█ Chapter 8: Breakfast

Murdering four teenagers undetected was a job easier said than done. While Chanyeol was determined that they could be silent and deadly (a tactic that had been successful with Sunyoung and Soojung), Baekhyun was concerned that the dog would give their sneak attack away.

Baekhyun had seen Coco in action at the hospital and knew the hound was not your typical outdoor dog with a fist-sized brain. It functioned with human intellect, like an actual person trapped inside a furry body with four legs. As long as the dog was keeping guard beside its owner, Baekhyun knew it was impossible to take their four visitors by surprise.

"Let's wait, keep them here for another day or two," was what Baekhyun finally suggested, turning to face the look of disappointment on Chanyeol's face. "We can stage a death."

Chanyeol's seemingly open hospitality and Baekhyun's talkative demeanor often helped in the social aspect of tricking people; after all, people needed to be charming in order to move the masses. When Soojung and Sunyoung had wandered into their trap on their own two feet, Chanyeol and Baekhyun had been nothing but sickeningly sweet to them. In turn, the girls had let their guard down almost immediately and the partners in crime had moved in for the kill when they were least suspecting it.

The only flaw in the dynamic couple's foolproof plan was that they had wasted precious ammunition on one of the girls when she had attempted escape. A bullet to her head had kept her from running, and the other girl had been fed to a walker. Unfortunately, that walker wasn't the only one ravenous for human flesh in the area, so Baekhyun and Chanyeol had really paid the full price for the wasted gunshot by being trapped in the garage for a week or two.

Chanyeol had suffered the most mentally after the loss of his older brother, but the two were driven to the brink of insanity when things turned to . When families and friends fell apart, Chanyeol and Baekhyun relied on each other, and those feelings manifested into a twisted version of love.

The worst part was that neither of them was willing to admit it, because their warped perspective of the world led them to believe their love was the only thing worth protecting and having. Everything and everyone else was superficial. To two broken people, their other half was the only thing they needed.

Chanyeol was Baekhyun's half, and Baekhyun was Chanyeol's.

"You're getting better at this than me," Chanyeol chuckled, slipping a hand under the hem of Baekhyun's shirt and resting it on his boyfriend's stomach.

It was times like these that Baekhyun wondered what was going through Chanyeol's mind, because sometimes his boyfriend would wake up in a cold sweat, screaming a girl's name at the top of his lungs. Baekhyun had known Chanyeol years before the world had come to an end, years before Chanyeol had lost his girlfriend. He had been Chanyeol's crutch through it all and had possibly become a replacement for his boyfriend's girlfriend (as awkward and ed up as that sounded).

Baekhyun knew Chanyeol wasn't well, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But what could he do? He had sworn his life to his best friend and that's where he was now, by Chanyeol's side, whether his boyfriend really wanted him there or not.

As nothing but the crickets chirped outside, Baekhyun couldn't help but sigh loudly to fill the silence. "Maybe," Baekhyun whispered. "Maybe we can head somewhere else, too. Travel a bit."

Chanyeol remained wordless, but Baekhyun could tell from the long period of silence that draped them that Chanyeol wasn't too fond of his suggestion. "Why? We've got everything we need now, we're keeping ourselves safe in here, aren't we?" Chanyeol's tone of voice dropped an octave lower. "We're keeping our baby safe."

The hand on Baekhyun's stomach pressed a little harder, making Baekhyun understand the gravity of his boyfriend's words. In a ed-up attic of Chanyeol's mind, Baekhyun, his boyfriend, was carrying the unborn infant who had perished with Chanyeol's girlfriend. As impossible as it was to believe for anyone, it really shone some light on how messed up Chanyeol was, to even hold onto that string of fabricated hope. It also spoke volumes how crazy Baekhyun was to play along.

Despite being seen as a substitution in Chanyeol's eyes, Baekhyun loved his boyfriend. He loved him in the most heart-aching and desperate way any human being could love another, so much so that he would willingly forfeit his own sanity to live in his lover's shattered realm of nightmares.

Baekhyun loved Chanyeol so much that he was more than willing to kill four innocent boys at the price of his boyfriend's satisfaction and feel no guilt at all for the crime he had committed. At the same time, Baekhyun loved Chanyeol so much that he wanted to heal him, to show him that there was light at the end of the tunnel, even if it would shatter Chanyeol's sugar-coated perspective of him.

He wanted Chanyeol to live and smell the wildflowers.

Baekhyun just wasn't so sure if he was willing to risk that love over the dysfunctional love they had now, yet. "Unless you know how to deliver a baby, I think it would be wise to find someplace else that has medical help," Baekhyun suggested with a playful simper. "Maybe that Kyungsoo guy, we can convince him to stay with us."

"We'll think about what to do with them tomorrow," Chanyeol mumbled softly, his conscience slipping in and out of slumber. In a few seconds, he had already fallen fast asleep and Baekhyun followed shortly after.

When morning brightened, Chanyeol and Baekhyun were the first to rise and Kyungsoo woke up ten minutes after. The others were fast asleep like babies in a crib, or a child on a Saturday morning catching up on sleep he hadn't gotten on school days. Everything seemed normal for once. Nothing suspicious had happened and all of them had gone to sleep without having one eye open for biters. The garage was nothing short of paradise.

"Mooooooooooooorning," Baekhyun greeted Kyungsoo who strode up to him lazily. "You like your eggs scrambled, sunny side-up, or what?"

Kyungsoo noticed that a part of the stash Baekhyun had brought from the hospital's storage room included eggs, which must have been locked away in the fridge most people mistook for a metal crate. His stomach growled instinctively as the eggs hit the bottom of the frying pan and sizzled. "As long as it's edible," he mumbled and looked around the garage now that the sunlight was bleeding through the blinds. Eventually, he wandered over to the tool bench where the dried blood stain was and squatted next to it.

"Don't go touching that or anything before breakfast," Baekhyun glanced at Kyungsoo warily as he prepared the eggs for breakfast. If they had been any quicker, eggs wouldn't have been the only item on the menu.

Kyungsoo knew the stain wasn't fresh, but there was something odd about the stain's placement. If the girl had truly committed suicide, her head couldn't have fallen at that angle, nor could she have shot the gun from above. Kyungsoo noticed the hand prints on the cedar, and the stripes on the walls that convinced him the girl had gone with a fight.

"Wake up your friends, will ya?" Baekhyun chirped.

With the details of the misconstrued plot unfolding in his head, Kyungsoo approached Sehun and Jongin who were the closest and draped himself over the latter. He shook his shoulder to stir him awake but kept his voice low. "Jongin, something's not right."

Jongin, of course, only heard his name in the midst of the mumbo-jumbo Kyungsoo was speaking, so he just rubbed his eyes and croaked a soft 'huh' in response.

"Something's not right with this place," Kyungsoo repeated quietly, giving Jongin's cheek a gentle pat. "Get up, we're eating and getting right out of here."

"Okay, okay, let me just..." Jongin yawned and sat up with his hair a mess and clothes ruffled, literally looking like he had wrestled with a bear the night before and woken up ten years later from a coma. Sehun stirred shortly after him, and Minseok was the last one to join the group when the eggs were ready.

During the whole meal, Kyungsoo looked like he was on edge whenever their hosts said something, while Jongin was also tense because Kyungsoo was acting strangely. Then again, Kyungsoo's gut instincts hadn't failed them before. The only thing that bothered him about Kyungsoo's baseless assumption was exactly that. It was baseless. He wasn't sure what sort of people Kyungsoo had dealt with, but Jongin wanted to believe that Chanyeol and Baekhyun were the exceptions to every other out there.

The moment they had their stomachs filled, Jongin asked Kyungsoo to see him outside for a moment.

"What's this about?" Jongin asked, one hand shoved into his backpocket and the other rubbing the tough stubble growing along his jaw and chin.

"Something doesn't seem right," Kyungsoo said, looking Jongin straight in the eye. "I had a chance to see the blood stain. She struggled." He formed the shape of a gun with his good hand and aimed it at the dirt. "Someone shot her at this angle; otherwise, her head wouldn't have fallen the way it did."

"So she shot herself in the forehead, these guys are just trying to help," Jongin frowned. "If they wanted us dead, the guy would have left us at the hospital."

"He saw our supplies."

Jongin scoffed and threw his hands in the air. "Really, Kyungsoo? Do you have trust issues or something? Is that why your only friend is your stupid mutt?"

"That stupid mutt saved your sorry ," Kyungsoo growled. "I'm trying to save your life, again."

Jongin sighed and swept a hand through his hair, thoroughly frustrated by Kyungsoo's behavior. Just when he thought they had something good, he had to see it being burnt and trampled to the ground in an instant. He placed both hands on his hips and tried making sense of the situation, even if it was getting increasingly difficult to see the dark side of the moon he knew was so bright.

Kyungsoo tugged Jongin's collar closer until they were almost nose-to-nose. "I was trying to find the restroom last night, woke up by myself and had to wander a bit," he paused. "I saw something out the back window. A biter."

"Big ing deal, there's a load of them out there."

"You ever see one on a chain?" Kyungsoo whispered. "Chanyeol said he lost his brother. Doesn't that make sense? The psycho keeps his brother on a leash and feeds people to it. You have to believe me."

Jongin shook his head, shoving Kyungsoo off of him. "You're ing crazy."

"Trust me, I'd rather be crazy than right."

When Chanyeol popped out to ask the two what they were talking about, Jongin reassured him that they had only been discussing their plans to get to Namsan before sundown and headed inside. He saw Sehun storing the canned goods in their pillowcase, but no sign of Minseok. Jongin's heart sank to the pit of his stomach, but he had to ask. "Where's Minseok?"