Chapter Text
Another head hangs lowly.
The day was still bright. Dawn, maybe. Martyn couldn't be sure anymore. He hadn't seen a working clock since everything had fallen apart, much less one he could take with him. Time had become little more than a meaningless guess.
Days blurred together beneath endless skies, measured only by exhaustion, hunger, and how many infected he managed to survive before nightfall. It was almost fun, counting the amount he saw. Like some deranged game he’d play only to see how utterly screwed the globe now was.
Warm sunlight filtered through the dense canopy above, slipping between the leaves in brilliant golden beams that painted the woodland floor, it provided little comfort to a dying man.
Dust drifted lazily through the light, and somewhere nearby he could hear the quiet trickle of running water.
The sound was faint, almost dreamlike, or another hallucination, but it was enough to keep him moving. Every agonising inch dragged him closer to it, to potential survival.
His right leg was caked in drying blood and thick layers of dirt.
Every time it scraped against the ground another wave of pain shot through him in pulsating motion and the swollen flesh felt feverishly hot.
It was almost certainly infected by now.
Whether from the fall or from dragging himself through the forest for hours, he couldn't say.
Either way, it hurt enough that he almost wished he couldn't feel it anymore; numbness is worse than pain though, if you can’t feel it, you can’t use it. A bit of piercing, vibrating pain isn’t as nearly sufferable than losing a limb in these conditions.
He continued to pull himself forward anyway, Martyn had always been stubborn.
It was one of the few things about himself he had never managed to change even under such woeful circumstances such as these.
His throat burned with every breath; a side affect of a dire lack of resources,
no water. No food. No sleep.
He hadn't had anything to drink in nearly two days, and dehydration was beginning to claim him far quicker than the growing exhaustion and starvation ever could.
His body trembled beneath its own weight until eventually his arms gave out completely,
forcing him face-first into the cracked, dry grass below.
His nose met the ground first, then his chin, then his whole body dropped.
His hands flailed to try catch him, but to no avail.
He lay there for several long moments, too weak to move and too lazy to attempt to.
His eyelids drooped despite every desperate attempt to keep them open.
Every part of him was shutting down, one piece at a time, and there was very little he could do to stop it.
Still, Martyn Littlewood was many things.
A quitter wasn't one of them. He refused to die of something as trivial as dehydration in a [literal zombie apocalypse.]
The world spun disorderly around him, the trees swaying in dizzy circles at the edge of his vision.
Black spots crept into his eyesight, threatening to swallow everything away, but the sound of flowing water was louder now, nearer to him.
He gritted his teeth. God...
His leg had to be broken. If not broken, then dislocated. Maybe both; if that’s possible.
It shouldn't have surprised him. Honestly, he'd have expected worse from such an accident, one of the Reds had cornered him on a rooftop hours earlier. There had been nowhere left to run. No windows to tumble through, no doors to kick in.
No miracle escape waiting for him as he hoped it would when running up the stairwell towards it.
Only a nearby tree branch stretching just close enough to tempt him. He'd convinced himself he could make the jump. He almost did.
Almost.
The memory still replayed perfectly in his head. His feet leaving the rooftop, his fingers brushing against corse bark, that awful moment of weightlessness, the same one he used to get at the peak of rollercoasters. Then the oh so bothersome gravity kicked in.
Now here he was.
His body was covered in cuts and bruises and scrapes on every surface, crimson stains spreading across torn clothing while dark purple bruises bloomed beneath sun, kissed skin already littered with old scars: unrelated to the whole rapture, believe it or not.
Dirt clung to every bit, sweat glued blond strands of hair across his forehead, and dried blood had long since stiffened his sleeves.
He must have looked like death, he certainly felt like it.
At last, his trembling hand touched something cold and relieving. Water.
WATER!
He almost collapsed beside the narrow stream, cupping shaking hands into it before desperately throwing mouthful after mouthful down his throat.
The water was probably filthy. Disease ridden, even.
He didn't care, why would he?
If infection didn't kill him, dehydration surely would, he didn’t have time to worry about brain eating amoeba, or whatever deadly bacteria dorm in the river.
The cold liquid rushed through him like life itself.
Slowly, calmly,
the fog clouding his mind began to lift. His blurred vision steadied enough that he could finally focus on the rushing current.
"Shit."
The word escaped as little more than a whispered grunt.
Taking a slow breath, Martyn carefully lifted his injured leg and lowered it into the stream.
Regret welled up as a pulsing agony exploded through him.
The freezing water forced itself into every cut and each tear in the still living flesh, washing away dried blood and grime with fast efficiency. It stung so badly he nearly screamed.
Instead, he bit down hard enough to taste blood pouring out the side of his lips. It hurt.
God, did it hurt.
But as unbearable as the pain was, relief quickly followed. Fresh water carried away layers of dirt, old gore, and whatever filth had settled into the wound. Eventually the stinging eased.
When he finally pulled his leg back onto the riverbank, he allowed himself to actually look at it.
Immediately he wished he hadn't, as the wound was truly grotesque.
Angry blueish bruising surrounded shredded skin, exposing far more than a normal body ever should.
Blood immediately pooled up again from dozens of smaller cuts, fresh scarlet streaking across his calf and knee before dripping lazily into the stream below.
"Fantastic."
Martyn sighed sarcastically after another heavy breath.
With few options left, he reached up and peeled his headband away from his forehead ,a shame, as it’s all the ‘fashion’ he’d managed to retain since life became convenience over comfort.
It clung stubbornly to sweat-soaked hair before finally coming free. He folded makeshift gauze as tightly as he could and wrapped it around the injury, pulling until stars twirled across his vision.
It would do, for now atleast.
The stream remained peaceful.
A rare moment of serenity.
Hidden deep within the forest, surrounded by towering trees and birdsong, it almost felt untouched by the collapse of everything around it.
The gentle sound of flowing water drowned out distant groans, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Martyn allowed himself a full, deep breath.
The moment was peaceful, if only for a minute.
He leaned his head back against the trunk of a nearby tree and closed his eyes.
Three weeks ago, the world had changed.
Everything changed
Nobody really knew where the virus had come from. Every newspaper he'd scavenged offered a different theory.
Some blamed it on the vaccines. Others called it a ploy of an alternative government.
A few insisted it had always existed beneath the ice somewhere, dormant until it melted.
The media eventually settled on one name for it, The Curse.
Bloodborne.
Transmitted through bites, scratches, or saliva from the infected. Incurable, and incredibly deadly, 100% of those who caught it passed, and 80% came back.
Governments collapsed almost overnight. Flights stopped. Ports shut down. Borders became shut or meaningless.
Entire countries were abandoned, turned to mass graves.
Nobody wanted refugees carrying a disease that might already be inside them.
Entire cities just stopped trying.
Families fell first.
The larger the group, the harder it became to keep track of everyone.
The more people you loved, the harder it became to pull the trigger.
After all, It's difficult to shoot your own child. Even when they're trying to eat you.
Kind people followed shortly after.
You let someone inside?
Dead.
You hesitate?
Dead.
You leave supplies behind?
Dead.
Mercy became yet another casualty of the curse. You had to learn quickly. Take what you need. Trust nobody. Keep moving, the goal was to find somewhere secluded to live the rest of your life. Everywhere became secluded when nobody is sentient though.
The Curse itself was horrifyingly slow. Victims remained conscious through most of it, aware of their own body forming into a monstrous beast.
Skin greyed and rotted, becoming brittle until chunks dropped or peeled away yet the nerves stayed intact long enough for those bitten to beg for death from other survivors, or from their own teammates.
Then came the eyes, the most obvious sign; the white scleras flooded red and bloodshot, then the irises followed, albeit a significantly paler shade.
Eventually even the pupils disappeared into the same impossible crimson.
Nobody knew why, but the infected only seemed capable of seeing shades of red.
Ironically that made red the safest colour to wear around the zombies, its better to blend into the world.
Disappear.
The final stage stole whatever little humanity that remained.
Reason. Empathy. Fear.
All replaced by blind, murderous rage.The Reds didn't need food. Didn't need sleep. Didn't even seem to need air. But movement, noise?
That awoke something violent inside them.
Animalistic, primal. The news had described it.
Something that wanted every living thing dead.
Martyn pushed himself upright with considerable effort, using the nearby tree to steady himself. He cautiously tested his injured leg.
He almost tripped over himself but he managed one step
Then another.
Running wasn't going to happen, not today.
Maybe not ever.
He laughed bitterly.
"Maybe this whole shitty apocalypse..."
He limped forward, leaning heavily against a fallen branch he'd fashioned into a walking stick.
"is just one massive dose of karma."
The muddy riverbank shifted beneath his boots as he followed the winding stream deeper into the forest. Every step felt heavier than the last, but moving was still better than waiting to die.
A sound came suddenly from his right
Martyn froze.
It wasn’t growling nor snarling.
Not the awful screeching noises the Reds made when they spotted prey.
This was...
Human.
"Help!"
The voice echoed weakly through the trees.
Panicked and dire
Beautiful, if not for the terror cracking every syllable.
Someone else was alive.
To this day, Martyn would never understand why he chose to follow that voice.
Everything he'd learned over the past three weeks here screamed that it was a mistake.
Helping people got you killed. Trusting people got you killed.
Being kind...
Got you killed.
"The nice die first."
The quiet thought drifted through his mind.
He chose to ignore it.
Maybe he knew the voice was innocent, wouldn’t hurt him.
In reality, he knew that he probably just had some sort of death wish.
Or maybe, just maybe,
Some tiny part of him still remembered what being human felt like.
Keeping low, he slipped between bushes and tree trunks, staying hidden wherever the undergrowth allowed. The cries grew louder with every careful step.
His heart hammered.
He barely had the strength to stand: relying majorly on his makeshift crutch from the trees
Twenty minutes of sleep over the past two days had left him exhausted beyond words, and fighting another horde simply wasn't an option.
His hand instinctively tightened around the pistol tucked at his side. One bullet.
Just one.
The last round he'd managed to find. He'd been saving it.
Not for a Red, though he wouldn’t admit it.
He liked the backup, just in case surviving ever became worse than dying.
The apocalypse had a funny way of making that seem reasonable when before he’d never dream of it.
he wasn’t a quitter.
Martyn rounded another tree.
Whatever he'd expected, we’ll.
It wasn't this.
A young man, maybe a year or two younger than him, stood backed against a broad oak, his shoulders pressed desperately against the bark.
One of the Reds lunged relentlessly at him, rotten teeth snapping inches from his face while he desperately held it back with a dagger jammed beneath its jaw.
His arms shook violently. He was losing.
If his arm slipped, if the zombie was one inch closer…
That was all it would take.
Martyn barely noticed the infected.
His attention landed entirely on the stranger.
He was, for lack of proper wording, perfect.
Not in the polished sort of beauty magazine covers used to idealise, but beautiful nonetheless. Everything about this person, was gorgeous.
Long and slightly faded sapphire blue hair had been carefully braided down one shoulder, tied neatly with a simple black ribbon that somehow remained untouched despite everything around them.
Crimson fabric draped across much of his clothing, blending naturally with the strange camouflage survivors had adopted.
Steel-toed combat boots dug into the earth as he desperately fought for leverage with a pointed dagger useless against leant on hands
fitted black shorts and a neatly belted white shirt suggested someone who had once cared greatly about his appearance, he must still.
The man had fabrics hung loosely off the side of his belt, probably kept for makeshift bandages or use for cover near a horde, as he noticed save one yellow strip, it was all red.
Then Martyn saw his eyes.
Bright and Impossible.
Vivid blues and greens that caught every ray of sunlight filtering through the leaves above
For one ridiculous heartbeat, the apocalypse disappeared.
The stranger's gaze locked onto his. Hope flooded them instantly.
“Help!”
The plea carried raw panic and utter desperation.
Martyn exhaled slowly, reaching into his satchel.
"The nice die first."
The statement remained true.
But shooting one Red couldn’t be thought of as kindness.
It was removing a problem, a pest.
He raised the pistol. His injured leg screamed beneath him, but his arms stayed steady under the pressure.
The stranger understood immediately.
He ducked down.
*BANG*
The shot thundered through the forest.
Birds exploded from the trees.
The Red collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, its ruined body crashing into the dirt without another sound.
Silence followed.
Only the river continued flowing.
The stranger stumbled forward, gasping desperately for air, still clutching the bloodstained dagger in trembling hands.
Martyn lowered the empty pistol.