Chapter Text
Shane Hollander is being dumped when the zombie apocalypse happens.
The conversation has ebbed into a comfortable silence; Rose is eating the dinner she brought over and Shane's already finished his portion. Originally they had planned to go out, but most restaurants are closing down because of the new virus going around. It isn’t too bad in Canada, at least from what he can tell— but Shane can feel himself already beginning to spiral. Lockdown started a week ago in America, and health warnings are one thing. But for once, America has been quiet. Not for the first time, Shane looks over at his phone— fingers itching to text something, to reach out, to make sure he’s okay.
He realizes that maybe he could, now.
Still, Shane isn’t thinking about logistics, or whatever virus has been rapidly spreading across the countries. Right now, he’s focused on the fact that his girlfriend– well ex girlfriend he supposes, just… told him he was gay?
He feels more settled, more calm. The truth Rose gently pried from him has made something deep within his chest click into the right place. He no longer feels like he’s fighting some endless battle, the exhaustion has finally ebbed enough to let him breathe again. The conversation has shifted to Rose wondering if filming will shut down soon and if she could even get back into America right now.
Admittedly though, his mind is drifting in the moments Rose goes quiet. Thoughts returning, like usual, to Ilya. The guilt in his stomach from the last time he saw the other man lingers, but even heavier is the weight of certainty now. Certainty that Ilya is what he wants, despite how impossible it all seems. He just needs… he just needs to know if he’s alone in that feeling or not.
“Holy shit,” Rose says suddenly, breaking Shane from his thoughts. Her eyes are locked on the TV behind Shane in the living room, he’s kept it on but muted. It takes him a few seconds to even understand what he’s staring at.
Bright orange and red— fires, maybe even riots judging by the amount of people he can see in the streets. He stands up, hand flying to grab the remote and unmute the audio.
It’s useless, because the moment he does— the only sound is an alarm coming from the TV. There are no broadcasters, just different street recordings of different cities in America. Text scrolls across the screen beneath:
Martial law officially declared in America – Boarders closed due to outbreak. Avoid ANY contact with infected individuals— symptoms appear with greyed out eyes, black vomit, deep purple veins visible along the body…
Shane tries to read it, tries to slow his racing mind to absorb the information but the switching clips from different street cameras keeps pulling Shane’s attention back up. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles–
The streets…
Shane feels himself begin to go numb. He blinks, turning to stare at Rose, as if needing to see her reaction to confirm what he is seeing. People are crawling over each other in the streets, pushing and shoving but something is wrong with how they move. Some aren’t standing, or even really running; they are digging, crawling across the ground and that’s when Shane realizes that half of the people moving are only… only parts of people, crawling. In some of the footage, there are soldiers and it takes Shane a moment to realize they are firing into the crowds of people.
He parts his lips to say something, anything but nothing really feels real– like it’s some shitty movie he’s seeing on his TV. There are plenty of zombie movies on TV, he can just… change the channel.
It’s on every channel.
Emergency Broadcast continues to flash in his face with a blaring alarm to go with it. It takes Shane a beat to realize that some of these cities aren’t just American when he sees Edmonton, Alberta flash up.
It just… it can’t be real. He knows about the illness, the virus– whatever it had been. People had been getting sick, yes, but nothing had led anyone to believe it was like this. People were just… getting cold. Making people get hypothermia, he could have swore he heard an official say that on TV– which explained the dark veins and missing body parts.
Logically, Shane isn’t stupid, logically, part of his brain is frantically trying to pull him out of the shock. Of trying to rationalize what he is seeing. But it just doesn’t feel real. Not even as he’s watching the torso of someone still crawling along the pavement. Not until he watches one of the soldiers in the footage turn the gun around onto himself and–
Rose screams.
Shane sucks in a breath, the trance snapping free and one name slams into his head Ilya. Ilya. Ilya.
Next is guilt when he hears Rose sob next to him. She is frantically grabbing her phone, her eyes are wide with terror. Shane turns to her, not sure if he can even offer any comfort as she frantically dials her family. He feels sick, because somehow in the past minute, he had forgotten that Rose’s family is American too.
Thankfully, someone must pick up on the other end because Rose crumples in her own puddle of relief. Shane steps forward to catch her gently and help her onto the couch– he can tell she’s talking, speaking to whoever is on the other end of the phone but he can’t hear her. Even as he stares blankly for a moment, trying to will himself to understand a single word out of her mouth. But it’s static, blaring, white, static.
His vision blurs as he fumbles for his own phone– just as a blaring alarm goes off.
His phone lights up, an emergency alert filling his screen.
State of Emergency declared in Canada. All residents are expected to STAY INDOORS until further instruction–
He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe– he can’t even finish reading the alert without his vision blurring into a smear. What is happening? How is this happening so fast? His parents. Ilya.
He’s only now realizing he’s missed four calls from Hayden, ten from Lily, and six from his mom.
How did he miss that?
How long had the world been ending and Shane hadn’t even fucking known?
Ilya.
Ilya who lives in America. Ilya, who Shane hadn’t phoned even when he heard of the lockdown. Because he was confident it wouldn’t last long. He had been stubborn. Hurting. Ilya who lives in one of those cities with piles of things crawling over each other to the next living person.
Ilya, who called ten times.
His phone lights up: Mom. His eyes drift down and he picks up.
“Shane, oh thank god, tell me you are okay.” His mom’s voice is frantic, winded through the phone and Shane fights to breathe. How long had she been trying to contact him? Rose behind him is still on the phone, her head bowed but she reaches out, gripping Shane’s free hand.
“Mom,” Shane manages to rasp, “Where–”
“Your father and I are at the cabin, you need to come here right away–”
“They’re saying to remain inside–” Shane begins but his mom cuts him off.
“Baby, you need to get out of the city. Please. It doesn’t matter anymore, get in your car and get here. Get out of that fucking city now.” His mom’s voice is high, panicked– Shane doesn’t think he’s ever heard her panicked before so he finds himself nodding. Moving back to his feet on autopilot. “If you are not here within five hours your father and I are coming to get you ourselves. I don’t know how long we have until phone lines go down but–”
Shane hears something outside, maybe it’s smashing glass or the skidding of tires but it’s only when he walks to his window does he see the chaos the city has already begun to fall into. The wail of sirens filling the street as his hearing begins trickling in through pieces. In his building they are so high up that it’s difficult to make all of it out but suddenly Shane realizes he doesn’t have time to think.
His mom is yelling instructions at him. Something about checkpoints, about other people evacuating. About not getting stopped.
Sometimes– sometimes Shane’s body moves for him. Sometimes his body works when his mind can’t and he listens but doesn’t hear. Even when his phone beeps to tell him his mom hung up and their conversation is over.
He doesn’t hesitate, his fingers flying across his phone screen and clicking on one name Lily.
Has he ever truly called this number with no hesitation? Shackles seem to fall free, shackles that once seemed so important are suddenly gone because Shane doesn’t know what he will do if Ilya doesn’t pick up.
Ilya could be dead.
It rings, and rings, before it goes dead. Panic swelling higher in Shane’s chest as he fumbles to text. If he texts, maybe Ilya can see them even if the lines go down. His chest heaving and only partially seeing Rose moving around his place. Throwing things into one of his duffle bags. In the end he can’t get his fingers to stop shaking so violently to actually text anything out and it feels like he’s wasting precious time.
He calls again.
This time, static breaks and Shane’s knees give out.
“Hollander?” Ilya’s voice is the same, but different. It warped and panicked, breathing sharply, but Shane doesn’t ask what he’s doing. All he can do is remind himself that if he is hearing Ilya’s voice that must mean Ilya is still alive too.
“Ilya, Ilya oh my god– are you okay? The news–”
“Bad, yes… Svet… are yo– safe?”
Shane sobs, he can’t help it, Ilya’s voice is coming in and out. The connection fragile, of course–
“Ilya, the phone lines are overwhelmed but I’m going to my cabin with my parents, out of the city, I’ll be safe but that doesn’t matter. Where are you? I saw the news. They said they are declaring martial law, what are you going to do?”
There’s no response– the line is buzzing and Shane thinks he can hear breathing?
“Ilya please, I need to know you are going to be okay.”
There’s a loud explosion outside, making Shane whip around to look out of his apartment again. He feels hands grabbing at him, and he thinks it might be Rose pulling him to the door. Shane is realizing very quickly that this might be the very last time he ever speaks to Ilya again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have never left that night. I love you. Please don’t die.”
Shane can’t tell if the buzzing is from his panic attack or from his phone. He’s staggering backwards, and he tries to listen more. Tries to hear a snap of Ilya’s voice. At least something to tell him Ilya heard him, that Ilya knows–
The line is dead.
-
Ilya tries to call back. He tries. God he tries.
He paces his garage, cursing as tries not to throw his phone against the wall. His eyes wild, panic crawling up his chest. The world is ending, the world is ending and the only thing he can do is try desperately to get through to one person.
Not his family, not a teammate.
To be frank, Shane had been one of the very few things on his mind as his world dissolved into chaos. Terror of where Shane was, how long Shane would have before it reached Canada. He’d been phoning Shane since Ilya realized the gravity of the situation. When Shane had finally called him back, he had almost dropped his phone.
Jane.
Ilya fumbled to answer the phone, his hands covered in gasoline from where he’s been collecting gas from his vehicles. When he got the phone to his ear, the connection had already gone dead. He moved to recall but Jane was already calling back.
“Hollander?” He had rasped, on instinct.
“Ilya, Ilya oh m– ou okay? The news–”
Shane’s voice kept breaking in and out but Ilya tried to piece it together, suddenly feeling more alive than he has since all of this shit started happening.
“Bad, yes, but Svetlana and I are heading to the checkpoint, are you safe?”
There had been buzzing, Shane’s voice snapping in and out.
“Ilya listen… phone lines–verwhelmed… to my cabin– out of the city– safe but–... Where are you? —martial law, what are you going to do? Ilya– know you are going to be okay… that night–”
“Shane,” Ilya pleads, trying to get something in, even with the connection so weak, so fragile. “Shane wait–”
The call dropped.
Just like that, nothing but the beeping of his phone and emptiness.
So now Ilya paces in his garage, forgetting what he’s supposed to be doing. He clicks on Jane again and again but the phone doesn’t even ring. Doesn’t even change screens before it flickers back to his call list.
“Ilya,” Svetlana is speaking, her form moving in front of him to catch his shoulders. He isn’t sure when she came into here after she had tried to make another call to Russia, a final attempt. But they haven’t heard from there for days now. “Stop, the lines are down. You can’t get through.”
Ilya sucks in a frantic breath, closing his eyes as he drops his phone from his ear.
Canada isn’t as far gone as America, Canada is still on quarantine, Canada is–
“Ilya we need to go to the checkpoint, it’s–”
“No,” Ilya blurts out, not even thinking the words through before his head is snapping up to look at Svetlana. But even as he says it, with a dawning horror, he realizes he means it too. “I–”
I can’t leave him.
He called me. What if he needs me?
Nothing fucking matters anymore right? Right? The world is ending. The world is ending and he still called me back.
“Ilya what are you–” her eyes fall briefly down, seeing the contact name on his phone and something is flickering across her face. “Jane?” She asks, and Ilya can’t tell if her tone is knowing or bewildered.
“I can’t–” his voice breaks. He should be scared for himself, he should be terrified of death. His neighbour was taken away screaming yesterday. He can hear gunfire even from here, in his suburban house in Boston. He’s seen the news. But all he fucking cares about is one person. “I have to go.”
“Where?” Svetlana asks, her eyes flashing up to him. Frantically studying his face.
“Canada, Ottawa,” Ilya is saying, backing away to grab another container to continue syphoning gas into. He has five different cars, not that any of it matters now– but he takes all the gas he can from each vehicle, because he’s going to need a lot of fucking gas now isn’t he? Shane’s going to his parents– his fucking cabin right? That’s a long drive. That’s a really fucking long drive. Ilya doesn’t have the first clue where that is besides a general area he heard in a TV show. Maybe the name of the lake it is near.
Svetlana intakes a sharp breath, like maybe part of her feared this answer. “Don’t be stupid Ilya,” she is saying in rapid Russian, gripping his arms. “She’s a hookup, right? That’s what you’ve told me.”
But Ilya is pulling away, shaking his head as he grabs another bag and throws it into the back of his only half decent car for long travels. “You do not need to come with me, I– I know you have people here you care about and I will not drag you with me. I love you Svet, you know I do. If you come with me I will do everything I can to keep you safe but–”
“For fuck sakes Ilya, you are not serious?” Svetlana demands. Cutting him off again. “This is a hookup, that is what you always tell me.”
“I can’t leave him!” Ilya snaps, not even realizing what he’s saying. “If he needs me I need to go, Svet. He—”
That’s when the reality of what he is saying settles on him, that and the slight widening of Svetlana’s eyes. Panic slams into his chest, despite how little it even fucking means right now. The world is ending, and he still freezes like he’s been caught with blood on his hands.
Before he can push past her, Svetlana’s hands catch his, “Stop,” she says. Her expression has shifted rapidly in the next second, smoothed into something gentler. “Just– Fuck Ilya, just stop.”
Ilya stops, he meets her eyes as she clings to his wrists. She is looking at him, flickering back and forth as if she can decode him by his gaze alone. Maybe she can. Her own world is falling apart and he’s realizing they really only have each other too. Russia isn’t a place they can get to, not like this. Not anymore.
“Okay,” she whispers, after another moment of staring at him. “Okay, I get it. I get it now.”
Ilya stops breathing.
“Tell me you love him,” Svetlana says.
Ilya’s breath stutters; those words are words he hasn’t even let himself entertain in his head despite how they had curled up in his chest every time Shane has been next to him. Words that remained in shattered echoes after Shane had walked out a door.
He nods. Slow.
“He might not love me back though,” Ilya whispers. “I won’t ask you to risk your life for–”
Svetlana makes a noise, shaking her head. “I didn’t ask if he loved you. You love him and he called?”
“Yes.”
Svetlana studies him again, before she squeezes his hands. Ilya is aware of what he’s asking, what he’s implying. Ottawa is an almost seven hour drive on a good day. But they can’t hide here, not when the army is starting to go door to door. Not when Ilya saw a man without half his body still crawling down the street.
Svetlana takes a quiet breath, before she nods her head, and speaks as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Then we go.”
-
Every person Shane has ever loved would be dead if it wasn’t for Yuna Hollander. That– and Shane’s paranoia of being followed to his cabin and wanting privacy back in the old world. So having it built in the depth of the Canadian wilderness helped– the only other cabins nearby are across the lake which makes it reclusive enough that infection hasn’t spread rampant here. It isn’t permanent, probably couldn’t be. But it’s the only thing they have right now.
Shane doesn’t know how long it has been since the world ‘ended’. He supposed it ended earlier for some other people in different countries. It was weird, thinking about how his own government had managed to hide everything until the very last moment– when it all imploded at once. It took Canada a single day to follow America into chaos. Martial law was declared two hours after Rose and Shane had left Montreal.
When the virus had been detected, months ago, no one thought much of it. It hadn’t affected Shane’s life, not until the end, and he was consumed with his own life at the time. Maybe if he had been paying more attention, watching the news closer, listening to the theories– maybe he would have made different choices. Maybe he would’ve been clearer about how he felt. Maybe he wouldn’t have wasted so much time making stupid choices to fit into a world that wouldn’t even be around to see it. To care.
He sleeps in a spare room in his cabin– his mom and dad in another, and then Rose in her own. He guesses building having all those guest rooms built in did come in handy.
Hayden, Jackie, and their three kids got Shane’s own bedroom. Shane would let guilt consume him later that his first move after the world had ended was to call his long time hookup and not his best friend who had an entire family. His mom had been the one who offered the place– texting Jackie before all forms of communication went down. So, maybe in his own attempt to soothe his guilt, Shane had given the Pike family his own bedroom to fit their family into. It made sense, it was the biggest room in his place. They had three kids to take care of, and Jackie was still pregnant. Which added another layer to things Shane didn’t want to think about. He was fairly sure Hayden didn’t want to think about it either, if his silence and refusal to leave Jackie’s side was any sign. Still, ironically, Shane sometimes feels jealous of the kids, they are shockingly adaptable to things once they get into the rhythm of it. He’s fairly sure Ruby is the happiest person here, her sister Jade a close second. Either way, it keeps Shane’s mom busy too. She spends a lot of time watching over the girls and Arthur.
His mom didn’t want them splitting up between the two cabins, too risky, so all of their supplies were kept here and whenever someone considered going out it was carefully planned. Government contact was all but gone, and sometimes Shane overheard a crack in the night that might have been a gunshot from a neighbour miles into the woods.
Rose isn’t doing well. She spends an alarming amount of time in the spare room made up for her. But Shane can’t say he really blames her. Her family is in the states, and her last communication with them was them begging her to stay put. They were alive, safe, but in the tentative broken way ‘safe’ is in a world like this now. She has night terrors still from the things both her and Shane saw that night on TV and in person during their drive here.
The illness, whatever it was, corroded the human body from the inside out; infected people were missing limbs, half their heads, jaws hanging on by threads of skin; things that still came crawling across the ground– seeking the only form of body heat they could. Shane doesn’t know if they are zombies in the technical sense, the ‘undead’ coming back to life, but they look close enough. People covered head to toe in blood and gore after they relentlessly attempt to dig into the warmest body next to them.
Rose and Shane didn’t even see much, not really. The drive, despite other drivers on the road, had been tame enough. They had been lucky. Luckier anyways.
It doesn’t change the fact that Shane spends half his night checking over his body, head to toe, again and again for any marks that might imply he’s infected. That somehow he got bit on the way here. That it had snuck in through the isolated cabin doors and he would kill everyone he loves one day. That he’ll wake up covered in gore and blood like he saw on the TV with his family piled on top of each other in pieces.
Somehow Ilya always finds a way to be in that pile too. His first kill, usually.
He spends too long staring at any vein he feels is too dark, too long checking if his skin feels too cold. He boils the water over the fire for far too long and mixes it with too little cold water when he cleans himself. Maybe if he burns his own flesh off first, the virus won’t do it for him.
His mom held a stronger front, his dad was using every ounce of hunting skill he gained through brief and small summers with his grandfather twenty years ago. Shane had food, but nothing actually important– at least he has a fuck ton of protein powder stocked up. It’s been useful. Still, it was odd how quickly things like diet and working out, things his entire life had been consumed with, stopped meaning anything. He used up most of his energy trying to make it to the next day.
He’s hardly even spoken to Hayden since getting here. Hayden who has three children and a pregnant wife. Hayden who is aware that the world has ended, and whoever he had to leave behind to get here too. Family, parents– friends.
Shane is a shitty friend. Maybe a shitty person. A worse person when he sees Hayden curl around Jackie at night sometimes and just hold her– and all Shane feels is a sickening jealousy and grief at the sight.
As if Ilya ever held him like that, out in the open– as if he ever could. As if Shane would have let him.
It never would be. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why Shane is the luckiest person in this fucking apocolypse who somehow ended up with almost every single person important to him up here and yet he cries himself to sleep holding a black shirt he stole months ago. How he grieves and grieves and grieves, trying to remember the moles on his back and what his face looked like when Shane had walked away.
He doesn’t know. He supposes he never will.
-
Ilya wished he had invested in buying a gun.
Svetlana and him circle every place on the map that seems like it would be densely populated. Large cities, places where multiple highways interconnect– but both of them are Russian and neither of them have exactly studied the places of America. Still, they manage it. Circling back when they enter anywhere with armoured vehicles or lines of other cars.
It’s easier said than done, check points keep popping up everywhere – but anywhere there are checkpoints, there are hordes of infected people and gunshots. Ilya turns the car around.
By their fifth day, Ilya spots the body. A soldier laying against a vehicle.
Ilya brings the car to a stop and Svetlana straightens up, she begins to give him a look. But then her eyes catch on the body laying there, suspiciously still and alone. He knows she sees what he sees.
It’s the gun.
“Ilya,” Svetlana begins softly.
“We need a weapon better than a baseball bat, a knife, and a car,” he says. “What happens when we can’t just drive away?”
Ilya doesn’t know what he’s saying. Is he capable of killing someone? Is he capable of deciding if someone is infected enough to kill? Would he do that to make it to Shane? To get Svetlana out safely?
He knows the answer. Knew it the moment the call came through.
Next to him, for once, Svetlana doesn’t argue. Maybe that is what scares Ilya more. How quickly things change, how quickly morals shift.
“Get in the driver's seat,” Ilya says as he checks the road again. Empty, for right now– they keep going through suburbs and side roads. Still avoiding the highways at all costs for as long as possible. He unlocks his door, “If something happens, gun it.”
“Away or towards you?” Svetlana asks, brows wrinkled as she looks over at him. “Maybe I should–”
“No,” Ilya cuts off her train of thoughts, “Not happening. I will go. I have more body mass to fight, you are the better driver.”
Ilya leaves the car. The street, once some nice suburb where people moved in to raise families, is alarmingly quiet besides the hum of his vehicle behind him. Svetlana moves over to the driver’s seat and he can feel her stare on his back.
Ilya has used guns before, it was hard to get out of while being raised by a man like his father. Ilya knew he had two career paths his father would try and force him through, he was just lucky to have been skilled enough that his father sort of let him go once he was proving himself on the ice. Ilya had a certain… repulsion to guns because of his father, it was something he had no interest in when it was just another thing to make him similar to the man. Still, he had taught himself how to disarm them when he was ten and his father was drinking heavily again.
He supposed maybe he should be thanking his father now though, because in the very least, he can say he knows his way around a gun. He just hopes American ones aren’t too different.
He walks over to the body, his boots crunching on pavement and dirt. It doesn’t take long for Ilya to determine the man’s cause of death. Self inflected. Right.
Maybe me and you will be similar one day. Unbidden, the thought comes to him and Ilya hates himself more for it. Hates that his mind keeps going there. But it’s become a comfort; something to stop his spiral every night.
Knowing he has a way out.
I can’t leave Svetlana. I can’t leave without knowing Shane is safe. That Shane is okay. That he’ll live and maybe Svetlana can stay with them.
Ilya crouches slowly, keeping his eyes on the body. Svetlana watches his back as he reaches out, fingers curling around the handle of the gun. He tugs it to himself, noting his fingers are trembling as he tries to look down at the assault rifle without fully looking away from the corpse in front of him. Nothing in this fucking world stays dead anymore.
He needs to figure out if he can use this gun, and needs to figure out if his dad’s teachings were meaningful in any way. If he can disarm a gun, surely he can rearm it.
Maybe, for once, it’s good he’s so used to his father’s voice hounding him. Snarling slurs and venom at him because his fingers run along the gun's seams and he unlatches the clip. There's a shell near the heel of his boot, which means it isn’t still in the barrel and when he opens the clip, there is ammo inside. But not enough.
His eyes focus back to the body. On the pouches across it, on pouches that probably have more ammo. Pouches that might have other weapons. First aid. He can already hear Svetlana hissing at him from the car to not be stupid.
Ilya has always been a little stupid.
Trembling fingers reach up, clicking the remaining ammo clip back in and tugging back the rod to prepare the gun to fire in case the body moves. The click of it echoes in the street and Ilya forces himself to breathe out through his lips, creeping closer. He studies the man for infection, at least on the parts of him that he can make out. He’s become so desensitized to gore over the past few days it doesn’t phase him at first– either way, but he doesn’t see anything. So he moves, beginning to unlatch the pouches as his stomach lurches violently when the smell finally registers. Fuck the smell is going to make him vomit alone, undoing on the progress he’s made stomaching the sight of dead human beings.
He works quickly, undoing the last clasp around the soldier's waist and pulls the entire tactical belt off the body.
“Ilya!” Svetlana screams suddenly from the car and Ilya jumps back on instinct. The body lurches to the side, a garbling slur leaving its mouth and its remaining eye opens. Muted grey – the iris gone from infection.
Ilya fires.