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“Seven. Nah, I’ll be generous. Seven point five.”
Ronan Lynch made this assessment while his boyfriend looked away from the scope of his rifle and blinked open his left eye. Lowering the gun and shielding his face with his forearm, Adam Parrish looked down from their rooftop perch to the street below, to Adam's quarry thirty yards away. Brown spattered the pavement around its head and its limbs were bent at weird angles. It was definitely dead.
Again.
It wasn’t Adam’s most accurate shot, but the zombie was dead for the second time, and that’s what mattered. It mattered to Adam, at least. Ronan, who had invented their game of scoring kills, preferred creativity over efficiency, the latter of which Adam was a stickler for. His shot was nothing if not efficient. It had killed the walker after all. Adam thought it warranted more than a seven point five on the scale, while Ronan thought it deserved less and only gave such a generous rating because of Adam's perpetual need for good marks in every facet of his life, including in the apocalypse. Ronan sometimes liked appeasing his boyfriend.
Slowly, Adam turned to stare at Ronan beside him. “No, it’s a ten. That was a head shot.”
“Oh, come on, Parrish.” Ronan Lynch looked back at Adam flatly for a moment before he shoved aviator sunglasses on his face and stuffed the wide-brimmed hat Adam made him wear on his head. It was a ridiculous look, but practical, though Adam always hated when Ronan put the hat on because Adam liked the way Ronan's buzzcut had grown out into short curls. Behind his sunglasses, Ronan rolled his eyes while Adam looked at his reflection in the polarized lenses. Ronan continued, "That was a head graze.”
Adam frowned, more at his reflection and how scruffy he looked than at Ronan’s comment on his marksmanship, though because Ronan found Adam's scruffiness appealing, he interpreted the frown as a response to his comment. Adam’s shot wasn’t clean through the forehead, but it was definitely more than a graze, as evidenced by the glorious amount of brain on display below them
Swinging the rifle’s safety into place before he put the gun’s strap over his shoulder, Adam pushed himself to both feet from his kneeling position. Ronan looked up at him and watched in admiration as Adam waved towards the body splayed out on the street before he held his hand out to Ronan. “It’s dead, isn’t it?”
“From the curb,” Ronan replied as he took Adam’s hand and Adam hauled him up from the gravel rooftop of the strip mall they’d climbed. Ronan kept Adam’s hand in his despite being on the verge of an argument. It was the end of the world, and Ronan had decided to hold Adam’s hand as often as possible, even if they were fighting. “Not your bullet. Take the seven point five.”
“I won’t. It’s subjective.” Adam dropped Ronan’s hand long enough to maneuver his backpack on his shoulders with the rifle, then he took Ronan’s hand again, because it was the end of the world and he had decided to hold Ronan’s hand as often as possible, even if they were fighting. “It should be binary. Did I kill the walker? Yes, ten. No, zero.”
Ronan led them back towards the ladder they’d climbed to get onto the roof and peered over the side of the building, confirming the alley below was empty before he reluctantly let go of Adam’s hand so he could climb back down to the ground. “Using that system, you get zero.”
“It’s dead, Ronan.”
Because he was a shithead, and because he was especially a shithead to his boyfriend, Ronan grinned up at Adam as he started backing down the ladder. Adam, used to Ronan being a shithead, just stared at Ronan as he descended, and Ronan repeated, “From the curb. Not your bullet.”
Adam muttered dick and even though it was unintelligible to Ronan, he knew Adam called him a dick, and Ronan’s grin broadened, and then broadened even more because he got a good view of Adam’s ass when Adam swug himself onto the ladder and started climbing down after Ronan. When they both reached the ground, Adam snatched Ronan’s hand back in his, and Ronan chalked up a point for himself when Adam begrudgingly said, “I’ll take the seven point five.”
“Figured you would. Where to?”
Pulling his compass from a pocket of his cargo pants, Adam oriented their direction to the southwest then looked up and squinted at the sun before he checked his watch. They had a few hours before sundown and could probably get through more of southeastern Pennsylvania and get a little bit closer to the Maryland state line, but they’d been walking all day and even though Ronan had been wearing the hat Adam made him wear and putting on sunblock Adam took from drugstores, the August sun had turned Ronan’s shoulders pink. It would be best to get inside before Ronan’s shoulders got pinker.
“We should probably find somewhere to stay for the night,” Adam said as he tucked his compass away. He preferred avoiding irritable, sunburnt Ronan whenever possible.
Ronan narrowed his eyes at Adam behind his sunglasses. Adam always wanted to get them out of the sun when Ronan showed the first signs of sunburn, even if it didn’t bother Ronan. “There was a neighborhood this way.” He gestured towards where he’d seen a cluster of houses through his binoculars while they’d been merrily sniping zombies from the rooftop and Adam looked in the direction he waved then compared it to his compass. “Better than–” Ronan turned, looked at the ransacked strip of shops they were leaving behind, and laughed, because even after the world had gone to hell, God or the universe or whatever still liked giving Ronan Lynch the middle finger “–J.Crew. Shit. We should pick up something for Gansey.”
Adam made sure Ronan heard his downright Saharan tone when Adam said, “We’re not looting.”
“Your end-end-of-the-world morality is real fucked up, you know.”
“We don’t even know if he’ll be there,” Adam replied, regretting it as soon as he said it. Neither of them liked the reminder that their entire journey from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. could be for nought. They didn’t like thinking their best friend could possibly no longer be their best friend but instead be a mindless brain-guzzling monster. In an attempt to lighten the mood, Adam added, “And no one’s killing walkers in pink chinos.”
“Salmon.”
“Salmon chinos.”
Ronan snickered at the thought of bronzed and burnished Gansey wearing a polo shirt and pinkish chinos while swinging a baseball bat at a zombie’s head. “Gansey would.”
Adam laughed at an almost identical mental image. “He would. And he’d get that concerned look on his face when they got stained with brains.”
“How fucking uncouth.”
Clicking cicadas and singing birds supplied a soundtrack as they walked in the direction Ronan indicated. It was pleasant, no hum of air conditioners or grind of tires on pavement disrupting the natural sounds. Their hands swung idly between them to no rhythm but their own, and Ronan only let go of Adam so he could pull an aluminum baseball bat from his backpack and connect it with a zombie’s temple when a walker shambled too close for comfort. Other than the lone disruption, it was a decidedly nice walk, first down a four-lane divided road, then onto a two lane street, and then down an elm lined drive leading to the neighborhood Ronan had spied. If it hadn’t been so hot and humid, it would have been even nicer because it reminded Ronan of the home he’d left behind in western Virginia so he could be with Adam at the end of the world.
They reached the neighborhood, which wasn’t a neighborhood at all. The elm-lined drive was really a driveway, and a brick wall with a wrought iron gate built into it stopped them dead in their tracks.
On the other side of the gate was what could only be called an estate. Both boys had encountered affluence, Ronan from personal experience, and Adam by association, but neither of them had seen anything as disgustingly wealthy as the house on the other side of the iron fence that barred them from the home’s circular driveway. The mansion was huge and white and tackily pillared in some kind of colonial style, columns stretching from the ground to the roof hanging over the low, broad porch. The garage was bigger than the double-wide Adam grew up in and the stables were larger than any of the barns at Ronan’s family farm. The whole thing was a gross display of wealth that Adam detested because it was everything he’d wanted and Ronan hated because it was new and made to look old, which he thought was cheating. But it was gated, and even from a distance they could see all the windows and doors were intact, two layers of protection J.Crew hadn’t offered them with its broken windows and shattered doors.
“I guess it’ll do,” Adam said dryly. He could tolerate the house, if only because it was a glimpse into what he’d so desperately wanted up until a few months before. Ronan was far happier about their accommodations, even as disgustingly new as they were.
“I guess it’ll do,” Ronan mocked Adam in a higher-pitched version of the drawl Adam had stopped hiding since there was no one around to impress. Yanking Adam’s hand, he led them to a smaller gate built into the brick wall that lined the perimeter of the property. “Come on.”
They passed through the unlocked gate, under the empty eyes of security cameras that weren’t keeping much of anything secure, and Adam closed and latched it behind them. On the off chance a walker maintained enough intelligence or dexterity to open it, he wasn’t taking any chances. He also wasn’t taking any chances on their approach to the front door and let go of Ronan’s hand so he could arm himself. Ronan curled his hand into a fist, his fingers mourning the loss of Adam’s touch as Adam slid his hatchet from one of the loops on his backpack.
Adam was paranoid pre-apocalypse and the end of the world only exacerbated his paranoia. Ronan didn’t often draw attention to it because it had saved their asses on more than one occasion, but on a gated property with no sound or movement anywhere close, he thought it was a little much. He also hated Adam having to let go so Adam could wield the weapon. “Really,” Ronan deadpanned.
“What?” Adam asked, hatchet poised to use on the next thing he deemed malevolent, which could also include Ronan if he kept going. “You never know.”
Ronan gave Adam a long look out of the corner of his eye that Adam ignored as they closed in on the house, but Ronan stayed silent until they mounted the single step leading to the front door. Looking at the lock then looking at Adam, Ronan asked, “You want to smash it or do you want me to?”
After thinking about it on their quiet walk to the door, Adam had a good feeling that if the people who owned the house hadn’t latched the gate, they hadn’t locked the door, either. It made sense to him; if they had any plans on returning from wherever they’d fled, a ransacked house with a functional front door was better than a ransacked house with shattered windows or a broken lock. “First of all,” Adam said, “we could pick it. Second of all,” he reached out his free hand and tried the handle, pushing the door open when the knob turned without resistance, “we don’t need to do anything.”
Ronan stared in awe at his boyfriend, because while he’d sometimes get close, he’d never fully understand Adam’s thought process. Adam really was quite a marvelous creature. He had been going to Harvard, after all. Grabbing Adam’s cheeks, Ronan pulled him in for a hasty, sloppy kiss, then made an overexaggerated gesture waving Adam through the front door. Adam grinned a little bit like an idiot as he stepped into the house, and Ronan followed him inside, closing and locking the door behind them.
Standing in the entryway listening for anything that would signal they weren’t alone, they looked around. The day’s dying light flooded the house through a back wall of windows that stretched two stories high, and the first floor was almost entirely open plan. The mansion had an unnecessary amount of everything, light fixtures, marble floors, vases, things to sit on, and even during the apocalypse, it looked dustless. Adam hated it and loved it, and it made Ronan want to smash everything to pieces.
So he did.
A trio of unnecessary vases stood on a side table in the entryway, and Ronan reached over and slowly pushed one off the table. The crash when it hit the floor and the rattle of scattering pieces echoed through the empty house. Ronan smiled with satisfaction. Half the fun of the end of the world was getting to smash everything without consequences, because everyone else was destroying shit, too, so Ronan took it upon himself to smash everything within reason whenever he was in the mood. It was one of his post-apocalyptic tenets, like holding Adam’s hand as much as possible, except unlike holding hands, smashing things was not a tenet Adam shared.
“Did you really need to do that?” Adam asked as he looked at the shards of what was probably a very expensive vase around his boots. “We could have used it on a staircase.”
Another thing the mansion had an unnecessary amount of was staircases. Two curved off the entryway to a catwalk connecting two sides of the second floor, and from their vantage point, they could see two more towards the back of the house. Adam wasn’t happy with having to spend a good chunk of time setting up the primitive warning system they’d come up with, leaving a minefield of breakables anytime they stayed some place with a second floor, an almost no-fail way of alerting them of walkers, animals, or, worst of all, other humans.
“It was begging for me to break it,” Ronan replied as he took off his sunglasses and reached for a second vase, pushing it off the table and onto the floor, which Adam thought was both a very Ronan and very feline gesture. Ronan met Adam’s eyes and smirked, which again Adam thought was a very Ronan and very feline gesture. “That one was, too.”
Ronan kept smirking until Adam cracked and pushed the third and final vase to the floor. Adam looked and felt a little giddy and Ronan wanted to keep egging him on until the floor was covered with pieces of glassware and pottery, but Ronan didn’t want Adam to get too reckless. That was Ronan’s job.
Their crashing and smashing in the entryway didn’t draw anyone or anything out of hiding, so they walked through the rest of the first floor, locking windows and exterior doors while winding around sitting areas, a pool table, and what Adam hoped was a fake tiger skin rug. Reaching the kitchen, they searched through cabinets and the pantry. Adam found CLIF Bars and Ronan found packets of tuna, and when Ronan walked by the trash can, he wrinkled his nose and said gross, Parrish, and Adam threw a CLIF Bar at him.
“Thanks for dinner.” Ronan caught the bar and Adam rolled his eyes.
Passing Ronan, Adam shoved Ronan’s shoulder, and after getting a whiff of the trash can, Adam said, “He who smelt it, dealt it.”
Ronan shoved Adam back, but inside his heart sang. It wasn’t often Adam stooped to Ronan’s level of immaturity, but when he did, Ronan loved it fiercely.
As shadows grew longer, they collected all the fragile things they could find while shoving CLIF Bars and shaking tuna into their mouths, using their kitchen discoveries to vary their diet of whatever convenience store junk food they could find. They both appreciated the change, but Adam hoped there was toothpaste somewhere in the house they could use before he ultimately kissed Ronan goodnight. Arms full of vases, figurines, wine glasses, and some star-shaped crystal award neither of them cared enough to read, they walked up the winding staircases, leaving a fragile trail behind themselves. They did the same with the back staircases, then stood together in one of the upstairs hallways, looking at the ridiculous number of doors they had to choose from to find some place to sleep.
“After you, sweetheart,” Ronan said with cheek. They weren’t the pet name types, but Ronan enjoyed them with sarcasm and Adam enjoyed them with derision, so Adam just gave Ronan a look before pushing the first door open, revealing a half bath.
“Next,” he said after grabbing a tube of toothpaste from the vanity. “Door number two.”
Ronan pushed open the second door off the hall with a flourish and revealed a bedroom, a nice one, with west-facing windows that let in the last dregs of daylight. The room had a queen size bed complete with fluffy linens and throw pillows and it looked like absolute heaven after all their walking through western suburbs of Philadelphia the past few days.
“Perfect,” Adam said.
Ronan wasn’t convinced the room was as perfect as Adam thought it was. It was the first out of God knew how many bedrooms, and Ronan wouldn’t settle for just any bedroom when he had the pick of the litter. “Nah. Pass.”
“It’s a bed,” Adam replied flatly. A bed was a bed to Adam Parrish, whether it was an IKEA mattress on the floor or the plasticky extra-long twin he’d slept on in his dorm at Harvard. Adam could sleep on anything horizontal, and even on things not horizontal, but he wouldn’t belabor the point with Ronan. The queen size bed and its myriad throw pillows were enough for Adam. He stepped past Ronan and into the bedroom. “What more do you need?”
“There’s gotta be a king in here somewhere.”
“Lynch.”
“I’m gonna find the king.”
Adam dropped his backpack and rifle on the mattress and crossed his arms over his chest as he turned to look at his asshole boyfriend, shadowed and savagely handsome in the doorway. Ronan was being difficult for difficult’s sake, and Adam wouldn’t call him on it, but he’d try. “Fine. I’ll lock you out,” Adam said, even though he wouldn’t.
“Go head,” Ronan replied, because he knew Adam wouldn’t. After they looked at one another a few more seconds, Ronan turned and started down the hall, but Adam, always the safer and more cautious of the two of them, called him back. Ronan returned and glowered in the doorway, and even though it was getting darker, Adam knew he was glowering because Ronan glowered a lot. Ronan asked, “What?”
“Bat out.” Adam fished a flashlight out of his backpack and tossed it to Ronan. “Use that.”
“Jesus, I thought Gansey was the dad.”
“Ronan.”
“Fine.” Ronan flicked the flashlight on and shined it up under his chin. It illuminated his face and his facial hair in a way Adam found particularly attractive as Ronan pulled his baseball bat from his backpack and brandished it. “Happy?”
Adam wasn’t, but getting Ronan readily armed and holding a flashlight felt like an accomplishment, and Adam was always at least a little pleased when he accomplished something, so he said, “Yeah.”
Grinning, face still illuminated, Ronan tipped his bat towards Adam before he stepped back into the hall and left the door open behind him. “See you on the other side.”
He swung the flashlight beam down to the floor and Adam watched him go before sitting down on the edge of the bed. With every step Ronan took down the hall, they got further out of each other’s sight than they’d been in weeks, and even though it was only a matter of feet, they missed each other acutely because Ronan’s recklessness always worried Adam at least a little and Ronan’s favorite place to be was near Adam.
But Ronan was always the left behind, not the leaving, and he didn’t feel too bad about the little thrill he got from leaving Adam in that first bedroom, though Adam was feeling a little bad about being the one left behind for once. He and Ronan always had a good understanding of one another, and that feeling made him understand Ronan a tiny bit more and Adam vowed to himself that, to whatever end, he’d never be far from Ronan again.
Adam fell back on the bed as Ronan opened the next door off the hallway, and Adam listened through the wall as Ronan explored the room next door, opening dresser drawers and rooting through bedside tables. Once he finished looking for anything useful, Ronan flopped on his stomach on the bed and buried his face in blankets. On the other side of the wall, Adam stared at the ceiling. They lay on the same size beds, but both mattresses were missing the exact same thing: each other.
After lying on his stomach for a few moments, Ronan flipped over onto his back and acknowledged he hated the emptiness beside him, then, peeling himself off the bed, he made his way to an en suite bathroom and Adam heard a door bang open. After rummaging for a while through the vanity, Ronan said, “Score.”
Adam heard his triumph and called, “What?”
“Found a razor,” Ronan called back and Adam frowned a bit. Ronan hadn’t been able to buzz his hair since the battery in his shaver died. He was glad the one he’d found had a charge when he tried it so he could tackle his hair and his week-old beard in one fell swoop. Adam already missed them as he thought about Ronan’s usual buzzed hair and clean-shaven face.
When Ronan stepped back into the hall and continued a quickened journey to find a larger bed, Adam caught a flicker of flashlight as Ronan waved the beam back and forth in front of him. The more Ronan’s footsteps faded, the less light Adam saw, and the less easy Adam felt, the more he thought of worst case scenarios, though Ronan was completely safe and found yet another queen size bed in the next room he entered. It was less fluffy than the one Adam lay on, less ruffled and pillow-covered, but despite the superior choice in linens, Ronan found the bed wanting when he spread out like a starfish in the middle of the mattress. While completely comfortable with his arms and legs stretched wide and his head sunk between pillows, the bed was sub-par because of what it was lacking: Adam.
Ronan moved on to the next room while Adam’s mind conjured images of a walker stuffed in a bedroom springing on Ronan when he opened the door, but no zombie fell upon Ronan when he opened the door on the next room, finding two twin beds in a room decorated to look like a zoo. Ronan grumbled about shitty kids rooms and through the house’s silence Adam caught wisps of Ronan's curses but couldn’t make out what about. Then Adam heard a few last footsteps until Ronan got too far away for Adam to hear as Ronan ventured onto the last door leading off that hall.
He hit the motherload in that final room, what could only have been the master suite. Ronan’s flashlight glided over French doors leading out onto a balcony, and a bathroom with a sunken bathtub was an extension of the room, not behind its own door. His light found the bed and it wasn’t just any king, but a California king, more luxurious than all the other beds combined, and Ronan took a running leap to crash onto the mattress. It was downy beneath him, pillow topped, like he was sleeping on air, and after weeks of walking with only enough sleep each night to keep him going, he could have well closed his eyes and fallen asleep right there, clothes and boots still on, if all the extra space on the bed didn’t feel so empty.
Four bedrooms away, Adam wasn’t anywhere close to sleep, though he was more than exhausted enough. He was picking apart how Ronan fifty feet away felt worse than Ronan five hundred miles away, though those five hundred miles had felt pretty damn bad while he’d waited for Ronan to get to him after Ronan told him to stay in Cambridge while everyone else was fleeing. That wait and that distance had felt bad enough that Adam couldn’t imagine being apart from Ronan ever again now that they’d been reunited. Having had Ronan back and then losing him, no matter how temporarily, left Adam's chest feeling hollow, like one of his lungs had been removed.
Adam was swimming in that feeling when there was a noise in the hallway because Ronan had given up on the California king and started walking back towards what he hoped would be a much better sleeping experience. Adam’s hand dove for his hatchet on the bed beside him as he sat bolt upright, preparing to fight someone or something in the dark if he needed to, because Ronan was an asshole and had turned his flashlight off so he could try to spook Adam.
He succeeded in spooking Adam when he jumped into the first bedroom’s doorway and he was lucky Adam didn’t hurl the hatchet at him, because Adam was ready to. Both their hearts raced as Ronan turned on his flashlight and lit up his face again, Adam from the shock and Ronan from the close call.
“You shithead,” Adam groaned, dropping his hatchet down beside the bed so it’s dense metal head thunked on the floor.
Ronan grinned, his perfect teeth bright white in the flashlight’s beam. “Happy to see me?”
Adam had never been happier to see Ronan, and Ronan was just as ecstatic to see Adam. He had made it to Adam across five hundred miles, and even the lure of a king size bed couldn’t keep him away for more than a few minutes. As soon as he’d set foot in the room next door, he’d wanted to go right back to Adam, and as soon as he’d set foot out of the first bedroom, Adam wanted him back.
“Find your bed?” Adam asked after they’d just looked at one another for a few moments, both glad to have eyes on one another again.
“Yeah.” Ronan swung the flashlight down to the floor and all of Adam’s uneasiness washed away as Ronan stepped into the room. Ronan closed and locked the door behind himself as Adam rose to meet him, taking the flashlight, turning it off, and tossing it onto the bed while Ronan shrugged off his backpack and dropped his bat beside Adam’s hatchet. They wrapped their arms around one another, swaying for a few seconds, and when Ronan wrestled him back towards the bed and pushed him down on the mattress, Adam laughed loudly, and when he flopped down on top of Adam and buried his face in Adam’s neck, Ronan grinned. He said, “Found it right here.”