The sunset is a mostly normal color.
This is in fact an improvement over the harsh red that followed the bombings. This means that something is recovering, even if it's hard to say what without the relevant expertise.
[NSFW. Gore]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
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.
This area is pretty clear because he's spent a lot of time making it that way.
"What were you doing before... everything?"
Casual chatter, but also he hasn't seen a new survivor in ages.
Of course, there are people who would say that revenants aren't true survivors, by definition.
Victor doesn't tend to listen to them.
Victor is abruptly crushed by how young he is.
Fifteen.
Victor was 67. He doesn't consider himself 70 now, because he doesn't look the way he feels he should at that age.
But that is how old he is, by any understanding of age dependent on time.
Fuck.
And here he's been, looking at the smooth patches of skin Roe's rags leave visible.
Xavier would call him a perve for that.
Xavier also isn't here.
He can feel Vic looking.
Makes him feel good. Makes him feel less crushingly alone, being gazed at like that.
He shivers, and it's only a little because it's nearing night.
He hangs back, so he's behind Vic now. He wants to look too.
Vic is grizzled, with a salt and pepper beard and long, semi-groomed hair. His clothes are better, but they don't hide the fact that he is a tall, large man, the kind that Roe imagines holding him.
Before he can wallow further down into his regrets the camp comes into view.
It's not the best place. A long, snake-like line of semi-permanent canvas tents stretches down what used to be the esplanade and is now an overgrown snarl eating away at the nearby highway.
But it's closer to home than anywhere else in the city.
They didn't bomb the rivers except for a handful of bridges. Better than anyone could have hoped for.
Also serves as a good distraction from the mutual bad idea attraction.
(This will not last for very long)
Alan doesn't get up when they see Dr. M, but he does get up when he sees the stranger. Skinny, only slightly shorter than them.
They grin, a wide, slightly glassy expression. "Hey, hey," they say.
Metal jingles when they move from the dog tags around their neck.
"Welcome back, moron."
Roe's surprised to see the hot stranger kiss Vic on the mouth. He has to lean down for it.
Does that mean they're also a zombie?
That question fights with the fact that the two of them are very hot like this. Roe likes looking.
He doesn't say anything. He's afraid it'll make them stop.
This is another bad idea.
Alan is a bad idea in general, rescued from a sewer with a gun in their hand, their mouth on Victor's cock and calling him Dr. M the moment they learned anything about his history.
Also young, but not quite as young. Still young enough that he shouldn't.
He forgets about Roe long enough that he doesn't stop Alan grind against him, and lets out a soft moan when he feels their erection against his leg.
"Oh calm down, there's nothing around for miles." He sticks their tongue out at Dr. M. "Come on, I'll get you situated. You'll be staying in my tent until we find you a place."
Their tent is functionally Dr. M's tent, too, but they're not going to mention that. They're going to wait until Dr. M cracks and hits on this bright young twink, because then it'll be entirely his own perversion.
Roe has never had sex before. Being a zombie for three years will do that to you. He should have been in high school being stupid. Instead he was learning new words from the paperbacks boredom drove him to steal.
He follows Alan into the tent. He doesn't assume anything with happen.
"Food?" he asks.
He's interested in all the flirting for sure but he was promised something pretty specific.
"Outside," he says. "We have a stewpot for the nights."
There's refrigeration but that's only in the buildings that get electricity 24/7 and they're not accessible to revenants without permission. "Wanted to get you situated first."
They've clocked Roe as inexperienced. They're a creep and a pervert but they're not going to force themselves on him. Especially if they're right about a small detail Dr. M probably hasn't noticed.
"Soup is good," Roe says.
It's a bit tedious, going in and out, but he's left behind the small bag he brought with him from the pharmacy and now he has a bowl of soup in his hands and food that isn't expired candy or bugs or human viscera is a relief.
He grins, skewering a potato with his fork. "I haven't had a potato in ages."
"Farming communities all up and down the western half of the state," he says. "S'where most of the people like us went. It's not pleasant, but they're the ones who can deal with the zombies. The city interior here is for manufacturing, doing the best we can."
They frown.
"Sometimes the Feds'll bring supply drops. I think they want us all to die though, so they can drop bombs on everything, instead of just the perimeter bombardments."
Victor and Alan look at each other. Even Alan, for all their time spent down in the sewers, knew. Roe really was alone, and it wasn't as though the perimeter was actually that close to the city.
They'd just announced it one day over the radios and said this is what is going to happen.
Victor strips down to boxers and lies down on his cot. This makes the wound on his neck easy to access.
Roe has small fingers. Not freakishly so, but he's smaller than Alan or Victor and his hands correspond. They'd slip into the wound easily, reach deep inside and hit where the flesh is raw and not rotten. Something stops the rot before it gets too deep, and his fingers could find that point, explore it, make the still living nerves sing with pain.
Victor digs his fingers as deep into the wound on his sternum as they'll go, and lets out a little moan of pleasure as his cock stiffens in response. He palms at the bulge in his boxers, not doing anything else for the moment.
The walls of the tent are not soundproof. There's a reason they put the revenants far away from the camp, and it's not this, but being overheard only by the people who might want to join in is a heady bonus.