Key wrapped his fingers around the pendant hanging from his neck. He closed his eyes and took in a deep, shuddering breath. It was late. Jonghyun was late, and all Key could do was sit in the cold, abandoned shell of a cabin they’d found.

He’d gone out hunting, but that had been hours ago. Key tugged at the necklace again, feeling the uneven edges of metal biting into his palm. He was careful not to break the skin, because you never knew where they were… Where the zombies were. That really was the worst part. He’d gotten over the fact that there were zombies and the world had gone to and everything he’d ever known or cared about was dead or destroyed. The worst part was you never knew where they were and Key didn’t know where Jonghyun was and it was all knotting up in his throat and chest and stomach and he couldn’t breathe.

Key didn’t know what he would do if Jonghyun didn’t come back. He didn’t know how long he could stay here in this cabin, waiting. He didn’t know if it was safe. They hadn’t scouted the woods well enough. It had been getting dark and Jonghyun had needed to get Key somewhere where he could rest. He’d hurt his ankle a few days ago, while they’d been running for their lives. It wasn’t serious, and it wasn’t a bite, but it made him a liability.

He was lucky he was with Jonghyun. Most people would have abandoned him in the woods and left him to die, if he couldn’t keep up. Jonghyun wasn’t like that. He’d risked his own life to haul him away. They’d slept in a tree the first night, something they’d learned from those crazy, survivalist shows that Jonghyun had liked to watch from the comfort of his living room. Key wished he’d paid a little more attention.

His ankle didn’t stop him from pacing throughout the three-room shelter. He’d already been over every inch of the cabin. There was a chair with really ugly upholstery, a two-person couch with similarly ugly upholstery, and a few raggedy blankets. The back room had a tub with no plumbing, Key had already filled it with water from the pond out back and taken a bath in the frigid water. He was pretty sure the exertion hadn’t been good for his ankle, but the opportunity to wash the grime from his body in the safety of a building was too enticing for him to give up. The other room was a small bedroom. The mattress hardly looked hygienic, but it was softer than the ground. The door looked solid enough, and the owner had blocked up the windows. It was safe for the moment, but he didn’t know how long it would last. Nothing seemed to stay safe for very long.

Just when Key was about to have a full-blown panic attack, he heard footsteps on the wooden porch. He panicked for a second before he realized the steps were too even for zombies, even the freshly dead ones with the best control over bodies that had yet to begin truly decomposing. Then he panicked again when he realized that it meant humans and if the humans weren’t Jonghyun, he wasn’t sure what he would do. There was a chance they were friendly, but there was a better chance that they weren’t.

“Key, open the door!”

Key almost sobbed in relief, yanking the padlock out of the fastener and pulling the door open, letting in a gust of wind and rain. He’d been so worried he hadn’t even noticed it had started raining. Jonghyun stumbled through, but he wasn’t alone. There was another person with him, a boy. He had his hand wrapped around Jonghyun’s bicep, but Jonghyun didn’t seem to be trying to get away, and the boy dropped his arm as soon as Key closed the door behind them.

Jonghyun threw his arms around Key and pulled him in close. “It’s okay,” Jonghyun said. “It’s okay, I’m here. I’m sorry I took so long. I’m here.”

“Don’t do that to me!” Key snapped. “It’s almost daylight. I thought you were--”

“Ssh, baby. Ssh, I’m here. I’m okay. We’re both okay. Key, look at me. I’m okay.”

Key pulled away long enough to look Jonghyun up and down. His clothes were spotted with mud and moss, his hair dripping, but he didn’t see any sign of injury. He hit Jonghyun as hard as he could in the shoulder and was rewarded with a sharp hiss of pain.

“What the hell was that?”

“That was for scaring me like that, you jackass!”

Jonghyun, risking another hit, leaned in and kissed him, wrapping his arms around Key’s waist and swaying him gently back and forth. At Jonghyun’s touch, Key finally felt the anxiety that had been building over the last nine or ten hours melt away.

“There we go,” Jonghyun whispered against his lips. “There we go. We’re okay. I had to make sure we weren’t followed. The rain should help mask our scent, but I didn’t want to risk anything following us here.”

Jonghyun kept an arm around Key’s waist as he stepped a little away, fingers splayed wide to keep as much contact as he could. His fingers dug in a little too tightly to match the relative calm of his voice. He’d been scared too. He’d been scared Key wouldn’t be there when he got back. They’d seen it before. Houses broken, massacred bodies left behind from the zombies and other humans, who weren’t much better than the zombies. At least they were trying to eat. The humans had no excuse.

The boy Jonghyun brought with him was watching them warily. Specifically, he was watching Key warily, shifting on his feet as though unsure if he were safe. He looked physically young, but he had deep pain in his eyes. He’d seen the same they all had, not that there was any question about that. His hair was long, but ragged, with twigs and mud in it. He must have been risking his life sleeping outside, with no one to take any sort of watch. It was a miracle he’d survived this long.

“Key, this is Taemin. Taemin, this is Kibum.”

“Key,” he corrected. “You’re on your own?”

Taemin flinched. He swallowed a few times before he spoke and when he did, Key almost wished he hadn’t asked. He wasn’t good with tact. “I… I haven’t been on my own long. We were… They caught us as we were trying to get across a river. Jinki stayed behind to get us across, to cover us, you know? M-Minho went back for him when he didn’t follow and he slipped… I never heard him scream or anything, but you never know. Sometimes you don’t have time to scream. Minho hit his head and I couldn’t get to him in time. It was raining then too, and the river was deep and fast. It took him. Jinki never came back... I heard the zombies coming and I just ran.”

He couldn’t look either of them in the eyes, his hands flitting between the dirty hem of his shirt and rubbing at the mud encrusted on his pants. Part of Key’s heart melted for the boy, but it was hard enough to keep the two of them alive, without taking on a third. He glanced over at Jonghyun, who shrugged.

It was Jonghyun who had argued hardest against taking any of their friends, particularly their younger friends, but he had brought Taemin to their door. He left it up to Key. They could give him shelter for the night and move on, or they could keep him, if he wanted to stay. Some people thought they were safest on their own. You could move faster, quieter, but you had no one to back you up.

“Jjong, do we have any food?” Key asked, trying to avoid having to come up with an answer for the moment.

“I was fishing when I found him. There’s some, but not much.”

“That’s all right. We should have enough wood for a fire, and I think I even saw a real lighter in one of the drawers. Can you start cooking? I’m going to take Taemin into the bathroom and see if we can get him cleaned up at all.”

Jonghyun nodded, bending to pick up the bag he’d dropped by the door when he came in. Key had been so frantic with worry that he hadn’t even noticed. Jonghyun turned to start digging through the drawers for the lighter and Key put his arm around Taemin’s shoulders, leading him to the bathroom.

“The water is probably still cold, but it’s warmer than outside.”

Taemin just stood there, staring blankly at the white porcelain of the tub. “We used to have a tub like this at home.”

Key’s heart cracked a little more for this boy. He couldn’t leave him on his own. Even if the zombies didn’t get him, he couldn’t leave him to the humans. There was no telling what they would do to him.

“Can you stay?” Taemin asked. “I’ve been by myself so much lately… I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Key pulled an empty crate to the side of the tub and sat on it. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”

Taemin took an almost painstaking care to fold his clothes as he stepped out of them. He set them far to the side where they would stay dry, even if water splashed out of the tub. Key’s heart hurt, seeing how skinny he was. They all had lost any of the excess weight that came from living in a city that never lacked for anything, except maybe time, but Taemin was skinner than all of them, or maybe Key was so familiar with his and Jonghyun’s bodies that he didn’t notice anymore.

He was shaking so badly when he stepped into the tub that Key could hear the water sloshing. Taemin’s head was bowed, the chunks of hair falling into his face and leaving swirls of mud in the already-dirty water. If they had time tomorrow, Key would try to fill the tub up again, so they could really be clean.

Key cupped some water in his hands, finding it really had warmed up quite a bit since he’d bathed, and poured it over Taemin’s shoulders. The boy flinched again.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Key said. He let some more water fall down Taemin’s back and started to rub the worst smears of mud from his skin. “How long have you been alone?”

“Two days, I think. Maybe three. It was night when we tried to cross the river. They were following us and we were hoping… They’re not very coordinated, you know. We were hoping they would get caught in the river and we could get away.”

“Lean back. Let me get your hair.”

Taemin complied, sinking down until just his face was above water. “We didn’t expect them to be so close. We could hear them, you know, but we thought we had time.”

He was crying, but Key pretended he didn’t see. Two days wasn’t long. Key and Jonghyun both had cried for weeks after they’d lost their friends. He focused instead on working the twigs out of Taemin’s hair without pulling. It took him quite a while, but by the time he did, Taemin had stopped shaking quite so badly. He and Jonghyun had saved a fair number of their clothes before they’d run, and Key was close enough to Taemin’s size that he had something clean to wear. When they finally emerged, Jonghyun was crouched in front of a decent-sized fire and Key could smell the fish cooking.

“Once you’re finished, you should take a bath,” Key suggested. “Then we can try to wash out some of our clothes.”

“It should be just about done. How do you feel, Taemin?” Jonghyun asked, holding out his hand for Key.

“Much better, thank you,” Taemin said.

“I’m really sorry,” Jonghyun said when Key reached him. His voice was soft enough that Taemin could easily pretend he couldn’t hear them. “I know you don’t like being left alone.”

“It’s just--”

“I know why and I don’t blame you. How’s your ankle?”

“It’s getting better.”

“Your limp isn’t as obvious.” Jonghyun paused to check the fish and used the iron poker to pull the food from the fire. “I think we should be safe here for a while, at least until you heal.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’re safer here than out there.” Jonghyun leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Eat up.”

Jonghyun displayed the food like some sort of proud hunter-gatherer, which Key supposed he was, in a sense. He’d caught four fish. One of them was tiny and probably would have served better as bait for larger fish, but he supposed there hadn’t really been time. There was enough that they might even have some left over in the morning. The two of them sat down at the coffee table, but Taemin hung back.

“You too,” Key said. “There’s plenty.”

At some point during their time in the bathroom, Jonghyun had found a number of candles. They were lit on the table, with just enough room for the rude tin plates the fish were on. Jonghyun snuffed out the fire in the fireplace, although the rain would have made the scent in the air nearly negligible. It wasn’t worth the risk.

Taemin crouched beside the table, picking at the meat with quick fingers. They ate quietly. Key was willing to appreciate the fact that they were eating real, cooked food, even if was nothing like they would have had in the city. It had been almost a year since they’d run, and warm food was as much of a luxury they got these days. Food was food, they’d found. Anything to keep them alive and running.

They’d seen the bodies of people who had starved or frozen in the winter. It was almost as bad as the ones that had been killed, mutilated bodies that sometimes just stayed dead and sometimes didn’t. Key sighed heavily, dropping a bone back down to the plate.

The rattling sound brought Jonghyun’s eyes up from his own plate. He reached over the flame and touched Key’s knee. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“You didn’t overdo it today, did you?”

“I twisted my ankle, Jonghyun. I’m not pregnant.”

Taemin snorted and then quickly covered his mouth with the back of his hand, but Key grinned at him. It was good to hear him laugh. It was good to hear anyone laugh. Even Jonghyun, who had never had any difficulty finding humor in almost anything, didn’t laugh enough anymore. For just a moment it felt like he was out with friends, rather than cowering in an abandoned cabin, but the feeling faded quickly when something clattered on the front step and they all flinched. The sound wasn’t repeated and Key concluded aloud it was probably a branch thrown by the wind. Even so, it left them all unsettled.

“I’m going to take that bath,” Jonghyun said, breaking the uneasy silence that had settled over them all. He stooped to kiss the top of Key’s head, and then headed into the bathroom, tugging his shirt off as he walked. Key knew the show was for him, but he still rolled his eyes. That was typical Jonghyun.

“How long has it been just the two of you?” Taemin asked, once the door closed.

Key sighed, hand going to the necklace again. “Not long. We left Seoul almost a year ago. There were four of us then. Me, Jonghyun, Woohyun, and Lee Jonghyun. Jonghyun died not too far out of the city. A zombie got him. We had to put him down before he changed. Woohyun…” Key swallowed, wrapping his hand harder around the necklace. “Woohyun got shot. A human.”

Key lifted the chain over his head and held it out for Taemin to examine. Taemin took it and turned it over in his fingers. He traced the bent and broken edges with his thumb.

“A bullet?”

“We got it out of him, but he still died. We had to make sure he wouldn’t get up again.”

“You kept it?”

“A reminder that we need to be careful. And of him. We’d been friends since we were kids… Practically brothers.”

“I’m sorry.”

Key shrugged, putting the necklace back on. “It doesn’t get any easier to watch your friends die, but it gets easier to burn them.”

The conversation faded to silence. Key let it. He didn’t like to think about Jonghyun or Woohyun. There hadn’t been anything either of them could do about either of their deaths, but he still felt like he should have been able to save at least one of them. He was sure Taemin felt the same way about his friends, whoever they’d been.

They all had their share of survivor’s guilt.

Jonghyun stepped out of the bathroom before too long, shaking the excess water from his hair like some kind of dog. Key leaned forward to blow out the candles. He grimaced when his ankle gave a quick twinge of pain. He really had overdone it today, not that he was going to give Jonghyun the satisfaction of that knowledge. “We should have gone to sleep a long time ago.”

“We should be safe here long enough to get some real sleep,” Jonghyun said. He took Key’s hand to pull him to his feet. He had to have seen the flash of pain on Key’s face. “You coming, Taemin?”

Taemin had been heading to the couch, but he stopped when Jonghyun talked. “With you?”

“The bed should be big enough for the three of us. It’s got to be more comfortable than a loveseat, anyway.”

Key convinced Taemin to get into the bed first. He took the place by the wall, where he was most protected. They hadn’t asked him how old he was, but he was clearly younger than them. It hardly mattered. Ages were all relative at this point. When you survived your first encounter with zombies, you’d reached your adolescence. When you killed your first zombie, you’d reached your majority, as far as Key was concerned.

Key slid into bed second, mostly because he knew Jonghyun would never let him have the outside, and Jonghyun laid down last, tossing the moth-eaten blanket over the three of them. The blanket reeked, but the bed was more comfortable than it had looked. Part of that might have been Jonghyun pressed against his back. They had rarely been able to sleep at the same time since Woohyun died.

In an effort to give Jonghyun a little more room, Key slipped an arm around Taemin’s waist, sliding a little closer. Jonghyun made an appreciative noise, putting his arm over Key. Key took his hand and Jonghyun pressed a quick kiss to the back of Key’s neck.

He’d almost fallen asleep when he heard Taemin’s quiet voice. “C-can I stay with you?”

“You’re stuck with us now,” Jonghyun answered sleepily. “I’ve never seen Key take to anyone as quickly as he took to you.”

“Thank you,” Taemin whispered. Key gave him a quick squeeze.

“We’ll find someplace safe and wait until they all die. Maybe there’s an island somewhere, or an empty castle on the top of a mountain. We’ll find it.”

Key didn’t really think they’d find a safe place to outlast the zombies, but he also hadn’t thought they’d survive as long as this. He didn’t know. He did know that they were safe for now, and he’d take whatever he could get.