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99 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
“It figures that we’d be stuck in a country with gun laws during the fucking zombie apocalypse,” Jisung grumbles, clutching tight to the handle above his head as they swerve down another street, the sounds of screaming and growling fading in the distance, like the ending credits to a bad nightmare. “I should have taken that study abroad semester when I had the chance. At least they’re allowed to have automatic weapons in America.”
“They also shoot people in America, Jisung,” Minho says distractedly, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror before he swears, knuckles going white around the steering wheel. “Hold on.”
Jisung just barely manages to cling to the dashboard as they mow down a zombie. The car jolts and makes several awful creaking and crunching noises as they drive over its body. Minho takes the next two turns at hair-raising speed, almost toppling the car sideways before he straightens the wheel and they book it out onto the highway.
Jisung twists in his seat and swallows thickly, watching the city disappear behind them in a cloud of fire and smoke. There are bodies piled up on the highway, abandoned cars with broken windshields, and pools of rusty blood. Minho doesn’t stop for any of them. His face is set in stone, streaked with blood and ash, mouth pressed in a tight line as he forces the car faster and faster, lead foot flat on the accelerator.
Jisung turns back around and settles in his seat, knotting his fingers tightly together. Neither of them say a word as they leave Seoul behind.
0.1 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
“I swear we don’t know anything else,” Jisung says desperately, for the fiftieth time. “We came out and all the—” He breaks off, voice failing. The memories of his dead coworkers’ twisted bodies staring up at him flash through his mind. Their wide empty eyes. The carnage left behind in the restaurant. The screaming outside as people rushed away. Jisung blinks away the image of Chan’s torn out throat. “The zombies were dead,” he finishes quietly, looking down at the table, at his hands, cuticles bloody from where he’s been tearing at them. “We barricaded ourselves in the staff room and waited until the noises died down.”
“And the guns?” the detective asks. He’s been sitting across from Jisung the entire time and if the chilly room is affecting him, he hasn’t shown it. Jisung’s fingers went numb three hours ago. He doesn’t mention it. “Your boss was registered to own three hunting guns. He was meant to return them to the Jungbu police station yesterday. When we checked, the guns were gone from his safe and his home.”
Jisung swallows again. “I don’t know what happened,” he lies. “Maybe someone else took them.”
The detective eyes him for a moment longer and then nods. “You’re free to go, Han-ssi. You’ll have to strip once more to ensure you didn’t get bitten and then you can leave.”
Relief floods Jisung’s veins. “Really?” he asks. “I—really?”
“We’d prefer if you didn’t mention this little incident to anyone else.” The detective adds, picking up his folder and cup of coffee—completely untouched during the entire interrogation. “We’re trying to keep it contained. Keep those affected by… Outbreak quarantined.”
Jisung nods so fast, his head starts throbbing. “Yeah—yeah of course. I won’t say a word.”
“One of our men will escort you home. You have a good day now.”
“So it’s all good, then?” Jisung blurts, just as the detective reaches the door. “No more—no more zombies?”
There’s a pause. The detective’s eyes flick to the one sided glass and then look back at Jisung. “No more zombies,” he says, after a long beat. “We got them all.”
10 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
It takes less than a day for the person who escaped the restaurant to mutate and bite multiple others. It takes three days for Seoul to enter quarantine. Six for the government to shut down the ports, cease all travel and close the borders.
It’s about four days too late.
Within a week, the news reports start spilling in from all corners of the globe. Jisung hunches in the corner of his parents’ apartment and tears his cuticles apart watching the pale faced news anchors tightly detail the effects of the Z-11 virus.
“Catchy name,” his mother mutters. She peers out of the window down at the empty street, her fluttery hand pressed to her chest. They’re all confined to their houses and the military is patrolling the streets, stone-faced and silent. Jisung has seen more guns in the last week than he has in his entire life. He’s never seen his little neighbourhood this quiet.
“I should—I need some air,” Jisung mumbles.
“There’s nowhere to go, Jisung,” his mother calls, but Jisung’s already gone, shoving his feet into the first pair of shoes he finds and hurtling downstairs. He makes it two floors, almost to the back exit of the building, when he hears it. The groaning and scrabbling. The screaming. Thudding. Somewhere, a window breaking.
Months later, he will hear those same sounds in his nightmares. He will still close his eyes and wake up in this stairwell. He will run up endless flights of stairs and he will still never make it back to his apartment before his mother is torn apart.
The first zombie hits the entryway one floor down and Jisung screams so loudly, his voice cracks and goes silent. He scrambles back upward and slips, nearly cracking his chin on the steps. He goes up, higher and higher, his heart in his throat. He’s just crossing another floor when the stairwell door gets thrown open and Minho sticks his head out, face white.
“There you are!” he gasps and grabs Jisung’s sleeve, yanking him into the hallway. The door slams shut behind them and Minho throws the lock. “I thought you were dead.”
“What the fuck is happening?” Jisung cries. “We’re on lockdown, hyung—”
“No lockdown, the zombies crossed through the boundary and they’re swarming the streets. They got into the buildings.” Minho’s picking up a duffle and tossing it at Jisung, who just barely manages to catch it. “Here, take this too.”
Minho’s brandishing a gun at him. The hunting guns that had been in the restaurant. Jisung stares at it, eyes wide. Minho had grabbed them and shoved them into Seungmin’s untouched locker before the police came. “Collateral,” he’d said hoarsely when catching sight of Jisung’s shocked face. “We might need them later.”
He must have gone back to get them when the coast was clear. Later, Jisung will wonder at it. At Minho’s planning, his foresight. If he must have known that things were going to go sideways the second that first zombie ripped out Chan’s throat.
Later, much later, he’ll wonder at his own naivete.
“Jisung, take the fucking gun,” Minho hisses, shoving it into his unresisting hand. “We need to go, okay?”
“But hyung, my mom—”
“Dead.” Minho grabs Jisung’s free wrist and yanks him down the hallway to the second set of stairs. “I checked. They got my parents too.”
“What?” Jisung thuds to a stop, aghast. “Hyung—”
“Jisung-ah.” Minho’s close up to him now, his eyes wide with fear. For an asinine second, Jisung drops his gaze to his mouth and thinks about the kiss Minho bestowed upon him ten days ago. “I need you to move right now, okay? We can talk about this later.”
Jisung nods. They run.
113 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
Phone lines have been down for a month, but news still manages to travel fast among the desperate and the surviving. There are pockets of villages across the country that barricaded themselves well, that protected themselves and their residents before the zombies could overwhelm them. The big cities suffered. Seoul was the first to fall.
Jisung doesn’t like thinking about those first early weeks after he and Minho had run. They’d crossed from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, barely sleeping, trying to keep safe, trying to build up a supply, trying to stay alive. Minho lost weight. His cheeks sunken and dark circles shadowing his eyes. Privately, Jisung doesn’t know how he kept going those first few weeks. When he looks back on it, later, all that comes to mind are hazy memories, like flotsam rising to the surface, bits and pieces bobbing around, all of them coated in sour, indelible fear.
Busan is their final destination—their haven. There are ships every day heading for Japan where the virus was tightly contained. Other island countries were similarly lucky; Iceland, New Zealand, Indonesia.
If they can just make it to Busan, they’ll have a way out of this. They’ll be safe.
Jisung glances sideways at Minho, curled up in the passenger seat, deep asleep, clutching a gun to his chest like a child with a stuffed animal. His lashes are long, brushing the tops of his cheeks. Jisung’s heart aches, and long forgotten tears burn at the back of his eyes. He sits up straighter and keeps his gaze on the dead night sky, on the ground, on the stars, so, so far away.
They’ll make it. Jisung knows it. And then they’ll be okay.
They’ll be better.
12 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
It doesn’t take long for Jisung to shoot his first zombie. Minho’s back had been turned, scoping out the entrance to an abandoned mini mart and the man had lumbered out of nowhere, snarling, teeth falling out with every shuddering, lopsided step he took.
Before he can think about it, Jisung has the gun raised, braced against his shoulder. He pulls the trigger.
The man—zombie—goes down with a guttural growl and Minho whips around. Jisung drops the gun, gasping at the sudden ricochet of pain as the gun backfires into his shoulder.
“That never happens in the games,” he moans as Minho spins back towards him, reaching for him. He stoops to grab the gun before pulling Jisung away from the corpse. “Holy fuck, that hurts.”
“Come on, come on,” Minho gasps, hushed and terrified, yanking Jisung around a corner. They’ve already learned that loud noises will attract more so they take off running, ducking between abandoned cars and alleyways, making their way up a steep hill to a layer of abandoned houses. Only then do they pause, trying to catch their breath.
“We need to watch a video,” Minho agrees breathlessly, leaning against a wall and heaving for air. “Figure out how to shoot these things properly.”
If Jisung could speak around the roiling in his stomach, he would point out that Minho seems to handle the guns just fine. A clatter sounds—far away, but any noise is bad noise and so they start moving again until they find a house—the front door wide open and belongings strewn everywhere as if the occupants had taken what they could and run.
As soon as they enter, they barricade the door with the sofa and lock the windows tightly shut and then, only then, after they’re sure of momentary safety, does Jisung stumble his way into the bathroom and vomit. Bile burns its way up his throat. He hasn’t eaten much, but his stomach spasms regardless, making Jisung choke and tear up.
Minho kneels next to him, smoothing a hand over his shoulder while Jisung retches. Every time he shuts his eyes, he sees the man. He’d barely turned. His skin wasn’t rotting just yet, but his eyeballs were grey and lifeless and his mouth was a gaping gash.
His shoulder throbs. He’d killed someone. Jisung coughs one last time, pathetic and muted and resists the urge to put his forehead down on the toilet seat.
“You saved my life, Jisungie,” Minho says quietly. Jisung wipes the saliva from his mouth and lets his head thud sideways onto Minho’s shoulder instead. Minho adjusts so he’s comfortable and pushes his hair away from his forehead.
“You saved mine first,” Jisung mumbles.
“Well actually, you saved mine first, back at the restaurant.”
Jisung pulls back. “Don’t—okay?” He blinks to rid his eyes of the reactionary tears and faces Minho head on. “Don’t keep count. We have—we have to keep each other safe, alright? We’re all we’ve got.”
They haven’t spoken in two years for the stupidest, pettiest reasons and now the whole world is ending. Jisung hasn’t even cried about his dead parents yet. He can’t handle owing Minho any more than he already does. For this. For everything.
“Okay,” Minho says. His eyes are so warm, steady on Jisung’s face. He squeezes Jisung’s shoulder and then guides Jisung’s head back down on his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” Minho murmurs. Jisung shuts his eyes, and feels the last of the tears trickle down his face. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
101 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
Their trip downwards is slow and exhaustive.
Petrol is limited, slowly going completely scarce. The car they’ve chosen guzzles it up, but there are still a handful of petrol stations that have limited supply. They pause at every rest stop they come across, and one of them takes up a gun while the other fills up canisters they’d collected for just this reason. When they come upon crumpled cars, abandoned, surrounded by corpses, they siphon what they can.
“This feels so evil,” Jisung mumbles in a hushed tone as he roots around an open Honda Odyssey for the camping supplies strewn around inside. There’s a mangled tent spattered with blood he bypasses, but plenty of blankets that are more or less clean. A cooler sitting in a pool of mashed food and water reveals sealed soda cans. Jisung picks those up with a small flush of relief. It’ll be nice to drink something that isn’t tepid water from dubious rest stop bathrooms, even if the cans are room temperature. He doesn’t look at the dead body in the driver’s seat, smushed up against the mangled steering wheel.
“It’s us or them, Jisungie,” Minho says from the other side of the car. Jisung can see him through the open sliding doors, standing alert, eyes flicking around, his gun at the ready. He’s silhouetted against the setting sun, the line of his body strong against the light. For half a second, Jisung lets himself look at the line of his legs, before he turns away, ears suddenly hot. They need to get a move on, find shelter, and hunker down for the night before some errant zombies find them.
Jisung grabs the last find from the van—untouched Spam cans, a veritable treasure trove—and spares a thought for the poor soul who probably just wanted to get some space from the city, see the stars and hear the crickets chirp. And now they were dead and rotting in their car.
Jisung zips up his backpack and crosses around the car to Minho’s side. Minho glances at him, a quick up and down that Jisung’s gotten used to. A caress of a glance that’s checking for any injuries despite the fact that he’s been less than three feet away from Jisung the whole day.
“Good to go?”
“Yeah.” Jisung studies him for a moment before he looks away quickly. Hopefully before Minho notices.
At night, they sleep in shifts, key still stuck in the ignition so they can take off at any moment. Jisung takes the first watch because he’s too wired to fall asleep. Minho knocks out instantly, one of the newly procured blankets draped around him, curled up tightly in the seat.
Jisung traces over his features. His hair, unevenly cut and longer than Jisung’s ever seen it. The sharp line of his nose. His mouth.
He needs to get over this. A rushed confession and an even more rushed kiss right before certain death doesn’t mean anything anymore. They have to survive. They have to.
20 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
Minho finally cries about his parents when they’re safe.
Safe is relative now, but they find a thatch of Seoul that has yet to be invaded. Once they manage to convince the soldiers that they aren’t bitten, they take shelter in a family’s apartment for the night. They have no way to get out of the city, not without supplies, a car—without a plan.
So they hunker down. They’re given a room to share, not that Jisung wants Minho out of his sight anymore, and spread the bedding on the floor.
For the first time in days, it’s not quiet. Outside, they hear the murmurs of their host family, susurrated with worry, the rumble of a tank patrolling the main street two blocks down, the soldiers outside each house. It’s the first time in weeks that Jisung can close his eyes and not hear his heartbeat hammering in his ears.
Minho’s shoulder is pressed tightly against Jisung’s so they both fit on the mat. It means Jisung feels it as soon as he starts shaking.
Minho cries quietly. Only one sniffle slips out before he quiets it. Jisung stares up through the darkness up at the ceiling, his own tears forming at the corners of his eyes. They drip down his temple into his hair as his hand squirrels down to find Minho’s under the blankets.
Minho’s breath hitches and then his hand is clutching back, holding on tight to the point of pain. They lie there, listening to the sound of the world ending outside, quietly mourning their loss.
63 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
It’s utterly asinine that Jisung hasn’t stopped thinking about their conversation.
They’ve got a thousand other things to worry about. The plan to Get The Fuck Out Of Seoul Before We Become Rotting Zombies is moving slowly. Moving neighbourhoods every few weeks and essentially staying on the run is hampering their progress of collecting supplies. Minho is determined to get his hands on a car, but most of the ones they come across are broken, out of gas, or locked, and neither of them possess the capabilities to hotwire a car.
Survival is the most important thing.
Not a silly little kiss. Not even if it was preceded by an even sillier conversation about their feelings. Feelings have to take a backseat during the apocalypse. Jisung knows this. It’s just… A little hard when Minho is constantly around and constantly being really fucking competent.
He used to be this snotty nosed kid who would tease Jisung with bugs and then he was an annoying teenager and then he grew up, and Jisung didn’t see him as much anymore. It’s startling to see the transformation, mature and steady and so sure footed.
It’s not that hard to focus on other things when they’ve got so much on their plate, survival scraping their skin thin. But then Jisung will glance up and see Minho’s face, reflecting the sun, contorted in a frown as he focuses on the burner instructions, wrinkled up in sleep, creases from his hands snarling the smooth line of his cheek, and he will feel that stupid, silly little crush that has no place in the world right now, start up again like a newborn foal kicking its legs for the first time.
It’s difficult to move on, is all.
117 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
They find one of the mythical villages on their way to Busan.
They’re avoiding even the very outskirts of Daegu, trying to bypass the infestation there. Somehow, they end up going a bit too far off the highway on a back road that’s looking more and more like a set from the horror movies Jisung used to blissfully enjoy when monsters were a far off dream and not a very present reality.
“Where the fuck are we?” Jisung squints through the vaguely greenish-gray fog. The headlights of their dinky little stolen Kia are on high beam, but it provides no help. When he gets no response, he flicks his eyes over. “Hyung.”
“Give me a moment.” Minho shakes out the paper map in utter confusion. “I have no fucking idea how to read these things.”
Jisung lets out a dry sob. “I miss the internet,” he groans with feeling, squeezing the steering wheel. “I miss being dumb and stupid and never having to use my brain.”
“Lucky for you, you still aren’t doing that,” Minho snipes back without ire. He shakes the map out again and growls, frustrated.
“I don’t think shaking it is going to help. It’s not a Rubik’s cube.”
Minho glares at him. “Pull over. We’re going to drive off the edge of the country like this.”
“It’d be better than the zombies,” Jisung mutters, but he slows down until he sees an exit sign. “There! What does that say?”
“Hold on.” Minho squints up at the sign as they trundle underneath it. The road twists and turns in the fog. Jisung slows to a near crawl while Minho peers at the map. Jisung doesn’t want to stop in the middle of nowhere, not as the sun threatens to set on them, but it’s looking like more and more of a possibility when Minho crumples the edges of the map in his tiny hands. “I have no fucking idea where we are.”
“That’s okay,” Jisung reassures him. “We can stop somewhere for the night and try again in the morning. Hopefully the fog will clear by then.”
Minho suddenly sits up straight, eyes wide. “Jisung—look, I see light.”
Jisung jumps and then accidentally floors the accelerator. “Fuck, sorry! Sorry.”
“It’s fine, just follow the road.” Minho pats him gently on the arm, sending heat up Jisung’s ears, before he pulls away to point straight ahead. Jisung squints. In the distance, through the fog, there’s a small orange light, like a fire burning, small yet still bright to stick out through the near dark.
“It could be zombies. Or a crash,” Jisung says quietly.
Minho reaches for the gun that’s always at his feet and braces it in his lap. “If it is, floor it.” He shoots Jisung a little grin. “You’re good at that.”
The light grows closer and Jisung’s heart thunders to a frantic pace. Stone walls start coming into view. A rumble, like the sound of people. Maybe the sound of people turning into an other.
“Hyung.”
Minho cocks his gun. “I know.”
Jisung slows the car to a crawl. He’s about to suggest that maybe they should leave when four figures emerge out of the fog with guns raised.
“Fuck—” Minho starts.
“Come out with your hands in the air or we’ll shoot!” One of the figures shout.
Jisung glances at Minho who shoots him a steely eyed look. “People are better than zombies,” Jisung offers weakly. They’ve been lucky not to run into the worst of what humanity has become in recent months, but Jisung’s heard the rumours. Seen the evidence left behind.
Minho doesn’t seem reassured. “Stay behind me,” he orders as Jisung stops the car. He leaves the keys in the slot as they step out, Minho with the gun slung over his shoulder. They both raise their hands in the air.
“We’re not dangerous,” Minho says steadily. The Kia’s headlights aid them in seeing the men, all armed, all of them stone-faced. “We just lost our way.”
“Yeah, we’ve had a lot of people lost recently,” one of the men scoffs.
“We’re on our way to Busan,” Jisung pipes up, keeping most of his body behind Minho, but craning his head around to be heard. “To the ports. We don’t mean anyone harm.”
“It’s dangerous out here at night.” Another man steps forward, eyes narrowed. “Were you bit?”
Another man protests. “Changbin, you can’t just—”
Changbin cuts him off, raising his voice to be heard. “Bit or not?”
“We’re clean,” Minho replies. “I doubt you’ll take our word for it, though. Why do you ask?”
Changbin’s mouth twists. “The fuckers come out of the hills in droves. They can overwhelm a car if they want to.”
Jisung’s heart leaps at the leading tone. “Are you going to let us stay the night, then?”
The man who’d protested steps up again. “Changbin, you can’t invite whoever the fuck you want into the village.”
Changbin glances over his shoulder. “They’re in need,” he says tightly. “We aren’t going to refuse help—we’re not going to become those people.” He looks back at Minho and Jisung with a wry smile utterly devoid of all real humour. “You’re going to have to get strip searched if you want to come in, though.”
“We wouldn’t expect anything less.” Minho’s voice is no less wry.
22 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
They sit in an abandoned apartment, peering at Jisung’s phone to watch a guy in a cowboy hat explain how to shoot shotguns in an incomprehensible accent that neither Minho nor Jisung’s tepid understanding of English can decipher. It’s one of the odder days they’ve spent together, and given they’ve known each other for almost two decades, that’s saying a lot.
Thankfully, the accent proves to be little barrier as the man seems happy to demonstrate multiple times. How to avoid the backblow of the gun ricocheting into your shoulder. How to reload and cock the gun. How to keep the safety on. The sun beating down on him is evident even through the screen, and his face gets redder and redder in the heat. Jisung considers the brim of his cowboy hat and wonders if he’d be able to pull one off.
They’re currently in the midst of a raging apocalypse and ten days ago Jisung shot his first zombie, yet this is easily the most surreal experience of his life. When he mentions it aloud, Minho laughs and tucks his chin on Jisung’s shoulder.
“Should have moved to America, Jisungie,” he replies, warm breath puffing against Jisung’s skin sending gooseflesh prickling down his spine. “Imagine how easily they’re killing the zombies there.”
Jisung sighs wistfully. “If only.”
124 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
Jisung wakes up alone.
He jolts out of sleep, heart hammering, immediately seeking Minho’s presence, which, up until now, has been unwavering. A constant. Minho is nowhere in the room. Jisung’s mouth dries as a distant drum of fear rattles around in his head like a funeral dirge; unsteadily, he rises from the floor and the blankets crumple to the floor at his feet.
The living room is empty. When Jisung tiptoes past the other bedroom, he sees the ahjumma hosting them fast asleep in her bed, snoring into her pillow. They’ve been in the village for a little over a week and neither of them are all that ready to leave yet. Jisung hasn’t brought it up, but neither has Minho, apparently content to stay in this quiet. This steadfast protection offered to them like a boon.
Jisung winces as he pushes open the sliding door to the yard outside. The sound of nightlift—crickets, frogs, cicadas—is almost thunderous compared to the quiet of the house. The moon is full, bearing down upon him almost like a spotlight. Against its brightness, the stars are barely visible.
He hears a gentle murmur from past the wall and Jisung shoves his feet into shoes before tentatively making his way over. You never know when you have to take off running in an apocalypse.
But there’s no need for it.
Minho is crouching at the crossroads, murmuring to a black cat that almost blends into its surroundings, a can open at his feet. Jisung carefully makes his way up so as to not scare the cat away. Its tail flicks nervously, but it goes back to the food when Minho strokes its head.
“I woke up and couldn’t find you,” Jisung whispers. He crouches beside Minho and holds his fist out to the cat, who offers him a single sniff before dismissing him in favour of food. Minho remains quiet so Jisung huffs a little laugh. “Guess I got too used to sleeping with you.”
As soon as he says it, he regrets it. Heat sweeps up his ears and he glances nervously at Minho but Minho doesn’t seem to have heard it. His eyes are fixed on the cat nosing about the can with its little pink nose.
“I noticed him when we arrived,” he says quietly.
Jisung blinks. “The cat?”
“He was so skinny.” Minho rubs the cat’s spine and the cat makes a pleased little rumbling noise, back arching into his touch. “No one had been feeding him.”
Jisung looks at the can. It’s tuna. Decidedly expensive in this climate. “Did you take that from the ahjumma’s kitchen, hyung?”
Minho’s shoulders hunch. “I’ll replace it,” he mumbles, voice a little shaky. “I just didn’t want him to starve.”
“Oh,” Jisung blinks, eyes suddenly hot. “Oh, hyung.” He lays a tentative hand on Minho’s back not unlike the way he’d touched the cat earlier before he does away with the hesitation and sits down on the ground with a hard little thump to pull Minho into a one-armed hug.
Minho doesn’t stiffen up. He lets Jisung hug him, still petting the cat in gentle strokes, hand hovering over its fur as if waiting for it to pull away at any second. Jisung’s pretty sure the cat isn’t going anywhere, and he’s proven right in the next second when the cat finishes poking around the can and rounds to paw at Minho’s legs, and then settle in his lap.
Minho stares down at the cat with shining eyes, now purring in the cradle of his legs, and Jisung’s heart thuds unsteadily at the sight.
“We can take the cat with us,” he blurts.
Minho scoffs. “Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not being stupid,” Jisung replies. “It eats what—one can a day? We can handle that. And if not there’s no shortage of rats around, with all these bodies, it’ll be fine. And as soon as we hit the ports, we can figure out how to get it some food. I’m sure they’ll have cat food lying around somewhere—no one’s bound to have eaten that… Hopefully.”
He’s kind of lost in that tangent that he doesn’t realise Minho’s looking at him for a long moment as if waiting for a reply. “Sorry—what?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Minho says but he’s staring at Jisung with those big, warm eyes and suddenly the night chill has faded to make way for a slow burning up Jisung’s face. “Are you sure?”
“Of—of course I am,” Jisung stutters. “It’s just a cat, hyung. We can take—it won’t be hard to take care of.”
Minho keeps looking at him. “Thank you, Jisung-ah,” he says softly. When did he get this close?
Jisung’s blood is deafening his ears. The world has suddenly fallen silent.
“You’re welcome,” Jisung replies, through a sticky tongue. This time, when he drops his eyes inadvertently to Minho’s mouth, he doesn’t immediately avert his gaze. He can remember what Minho tasted like, one hundred and twenty five days ago; sweaty and hot and a little like the chili sauce they use in the roasted chicken dish. He wonders what he’ll taste like now. If he’ll ever get the chance to find out.
This time, when he looks up at Minho again, Minho is staring at his mouth too.
72 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
“What are you going to eat when we get out of here?”
“What?”
Jisung pokes his head around a shelf and waits for Minho to appear at the opposite end of the aisle before he repeats the question. “What are you going to eat when we leave, hyung?”
Minho thinks about it, eyes rolling up to the destroyed ceiling above them. Most of the store has been ransacked by the time they arrived, but Jisung’s finding some gems buried under the rubble and broken shelving.
“Steak,” Minho says decisively as Jisung yanks out a surprisingly intact packet of chips from under a toppled over shelf. “Pasta,” Minho goes on; Jisung follows the line of destruction around to the back of the store where the home supplies sit. “Tteokbokki if we can find it.”
“You’re making me hungry,” Jisung whines. He’s salivating at the thought of food—of eating anything that isn’t ramen or dried fish.
“You asked,” Minho replies, almost affronted. Jisung scoffs, rifling through rows of useless plastic knickknacks—an egg timer here, a cutting board there. Minho asks, “What do you want to do when we get out of here?”
“Do?” Jisung calls back. He finds a screwdriver set and considers it before tossing it into his bag. They might come in handy—he hasn’t gotten close enough to a zombie to stab one yet but surely a spanner in the eye can’t feel great, even to something undead.
“I want to go to the beach.”
“Oh.” Jisung thinks about it. He hasn’t had time to miss his hobbies—hasn’t even really thought about them. There’s surprisingly little time to miss the guitar when you’re running for your life, and the thrill of video games has all but faded now that he’s shot a gun in real life. “I guess the beach sounds good.”
Minho blows a raspberry. Something clatters to the floor. “Pick something else.”
Jisung slowly zips up his bag, thinking about it. What does he want to do when all of this is over? If they ever manage to escape it all. Sleeping sounds too trivial. So does food. There’s only one thing he wants these days and he can’t say that out loud.
“I don’t know,” he settles on, finally. “Nothing comes to mind.”
“Nothing? Really?” Minho’s voice grows closer behind him
Jisung shrugs. “None of it seems all that important now.” Something catches his eye at the end of the row and he reaches for it. He’s just got it in his hands when Minho comes up in front of him. He’s grimy, sweaty and covered in dust—they haven’t found a place with working water in a week and it’s showing. Jisung’s sure he doesn’t look any better.
“Han Jisung.”
Jisung looks up, twisting the new item between his hands. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to get you through this,” Minho says so steady, so sure, like a lighthouse looking out into the stormy sea. Like the last bastion before the surge. “And when I do, we’re going to the beach and you’ll find something you want to do. Okay?”
The gardening gloves patterned with tiny cherry tomatoes get crushed between Jisung’s suddenly sweaty hands. “Okay,” he replies, soft and warm all over with a gentle surety that’s only ever been unfurled under the unwavering umbrella of Minho’s friendship.
126 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
“Do you like this place, hyung?” Jisung asks quietly as they’re washing up dishes after dinner. Minsook auntie complains that they’re too skinny and keeps making more food than either of them can put away. With it comes a mountain of dishes that they have to lug buckets of water back from the well for. Jisung’s not complaining—he’ll take this over having to scavenge for meals and sleep in a car any day.
“I do,” Minho says. His veins bulge along his forearms as he scrubs a particularly stubborn pot. “They’ve been really good to us.” A small pause before he adds quietly, “Far more than I expected.”
It’s impressive how this small village has managed to barricade itself against the world outside. They have their own garden, their own mini government, their own rules. Every few days, a group splinters outside to loot gas and supplies they can’t procure for themselves. Everyone has been welcoming of the two of them, if a little invasive, given the multiple strip searches they had to endure over the first three days.
“Do you…” Jisung hesitates, taking a dripping, warm plate from Minho’s hand and drying it.
Minho glances sideways at him. “Spit it out, Jisungie. Can’t have secrets at the end of the world.”
“Do you want to stay?” Jisung blurts. “I mean—I know we have this plan but—it’s—we’d be going all the way to some other country. And even if it is Japan, I mean I can’t speak any Japanese and you can barely speak it and we won’t have jobs or money or—”
“Do you want to stay?” Minho interrupts, not unkindly. He’s scrubbing the sink down, rinsing it down with steaming hot water from the kettle. His palms are red and raw from the heat but Minho looks unbothered by it.
Jisung hangs the towel up and leans against the counter. “I don’t know.” He looks down at his bare toes, pressed against the cool tile.
“Change is scary.” Minho washes his hands and then draws near, stepping close into Jisung’s space. “We can learn Japanese or English or whatever it is they speak where we end up. We can get jobs.” He nudges Jisung’s shin with his toe, making Jisung look up at him. Minho’s expression melts into something terribly tender when they make eye contact. “We can do a lot if we stick together.”
Jisung’s stomach warms. “So that means you wanna go?”
“If you want to stay here, we stay. If you want to go, we’ll go.”
“Hyung, be serious.”
“I am being serious. Hey.” Minho taps Jisung’s chin, making him scowl a little. “I’m dead serious. I’m okay with whatever you want to do. You want that next big adventure, I’ll be holding your hair back when you throw up over the side of the ship. You want to stay here and live out our days harvesting carrots or whatever it is they do here, I’ll go find the gardening gloves you grabbed from that GS25 for some deranged reason.”
Jisung stares at him, eyes too hot all of a sudden. “Ah, hyung.” He looks away, over Minho’s fluffy hair, biting his lip, mumbles a watery, “Fuck off.”
Minho laughs and pinches Jisung’s hip. “I’m in your corner, Jisung-ah. You just let me know when you decide, okay?”
Jisung slumps forward into Minho’s body and feels incredibly, stupidly grateful to whatever higher power or random string of red-blooded, bone-deep fate led him to Minho all those years ago. Led him back to Minho right as everything went to complete and utter shit. Jisung must have done something truly extraordinary in his past life to be lucky enough to land here.
Minho’s chest thumps rhythmically against his forehead as if in agreement.
“Okay,” Jisung mumbles. The words threaten to trip off his tongue and land flat on their face between the two of them. He presses them back with whatever preservation he still possesses and lets himself breathe in Minho’s comfortable scent.
127 DAYS SINCE THE APOCALYPSE
“Hyung,” Jisung burbles, around a laugh. He pokes the soft flesh around Minho’s midsection, pinching his hip. He’s so glad Minho’s put on a little weight recently, that he feels safe enough to relax, to come out of survival mode—even if it’s just barely. “Hyung-ah. Hyunghyunghyung—”
“You’ve become a complete lightweight,” Minho scolds with a little laugh that betrays his frown. He scoops Jisung up off the ground with ease and sets him on his feet.
“‘M not a lightweight,” Jisung argues. He sways a little before standing upright and grinning proudly at Minho, whose mouth starts twitching. “See?”
“Congratulations, Jisungie,” Minho replies blandly. He takes Jisung’s hand and leads him down the road to the house. Jisung closes his eyes and stumbles after Minho, letting himself be led away. For a tiny village trying to survive in the midst of flesh-eating zombies, they do seem to have an alarming amount of alcohol stored away.
“As soon as we got settled, they started making rice wine,” Changbin murmured to them behind his hand when they made it down to the village center for the gathering, the firelight from the bonfire dancing cheerfully over his round cheeks.
Jisung eyed the wine with starry eyes and Minho snorted. “Priorities.”
“Are your eyes shut?” Minho asks, knocking Jisung out of his dreamy reverie. “Jisung.”
“You’ve got me,” Jisung argues, keeping his eyes closed. He feels like a kid again, in the backseat of his parents’ car, feeling the world tilt and twirl around him in a gentle dizziness. A soupy warmth crawls over him that’s reminiscent of being tucked in bed by gentle hands.
Minho drags him forward by his wrist, catches him around the waist and practically lifts him over the threshold. Jisung laughs a little, finally peeling his eyes open.
“Are you carrying me over the threshold, hyung? So romantic.”
“You kept your eyes closed,” Minho replies, his hands still hot around Jisung’s waist. “It doesn’t feel like you’re appreciating my romance.”
The house is still and dark—they’d left Minsook auntie back at the gathering. Moonlight spills across the floor, highlighting the plane of Minho’s cheek, the line of his nose, those large dark eyes.
“Are you romancing me?” Jisung whispers. The sliding door to the house entrance is pushed all the way open, inviting a gentle breeze in. The flush of alcohol is wearing away rapidly and he feels cold and exposed under the night sky, blanketed with a thick layer of stars. When did they get so close?
Minho stares at him. “Do you want me to?”
“This isn’t a choose-your-own adventure, hyung,” Jisung says, unsteady and bewildered. Far-off hope is fogging with confusion. “You don’t—I don’t want you to do this because I want it or because it’s end of the world or even because you kissed me and you think you owe me someth—”
Minho leans in close and their noses brush. Jisung’s voice falls silent halfway through the word, like his strings were cut. “Han Jisung,” Minho says quietly. “I’m asking you. Do you want me?”
Jisung swallows. It’s now or never. Funny how he’s never felt the need to confess again, not even when they were sprinting from a pack of zombies close on their heels, not when Minho fell sick, not after they emerged from the locked back room of the restaurant to find their worlds irreparably changed. Now, though, it feels inevitable. A forgone conclusion that they would end up here and the words more than anything would slip from Jisung loose lips.
Lips that Minho is now kissing. Gently. Sweetly. As if they have all the time in the world. His hand is still hot around Jisung’s hip, the other one cupping his jaw, drawing Jisung up, up, up, arching into his mouth like a sunflower.
Jisung clutches at him, gets his hands on Minho’s arms like he’s been wanting to all this time, feels the muscle shift under his grip, and then feels them tense when Minho hauls him up. Jisung gasps as his legs wrap around Minho’s hips automatically; the ease at which Minho moves him around has a subtle warmth kindling in his gut. A heat that only thickens like syrup when Minho lays him down on the bedding, rocking the solid length of his cock down against Jisung’s.
“Oh, hyung,” Jisung gasps, feeling a flush sweep down to his toes, all the way up to the tips of his ears. Something shy, half a giggle, half a moan, slips out of him on the back of a wet kiss. “I’m not going to die a virgin, am I?”
Minho sits up on his knees and looks down at him, eyes dark, hair mussed, lips dark; delightfully, impossibly lovely. “You’re not going to die at all, Jisung-ah.”
At some other time Jisung would have a snappy comeback, maybe a retort that would make Minho laugh, in that soft hiccupy way he only lets out when he’s truly delighted. Now, the words are lost on the back of his tongue, dissolving against Minho’s saliva smearing into his mouth, his teeth sinking into Jisung’s lip.
The clothing comes off slowly. The windows are open and the chilly night air prickles Jisung’s skin with gooseflesh. He spreads his thighs and welcomes Minho between them. Lets himself be gently pried open, with the leg slung over Minho’s shoulder trembling at every twist of his fingers, every kiss he bestows upon Jisung’s knee, his hip, his stomach.
When he presses in, Jisung shoves his fist against his mouth to hold back the sounds. Minho hands are pressing bruisingly tight into his legs, his hips, his waist, his cock carving its own space inside him.
“Next time, I’m going to hear you, jagiya,” he murmurs, mouth pressed to Jisung’s pulse point. “Every single thing, without you holding back.”
Jisung spills against him completely untouched, shivery and warm all over and can only whisper please hyung, inside me, inside—until Minho fills him up, gasping into Jisung’s ear, a stuttery, broken melody, like a song he never wants to end.
They slump against each other. Under the moonlight, Jisung traces lines along the sweat on Minho’s back and feels impossibly lucky, all the way at the end of the world.
“Can’t believe I waited three months to do that,” Minho says. He hasn’t let go of Jisung yet. His cock is still inside him. Jisung wonders if they can make it all the way to the ports without it ever leaving him. “We should have fucked in the restaurant, right then and there.”
“With the zombies around us?” Jisung laughs softly. “How romantic.”
“You know me, jagi.” Minho kisses his cheek and that, more than anything else, makes Jisung blush all over. “I’m all about the romance.”
3000 DAYS BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE
“Are you seriously still sulking?”
“I am not sulking,” Jisung sulks.
“You can’t be that mad about me not picking you for the team. It’s just an after school club.”
“Then you should have picked me!” Jisung whirls on Minho. “If it’s just a club.”
“Jisungie, you fall on your ass every time you try to kick a ball.” Minho’s eyes are bright with laughter, a grin spread over his face, the collar to his school uniform flagrantly rumpled. He doesn’t even have the decency to look cowed. “You suck at soccer.”
“It’s not like you’re that good at sports either,” Jisung snaps. He hauls his backpack higher up on his shoulders and speeds up. His back hurts from carrying his books around and hagwon had nearly put him to sleep with how much math he’d been forced to do. And on top of it all, Minho had betrayed—
“Jisung-ah,” Minho calls, laughing. “Come on.”
“Fuck off!” Jisung yells over his shoulder.
Minho jogs up beside him and grabs his wrist, yanking him back down to a slow pace without even trying. Jisung hates him. “Come on, don’t be mad. I’ll pick you next time.”
Jisung scoffs. “I’m never going to play with you again.”
“I’m sorry.” Minho’s hand slips down and suddenly their fingers are interlaced, sweaty palms sliding against each other. “I’ll buy you five Melonas,” he promises and Jisung pauses, glancing sideways at him. They round the corner to their street, Jisung’s house sitting opposite Minho’s, the windows to the living rooms that face each other, the gates that never quite shut properly. It’s hard to be mad at Minho on this street. When it’s just the two of them.
“Ten.” The sun is setting quickly, a salted yolk dripping down into inky night.
Minho squints at him. “Seven and don’t be a brat about it.”
“Fine,” Jisung gives in. If he squeezes Minho’s hand a little tighter just before they separate at their gates, neither of them mention it. He crosses to his gate and opens it. Just before he goes inside, he glances over his shoulder and finds Minho standing in a similar fashion, at his own. Minho winks at him and Jisung mimes retching into his mouth. Minho breaks out into laughter, hiccupy and delighted, and Jisung thinks about what it felt like to hold his hand.
He turns and heads inside, Minho’s laughter following him all the way home.