Chapter Text
“Just- get out of here,” Phil rasps, shaking hands clutching the already-soaked bandage around his waist. “Take care of them.”
Wilbur, stubborn as ever, glares at his father with tears cutting streaks through his grime-covered face. “You’re a fucking idiot if you think I’m leaving without you, old man.” And he begins to root through their med bag, looking for any hope of saving the one man who always believed in him.
Phil wheezes with the effort of sitting up, shoving Wilbur’s hands away from the bag. “It’s too late, Wil. Please. Just go- I don’t want you to ha-”
His sentence is interrupted by a hacking cough, stinging nettles in his throat as his body tries desperately to expel the blood in his lungs. It sprays over the bag and all over Phil’s front, and he’s too weak to continue.
He collapses back down, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling. He can’t move. Why can’t he move? Everything’s fuzzy.
Wilbur leans over him, frantically rambling as he checks his father’s wrist for a pulse. Phil can’t tell if he finds one or not. “Phil? Phil, please, no, there’s still time, there’s still supposed to be time-”
There’s a crashing noise out the door of the cellar, and Wilbur’s head whips around in panic, hands cupping Phil’s cold face.
When he turns back, his eyes are full of tears again, and Phil wants nothing more than to wipe them away and give his boy the strength he needs to continue. But his arms are numb and his tongue is too heavy to even attempt speech.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Wilbur whispers, hot tears dropping onto Phil’s chin. It tickles. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
“ I love you too ,” he wants to say, “ and I always will. ”
But then the fuzz takes over, and the world goes dark.
--------------------------
The zombie sits in a cold metal chair, bored out of its mind. It’s hungry, and it’s thirsty, and its arms hurt. It’s pretty sure that one of its fingers has detached from its body, and is now lying on the floor, adding to the rotten smell of the room.
But there’s something itching at the back of its mind. Something important, it thinks. Maybe even some one.
Nah, the zombie’s alone. It’s never had anyone in its miserable afterlife, never even made nice with another wandering zombie. It knows, instinctively, that a zombie without a horde is dead meat, quite literally, and hordes don’t take in members who aren’t New. And this zombie is old.
It’s hard to tell time, in part because its mind is still fuzzy and the watch it thinks used to live on its wrist has long since fallen off onto the cold gray concrete below. It thinks it may have been a few months or so since it woke up. Much too late to be considered New.
It’s very bored, just sitting here all alone, but the cold of the room is preferential to the blazing heat of the outside world, and the zombie is free to do whatever it likes. Unless that thing it likes is eat, or move, or do anything except groan and mumble nonsense to itself.
It’s hungry. It’s so hungry.
It barely remembers a time before the hunger, when pains in its rotting stomach were not constant, when it had mostly unbroken skin and all ten fingers and a throat that wasn’t rotten through. All it can remember is the vague touch of soft hands on its face, the tears dripping off a young man’s chin, and a promise.
I love you, and I always will.
It doesn’t even know if it broke that promise.
Nothing is solid in this godforsaken world, that’s something it knows from Before. Plans change, people leave, people die, people get eaten-
The world keeps turning, spinning in place on its axis like a carnival ride, and the zombie thinks it would very much like to get off the ride for a few minutes.
Its thoughts are interrupted by a far-away boom, echoing through the walls and finding a home inside the zombie’s slightly rotten ears. It blinks, its eyes focusing blearily on a figure suddenly standing in the doorway.
Another zombie?
It’s a young one, in age, but it appears pretty far along in the decaying process. Maybe a few weeks younger than itself, the zombie thinks. Its eyes are different colors, though muted, and its hair splits roughly down the middle. Half its face is rotten off, exposing sharp molars that this zombie knows it shares, and it stares at its Brethren with as close to Emotion that the undead can get.
The zombie in the chair groans slightly, in a sort of greeting. The other simply stares back.
The young one opens its mouth to return the greeting, maybe, but it never gets the chance. A stake is rammed through its skull, greenish fluids mixing with dark red blood, and the young zombie falls.
Standing in the doorway now is a Survivor. They are dressed in a dark green sweatshirt, face covered with some sort of mask, a smile carved into it, and they clutch a sword in their other hand.
It’s a stroke of sheer dumb luck that the zombie hasn’t moved yet, and it continues to stay deathly still, hoping beyond belief that the Survivor assumes it’s dead. Or- fully dead.
The green Survivor steps into the room, the scent of human flesh filling the zombie’s nose and- oh, sweet jesus, it wants to rip into the soft meat and eat until it’s full and then some more and not stop until the Survivor is nothing but bones and then gnaw on the bones-
They poke the zombie with the point of their sword, the tip sinking into its rotten chest. It doesn’t mind. That area hasn’t felt pain for a long time.
It holds its groans back, keeping perfectly still, until the Survivor is satisfied, and leaves the room calling out to others.
Others?
The zombie can’t help itself. The temptation of sweet, fresh, bloody meat is too much.
It rips itself out of the chair, stumbling to its feet, noticing with interest how one of its feet is pointed in the opposite direction of the other. No matter. It can still walk.
And walk it does, ambling out of the concrete room that’s been its home for its entire afterlife. It makes its way through the junk, piled high in narrow alleyways fit for Survivors and not zombies. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and it’s only a matter of time before-
It leans too close to the towers of plastic and the entire thing comes crashing down. The zombie shrieks, dropping to its knees and pressing its hands against its ears, trying desperately to block out the sound of plastic scraping against metal and metal against chalkboard and-
One of its ears snaps clean off into its hand. It stares at it with surprise, pocketing it out of instinct and marveling at the less assaultive noise. Who knew!
The only problem is, it now has five Survivors pointing guns at its nose.
The leader, the green one from the room, says something in garbled speech that makes no sense to the zombie’s remaining ear. It stares up, confused, and tries the play-dead trick again, flopping over and going glassy-eyed. It doesn’t work.
It’s suddenly lifted up with strong, rough hands, slung over someone’s back and carried into a large vehicle. It’s sat on a bench, hands restrained violently with zip ties that cut into the already fragile skin of its wrists, and it’s confronted with that same smiling mask.
It growls, baring its teeth, though its eyes are terrified. It doesn’t mind death, it’s already been there, but it’s not ready just yet. It’s got something to do, even if it can’t remember what it is. So it makes itself look threatening, eyes glowing with a pale yellow light.
And then the Survivor lifts up their mask, revealing the concerned face of a young man, eyes a bright green and freckles dotted over his nose. He doesn’t seem to mind the zombie’s growling, talking in that same strange language to the others.
“-seems coherent,” the man says, “more than usual. Reminds me of when we found Sam.”
“Dream, we don’t know that-” the one with goggles on his head interjects, though he’s cut off. The zombie’s head follows whoever’s speaking, eyes mild with interest.
“I know what I saw,” the green one insists, shaking his head. “This one’s got a mission.”
The one with a red hood steps forward, putting a hand on Green One’s shoulder. “Do you think we can risk it?”
“Yes,” he states definitively. The red one nods.
“Guys, I think we should trust him. Dream’s gut has never been wrong before, right?” he reasons, hand straying towards the zombie’s face. It eyes the fingers hungrily, wet saliva dribbling down its chin. It’s hungry.
“Bad, watch it-” the one with a bandaid over his nose warns, but the red one’s already pulled back.
“How do we know that his mission isn’t something awful?” Goggles speaks up, and the zombie gradually realizes that it recognizes the accent. It grunts excitedly, fingers twitching as it tries to convey its realization.
Green one’s bright eyes turn back towards it, watching carefully. “Hey, bud,” he starts easily. “What’d you find?”
It lifts its arms, Bandaid man tensing up at the movement, and it points at Goggles man. Grunting again, it motions to its mouth and then back to the dumbfounded man.
“You… know him..?” Green one questions, and the zombie shakes its head no. “Okay, uh… you recognize… his- oh! His accent?”
The zombie nods, not even realizing that it’s started to remember the meanings of the strange words. It grins, exposing its razorsharp teeth, and though the others jump back, Green Man smiles back. “Good job, bud!”
The group moves away, talking quietly amongst themselves, but the zombie can no longer hear them. It hums quietly to itself, a tune that it vaguely remembers from Before but can’t think of where.
After a period of time that it can’t measure, Green Man returns to its side with a piece of paper in his hand. He sits down, too close for his own personal safety. The zombie is hungry, and the Survivor is fresh.
“Do you remember who you were?” he questions it, smiling in encouragement when the zombie turns its head to look at him, his smile dropping momentarily when it shakes its head no. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine, bud.”
It doesn’t understand why Green Man isn’t either killing it or being scared of it. That’s not the natural order of things. But it listens to the questions, and does its best to answer them all with a nod or a shake of its head.
“Do you recognize any of these pictures?” comes next, none of which make any sense to the zombie. There’s one of a dock, sitting on a lake, a dark-haired woman sitting with her feet in the water. There’s one of a woman on a sailing boat, her curly white hair blowing in the breeze. There’s one of a short, stocky boy with hair growing over his eyes. And then there’s-
It startles, a strangled groan emerging from the deepest bits of its throat, looking away. But the image is burned into its mind.
A boy, maybe seventeen, brown hair swept to one side and obscuring half of his round gold glasses. He’s sitting on a field, guitar in his lap, and he appears to be singing.
Green Man immediately pulls the photos away when he sees how it affects the zombie, eyes following it with concern. “Bud? You okay?”
It shakes its head, feeling salt leak out of the corner of its eye and travel down the flaking skin of its face. It knows that boy. It knows that boy. It made a promise to that boy-
Green Man is whispering to a little shiny box, watching the zombie carefully. “-recognized Wil. I think he might be- no, no, it was- George, he cried. I’ve never seen a zombie cry. Not even Sam.”
Silence.
“Yeah, I know, George, but-” Green Man sighs, frustrated. “It can’t hurt to drop him off at the gates. They’re due for a resupply anyway.”
Silence.
“Okay, okay, have it your way. But you better not hurt him. You know what Techno would do to us if it ends up actually being Phil, and we didn’t-?”
The zombie jolts at the two names. Those are familiar. He doesn’t like it. No, no- no, not he, it’s not a he, it’s not human, it’s dead, it’s a zombie who eats humans and can’t speak and shuffles along with a foot that faces the wrong way-
And suddenly he- IT, it’s an it- it’s on the floor, beating the cold metal with clumsy fingers, shrieking like a banshee. No, no, this is wrong, this is all wrong, it’s meant to be on the streets ambling along just like every other zombie, and yet it’s here on the floor of a van hearing names it doesn’t want to remember. It wants it to stop.
“Oh my god, hold on-” Green Man hangs up the shiny box, dropping to his knees and putting his hand gently on the zombie’s shoulder. It whips around, eyes wild, desperate to feel inhuman again, to feel like it’s got no responsibilities, like it doesn’t have to hear pretty words or nice accents because they hurt his ear, and all of those thoughts combine into one.
Hungry.
It lunges, snarling, its fingers bent into claws, scrabbling at Green Man’s face. The man’s eyes widen, and his mask snaps back down into place, leaving the zombie’s fingernails to scrape against the plastic with a horrendous noise.
It knows it’s not the strongest of zombies. It’s old, it can’t run very far, and its claws aren’t as sharp as they could be. But it’s got an instinctual need to fight, to feast, to rip open a human’s flesh and gorge itself on sweet, sweet blood, and it needs it right now.
Green Man doesn’t fight back, simply shooting to his feet and flipping out of the way. The zombie growls, pushing itself up and lunging again. Green Man jumps into the air, catching himself on the metal bars hanging from the ceiling and staring down at the zombie.
“Hey, bud, I’m sorry,” the Survivor coos, posture unthreatening even as he hangs from the roof. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s okay, man.”
The soothing tone gives it pause, and it stops scrabbling at the walls to blink up at Green Man. It gives a soft moan, a questioning tone in the sound.
Green Man smiles softly. “That’s right, bud. We’re gonna take you home, okay? Somewhere safe.”
Safety. Something it hasn’t had for as long as it can remember. It feels nice, just hearing the word.
It slumps to the floor, more salt slipping out of its clouded eyes. Green Man slowly lowers himself to the ground, crouching to be eye level with the zombie.
“You gonna be okay back here for a bit? We’re gonna get moving in a few minutes, so be prepared for a bit of rocking.”
The zombie nods, though it doesn’t particularly understand what that means. It leans up against the bench, assuming the same position as it had been in the concrete room. Green man nods, leaving without another word.
----------------
The ride is very bumpy. It doesn’t like it. The movements rattle its brain, and one particularly harsh bump causes its right thumb to detach and fall to the floor. It stares desolately, not even bothering to care. It’s not like it’ll be able to hunt anyway.
But after a long while, the van shudders to a stop and the doors open. The zombie blinks in the bright light, hissing weakly.
Bandaid Man enters, followed by Red Hood Man, and it’s haphazardly thrown over a burly shoulder and gets shackles placed around its wrists. It gives a pathetic groan, the skin already red and inflamed from the zip ties. Red Hood Man sympathetically pats its head, easily dodging its half-assed attempt to bite him.
And then it’s carried to a tall stone barricade, Bandaid Man talking loudly to whoever’s at the gate.
“Found him in the old Minecraft house. Was just sitting in the cellar. Dream says it might be Phil?”
The zombie blocks the name from its ear the best it can, pressing its head to its shoulder with a groan.
“I’ll alert the boss,” the man with sunglasses says, nodding. “It sure looks like the pictures I’ve seen. Thanks, Sapnap.”
The zombie is thrown to the side roughly, its head slamming painfully against the stone wall. It groans again, glaring at Bandaid Man.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t look at me like that,” he grumbles, shaking his head. “You’re lucky I didn’t just kill you when you took down the supply storage.” The zombie glares harder.
Bandaid Man and Red Hood Man leave soon after, when Sunglasses Man returns with a syringe filled with some sort of pink substance. The zombie growls at them, shying away from the needle, but it can’t move very far and it gets pricked anyway.
It succumbs to the blackness, sleeping for the first time since it died.