wet and slippery, and she doesn’t realize that it’s blood until she’s losing her balance again.
“Lip,” she says, crowding against his back and wrapping her arms tight across his belly. “Lip, we were dying.”
He’s breathing hard. She can feel it, the harsh rasp of his lungs through his rib cage. Through the thinness of his ratty t-shirt.
It’s December. He should be freezing, but he’s not, skin burning hot to the touch, from rage or fear or both.
“I could have found a way. You know I could have, asshole. I just needed more time.”
He’s not screaming now, although he could be, and Fiona feels the way the sobs wrack through his chest, too. Feels it when he collapses against Ian instead of fighting against him.
“I could have saved her," he whispers, sobs leading the way to his grief. "I was trying so hard.”
--
It doesn’t get worse.
It should. By rights, they shouldn’t still be standing, but they are.
They are, and they’re going to stay that way.