6.

 

He wakes up to the scent of blood. He doesn’t know whose it is and neither can he discern it with his eyes. His white shirt is drenched in the ruby liquid, his arms are caked in a cracking film of maroon but his trousers are dark coloured in the first place. He sits up. Pain screams up his left arm and his back protests loudly. He doesn’t yell out, doesn’t make a single gesture of pain except to clamp his eyes shut and clench his jaw tightly. He supposes the dried blood on his arm must be his own, but the other splashes, he can’t be sure if they were the infecteds’ or Taehyung’s.

 

Taehyung. His eyelids flicker upwards and he surveys his surroundings without moving his head. It’s dim and damp with a waft of rottenness slinking underneath the overpowering stench of blood. He’s underground, which means someone must have dragged him from where he had been.

 

Flashes of something pass behind his eyes, too fast to comprehend but he shakes his head and lets the metallic tang of the air replace it. He drags himself onto his haunches and slowly stands upright. He doesn’t know how much blood he’s lost or if he can tolerate it—and he can’t. He feels the blood draining from his head and the world around him goes black for a second before his body readjusts, and he’s breathing just a bit harsher than before as the blood rushes past his ears.

 

Suddenly, a soft yellow light seeps into the tunnel and he in a breath, frantically searching for a place to hide. But the tunnel is empty except for a small bag of medical supplies and some white sheets strewn around the place. The light gets brighter, flickering and creating shadows, indicating that it belongs to a candle. He freezes, he’s breathing so hard and fast he’s nearly hyperventilating and his head is starting to spin again.

 

A head pokes around the corner and he tenses his leg muscles for a quick escape. He’ll probably get lost, and without food or water he doesn’t know if he’ll survive for anything beyond three days. He’ll fight, he thinks to himself, his hands clenching into fists as the person rounds the corner, eerie light and shadows flicking over their form.

 

“You’re awake,” the person at the end of the tunnel states but doesn’t come any closer. He can see from the faint light that the figure is clad in a sweater and shorts and the other’s hair is a reddish brown. The male, since the register of the voice is low and soft, has such pale skin that even in the low light he sort of glows in the dark. “I got the food that you had on you, it’s in the bag over there.”

 

He doesn’t dare to take his eyes off the stranger but relaxes anyway. It means that the man opposite of him isn’t here to murder him for his supplies or, worse, one of the infected. Or at least symptomatic. He knows that there is a window between infection and the manifestation of symptoms. Namjoon had told him so. But right now, he isn’t in any danger of becoming infected.

 

“I’m Yoongi.”

 

With hawk eyes, he watches Yoongi who merely stands unmoving at the end of the tunnel, one hand gripping the strap of the calico bag. It’s only when he’s gingerly sat back down does the other shift his weight and step forward.

 

“Jimin,” he offers in return, his voice hoarse and scratchy. He watches warily as the male walks closer to him. He can make out a few more features of the other: a calico bag slung over a shoulder, full and heavy; lazy eyes peering out that don’t miss a thing; scratches all over the exposed legs, red and angry; and rips in the sweater that reveal a white shirt whose print is cracked from wear.

 

Once Yoongi draws to a stop in front of Jimin, he rummages through the calico bag and produces a plastic bottle. The water inside refracts the light from the candle in Yoongi’s other hand, sending yellow ripples across the dark of the tunnel walls made of rock and soil.

 

“Don’t drink all of it,” Yoongi cautions as Jimin reaches out a hand to grasp the bottle. He notes that it’s a 1.25L Coca Cola bottle, as the plastic wrap around the middle proudly proclaims. It almost seems a lifetime away. “I need it to clean your arm and dress it.”

 

 

1.

 

“Here’re the documents.” Namjoon slams the papers, still hot from the school printers, onto the desk where Jimin and Taehyung are sitting with their laptops. “The new outbreak.” He settles himself atop of the table and draws the two younger males’ attention to a particular section of the papers. “They’ve nicknamed it the ‘zombie fungus’ like it’s gonna be an apocalypse or something.” He snorts.

 

Jimin grabs the pages as Taehyung goes back to surfing BigBang YouTube videos. He squints at the only image, a blob of purple, in the middle of the page, apparently a pathological smear of the new pathogen that’s had an outbreak in Thailand. He can’t make anything of it. Briefly scanning the pages, he hands the sheets back to Namjoon who’s merely staring intently at Taehyung’s screen.

 

“It’s not likely to become a global pandemic, is it?” He asks as the squiggles of inked data leave his mind.

 

Namjoon snorts again. “It’s not likely to even reach Korea.”

 

 

7.

 

After Jimin is patched up, they leave the network of tunnels and emerge into the dying sunlight. They limp through the deserted streets in the general direction of north, keeping the sun to their left. Their only options left were to head up to Russia where the fungus hasn’t penetrated due to the ever present cold, or from there they stowaway to Australia or somewhere on the other side of the Middle Eastern deserts.

 

They walk through the sunset undisturbed until the stars begin to twinkle in the black curtain of the sky. It’s quiet. They manage to pick the lock of a convenience store and camp there for the night, Yoongi filling up his calico bag with imperishable goods while Jimin picks out the food with little vigour.

 

The donuts in the stand by the window have long gone stale. Many of the packaged goods like chips and biscuits have expired months ago. The sweets can last another few months and Jimin daren’t touch the milk in the refrigerator. The bread and buns have turned into mounds of green mould and dust has gathered over the counter and the slushie machines are home to cobwebs. In a bygone era, the slips of paper under the counter would have meant something. Now Jimin gathers the dried beef jerky and cans of spam into the bag that Yoongi had retrieved.

 

Suddenly Jimin stops his movements. His breath is harsh against the silence. Yoongi is on the other end of the aisle looking at the back of a package of nuts.

 

“What happened to Taehyung?”

 

Yoongi turns to him slowly, his face a mask of boredom, as if he had some other place to be other than checking the expiry dates of the only food they can get their hands on. “Who?”

 

Jimin’s hands are shaking. He tries to regulate his breathing like Namjoon had once taught him. “My friend.”

 

“Oh, the guy who was dead?”

 

And Jimin turns away to shove more cans of tuna into his bag. His head hurts and flashes of something keeps dancing behind his eyelids. He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the night and neither does Yoongi, even when Jimin snuggles up to the other as the owl stops hooting. Yoongi merely drapes an arm around Jimin as he sniffles into his bag of food.

 

 

4.

 

They’re stumbling around a neighbourhood they’ve only ever visited once. He remembers this place from their visit to Seoul. They came here for the famous dumplings over by that shop over there with its shopfront painted in a navy blue that had reminded Jimin of Taehyung’s school pants he’d accidentally set fire to during their first chemistry lesson.

 

Now Jimin finds the streets alien, even with Taehyung by his side. They haven’t exchanged any words since three days ago. What is there to say? When the world they knew has ended, what would a few noises make?

 

The smell reaches them first. It’s the distinct acrid stench of the dead that sends Jimin gagging. It’s akin to throwing himself into the middle of the compost bin their middle school had insisted to place in the back corner of the school grounds, except it’s a thousand times worse. No flower can be born of the rotting human bodies infected by the Ophiocordyceps morticus fungus. But despite the stench, their footsteps don’t hesitate. They walk up for another few metres and Jimin’s body shivers, then they make a turn to avoid the source of the smell.

 

They pass over a bridge that curves gently upwards towards the sky. When they’re halfway across, Jimin glances backwards. He thinks he sees a black smudge somewhere further down along the bank of the small lake they’re crossing over. He closes his eyes and turns back to face North. Taehyung’s hand slips into his and gives it a squeeze. It’s okay, Taehyung is trying to say. We’ll be okay. And Jimin has to remind himself that he’s lucky he hasn’t passed by a graveyard of corpses yet, that he’s only passed by one and the image of it is enough to satisfy him for a lifetime.

 

He can still see it, even as he opens his eyes to the smooth bitumen road. The hollowness of the face, the flesh all eaten away from the inside out so that the pale skin sagged, and the sickening preservation of the jaw muscles that had been clenched so tightly, the muscles bulged. Fine hair-like growth had sprouted from patches of skin, coating the body in web-like, cotton white threads. And, most nauseatingly, the thin stalk that had grown out of the back of the corpse’s head, reaching towards the sky, the spores that could infect a bystander contained with it. And the wind had rattled then, as it rattles now, ruffling his and Taehyung’s head. He’d been lucky then. He and Taehyung.

 

Namjoon, not so much.

 

 

8.

 

He thinks it’s probably the fifteenth day after meeting Yoongi. They don’t say much either. Whereas with Taehyung and Namjoon, the three knew everything about each other anyway, he doesn’t want to know anything about Yoongi, doesn’t want to know him as a person. It’ll be too painful when he goes the way Namjoon and Taehyung have.

 

Despite that though, Jimin catches the little things. The way Yoongi his lips when they get too dry, the way Yoongi constantly bops his head to a beat that only he can hear, the regrowth from the red-brown dye that is already a full hands width from the crown of his head, the ring that’s set on a thin chain around his neck, the way he compulsively needs to check that the water bottle is still there, shoving his hands into the calico bag. The way Yoongi switches arms to carry it. Jimin had suggested a backpack like his, but Yoongi only said that he’d pick one up if they pass by a store they could raid.

 

They had seen one, but the stink of a dying corpse made them circumnavigate it.

 

Jimin notices the way Yoongi’s fingers curl around the red lighter that the other always carries. Notices the way Yoongi’s fingers goes to flick the switch, but never does for fear of wasting the gas.

 

Then they find Hoseok wandering just after sundown, walking eastwards instead of north having lost his sense of direction after the darkness settled. He brings with him some oranges he’s picked from a plant in a front yard and a few vegetables that the house next door had been growing. They don’t have pots or pans, but Hoseok convinces them to nick some from a residence. The same house conveniently has a chimney and a fireplace which they use to cook a beef jerky and spinach soup.

 

Hoseok is talkative and Jimin quite likes him, but Yoongi is surly and frequently tells the other to can it. The dynamics change and Jimin doesn’t really know how to deal with the tension. Hoseok is all arms slung across shoulders and Yoongi is all sleeping in corners. But they work together agreeably enough to raid houses for supplies.

 

Then Seokjin appears one day as a walking hospital. He’d been a medical student before the pandemic hit, and he’s the one who patches up Jimin’s arm properly since the wound was giving off a strange smell and tends to Hoseok’s sprained ankle and eases Yoongi’s grumpiness with a few murmured words and looks thrown at Hoseok and Jimin. He’s the one who brings a semblance of peace with pillboxes full of an assortment of antibiotics and pain relief medications and rolls of bandages and pieces of cloth and bottles of saline solution and antiseptic wipes.

 

They start to eat meals that make more sense, like boiled vegetables and slabs of spam between stale crackers rather than broccoli and mango chili flavoured tuna soup. And Jimin finds that he’s warm at night, wedged between Yoongi and Seokjin, face snuggled into the back of Seokjin’s neck with Yoongi’s arms thrown around his waist and the soft snores of Hoseok sounding like a lullaby to his ears.

 

He finds a sense of contentment that he hopes will last until they reach north, yet somewhere deep inside of him he knows it won’t.

 

 

2.

 

Biology is the only science subject that Namjoon takes whereas Jimin takes chemistry as well while Taehyung takes physics. Namjoon’s repertoire consists of philosophy, world history, music, classic literature and other humanities based subjects, so he’s thinking of dropping Biology by the end of the year.

 

Biology and physics are Taehyung’s best subjects. He wants to do some astrobiological research when he graduates, because finding aliens would be so cool. Jimin is all about the performing arts. He takes drama and dance and music and wants to make a name for himself in stage musicals and the movie scene and own the red carpet. His dream is to star alongside his current celebrity crush, Park Shinhye. He has the talent, he’s even been scouted by a prestigious academy, and just needs to score well enough to graduate. Because of that, he’s a fair hand at Biology, nothing flashy like Taehyung, so he kind of wants to skip out on listening and giving feedback to Namjoon’s presentation that’s worth 20% of his marks, but he stays anyway, just because Namjoon gives him pleading eyes and it’s usually Jimin who pulls the cute and lost puppy dog card.

 

“Ophiocordyceps morticus is a mutation of the parasitic fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the ‘zombie fungus’. The original fungus is widely known to infect Camponotus leonadi ants found in Thailand and Brazil. Its spores penetrate the exoskeleton of the ants and disrupt the haemolymph, causing convulsions and host manipulation. In humans, it has mutated to be able to infect the brain via the blood after inhalation of spores, and manipulate the behaviour of its host.”

 

It isn’t until a few months later that Jimin finds out what exactly are the consequences of ‘manipulating the behaviour of its host’ actually means. It’s a favourite pastime of freshmen and juniors alike to sneak into the seniors-only common room where a television sits on a low bench playing the news. Jimin, Taehyung and Namjoon are sitting transfixed at the scenes that flicker on the screen, of police cracking down on aggressive masses in the southern parts of China where the fungus has spread. Of hospitals becoming a quarantine—a graveyard—for the infected and prisons becoming a festering ground and schools shutting down and people gripped by agoraphobia for fear of their lives too ending.

 

The segment ends and the three are quiet. Then they laugh and say that there’re still so many thousands of kilometres the fungus has to travel in order to reach them in their common room that smells like cheese macaroni and instant coffee with photos of the seniors pinned to a corkboard in one corner, the kitchen in another and several beanbags strewn all around. They call the street vendors who yell fearfully that Judgement Day has arrived paranoid, derisively whisper ‘idiots’ behind their hands at the citizens who begin to hoard food in their basements, roll their eyes when people begin to dig tunnels for when war erupts over stupid little mushroom fungus thing.

 

 

5.

 

Breathe.

 

He has to remind himself to breathe as he crouches behind a bush.

 

Breathe.

 

He exhales shakily, his grip on Taehyung’s hand tighten so hard that he’s certain he’s cut off Taehyung’s circulation. On the other side of the bush, the shuffling sounds of the infected can be heard. He doesn’t know how the infected can detect people. None of Namjoon’s research touched on it, probably because too few people had survived an encounter. Is it by sound? Sight? The smell of blood? He merely sits there and prays to a deity he has never believed in until this moment.

 

Breathe.

 

He in a breath and looks at Taehyung whose eyes are glinting brown stones. There’s a hard resolve in their depths and Jimin nods then faces forward. He can’t look back. He won’t look back. Taehyung squeezes his hand and they shoot off, sprinting across the park, each foot strike on the ground sending shockwaves through his body. He only grips Taehyung’s hand even tighter as they race away their fears.

 

But there are loud thuds that break the rhythm Jimin and Taehyung have built up. And he’s scared, so scared, to look behind his shoulders. He wants to close his eyes and wish that these past months were just a dream, that nothing is real and when he wakes up again, Namjoon will be by his bedside yelling at him to get to school because he can’t fail his final year. He can’t fail because he needs to get into the performing arts academy, needs to graduate and invite Namjoon to those award ceremonies.

 

Now there is no Namjoon to invite. There are no award ceremonies for Jimin to attend, no performing arts academy for Jimin to learn from. And his eyes are tearing up from keeping them unblinking for so long. Taehyung tugs his hand and they skid into another street. Jimin’s cheeks are wet and they tickle a little as their harsh breaths ring in his ears. The thuds behind them are getting louder and more tenacious and his eyes widen even further when he realises there are more than just one pair of feet. He ducks his head down and keeps running forward, uncertain of when his legs will give out.

 

The street they are on narrows as they head towards a shopping district. Jimin tugs on Taehyung’s hand and they duck into a side alley that’s full of decomposing cardboard boxes, empty glass bottles and rusty metal frameworks that would have once been bicycles or maybe rubbish containers. He doesn’t know what they’re stepping over, he thinks they might have once upon a time been plastic containers or plastic bags that’s now been overrun with vermin and cockroaches, and the crinkling sounds of the plastic make his heart sink down to his stomach. The sound crackles like thunder between the walls, and the source is from behind them. He isn’t sure how many there are, doesn’t really want to know.

 

But from the corner of his eyes, he sees Taehyung whip his head around and suddenly the world is tipping over and he’s crashing into the filth on the ground and pain shrieks up his arm. It screams so painfully that he’s knocked breathless and something falls on top of him. He quickly scrambles up from underneath the heavy and rusty bicycle, adrenaline still pumping through his veins, and gets ready to run again when he suddenly realises that his hand is cold.

 

He whips around and Taehyung is sitting there, teeth biting down on lips and hands wrapped around his ankle. He glances down where they came from and there are four infected running up the lane. He glances up the alleyway and thinks he sees some movement, but he can’t be sure. He glances at the bicycle that’s just given him a gash right down his biceps and to his forearm, and heaves it up. He won’t abandon Taehyung. He’s not that sort of best friend. With adrenaline and fear lending him their strength, he manages to pivot on one foot and use the momentum to fling the metal at the infected. If asked later, he wouldn’t be able to answer how he did it. Either way, it manages to bowl one of the infected over. Despite a twisted knee, the infected merely picks itself up again and the other three keep marching forwards.

 

He’s sobbing as he picks up the discarded bottles, cutting his fingers on them, gasping as he flings the glass. Taehyung is attempting to stand up, but his leg gives out and he falls back to the ground. They’re going to die here, Jimin thinks to himself as he hurls the last bottle and the infected are merely a few metres away now. Taehyung is crawling away while shouting something at Jimin, but he can’t make out the words. He thinks it’s something along the lines of run and forget about me. In desperation he looks around and spots some sort of stick amidst all the rubbish, and when he ducks to grab it, his hot and sweaty palm meets the cool metal and he blinks away the tears. He places himself between the infected and where Taehyung is once again trying to stand. He doesn’t know how to fight and he’s chanting prayers of ‘save us someone’ in his head and maybe aloud as he swings the metal pole at the infected. It connects with the head and the shockwaves send Jimin reeling backwards a step or two before he grits his teeth and steps up again to deal another blow.

 

But there’s four of them and only one of him, and he nearly screams as one claws through his shirt at his wounded arm. The infected are so thin, the fungus already eating them from the inside out, but they’re still so powerful and their eyes are glassy where they pop out from the socket. Jimin manages to poke one of their eyes and it just explodes into a mess of blood and fluid. It rains down on him and he nearly chokes on the metallic tang in the air. He whacks them harder, movements frantic, trying to push them back. He can hear Taehyung shuffling, can hear his ragged breaths, can almost hear the mechanical creaking of the bones of the infected, their movements jerky. They’re grabbing his arms and suddenly the metal pole is wrenched from his hands and he sees one of them unhinge a jaw as they stare at him, glassy-eyed and unblinking, and he doesn’t know who screams—

 

Until he realises that his lips are stinging from him biting down so hard that the smell of metal is partially caused by it. It’s not his scream. He whips his head backwards and Taehyung’s injured ankle is trapped between the jaws of an infected. The force of the bite has completely twisted the foot so that it points in a direction that isn’t humanly possible. And the jaw muscles of the infected bulge and strain just below the ears and it’s so disgusting and Taehyung’s screaming in so much pain, that Jimin somehow finds the strength to swing his legs up and kick the infected away from him.

 

Then he’s rushing to Taehyung and trying to pry the infected away from his friend. And he can’t because he knows that the distinctive feature of the fungus is its jaw locking ability of the host. What he doesn’t expect is for the infected to swivel its glass eyes at him and while looking him deliberately in the eye, it lifts a hand and digs it sharply into Taehyung’s abdomen. Taehyung’s screaming is cut short as he flops to the ground motionlessly. And Jimin can only sit back as the tears finally blur his vision and those eyes that are so blank and inhumane disappear under salt and water. He can feel the claws of the other infected at his back, on his legs and on his arms, but it’s nothing compared to the hollowness inside his chest where his heart has stopped beating. He crawls his way over to Taehyung’s head and hugs him close.

 

They were best friends since childhood when Taehyung helped Jimin to the school’s infirmary when he’d tripped and scrapped his knee and started brawling in the playground. And Jimin can’t even return the favour twelve years later.

 

Glancing down at the infected whose jaw is still clamped tightly around Taehyung’s ankle, he notices the thin stalk from the back of the head, the sporangium that housed the fungal spores hanging heavy from it. And he realises as he lies there in a small corner of the world, in the filth of the forsaken, looking up into the mocking blue sky, that there are only two options left. Die, or become infected. He shudders as something grazes down his neck and down his back, something that felt suspiciously like teeth, and he hugs Taehyung closer, the blood seeping through his clothes to give him a sticky kind of warmth.

 

Just before he closes his eyes, he feels a searing heat and thinks that the world is dyed a yellowish red. He wants to wake up in a world where Namjoon and Taehyung tsk at him for nodding off once again under the cherry blossom tree that had once stood in the local park.

 

 

10.

 

Everything is ringing in his ears. Screams, his heartbeat, his breathing, moans of pain—Yoongi’s words. He tries to outrun them all despite the fire that up his leg muscles that tell him to just stumble, breakdown and cry. He doesn’t even know if he’s running northwards to safety, or not. He just needs to outpace everything.

 

The scent of blood.

 

The glassy eyes.

 

Cries of alarm.

 

Yells of pain.

 

Hands clasped around his face.

 

The words are still ringing in his mind, but the burning in his lungs have pushed everything else back. There’s only one command etched into his body and soul, three letters that now underpin his life.

 

He’s gulping in air as fast as he can, his vision was out a long time ago. He’s stumbling along streets he doesn’t recognise, yet he thinks he can still hear the thudding of heavy footfalls behind him. A small voice in his mind is telling him impossible. He’s run miles and for hours now, if he hasn’t been caught up to by now, he won’t ever be.

 

But Yoongi’s rasping ‘run!’ is still carrying his legs until he crashes into a wall. No, a window, he realises as he looks up and finds the letterings that declare it a supermarket. He tries to stand up, but his knees wobble and his bones refuse to support his weight and he comes crashing down to the ground again.

 

He curls up where he is and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes.

 

 

3.

 

At first, it’s very hard to discern the healthy from the infected. Namjoon tells them that it takes about a week or two for the fungus to grow in the bloodstream and for it to travel and for its toxins to cross the blood-brain barrier to infect the brain. Jimin notices that Namjoon’s twitching in his sleep on the eleventh day after they pass by the corpse with its thin stalk and heavy sporangium. He puts it down to nightmares and keeps watch on their surroundings. He lets slide the way Namjoon clamps down on his wrist so hard that it leaves bruises the next day. Those were the only conscious decisions that he made. He doesn’t know how many Taehyung has made but probably not many either. The world’s changed so they’re bound to change and adapt.

 

But when Namjoon actually punches Taehyung’s face, that’s when Jimin pushes Namjoon back and calls him out on all his crap. They need to get along for them to survive, he nearly screams at Namjoon, not helped by the fact that they haven’t had any food beyond dried apricots in four days. When he turns around to tend to Taehyung’s face, Namjoon shoves Jimin onto the ground and starts calling him names, names that he hasn’t heard since he was in middle school, things like ‘useless fat curd’.

 

All he can do is stare up at Namjoon who looms over them, black hair sticking in strands to his face. The other’s eyes are wild and spitting out so much hate that Jimin draws into himself. He’s shaking, Namjoon is, with fists clenched at his sides.

 

Jimin knows it’s his fault that he spilt the only clean water they had, but Namjoon doesn’t have to call him ugly names for it. He’d even gone out of his way at night to climb a rain tank and fill up all three bottles with clean water because he felt so guilty. Namjoon had even thanked Jimin for being considerate in rectifying his mistake back then, so Jimin can only stare dumbfounded as Namjoon continues to spit out words that pierce his heart.

 

It hurts because Namjoon was the one to chase away the bullies when Jimin was dumpy and had spent the year in a different class to Taehyung and no one would pick him for their basketball team. But Namjoon offered a hand to Jimin and showed him that even if he was bad at one thing, he could be brilliant in another.

 

“You’re acting like an infected.” Taehyung is sitting up, a trickle of blood dripping from his nostril. His gaze is set dead on Namjoon who, after a moment, merely blinks and turns away.

 

“We need to get going and find a place to settle for the night” is Namjoon’s only reply and they all stand up and put the incident behind them.

 

The next few days, Namjoon is silent. And when he isn’t silent, he’s passively complaining about everything around him. From Jimin’s utter slowness at grasping the situation to Taehyung’s weirdness, from the way the place smells like trash to the way Jimin can’t cook the food right. He complains about how Taehyung only managed to pick up expired food and how Jimin didn’t check to see if the water had been contaminated.

 

Sometimes, Jimin can see Namjoon’s fists clench and unclench, notices that Namjoon’s shirt is usually drenched in sweat when his and Taehyung’s are dry, notices that Namjoon alternatively shakes and becomes rigid in his sleep, and that he’s often hit with spells of dizziness that he tries to cover up by doggedly marching ahead, only for Jimin to catch him when he falls.

 

One day, Jimin wakes up to Taehyung’s worried face bent over him. “Do you know where Namjoon-hyung is?”

 

Jimin gives Taehyung a look because, obviously not, he had been asleep until a few seconds ago. But he struggles upright to take a look around him. They have camped out in a church this time round, sleeping on the pews while the statue of Jesus Christ watches over them with sorrowful eyes. He isn’t religious. His family had been devout Christians, but he had never been. He stares up at the statue with no pupils and then glances around. The place where Namjoon had been sleeping is cold to touch.

 

They frantically search the neighbourhood, too afraid to call out Namjoon’s name in fear of attracting unwanted attention. They look around corners and down empty lanes until they catch sight of a figure walking over the hill in the park, and they share a look before racing up the hill and slide precariously down the other side. There they find Namjoon standing by the edge of the river that slowly meanders out to the sea.

 

“Hyung!” Jimin gasps out as they skid to a stop metres from where Namjoon is looking out to the distance where the river meets the horizon. Something is glinting in his hands but the way Namjoon’s eyes are hurting more than the statue of Jesus back in the church pulls his attention away. “Hyung!” he tries again.

 

“You woke up early.” Namjoon turns to them. The thing in his hands gleam and temporarily blind Jimin. His eyes flicker to the object and he realises that it’s a knife still tied to its yellowing packaging.

 

“I didn’t want you to see this,” Namjoon says softly.

 

“Hyung.” Taehyung steps up but Namjoon throws a cautionary glance that keeps anyone from moving. “Hyung, no one wants to see their friend go, so step away.”

 

Namjoon’s smile is more of a grimace. “No one wants to see their friends become infected.” There’s a blanket of silence that settles over them and nearly chokes Jimin. “So please, while my mind is still clear, let me make my own decision.”

 

“What if there’s a cure?” Jimin pleads desperately at Namjoon. “What if we reach our destination and they have a cure?”

 

“Where’s our destination?” Namjoon shoots back, sharp as ever. “You’re heading north but you don’t have a clear city in mind. I’ve already reached my destination.

 

“I want to die knowing I haven’t killed any of my friends.”

 

No more words are exchanged. The blanket of silence suffocates Jimin, constricts his chest and squeezes him tightly, as Namjoon breaks the knife free of the packaging and slides the sheath off. Taehyung’s hand finds Jimin’s and he realises that Taehyung is shaking just as badly as he is. Together they watch as their hyung, their guiding hand, their source of wisdom and comfort for four years of their life, raises the cold metal to his neck.

 

“Good luck,” Namjoon whispers and, with one deliberate movement, slices his lifeline open.

 

They watch as Namjoon’s body is borne away by the sluggish river that is slowly painted a red that cannot be found anywhere else, floating spreadeagle on the waves. Namjoon’s final resting place will be the vast ocean with its glittering sapphire jewels and birds that soar freely. They can only hope for something as romantic as that.

 

Taehyung collapses first then, after a moment, Jimin joins him on the grass where their tears mix with the dew of the early morning frost. It’s far too early to be clinging to each other and wishing away reality. It’s far too early.

 

 

?.

 

He wakes up to the scent of blood. But it fades as he opens his eyes to the white ceiling above him. The bed sheets under him are scratchy and coarse, yet he still runs his hands over them because it’s a welcome change from hard concrete and wet grass. He realises he’s in a plain white shift and that his feet are bare. He thinks he can feel Taehyung’s grip in his hands—the gentle squeeze whenever Jimin is feeling down—and anger floods him.

 

He doesn’t know why, but all he can see is red. He doesn’t know at whom it’s directed, but he lets loose a yell and punches the wall that’s beside his bed. He doesn’t feel the pain. He’s too preoccupied with smashing the pillow against the bed and tearing it apart, the filling falling like the softest snow to join others on the ground.

 

It’s not the first time.

 

His jaw is sore, he realises as he flops back onto the bed, the rage flitting at the periphery of his awareness. He raises a hand to massage it, and when he removes his hand, it’s covered in blood and reeking of rottenness.

 

Sitting up, he recognises the scene in front of him. It’s him and Taehyung, stargazing on the roof of their cabin on their school camp to the countryside. He still hasn’t figured out how many stars there are in the universe, or how many blades of grass there are in the world. He believes they’re equal in number. If he can calculate one, he can calculate the other. That had also been the first time he’d found the Northern Star. His past self is pointing to it, showing it excitedly to Taehyung, who is just as awed by the brilliance of fire that descends and engulfs them in a cool embrace until Jimin is standing in front of a mirror.

 

He’s thin, stick-like, with skin hanging off him. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced than ever, his fingers are spidery and his ribs are poking through the white shift. His stomach seems to have caved in and his legs don’t look like they should be holding his weight, but his cheeks are still full like a chipmunks. His jaw is sore. White threads are sprouting from the hair follicles on his arms and legs. His eyes are blank, improperly reflecting the rage within him that spills over and he punches the mirror. His reflection is hateful. It ignites and enflames fury within him so hot that he’s consumed with it, his reflection devoured by fiery red tongues that remind him of Yoongi’s lighter.

 

Yoongi’s lighter.

 

He turns around and stares back at the white room with its single bed pushed into a corner and a ripped pillow at its head, the sheets slipping off and pooling at the foot. The floor is tiled and icy to his bare feet and there is nothing else in the room. Only him and his uneven breathing and the embers of something rotten burning away in his chest. Alone.

 

 

9.

 

They never expected to wander straight into an infestation of infected. They were just trying to break into a hospital since Seokjin’s supplies had been running low, especially as they’d all eaten something that was off and started vomiting. Seokjin had shoved some pills down each of their throat and cured them in a day and a bit more. They never realised it until it was too late, and Hoseok had been thrown against the wall and Seokjin had let out a cry of alarm.

 

Jimin reacts first, and grabs the first thing he can get his hands on, a fire extinguisher, and throws it over his head at the infected that’s standing over Hoseok. He hears Yoongi cursing as there’s nothing flammable in the hospital corridor and the lighter is just a flashy piece of metal container, not a weapon. Seokjin is frantically pounding away at the door of the pharmacy, having given up trying to unlock it. It’s a keycard system anyway, they would never have broken it down unless they had a battering ram.

 

Then an infected is running towards Seokjin, and it’s only in the nick of time that Jimin pulls the older towards him and out of the way. The infected barrels open the pharmacy doors, and Hoseok rushes past Jimin and Seokjin with the metal frame of an IV drip in his hands. Jimin sees another lying further down the corridor where a crowd of infected is rushing towards them. He takes one good look at Hoseok who has impaled the infected on the pole, then makes the mad dash towards the pole. Seokjin is screaming at him, what is he doing, you’re going to get killed!

 

He reaches the metal frame before the infected swamps him and grabs it, twirling it around his body and knocks a rotting body backwards. Then he spins on his toes and runs towards the pharmacy.

 

Yoongi and Seokjin slam the pharmacy doors close. The stench of the dead permeates the room from a pool of sticky red blood around the unmoving body of the impaled infected. The breather is only for a moment before the door is broken down for a second time and the room is filled with screams and grunts of pain and the thud of metal connecting with flesh as Jimin waves the IV pole around.

 

He’s lost Seokjin within the masses of bodies, only knows the older is somewhere near the counter from his screams. He can see Hoseok, defending himself with the pole that’s dripping blood everywhere. And then there’s Yoongi, behind Jimin, raiding the drawers of the pharmacy, throwing paper up into the air, until it’s raining white and Jimin suffers papercuts all over his arms and face.

 

Suddenly, Seokjin’s screaming is cut short by a wet gurgle that sounds horrific and Jimin has to immediately shut down the image that comes unbidden into his mind. Yoongi works even more frantically, rattling and slamming every drawer, until Jimin is standing ankle deep in prescription papers and medical records. From the corner of his eyes he sees Hoseok fall, a gash that’s ripped open the other’s jeans spilling out the brightest, most primal red Jimin’s ever seen. But Yoongi is throwing out pills and crushing them and everyone is skidding and trying to regain balance as they step on and crush them, mixture of oil and drugs soaking everything.

 

Then Yoongi is tugging Jimin over to where Hoseok is lying and Jimin can’t look at the wound because it’s horrible and he doesn’t know exactly what’s been mangled. There are strips of something hanging out but it’s all covered in blood. So he turns around and stands guard over them, wielding the metal pole with a deadly precision and ease that he would never have had last year.

 

“Seokjin-hyung?” he hears Yoongi asking. He can’t see them, but he imagines Hoseok shaking his head because Yoongi goes on in that cool and calm manner of his. “Can you walk?”

 

Jimin imagines Hoseok shaking his head again, that is, until he hears the other rasp out a, “forget about me.” And he’s punched in the gut by his own nostalgia. He grunts loudly as he slams the pole against the head of the infected and into the one beside it, taking them both out of action for a while. Because he can hear Taehyung’s voice, a lot more frantic, so much more desperate and desolate than Hoseok’s, uttering the same words.

 

How can he forget about them? About Taehyung and Namjoon and Seokjin and Hoseok?

 

Yoongi’s just behind him now but he can’t take his eyes off the infected for even a microsecond, he can’t turn around and face Hoseok with his cheeks streaked with salty tears. He’s losing them, one after the other.

 

“Jiminnie, there’s a window up there, at your seven o’clock. I want you to climb through it. I’m going to set this place on fire.”

 

Jimin nods his understanding and hurls his pole at the infected. With one strong kick, he topples a cabinet down between him and the infected, the papers, fliers, books and folders scattering into the air, and turns around. Yoongi grabs his face, calloused and dry hands clasping his cheeks, and Jimin looks up into the warmth of the other’s eyes that’s a complete contradiction to the coldness Yoongi wears like a second skin.

 

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Yoongi says with such certainty that Jimin doesn’t hesitate to nod and breathe a ‘yes’ in return. “Now, go.”

 

He doesn’t need telling twice. He’s bolting towards the window, hopping from bench to shelf to sill. He slams the glass open and makes the fatal mistake of looking behind him. With flames dancing in the background, Jimin sees Hoseok launch off his only good leg to tackle an infected, and Yoongi, the angel of fire, stands there staring at Jimin with the red lighter in one hand and his wrist of the other clamped in the jaws of an infected.

 

“RUN!”

 

It’s the force of Yoongi’s scream that sends him toppling through the window. He lands on his shoulder and his head follows afterwards, and he lies there for a few seconds, just regaining his bearings, blinking then staring at the green grass that’s tickling his nose. Then he sits up and carefully rises onto his knees and stands. He loiters there for how long he doesn’t know, staring up at the small window he’s fallen through, waiting for Yoongi’s face to appear and for him to drop and tumble onto the ground.

 

But it’s not Yoongi’s face that appears—it’s the face of a man that could have been possibly in his thirties, jaws locked in an eternal grin. Those glassy eyes that protrude slightly from the skull swivel to look down at Jimin and a shiver runs down Jimin’s spine before he hears Yoongi’s voice ringing in his ears.

 

RUN.

 

Those three letters force him to turn around and flee just as a heavy thud shakes the ground and tells him someone has just jumped from the window. And it’s not Yoongi. It will never be Yoongi.

 

 

11.

 

Something rattles but Jimin ignores it. He doesn’t think he can go on now, even if it’s an infected or a bandit looking to empty Jimin’s already empty pockets. He can only sit there against the shopfront of the supermarket, sobbing into the palms of his hands with Yoongi’s words still ringing in his head. Footsteps approach him, careful and light.

 

He’s thought about it, dreamt it in his dreams on cold nights wedged between Seokjin and Yoongi. Namjoon would have been a politician, campaigning for the rights of the ostracised minority. Taehyung would be an astrobiologist, the ones that the science community ridicules, but Taehyung would be content in his niche of finding life outside of Earth. Seokjin would be the hypochondriac medical student who rolls his eyes when Jimin asks if his cough means he’s going to die but would scream about some rare incurable disease when he has tremors from a cold. Hoseok would be the happy-go-lucky arts student whose smarts, in Namjoon’s opinion, would be wasted. Namjoon would keep pushing Hoseok to add Law to his degree, just like Namjoon has. And Yoongi. Yoongi and Namjoon would have been best friends if they had met. Yoongi would be the cool music student, composing whenever the six of them meet up during breaks, his head bopping to beats that only his ears can hear.

 

Jimin would be studying in the prestigious performing arts academy. He’d be scouted by a big entertainment company like JYP, maybe given a choice to debut in an idol group or work solely as an actor. And he’d have such a hard time choosing between the two that it would keep him up at night.

 

He laughs derisively and silently into his hands. He doesn’t need to choose. There isn’t a choice anymore. He’s been snatched of it so cruelly.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

He looks up at a young boy who’s hovering, concerned, over him. He can see himself reflected in those clear black eyes, a small thing with a face streaked with tears, blood, sweat, dirt and snort. And he can image it, him choosing the idol life so he doesn’t have to give up dance and music. He’d be sorted into a group with this kid in front of him right now, and together they’d sweat it out at 3am in the practice room, getting the choreography and adlibs down pat.

 

“The gym down the road still has running water, so you can take a shower,” the young boy says as he offers a hand crisscrossed with scars and dotted with callouses. “This supermarket has clothes and a few cans of food.”

 

Jimin grabs the proffered hand, and the young boy helps him up with surprising strength in the wiry frame. He teeters on sore legs. The other notices and quickly stabilises Jimin with both hands. That’s when Jimin notices the baseball bat the other is carrying.

 

“Thanks,” he mutters. “I’m Jimin.”

 

“No problem. Name’s Jungkook.” The boy smiles serenely at Jimin, then grows grave. “Did you run into a horde of infected?”

 

And he can hear Yoongi’s voice telling him to run, see Hoseok with his mangled and torn leg launch himself in a last stance, can hear Seokjin’s last gurgle of blood, can feel the warm blood seeping onto his chest from Taehyung’s wound and see that overwhelming sadness in Namjoon’s eyes. The taste of blood, the smell of rotting flesh, the feeling of claws grabbing him—he knows it all, and it haunts him. It’s glued to his heart and mind, invaded and infiltrated so deep to his core he doesn’t know how to cleanse himself of it. He’s covered in more blood than can be washed off, covered in more filth than what Jungkook can see, covered in more scars than what his body can show.

 

And the thing that gets him the most is that Jungkook, this young boy with a smile and clear eyes standing before him, probably has seen it all too.

 

And all he can do is to screw up his eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the new wave of tears. Jungkook folds him into his arms, and slowly walks them back into the supermarket. Jimin hears the rattling of the door closing again and the click of a lock. In the safety amongst the aisles of supplies, Jungkook rubs circles into Jimin’s back. No words are exchanged between the two. There aren’t any words needed. In a world where all hope has disappeared, things like ‘it’s okay, everything will be alright’ are blatant lies, but the truth like ‘we’re going to die, we’re going to be infected’ are wholly unwelcome.

 

So they sit there in silence of the supermarket with its shelves of cobwebs and floor of grime, with screams still ringing in Jimin’s head and Jungkook’s arms around Jimin’s shaking form. They sit there until Jimin has to go shower in the gym down the road and change his clothes and bandage up all his wounds. They sit there, wordless, until they have to go on.

 

He’ll see Yoongi on the other side.