(If We Can) Find Where We Belong

They’ve settled into a kind of routine. Frank, Mikey and Tyson go out to kill zombies and Pedicone, Chris and Kennerty go scrounging or looking for survivors. Every so often they swap around, probably to make sure they don’t get bored or stuck in the routine, or maybe just so it’s fair, Mikey doesn’t know.

Sometimes Pedicone drags someone – usually Frank – out to help him fix up his van with junk he’s scavenged from the surrounding area, because he’s still set on getting out of here. Mikey doesn’t even know, any more, but he’s just always gone wherever Gerard goes and for now, he seems set on staying right here. He helps Nick help Ray, but he’s barely improved since they arrived. No one’s throwing the d-word around yet, or even the z-word, but it’s in everyone’s eyes except Gerard’s. He’s barely moved from Ray’s side in the nine days they’ve been here.

Mikey’s worried about him. He always worries about his big brother, but this is different. He’s seen him like this, before, when the drinking got so bad he was practically wasted twenty-four-seven, and it’s... unsettling, the way Gerard can’t seem to focus on anything at all beyond the tiny room Ray’s been occupying in the nine days they’ve been here. It’s not the same, he knows it isn’t, but it’s similar enough that Mikey can’t help but worry.

He worries while he shoots at zombies, taking down two or three of them at a time. He doesn’t let himself lose concentration, doesn’t let himself get distracted enough that they could gain the upper hand, but he worries.

When they’ve wiped out an entire pack of them, they stop to take a break, breathing heavily against the side of a ruined building. Frank frowns, suddenly, his gaze fixed on Mikey.

“Shit, Mikey, you’re bleeding,” he exclaims, snatching up Mikey’s right hand to examine it closely. Mikey looks down at it, surprised. It’s a pretty deep cut, jagged and messy down the flat of his palm, deep enough that Mikey wonders for a second how he didn’t notice it before. “Come on, we’re going back now so Nick can take a look at it.”

“Frank, come on, it’s not that bad,” Mikey protests. It isn’t, not really; it’s a deep cut but it’s not bleeding too hard, and it’s already starting to congeal around the edges.

Frank gives him a narrow look, still clutching his hand. “I’m not risking you turning into one of them, Mikey,” he says, fiercely, “I’m not. Gee would kill me, for a start.”

“He’s right to worry,” Tyson puts in, before Mikey can protest any further. “The disease is airborne, after all, so even if it wasn’t a zombie that cut you, you could still be at risk.”

Mikey heaves a resigned sigh. “Fine. Let’s just go, okay?” But Frank’s hand is warm in his, one of his fingers rubbing absent circles into the skin, and Mikey can’t bring himself to be too annoyed by Frank’s overreaction.

***

When they get back, Frank drags Mikey over to Nick’s house before he can protest or run away.

“Mikey’s cut his hand,” Frank tells Nick, grabbing him on the way out of the kitchen. “I think it might be infected, do you think it could be infected?”

“There’s a possibility,” Nick says, frowning, and Frank turns to give Mikey a triumphant look, “considering you’ve been around the deadbeats all day. I’ll take a look at it.”

“We should go, just in case it is infected,” Tyson says, taking Frank by the arm to steer him next door. “Come on.”

“Yeah, okay,” Frank says, reluctantly, allowing himself to be steered from the room. Over his shoulder, he says to Nick, “You take care of him, okay?”

Nick nods and waves them both out. When Tyson shuts the door gently behind them, he turns back to Mikey, lifting his hand to take a look.

“It’s not that bad,” Mikey starts, but Nick just waves a dismissive hand.

“It’s bad enough,” he says, his lips a thin, grim line. “You don’t wanna end up like your friend Ray, do you? Your brother has enough to worry about.”

Nick squeezes the disinfectant onto the wound and Mikey hisses. “How is he?” he asks, cautiously.

“Ray or Gerard?”

Mikey shrugs. “Both, I guess.”

Nick cuts off a length of bandage and starts wrapping it around Mikey’s hand, avoiding Mikey’s gaze. “I don’t know,” he says, eventually, lower lip pulled in between his teeth. “I honestly have no idea. I think Gerard’ll be okay- he’s fine when he has something to focus on, when he isn’t just staring at Ray and waiting for him to wake up. But if he doesn’t...”

Mikey’s heart pounds in his chest. “Do you think he won’t?” He’s always known it was an option, right from the start, but Nick saying out loud makes it real, makes it something that could actually happen.

Nick gives a helpless shrug. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “He lost a lot of blood, and he was exposed to a fuckload of zombies for longer than is healthy for anyone, let alone someone with an open wound. And it’s just- it’s been so long. He should be getting better, at least a little, but I can’t check his blood or anything to be sure.” He looks down, at the bandage he’s secured around Mikey’s hand. “It looks like he’s changing,” he says, quietly. “I can’t be sure, but I’ve seen this happen before and- I don’t think it’ll end well.”

Nick looks so helpless and hopeless, this man who has done so much for Mikey and his friends and asked for nothing in return. Mikey brings his arms up and wraps them around him in an awkward hug, squeezing his eyes shut tight when Nick hugs him back.

***

Their dinner tonight has been scrounged from somewhere, Mikey knows that, but at this point he can’t bring himself to care about where. Pedicone seems to be proud of it, anyway, and Mikey leaves him telling Frank a likely embellished tale of how they got hold of the food and slips back next door.

Gerard looks up at him when he sits down, offering him a tired, wan smile. Mikey gives his brother back the smile and a plate of food he saved for him from dinner, loaded with food because he knows Gerard hasn’t eaten properly in days. He eats it after only a little bit of cajoling and a tiny bit of begging on Mikey’s part, not taking his eyes off Ray the entire time.

Mikey watches Gerard instead. (He doesn’t want to risk looking at Ray, doesn’t want to see the zombie where one of his best friends should be.) Gerard’s hair is lank and greasy from not being washed in over a weak and his face is pale and drawn, his eyes red-rimmed and bruised from lack of sleep. He looks... old, older than their parents looked before they died protecting the two of them.

Mikey swallows, hard. It’s been days since he thought about their parents, but apparently that’s all the reprieve he’s allowed. A part of him is glad that he can’t forget about them so easily, but mostly he’s just so tired of how much it hurts to remember.

***

Ray wakes up a few hours later. He’s kind of the most amazing thing Mikey thinks he’s ever seen, even paler than death and rasping for “water, fuck, please,” his voice like nails scratching down a chalkboard.

Gerard cries. (Mikey’s never seen him cry like this, not ever, never seen the tears streaming silently down his cheeks, his shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. Gerard never does anything quietly.) Mikey slips out of the room, unnoticed, when Gerard cradles Ray’s head in his hands and whispers something Mikey doesn’t need to hear, and goes to find Frank to tell him the good news.