ODDS OF SURVIVAL - TAEKOOK

CHAPTERTHIRTYTWO

Stuck in the limbo of unconsciousness in a pitch black room, Taehyung had no idea how much time was passing.

He could have been laying there for days, or maybe only minutes, there was no way for him to know.

A few times he thought he opened his eyes and got up, went outside looking for the car and found Jungkook there asleep in the passenger's seat. He was pretty sure those were dreams, though, because he moved all wrong.

Too easily, barely even touching the ground. Also because time kept resetting and starting back in this pitch black room. Life didn't do that, he was pretty sure about that, too.

When he finally did wake up for real the room was just as dark whether his eyes were open or closed and when he tried to reach up and touch his face to confirm whether or not his eyes were open, he gasped in pain.

Fuck, his shoulder! It hadn't ever stopped hurting, but moving at all made it exponentially worse.

And his face and neck and back and all the other parts of him hurt like-- Well, like he'd had the living hell beaten out of him, so that made sense. He supposed that was the most reliable indicator that he actually was awake this time.

Another difference between this and the other times he thought he'd woken up were the noises he could hear outside the door. Scraping footsteps, thumping, crunching sounds, all seemingly right outside the door.

For some reason he'd thought maybe the zombies would wander back outside after a while, but that was a ridiculous notion. They probably couldn't figure out how to get outside.

His options were to lay here in agony for days or weeks or however long it might take for him to die, or he could go out and be torn apart by corpses because he was unarmed and in no shape to fight them off.

This was it, then. He really was going to die.

But unless zombies suddenly learned how to turn a doorknob, he had plenty of time to lay there and ponder his regrets. Maybe he could pinpoint the exact moment his life went wrong.

He'd hardly even begun lamenting every decision he'd ever made before there was a hard knock against the door that startled him, but somehow he managed to stay silent despite the jolt of pain through his arm when he flinched at the sound.

A moment passed with only the sound of his pulse thrumming in his ears, then the knob rattled and the door swung open, dousing him suddenly in light from outside that stabbed at his eyes.

On reflex he tried to shield his eyes, but the aborted movement hurt so much that he let out a ragged, pained groan. He blinked a few times, waiting for his eyes to adjust so he could at least see his imminent demise coming.

Maybe Jennie's zombified corpse had come to finish him off in some sort of twisted revenge from beyond death. On second thought, maybe he didn't want to see that.

He could see a figure silhouetted in the doorway, but it wasn't shuffling toward him as he expected. Instead it stood still, crouched slightly with some sort of stick held at the ready to attack, or maybe to defend.

As his vision adjusted, he could see the person's posture slowly relaxing until they had lowered the stick and were standing completely upright.

The person's skin was entirely covered from head to toe, complete with some sort of ski goggles and a cloth tied around their face. From their stature, he thought they were probably either a woman or an adolescent.

"Where's your friend?"

Was she asking about Jungkook specifically? Did she know about him? Or was she just checking whether he had any companions nearby?