Five
Four Shots
ZELO POV
I don't know how I was able to fall asleep, because I know no one else could. I don't know how I got in that pile of rock, because I wasn't there before. I don't remember, exactly, where I was before that. But I know I wasn't there.
Because suddenly I was suffocating, suddenly there was a mountain pressing down on me, trapping me. And then there was a pinprick of light in the clotting darkness, and then there was an angel to let me breath that didn't look so much like an angel. He didn't have the pure-white wings. He didn't have wings at all. But he saved my life, and so I'm grateful, and so he's a angel, at least to me. At least to me.
I know Jongup doesn't trust him. I know he doesn't think that Yongguk hyung can do this. I know he doesn't like Yongguk. I know Himchan is fine with him. A little wary, but anyone who wouldn't be is a fool. I don't know about Daehyun. He's a lot harder to read than the others, a lot more closed up, a lot more able to keep his fears and his worries hidden. I think Jongup can do that, too, but he's making how he feels about Yongguk's unspoken leadership plain. I think he's doing it for a reason, some reason, becuase Jongup isn't one to set a spark where you don't need it. I know he knows Yongguk is a part, a big part, of getting us out of this mess alive, and he wouldn't unhinge him for nothing more than entertainment.
No one talks as we tramp through the woods. Yongguk leads, Himchan behind him with Jongup just a pace after, me, and then Daehyun. The only sound is the crunching of sticks and leaves under foot, the swish of branches occasionally as we brush them out of the way as we make our own path. The wind is gone, and the late morning sun isn't hot enough to do more than a light touch of heat on my shoulders. But no one says a word.
Too much on our minds, I guess, about what's ahead. Seoul, but not really Seoul. Not really the place where we used to live.
Just ruins, now, but I'm hoping same as anyone, that we can find something in the ashes and the shelled buildings. Food that was left untouched. Clothes. Water. Medicine. Even a couple of weapons, because even though I don't know what we're going to do after this, the woods that the world are filled with the metal freaks. They have been, for the past few months, but they were only whispers, only rumors, only shadows in the dark and stories by the fire. No one really believed them, until a month ago.
Jongup has a gun. A shotgun, resting on his shoulder as he takes even, light steps through the brush in forth of me. He carries it like he doesn't know it, doesn't like it, so it must not be his. Maybe a father's, or a brothers. Maybe he picked it up out of the ashes and ran. I don't think it would be very useful if none of us know how to use a gun, and the bullets might run out after a few experimental shots. But it's the only weapon we have, really, and although the sun is high in the sky, night is always around the corner and with night, we'll need a gun.
Before too long, the trees start to thin out, the grass, yellow and wilting, starts to fade back, and the dirt under our boots turns lighter, lighter, under we stand in the empty plain that surrounds Seoul. In front of us, in the distance but not-so-distant, is the city. Even from here I can see the darkness, the burned out buildings, the empty streets, and it leaves a pit in my stomach.
But we go forward, we have to, since we have no were else to go and my stomach is growling, protesting almost a day's worth of mostly no food, except for a box of crackers Himchan had had in his pocket that we had passed around last night.
Himchan sighs, a heavy sigh, and I turn my head to look at him. His eyes are closed, and his mask is breaking, just a little, with the sight of the ruined city, where his boyfriend died in front of him and where his parents and friends and everyone he knew had died as well. I think I see a single tear slip from between his dark eyelashes, but he wipes roughly at his cheeks quickly, so I'm not sure.
Jongup moves up to stand beside him. "Are you okay?" He asks him, and I know he's seen the tear and Himchan turns his face away, gathering himself, pulling himself together.
"Yeah," he answers, and when the word comes out strangled, he tried again, clearing his throat before. "Yes."
Jongup studied him. "Are you sure?" I wince. That wasn't a great thing to say.
Himchan makes a face like, well duh, of course I'm not. But he still answers positive anyway. "I'm okay."
Jongup got the message and drew back, his face troubled.
Yongguk sets his jaw. "Let's go," he orders gruffly, his deep voice even throater than usual, and I can tell he's trying not to cry. Jongup pressed his lips together but his face stays blank, emotionless. Daehyun just stands there, face tilted up to the weak sunlight, eyes closed, but I somehow know he isn't trying to supress tears. He's too steady for that.
When no one moves, Yongguk finally does, setting across the barren land with his long, purposeful strides. I hurry to catch up with him, not wanting to be left behind in this sad stretch of empty, and after a pause I hear the sound of boots hitting the sun-dried mud and I know that we're all moving, all crossing this great desert to the end, to where our home, used to be.
➻➻➻➻➻➻➻
Daehyun, with a distaceful expression on his face, kicked at a blackened soda can. The burned metal clattered loudly as it rolled down a small slope, as we stood on the rise. In front of us, in front of Yongguk who had started to pick his way down the ruins. In front of Himchan and Jongup who were already down, in front of me, and closing in on us, is Seoul. But the streets, where there was people and voices and unnatural colors, now there is black and grey and collapsed buildings and scattered trash and cracked pavement. There is cars, crashed, parked, but none that are moving.
It's terrible, this distruction. It tears, somehow, at your soul, like the sharp edges of a cement block, dislodged and lying in pieces 20 feet from where it should be. The place, just the edge, is deathly silent, us the only sounds. Daehyun turns to look at me, a wry smile on his lips.
"It's done, isn't it? This, the Seoul we used to know is done," he says to me. Done. The old world is done. Normal is done. Gone. Gone. But Seoul isn't gone. No, it's right here. It's in front of us and beneath us and around us and a little behind us, but we can still see the desert we walked through to get to this destruction if I strain my eyes back through the smoky-grey of the air here. The air tastes like smoke and ash and dust, and every new gust of wind brings a sharp pierce of pain, of what my home used to be.
Shaking myself, I start to turn and climb down this little hill, careful but not careful enough. I scrape my hands a lot of the untrimmed edges, and skim my knee twice on the rough man-made creation and distruction of that creation. By the time I get down, and Daehyun is just planting his feet on solid ground, I'm scraped and bloody and bruised and so, so sad and tired. I don't know how we can survive here. I'm hungry, and I'm thirsty, and I just want to sleep in my bed, under my covers right now. But I can't, my home is gone.
Gone.
Himchan is trying not to look, but I can see him once in a while as we scrounge the streets, the shelled hoses. It would be heartbreaking to recognize something in this mess, but I can't help but look too. The wind whistles through the hollowed streets, and I can hear my breath, rasping in and out as the junk in the air gets into my lungs, into my throat.
Everything here is suspended in time. Nothing moves, nothing breathes. And as we look, we can't find anything. Not food, not water, no people. No freaks, too, but that's a relief. I know that soon, if they haven't already, the freaks will find homes here, in where our homes used to be, and Seoul -- what's left of it -- will be overrun. This is our only chance before... Before doing something. Before going somewhere else that no one knows where it is.
But as the minutes fly by, and we get deeper into the blackened, ruined city, I feel like something's here. Something's watching us, and it sends chills up my shine. But everytime I look back, everytime I look over my shoulder, nothing's there. Yongguk plows ahead, tossing aside blocks of concrete with his bare hands as he searches through wreckage, and Jongup and Himchan pick a bit more cautiously through the ruins. Daehyun stays behind, a step behind me, and I can see him with a furrowed brow, every so often glancing behind him. He's heard it too, or maybe the both of us are just paranoid.
Yongguk freezes. He's bent over a pile of concrete, his hands bruised and scrapped resting lightly on the concrete, but he's doesn't move. His eyes are glued to something in the pile. His breath is shaky, and we all pause, in the middle of a wide street. Yongguk pushes himself up, and turns around. His eyes are black, afraid. He's afraid.
"We have to go," he says, and we all stare at him. When no one moves he clenches his jaw. "Go! We have to go!" The panic in his tone jolts us, and we all turn. We don't know what he saw, but we have to get out. This is dangerous. But as we spin around, and fear builds in my stomach because Yongguk isn't one to be scared easily, I stop before I even move.
In front of us. In front of us. No, no, all around us. Behind us. Snarling, rustling, waiting. Their teeth, silver and gold, glint in the weak sun, sharpened to point. Plates of metal are their skin, their fur, sliding together and sliding apart, on their neck and legs and tail and lean bodies. Their eyes, an unnatural, lighting glowing acid green, are fixed on us. Predatory. Dangerous. Trained to kill. Trained to kill us.
They surround us. All sides. And as weak as we are, we can't do anything. Nothing. A single freak steps forward. Something like intelligence is in its eyes. It tilts its head, and it looks at me, and I feel the unseated fear that I am about to die. That we are about to die.
The front Wolf gives a snarl, low and fierce. We are still, absolutely still.
The front Wolf leaps.
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