Chapter Text
Only three weeks had passed since the world had gone to shit, yet it felt like years.
Of the many ways you thought the world could end, honestly, a zombie apocalypse wasn't even in the top 5.
Yet, that's exactly what had happened, the first few days the newscasts and all the online news screamed at the prank, hoax, yet more and more videos appeared on the internet, people started to panic adding chaos to the tragedy.
After five days, countries all around the World declared a lockdown, only the army patrolled the streets of the cities and more and more sounds of gunfire could be heard in the deserted streets.
After about ten days the situation became unmanageable, outside your windows there was literally a war, a war that the humans were quickly losing, not even the army seemed able to stop the undead horde.
That is why you had barricaded yourself in the house, fortunately the pantry was quite full when the lockdown was declared, but your heart wept because, for the first time in your life, you bitterly regretted moving to England.
If the world was going to end, then you wanted to be with your family, hugging your mother and your younger sister, with your father cracking some horrible joke, somehow trying to lift the spirits of his beloved women.
Instead, you were in Leeds, alone, in the apartment you shared with your best friend until this madness began.
Alone because Connie had never returned from her shift at the hospital, where she worked as a nurse, you still remember the last call you exchanged, barely a few minutes long, a week after that hell began.
"Don't worry honey, it's a mess in here, they won't let us out and we're swamped with work, but the hospital is the most protected place in town right now and you'll see, I'll come home as soon as this whole thing settles down. You, instead, barricade yourself in the house, don't open to anyone and please be careful."
Those were the last words Connie said to you; you had tried to contact her in the days following and again after that, but you never received a response, and after a while your friend's cell phone, which at least up to that point had been ringing, started giving the voicemail message: "This number is not currently reachable or is turned off, please leave a message after the beep."
Evidently, the device had broken or, more simply, had run out of power.
Before the phone lines were completely cut off, you had left dozens of messages on that voicemail and even more times you had called just to hear Connie's voice in the pre-recorded message.
The last call to your family, however, you didn't want to remember, because every single time your mind wandered in that direction you found yourself doubled over in pain, unable to do anything other than curl up in yourself and cry.
You didn't really know why you had been lucky enough to survive until now, you certainly didn't have the body, and if anyone had asked you would have said not even the spirit, of the survivor; too many pounds on tired bones and a fierce hatred for cardio which, if you remember well from the movie Zombieland, was one of the most important things to stay alive.
No, the reality was that you had not dared putting your nose out of your apartment, which you had barricaded for good with the furniture you had managed to move. That, and the fact that the apartment you shared with Connie was in a newly built building to which very few tenants had yet moved in, had allowed you to survive.
But the situation was getting serious, you still had electricity and running water, but you were not stupid, you knew perfectly well that soon these services would stop and you were not at all prepared for it, not to mention that the supplies you had been diligently rationing had diminished anyway to such an extent that soon you would have to go out and find more.
Of course, you knew very well, going out for you meant almost certain death.
You weren't able to run for more than a few seconds, you weren't able to climb or scramble, and you were unfamiliar with combat, and no, the year you spent playing baseball as a kid didn't count as experience in crushing zombie's head.
That is why you hesitated, tried to sleep as much as possible not to waste energy, and rationed your supplies further, trying to postpone the time when you would have to leave your home.
What you didn't anticipate was that you would find yourself helping someone else.
Yet, when you had woken up that day, you had done so because of the commotion in the hallway on your floor, a commotion you had not heard since the pre-zombie days, and that had taken a toll on you as you recited your prayers because your time must have come, there was no other explanation.
"Bloody hell."
But a voice with an unmistakable Manchester accent had taken you by surprise, the zombies couldn’t talk, of that you were certain their brains were too fried to allow them to retain the ability to speak.
Whoever was in your hallway was very much alive and very much human.
As quietly as possible you approached your apartment door and, holding your breath, looked through the peephole in the door.
Leaning against the wall in front of your apartment was what, at least in theory, appeared to be a soldier, given the weapons and clothes he was wearing, although he was in total black rather than camouflage, plus the skull mask covering the top of his face did not help to calm you down.
What was obvious to you, though, was that he was injured, you could see the blood dripping down the wall. Holding your breath, you continued to watch as the man, panting and clearly in pain, had come off the wall and taken a few steps toward the door of your apartment.
Panic almost made you forget to keep quiet, and you had to put your hand on your mouth to avoid letting any sound escape, but there had been no need because the behemoth of a man(in effect you wondered what they fed him as a baby since he looked like a fucking mountain) had literally collapsed on the floor, losing consciousness.
By then you had lost your strength as well and had to sit on the floor for a few seconds, your legs folded against your chest and your face tucked between your ample thighs trying not to hyperventilate.
At that point your inner monologue had begun.
Do you leave him out there? No, because otherwise he might rise as a zombie and then you're done because he's directly in front of your apartment.
Do you pull him in? What if he then dies in your arms and becomes a zombie?
Well, it was clear that he wasn’t going to heal himself if you left him out there, plus probably with all that blood he would have attracted zombies, and you didn't really like the idea.
On the other hand, getting him inside was a risk on other fronts as well, assuming that you managed to treat or medicate him in any way and that he hadn't been bitten by some undead, he was still a very large man, certainly very strong and definitely trained to be dangerous, whereas you...you were a soft fried doughnut.
Maybe, though, it was a good person, a soldier, maybe he could help you once he you had treated him, he could protect you, he certainly seemed capable to do so.
You had sat on the floor a few more minutes, as indecisive as ever, before you came to an agreement with yourself, at which point it had all been very simple, once you made up your mind there was nothing left for you to do but to act and so you stood up, as quietly as possible and moved the bookcase you put up to barricade the door and opened it.
You looked around, trying to see if there was anyone else around, human or zombie, but only silence greeted you; so, you took those three steps that separated you from the behemoth on the ground and, after poking him with your foot a couple of times, making sure he was out cold, you had knelt down, turning him onto his back.
You only began to doubt your decision when you saw how much effort it costed you to turn him over, the guy weighed a ton, but you were a determined person when you put your mind to it, and so you stood up and ran your hands under his armpits, using all the strength of your legs, while praying not to pull some muscle, to pull him in.
After a few minutes that felt like an eternity you managed to get him inside your apartment and closed the door behind you, you leaned against it, panting from exhaustion, drops of sweat beading on your forehead.
What to do now?
Biting your lower lip, you picked him up by the feet and, slowly, carried him to the bathroom so that he would not bleed too much on the carpet, and once there, feeling like a pervert too, you begun to undress him.
First you had removed all the weapons you had managed to find, rifle, pistol, magazines included, and an incredibly large number of knives hidden in the tactical robe, as well as what looked like a...machete?
Raising an eyebrow, you grouped all the things together and gently hid them in the kitchen, under the sink, then went back and started removing all the clothes, making sure there were no bites on the man's body.
When you removed his shirt, you held your breath, the number of scars on the chest, and you suspected on the back too, of the man was absurd it looked as if someone had used him as a target. However, one scar stood out more than the others, a large Y running almost all the way across his chest, a very strange scar and one normally seen only on dead bodies.
Who would do such a thing?
You didn't want to think about it, and anyway, it wasn't really the time to get lost in such thoughts, so you kept undressing him until he was naked in front of you (and Jesus Fucking Christ, that man was proportionate in every part) except for the mask and balaclava that covered his face.
Very quickly you had lifted it up for a moment, just to make sure there were no bites on his neck or face, and then you had lowered them back down, something telling you that the man cared about no one seeing his face, and you certainly didn't want to piss him off once he got his act together.
However, there were no bites anywhere, and even the wounds you found were not as serious as you thought, there were some cuts, one of which was quite deep (but seemed to be getting infected) and a couple of grazes, but nothing that was so worrisome.
He clearly didn’t pass out because of that, probably, you told yourself, he passed out because of fatigue and perhaps hunger, he didn't seem to have backpacks or bags of any kind with him, and you hadn't found any food on him.
In any case you had gotten up and retrieved all the medical stuff you managed to find in the closet, a kind gift from Connie, and took everything to the bathroom. Taking deep breaths to calm yourself down as first you disinfected the wound that looked infected and then you closed it up with stitches that were so many things but beautiful wasn’t one of them. After that you bandaged it up, hoping for the best.
The other wounds and abrasions had been easier to handle, not requiring stitches; once you finished bandaging and fixing him, you got up, complaining to yourself about the back pain, and filled the mop bucket with soap and water.
Silently, always checking that there was no one around, you had gone out into the hallway and tried to wipe the blood off the floor and wall, just to make sure you didn't attract unwanted attention, after which you got back inside and barricaded the flat again, pushing the bookcase against the door.
Now all you had to do was take the behemoth to bed. Yeah. The easiest thing in the world.
After HALF AN HOUR of pushing and pulling and oh my God please my back is killing me, you had managed to carry the unconscious soldier to your bed and it had left you worne out like never before, no, not even when you had walked the 498 steps of the Asinelli Tower in Bologna and thought you were going to die.
You put him under the sheets and blankets and went to the kitchen, pouring some water in a glass and getting a clean cloth and you went back to your room, you had to somehow make him get some fluids back, but in his condition, he certainly couldn't drink, so here's your ingenious solution.
You put one corner of the washcloth in the glass, making sure that it got completely wet, and, after raising the balaclava just enough to reveal the man’s mouth, you placed the wet cloth over the dry lips. It took some patience and a little (a lot) of water dripped on the pillow, but eventually, though unconscious, the man started to suck the water from the wet cloth.
Sighing with relief, you tried to get him to drink as much as possible, until at some point he stopped responding, so you set the glass and cloth down on the nightstand and went to make yourself something to eat.
When you returned to the room a while later, you noticed that the behemoth was burning up, cursing at yourself you had told yourself that he must have a fever because of the cut that had become infected, you thought about trying to give him some medicine but all the ones you had needed to be swallowed and right now, clearly, it was out of the question for him.
Also, you could see him fidgeting, almost as if he were having nightmares.
At that point you didn't know what to do, you weren't the nurse here, so you did what you remembered you had read in a book once, you had no idea if it had any medical basis, but you had no other idea. You stripped off, staying in the T-shirt and shorts you used to sleep in, and got under the covers with the man.
Which was not the sanest thing you had done in your life, but on the other hand it was the apocalypse, wasn't it?
You had been lying practically on top of him, pushing yourself against his side, your head on his shoulder and your legs intertwined with his, trying to get as much skin-to-skin contact as possible and to keep him from moving too much.
You sighed, feeling him moving and shivering under your body, and you closed your eyes, praying for grace.
You didn’t think you would be able to fall asleep and yet it must have happened at some point because now you were DEFINITELY awake, with a hand the size of a spade choking you.
“Who the fuck are you?"
It was barely a growl.
The behemoth had awakened.