Through the Dark (A One Direction Zombie Fic)

Recommended listening:

http://soundrown.com/ (Play "Birds") at the same time as playing http://www.iserenity.com/brook/

Inspired by this picture:

http://channybee.tumblr.com/image/65674839216

        Coffee was a privilege now. There were very few things Louis knew anymore and at the moment it seemed he knew this more than the other boys who were drinking it in their makeshift tin cups rapidly. Louis savored it. The smell was something he had once grown accustomed to. There was hardly a morning he’d wake up and coffee was not already sitting on a table in the tour bus, steaming hot with creamer and sugar, just how he’d always loved it. Hell, the morning all this happened, his coffee had been waiting for him in his mug, imprinted with his name right next to Harry’s mug which read, “Haz” in some calligraphy sort of alphabet. With his jeans rolled up and the blood washed away from all his belongings, his hair cleaned and cut (although a little more than he would have liked, but fine by Liam’s standards), it was almost as if he and the lads were on a camping trip instead of surviving a zombie apocalypse.

            “Oi, Louis,” Zayn interjected his thoughts, “C’mon now. We’re waiting for you. We can’t stay here, you know.”

            “Just a while longer, yeah?” Louis protested, not caring to look back at the lot of them. Louis had changed. They all had moments of silence where they’d look at each other in concern, as if to ask where he was. He didn’t need to turn around to see this moment happening. This he also knew.

            “We can’t.” Zayn was walking toward him now, everyone aware of the sound of his footsteps on the leaves. “We can’t stay anywhere outdoors as long as we have already. We’re pushing it. They track scents and the longer we linger, the more prominent our scents become. ‘Specially since we washed in the brook yesterday evening.”

            There was a moment of lingering silence between them before Louis took his feet from the water and slipped on his sneakers. They were white and the only thing which the blood seemed it would never wash out of. He’d sometimes wished he’s brought boots like the other boys, but he couldn’t part with how things used to be as easily anymore.

            “What’s the plan this morning?” Harry asks slowly, his voice strung with sleep.

            “Upstream. The water’ll be carrying down whatever bits we got rid of yesterday. We want to move away from that.” Liam answers.

            “Are we seeking the city?” Harry knows immediately that it was a stupid question, a stupid lingering hope.

            “No.” Liam shakes his head. “No cities. Suburbs at best. Cities are where the spread started. It’s where the amount of the infected per square mile is an odd we’ll never –”

            “Stop. Please stop.” Harry makes them all shut up quite quickly. Louis may have changed, but he grits his teeth and throws an arm around Harry’s neck.

            “It’s fine, Haz. Just because the cities are out of the question doesn’t mean there isn’t hope of a cure. Liam is just… he’s preparing you. London isn’t the same. Nowhere is.”

            The quiet between them is thick. No one even has the heart to stop Niall from cutting away branches in his boredom. The sound of them hitting the ground makes the birds stir. Louis had often wondered how some animals died and others didn’t. The birds had wings of course, but for some damned reason, not even the vultures would pick at the walkers. It was as if they knew what was happening was something that would drag them down into depths of hell no one knew existed.