█ Chapter 11: Alarm

Warning: DEAD CHILDREN AND (AWKWARD) BAEKYEOL AHEAD!

Spooked by the fresh messages written for them, the group decided it was best to leave their shelter and find another, even in the dead of night.

There were more roads and manmade constructs on their route now. Jongin could have sworn this part of the district had been a lot livelier with flashing neon lights and steaming street food ready to be sold to tourists once upon a time, but none of that remained. Not even a flicker of life. The whole city had been evacuated or purged and what remained of the citizens were their corpses still stalking the empty streets.

It was a depressing sight, and certainly one that could destroy any individual's hope of ever surviving such a daunting apocalypse. It was these moments when he and Sehun traveled through the ghost remains of a once thriving population that Jongin doubted they could make it. But, for Sehun, he always lied.

"Keep close," he warned the others and tried to move swiftly past the abandoned cars and booths on the street. The buildings and roads were cloaked in pitch blackness except for the flickering signs spotted here and there. Jongin would have tried to salvage some of the street food that had been left in the wagons but the rats and insects had already gone to them as they spoiled and rotted. He couldn't remember the last time he had a bowl of dukbokki or a stick of hot fish cake with his buddies.

"The military swept through," Kyungsoo noted when he found several soldiers' gear littered on the pavements, most of them grotesquely botched with blood. "I don't think they made it far."

Jongin grabbed an M16A3 rifle off a soldier's mangled corpse and slung the strap over his shoulder despite the weapon having no ammo. If there were more soldiers lying about, surely they had to have some spare ammunition that they hadn't gotten the chance to fire in the fray. As they kept walking, the stench of the undead became stronger until it was practically hovering like poison gas in the still air. They couldn't keep going past this point. Not until sunrise.

Baekhyun pointed to another gated building that looked like a school, although it was too small to be anything more than a kindergarten or elementary institution. The sunflower-and-rainbow mural decorating the entrance surely gave that away. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting the creeps being out here. I feel like we're being watched."

Baekhyun yelped when Chanyeol spooked him with a surprise 'Boo!', although the two stopped bickering when the group came across a minivan full of children. Undead children.

Chanyeol strode up to the dusty glass first and swiped his palm across it, coming face-to-face with a gastly visage that was once the sunshine of some proud parent's life. He said nothing, felt nothing, as Jongin hurried them along.

The group trudged onwards in silence, the memory of the van full of children still haunting each one of them. It wasn't a sight that they could get used to, no matter how much time they spent surviving or what inexplicable horrors they had seen along the way. It just wasn't.

There were still a few biters roaming the deserted kindergarten but the group cleared the threats and found a classroom to hole themselves in. It was the one place in the entire facility that didn't reek of the undead nor had any blood strewn across the walls or splattered on the floors. Nobody had died here. But, the longer Jongin or anybody else spent within its colorful walls, the more unsettling the comfort felt.

"You think... you think they all... died, Jongin?" Sehun asked quietly as he scanned the walls pinned with crayon self-portraits of the kids. They were all smiling in each rudimentary drawing but there was always one in each batch that looked sadder than a kid should be and it reminded Jongin of himself. Sehun rubbed his own arms slowly, feeling goosebumps rise on his skin.

"No. I'm sure they're all in Namsan or Busan. Safe," Jongin lied again, patting the bean bag next to him and setting his rifle to his left. "Come here and get some sleep, Sehun. Please."

Kyungsoo chose high ground and lied across a low shoe cabinet while Chanyeol kept silent watch over the window of the second story and Baekhyun perched on the teacher's desk. "So, what's the plan?" Baekhyun asked.

"As soon as the sun comes up, we're going to split into two groups and do a supply run. It doesn't look like anybody bothered to check around here," Jongin yawned and rubbed some sleep from his eyes. "Baekhyun, you're going with me and Sehun. Kyungsoo, Minseok, and Chanyeol can forage the first floor."

"You still can't trust us?" Baekhyun frowned and glanced at his boyfriend who still kept his gaze zoned outside. "Look, you already took our gun. What am I supposed to do, talk you to death?"

"Please, just shut the up," Jongin sighed in desperation.

It really wasn't that he felt threatened by the two. If he really wanted to, he could have taken them down in a fist fight but keeping his friends safe from them was another story. Looking out for himself and protecting another were two very different motives to stay alert and guarded. For now, Baekhyun and Chanyeol were still on his radar for the they had pulled back in the garage but if there ever were to be a chance for redemption, now was it.

After an hour of Baekhyun insisting that he tell ghost stories, most of the group fell asleep, even Jongin who had volunteered to be on night duty. Fatigue had caught up to all of them, except Chanyeol and Baekhyun.

As soon as they heard everyone snoring at least once, Chanyeol and Baekhyun snuck into the hallway and adjoining restroom. The space was tiny, cramped, and barely provided enough wiggle room for Chanyeol to stretch his long limbs but the two managed to make most of what they had.

What they had was a messy . Not the kind of that was perfectly -quality but the clumsy bathroom kind that involved knocking over things and readjusting awkwardly arranged limbs. They also didn't have the convenience of using lubricant anymore so a spit- against the wall of some deserted bathroom sufficed, for now.

Chanyeol hoisted Baekhyun's weight up, wrapped his boyfriend's legs around his waist, and pressed him against the tiles as he rocked into him. Both of them tried to keep quiet but Baekhyun was obviously having a harder time as he had to bite Chanyeol's shoulder to muffle his moans of pleasure and occasionally pain.

"Ah, not so deep, Chanyeol," Baekhyun winced, holding onto Chanyeol a bit tighter when they shifted.

Their was horribly plain once Chanyeol found an angle he liked. Baekhyun hung onto his front like an attachable doll while Chanyeol jutted his hips only an inch in and out, just until the teasing friction was enough for Chanyeol to in as deep as possible and inside of his boyfriend. Chanyeol groaned hoarsely when his rattled his entire body, shaking him like a leaf as he worked himself off inside of Baekhyun.

"You didn't , baby?" Chanyeol breathed heavily against the crook of Baekhyun's neck as he pulled out and groaned once more at the lewd sensation of his trickling out of his boyfriend and down his half-hard shaft.

Baekhyun almost wanted to say 'no, you dumb, you at ' but he shook his head silently instead and pecked Chanyeol's sweaty cheek. "No, but it felt good. I think one of my legs fell asleep."

This was when the lovey-dovey cuddling Baekhyun liked and preferred so much came into play but as soon as they heard the bathroom door open, Chanyeol had dropped Baekhyun and the two scrambled to tug their pants on as a beam of light shone in their flushed faces.

The light left their faces and aimed at Chanyeol's bare crotch before directing upwards to illuminate the contours of Kyungsoo's face. "Seriously?" Kyungsoo snorted. "I hope your pathetic was worth dying, because the two of you just lured a bunch of biters up here."

When the three returned to the classroom, Jongin and Minseok had already taken out three biters who lied face-down in a puddle of their dark blood.

"Where the hell were you two?!" Jongin hissed under his breath. He knew there was no time for them to explain because another group of the biters were crawling their way up the stairs, their only method of escape for now. The elevator was jammed and the other staircase was too far into unknown territory to rush into. "New plan!" Jongin yelled as he stabbed a biter in the skull with a pair of scissors. "Kyungsoo, Minseok, Chanyeol, find an exit behind us. We'll hold them back."

Kyungsoo fell back with the others. Sehun had picked up a chair to force the biters back without actually killing them, and Baekhyun was managing just barely with a ruler in hand and his pants down to his knees.

Jongin, who was taking the heaviest part of the hoard, grabbed some file cabinets set in the hallways and knocked them over to stall the growing number of biters for a precious second or two. There were too many. From outside their second story window, he saw a line of biters marching into the building in some sickeningly neat pattern and it worsened when the fire alarms rang. Now, who the would ring the fire alarms?

Jongin barked at Baekhyun and Sehun to fall back and head the other way as the PA system echoed overhead, just barely squeezing out enough juice and static to deliver a message from Kyungsoo: "Jongin, we found the office downstairs. The entrance is infested with biters but we got the keys to the back door. Meet you... kzzzzt... downstairs... in the office... kzzztkt... the fire alarms... kzzz... drawing biters... kzkttktttt..."

"Okay, we have to go!" Jongin bellowed over the hiss of the fire alarm showers drenching them.

Baekhyun ran dead last and called for Jongin and Sehun to slow down, but his voice lured a child-sized biter out of the janitor's closet. Baekhyun stumbled in surprise as the thing latched its teeth onto his ankle, gnawing right into his bone. ", , !" Baekhyun whimpered and kicked the biter's head off with his good foot, writhing in pain when Sehun and Jongin picked him up.

", he's bleeding a lot," Jongin panicked and ran downstairs with Sehun, trying to keep Baekhyun quiet so he wouldn't lure the biters this way.

When they found Kyungsoo's group, Jongin quickly moved Baekhyun onto Chanyeol's back. "We have to get out of here now, there's too many, we're going to get flooded," he said, his expression going dark as he saw Kyungsoo patting his pockets and fishing out nothing from them. "Kyungsoo, where are the keys? Damn it, where are the keys!"

"I don't know, I had them right here, I swear. Minseok, where did—"

And there Minseok was in the distance, slipping out the back door and locking it behind him.