Victor isn't supposed to be looking for survivors. It's the general opinion of the encampment that there are no more uncontacted survivors left to find, unless someone's been maintaining their fallout shelter from the Cold War with more rigor than most. So instead he's been tasked to break into a pharmacy and see if anything's been left behind that hasn't either gone bad from a lack of refrigeration or been ruined by contact with

fluids. 

The shotgun is mostly for effect. He's too old to run away if something tries to attack him, so he goes for imposing instead. Zombies leave him alone--he doesn't smell like food--but the same doesn't go for other survivors, the ones who have turned to one of the oldest professions for the dispossessed: banditry. You keep them away the same way you keep bears away. Be loud. Be dangerous. Carry a gun and look like you're going to use it. 

The pharmacy has signs of habitation. Someone's built a nest out of blankets. There's blood.

He's also pretty sure, from the kind of crap that's been dragged to the nest, that the owner of the blood is both a zombie and very young. 

This is worrying. Hopefully it's someone who can be brought back to the encampment and given food that doesn't have blood in it and talked to. That's not a guarantee.

For a place with a permanently open door, it's less trashed than you might think. This is definitely a sign of... something. 

Roe hears the stranger making his way into his home. He's worried about his stuff, but he knows from bad experience what happens if he prioritizes his stuff over his body. 

(Also, there's always more stuff, he's pretty sure, or at least there will be for a long long time. There are so many things the store kept outside the reach of customers, and now Employees Only doors mean nothing because all the employees are dead.)

He stays hidden on the other side of one of the shelves, listening. He's got good eyes, but he doesn't need good eyes when he can hear and he can smell. 

Roe doesn't know that Victor has the same kind of senses. Maybe he doesn't know what the different smells for zombie and not-zombie mean? 

The stranger is making his way towards the pharmacy. The cage separating the actual pharmacological substances is either damaged or caked with gore. Roe tends to avoid it. He doesn't understand what the stranger is looking for, so he follows. 

Painkillers, mostly, if there are any that haven't been taken. So, NSAIDs, maybe some opiates (though those are probably gone.) Anything antibiotic that hasn't degraded. 

Not for him. For the humans.

This is the part where Roe's curiosity gets the better of his good sense and he emerges from the rows of shelves, perching himself right near the counter. 

He is tall and spindly and looks slightly underfed, and like he hasn't had a bath in a while. 

In other words, he's pretty but in a sparkplug kind of way. 

"Hi!" 

It's only then that he notices that the stranger has a gun.

Thankfully for Roe Victor isn't interested in using his gun like that. 

He turns around to see the revenant he was wondering about. Turned young, then, mid-teens. Explains the stealth and also the isolation. He's probably not been terribly socialized since the bombs dropped. 

"Hey. Do you know if there's any meds left?"

"Yeah! People don't like going back there because of all the gore. They say it smells bad and then they go away." He exaggeratedly sniffs the air. "I agree."

He's wearing a very torn up shirt, and if Victor is looking he can see the bite marks that probably turned him, just under his ribcage. 

He is. He doesn't want to be. But he is. 

"Do you have food?"

The stranger hasn't freaked out at him yet, which is better than most strangers, and if he has food then that's a bonus.

"Not here."

Going through the destroyed cage is no problem. Victor is habituated to gore, from the fall and from... other things. It's also mostly dry, which helps. 

"I have food back at the camp, if you'll come with me."

That's a surprise. No one's ever offered that before. 

It might not seem like it, but Roe knows what he is. He's not stupid, and he's seen how most strangers look at him. He's also noticed that he's stopped growing, that he doesn't get periods anymore, and--obviously--he's noticed that he has a taste for human flesh. 

He also knows he's different from the zombies, because he can still think about it.

He only eats the strangers who die naturally, promise. And there are a lot of those. 

"You sure?" he asks. "You can see what I am, right?"

It's a surprise the boy hasn't realized what Victor is yet. Maybe he's not used to the smell of revenants that can think? 

"It's not a problem," he says. He unbuttons his shirt to show the mess of his collarbone. The wound's technically open, but doesn't really hurt unless he sticks a finger into it. 

Most people aren't into that. Good thing he's not most people. 

"Woah!" 

He's definitely never seen anyone else like him. Started wondering if he was cursed. 

Maybe they're just both cursed. 

"And the food... is it?"

"Depends on what you want," Victor says. "Mostly not people, though."

The humans get judgmental about it, but it's the revenants that work as guards and can patrol without fear of infection, but if you keep them well fed it isn't a problem. It's only if they're really hungry.

Obviously, Roe's been really hungry for years.

"How long you been here, kid?" 

"Dunno, three years?" It's hard to keep track of time after all the clocks finally stopped working. 

Also because he's been alone. The strangers mostly don't count. 

It'd be amazing he can still talk, but no, he talks to himself. 

That's a long time. 

Victor would have gone insane. 

Well. More insane. 

"Do you want to come?"

He's not going to force the issue. If the kid really prefers being a weird little cannibal hermit that's his business. 

"You have food that isn't..."

He sighs. 

"People?"

Yeah.

He's going to go with him. 

What he's not going to say is that for all of his self-loathing this stranger has aged and zombified into a kind of hot old man, and being alone with a sexuality in the apocalypse is booooring. 

Not that he'll do anything about it. 

But. 

He can definitely look.

He does actually find some opiates that look like they might still work, all still sealed. Same with the NSAIDs. This is a pretty good haul, relatively speaking. 

"Follow me back?"

Roe nods.