Empty Sighs & Wine

Two months in and the sound of gunshots still rattled Zayn to the core.

The firearm trembled in his hands, heavy and unfamiliar despite having been his closest companion since the hell settled in. He aimed it, holding his breath, eyes narrowed and locked on a monster that stumbled all too fast towards him. He winced when he pulled the trigger. Always did.

He hated guns, hated them for years, but it was all he had to defend himself against the world. He had to do what he had to do.

The bullet he shot hit the zombie dead between the eyes. Almost. A little too far to the left. He couldn't bare to look at it for long, just turned his head and walked away. Because it wasn't an it, it was a she. And she was young, maybe twelve, in a pretty pale sundress, soiled with blood and dirt. And he couldn't take it. What if that was one of his sisters? What had become of them? His parents?

Fuck.

Zayn had the tendency to speed walk. The faster he left those type of scenes behind, the better. He made quick steps through the desolate town, eyeing a Jeep momentarily before realizing the battery had been torn out. He just needed to leave, just needed to—

The border was blocked.

The town was cut off by more monsters, snarling and staring and sloppy. They all eyed Zayn, heard him from a mile away and he didn't know how, just knew he wasn't getting out of this unscathed. He held his breath, hoped that if he didn't come off as a threat, they would leave him alone and he could make it past without killing anything.

A pipe dream, but.

He lowered his head, held his gun tight, and took a few steps forward. Some of them pushed themselves up to their feet, bared their bloodstained teeth and widened their blank eyes. He glared at them, just needed to keep them at bay so he could get through and breathe a little better.

Zayn stared at the ground after what felt like an eternity, realizing that it would be better to not watch them as they did him. He murmured, "Please, please, please…" tensing his body. They were predators. He was prey.

He just needed to make it through.

Was there another way out of here?

Maybe.

But he had come too far to slow down or turn around.

They were already growling at him, some crouching further down with every shaky, scary breath Zayn dared to take. He knew one, at least one, was going to lunge, and maybe that would be the one to kill him, but he was going to hope that was his inner pessimist and not his inner fortune teller.

And one lunged.

It let out a horrid screech, one that threatened to burst Zayn's eardrums, and clung to his jacket, smearing the leather with something like blood, something like dirt. He jumped, swatted at it and aimed his gun. It was a domino effect. One comes. They all come.

Monsters leapt for him left and right.

Every pop and bang coming from the killer in his hands hit him deep, but it was either a gunshot or a bite.

He snapped, "Fuck off, fuck off!" trying to keep his façade strong. He was not scared. He was strong. He could kill all of them. He could forget that they were really people, they once lived, loved, and lost.

One of them got their hands around his throat and others, they crowded around, snarling, drooling, reaching for him. He was drowning in a sea of the undead, couldn't get up for air. The one that held him, they squeezed tight, nothing but animalistic instincts running through their head. They needed him dead so they could devour him. End of. He was their prey.

Others scratched at him, tried to slap his gun away. It went off twice, once on purpose and once by utter accident. One bullet hit a zombie in the leg, eliminating them from the fray. One bullet hit Zayn in the thigh, and he would be damned if it didn't kill him. He shouted out, fought harder to try and break away. He dropped the gun and pulled at the creature's hands, struggled to free himself. With too much effort and not enough breath, he escaped the hold, dizzy and disoriented.

Zayn stumbled back, scrambling for his gun, air rushing down into his lungs and nearly stunning him. The moment he reached his weapon, a monster got too close. He made the mistake of looking up and he saw braces, fuck, was this a kid, braces and they had an old wristband with superheroes painted on the rubber, fading away.

They stretched for him and he shot. He fucking shot. This-He-He shot them and they let out a wretched yell and hit the ground. He backed away, pain radiating up his leg. The whole left side of his body was on fire, driving him mad. Still, he had to run. He was going to have to shoot more if he didn—and one touched his wrist and he got trigger happy and shot them, too, square in the chest, was that the heart?

He held his breath until he broke away, running for it. It hurt to even move that goddamned leg, but he had to go. It was starting to pile up. He was killing. He was fucking killing. Killing creatures that were people once, so it counted, right?

Where were his sisters, where were his parents? Dead and gone or alive and well, he would never know, would he?

Zayn liked to think he made it far by the time he collapsed. He sat at the side of the road, blood trickling down his leg. His breathing was ragged and he prayed right then and there that he got far enough from the edge of town that the zombies gave up and decided to leave him be. He didn't hear any, but then, he couldn't hear much of anything. There was a ringing in his ears, strong and irksome.

He dragged himself to the edge of the road, rolled over in the grass. He left blood on the pavement and painted some of the green a dark, dreary red. His thigh throbbed. Could he die from a shot in the leg? Maybe, if he bled out or got infected or…

Zayn stared at the sky for what felt like an eternity. His mind spun as he thought about the last day he spent with his family. His mum and dad were busy teasing him about his plans to be an English teacher upon completing school, pinching his cheeks and poking him around. "How're you controlling a class, you can't even control your sisters?"

Waliyha and Safaa were going through the ‘too-cool-to-sympathize-with-their-brother’ phase, sitting in front of the telly and sticking their tongues out at him, giggling behind their hands. Doniya, the only one with any heart in that house, promised him he'd be fine and gave him some useful tips to surviving uni.

And then.

Gone.

He went off to school and everything went to shit and he hasn't seen them since.

Zayn felt the strongest urge to shed a tear, but he couldn't be bothered to let one fall. It was so much effort to cry, and the recovery period was just so lengthy. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on anything but the physical pain, burrowing himself deep in emotional pain, instead.

He blacked out reminiscing on the one and only time he tried to braid Doniya's hair.



Zayn woke up to someone lightly scrubbing his cheek.

It was a boy, blond hair fading to brown, face sprinkled with light freckles and smudged with dirt. His crystal blue eyes were narrowed in concentration. Zayn jerked lightly to let him know he was awake, instincts kicking in. He didn't feel his gun on him anymore. The guy had taken his gun.

"What—"

"We found ya on the road," murmured the artificial blond, revealing both a strong Irish accent and braces. Zayn could only imagine what a hassle those would be in the future if he didn't get them tightened or whatever braces needed to be. "Had a bullet in your leg. Bleedin' like mad. We got the bullet out, though, and Lou wrapped it up well, I think. His mum's a nurse, y'know? Wait. Of course not. You don't know us."

He stopped his incessant chatter to breathe and then.

"I'm Niall. I'm scrubbing dirt off your face."

Zayn frowned, propping himself up with his elbows. He didn't want to be sucked into a group. It would prove disastrous. There was no doubt in Zayn's dark, dark mind.

"Zayn," he said quietly, his leg giving him a signal to shut the hell up and lie back in the form of a shooting pain. "You could've left me."

"You'd be something's dinner, mate," Niall responded, finally leaving Zayn's face alone. He sat back, smiled a little and cracked his knuckles and kept moving for no damned reason. "Couldn't let that happen to ya."

"Why not?"

"Because, like, you're a fellow human. And we'd feel like shit if we just let you lie there and wait to be devoured. That'd be pretty awful."

"I could've dragged you down, um, Niall."

"Strength in numbers, Zayn."

And Zayn realized then, in that tent with the talkative and twitchy Niall, that this boy was probably there to stay.

Great.