writerly-owl-blog - Tumblr blog

writerly-owl-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Undead: Chapter Four

Summary: It's been a year since the unexplained rising of the dead and mass infection of the millions, but Lance is managing to survive. He even thinks he's doing pretty damn well, as fighting for your life goes, until he meets Keith - the boy with the sword and quiet words and constant plan. Mix in Hunk and Pidge, and they've got a solid team of four and a solid method of survival, but when they stumble into a hostage, an experimental, mad genius, and the odd truth, keeping some semblance of a nice, unconfrontational life may not be as easy as they had originally thought.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

On AO3

CHAPTER FOUR

Are you sure you want to go?”

“Keith. I’ve been training for this for years. It’s just a mission, nothing more.”

“Yeah, but…it’s just…”

“I’ll see you in no time. Just a few months.”

“Shiro, I…I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“It’s always scary going out into space, sure, but I’d say we’re pretty well prepared.”

“How well prepared?”

“Prepared enough, Keith. Don’t worry about me. Focus on your school, on staying top of your class.”

“…Fine.”

“Good.”

The smother of a hug. Worry, steaming at the pit of his stomach.

Dead. Shiro is dead. The television says it. The government says it. But -

“Keith!”

Alive. Shiro is alive.

The thought slams into his head the moment he’s awakened, feverish and as repetitive as a scratched CD. Keith’s eyes pop open faster than ever before, probably breaking some kind of world record, and his arms automatically flail outwards, except they can’t - something strong and steady is tied around his middle, as if he’s a mummy being prepared for its sarcophagus. His legs jerk next, but they too are strapped to something strong, bracing against his calves.

He blinks once. Twice. The world around him adjusts into startling clarity - including the rotten finger lounging just in front of his face like it’s poolside at the Bahamas, without a worry in the world.

“Ahh!” Keith flings his body backwards, the cords wrapped around his chest moaning and groaning with his struggle, and the rotten old chair he’s sat upon lets out a shriek for the ages, flying back a few inches before hitting something solid.

“Ow! That’s me back here!” the voice screams again, the same one that had awoken him, and his first thought is that it’s obnoxiously loud, screeching against the sides of his head and rattling in his cobwebbed skull, but his second thought is flooded with surprising relief. Lance.

“And don’t push me any closer! I’m already as close enough to the cage as it is!”

Keith’s heart drops. Okay. Maybe no relief, then. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?

He follows the spear of finger on the decimated hand, trailing the rotten flesh down to the scabby elbow resting on the metal of the cage, tracing up the half-bare chest, looking at the edges of the scarred neckline…

The zombie is gazing straight into his eyes as if squaring him up for a fistfight, something akin to a crooked smile lingering on its half-collapsed face.

“Okay. Okay,” Keith breathes to himself, forcing his eyes off of the gruesome sight and to the grey concrete ground. Rope. They’re tied in rope, and they can’t move, so they need to get out. Maybe they could wriggle out of their chairs and rope through time? Or perhaps somehow use the dead -

“We’re going to die!”

“Lance! Shut up!” It’s Pidge, the words taken directly from Keith’s mind, her voice echoing from across the warehouse. Keith immediately whips his head around toward the source, but all he can see is the standing dead, the walking dead, the surprisingly functional dead, whatever you want to call them, and the side of Lance, who is desperately trying to twist himself around in his seat to see anything besides the bare wall.

“Pidge! You’re alive!” Lance cries, tilting his head back. Keith feels Lance’s hair brush against his in a sensation that’s almost ticklish, and normally it would be disturbing to be touching another person after so long alone in a cabin, but right now, at his very moment, he doesn’t mind.

Besides. It’s just a head.

“Yeah, you dolt! Where are you guys?”

“Tied up! Boxed in by cages!” Keith answers, but his scratchy voice doesn’t quite carry based on her lack of response, so Lance picks up the slack.

“TIED UP! BOXED IN BY CAGES!” he screeches at the top of his lungs, struggling desperately in his chair, and Keith rolls his eyes.

“Lance. Calm down.” His hands flex against their ropes, testing out their strength, but they brush against something warm and soft instead, a far cry from the absolute nothing he had expected. Keith retracts his fingers immediately as if he had been nipped at.

Heads are one thing. Hands?

Keith doesn’t know how to feel about that.

But Lance sure does.

“Keith! Is that you?” Lance stretches out his hands as far as they can go, wriggling his fingers until they catch on to Keith’s balled fists. “Hey! Maybe we can work on each other’s ropes!”

“Mmm. Sure,” Keith spits out through gritted teeth. Every touch is like a wildfire burning underneath his skin, brought on by a bolt of lightning to dry wood, and he doesn’t like it. No thank you.

But, unsurprisingly, none of his thoughts stop Lance’s fingers from slipping over his knuckles, grasping for purchase, catching against his pinky and forefinger. Keith shoots out a strong breath through his nose, biting his lip until it hurts.

Lance speaks without warning, as usual.

“Hey, I know I got on to you before about shifting my chair back, but, uh, I kinda have to do the same thing, so, sorry!” Keith hears the slapping of his worn-out boots against the wall, the unholy noise of Lance’s old chair shifting across the ground, and then the warm hands are pressed all over his, softly feeling their way around his rope and clenched fists.

“Ease up, Keith! If you keep your hands to the side a little, I can work on the rope,” Lance grumbles as he works the rope around Keith’s thin wrists, grappling for the enormous knot wedged on the other side.

“Guys! Be quick! These chairs obviously weren’t meant to hold us for long, so they’re probably coming back soon!” Hunk weakly calls from across the room, a small groan easing out of him a moment later.

“Hunk! You’re awake! Can you see Shiro?” Keith calls, raising the volume his voice as high as his damn creaky throat will allow.

“What was that?”

“Shiro!”

“Dude with the white hair?”

“Yes, that’s him!”

“Yeah, I can barely see him through the cages. He’s still on that cot. Knocked out cold.”

Keith swears under his breath, panic jolting through him like electricity. What if he’s already dead? Or in a coma? Or -

His wrists slip apart, completely freed.

“Keith! I got -“

“I know!” Keith is already undoing the ropes confining his ribs with the speed a master spy, pointedly ignoring the fact that his fingers are shaking. Nope. They’re strong as concrete, as those iron bars holding the masses of undead.

The thoughts don’t really help, but he figures he should at least try.

“Hold still, Lance,” Keith mutters as he finally wrenches himself from the chair, kicking it off to the side. One or two of the zombies dive against the confines of the cage immediately, their flayed fingers bloodying the top of it, weak gums closing around the rotted wood. Keith’s eyes narrow, the back of his spine prickling uncomfortably. They’re alert. Too alert.

“Keith? Buddy?” Lance yelps from behind him, and Keith quickly turns around and drops to his knees, his callused hands beginning to pick at the rope.

“Stay still,” he warns, pursing his lips. Lance’s hands aren’t pressed against his. The warmth isn’t searing. He’s fine. Just fine.

“Yeah, I’m still. Still as a statue. One of those Greek ones. Except…clothed. I always found those creepy, you know,“ he rambles, a nervous laugh escaping in the form of a forced chuckle.

Keith rests his head on the back of the chair, sweat beading down his temples.

“Lance.”

“Yeah?” His voice is high-pitched, and for a moment, Keith feels bad for the tension knotting in the middle of his chest like a rubber band fit to snap. It’s all too much. Shiro. The undead. The odd, stunning situation they’d somehow gotten themselves into. And Lance’s empty words, grating against his nerves like nails against a chalkboard.

Keith shouldn’t be angry. He really shouldn’t. Lance is scared, just like the rest of them. Just like him.

But he does it anyway.

“Please. For the love of God. Shut up,” he snaps, the tone coming out clipped, tight, rough.

He hears Lance’s intake, sees his fingers flinch the slightest bit. But he also drinks in the silence that the comment brings, the tiniest seed of guilt scooping itself into his chest.

His hands work mindlessly after that, fingers almost bloody from the incessant tightness of the knot, but Lance is freed of his bondage a few minutes later, his back pressed to the wall as he gazes at the cages on either side of them with squinted eyes.

“Pidge? How are you guys doing over there?” he yells, shifting past Keith to peer through the bars and bodies.

“We’re almost done!”

“We’re out! C’mon, let’s get our weapons and -“

“We’re not leaving Shiro.” The thought flies out of Keith’s mouth as surely as a reflexive breath would.

“That’s right! We’re not leaving Shiro!” Pidge calls from across the room, her voice clenched with determination. “He was on the failed mission with my family. If he’s still alive, maybe they are, too.”

“How did they even get back to earth?” Lance wonders, pressing a mindless hand against the broad edge of a cage. One of the zombies lunges for his fingers, purple, lacerated gums bared and bleeding, and Lance shrieks, backing up into Keith.

“It’s teeth!” he cries, whirling around, and his blue eyes flicker to Keith’s for less than a second before he forces them away to the hard ground. “Just…look at it’s teeth.”

Keith frowns, lightly shouldering past Lance, his eyes catching on the negative turn on his lips, the empty look dug into his eyes like pits. He pauses for a moment, hand reaching out, but its destination is unknown, at least to Keith. He stares at it, hovering in the air, halfway between him and Lance as if it has a mind of its own.

Where is it going? Where does he want it to go?

Keith quickly scoops his hand to his chest, clenching his fingers together, and swings his body around almost recklessly, pursing his lips.

The first thing he sees is its grotesque smile, but it’s a far cry away from the flat, broken teeth he had seen upon waking.

The creature has black teeth fit for carving forcibly stuck into the back to replace the molars, each one ending in a wicked point, but the teeth become even more eclectic as he follows the row to the very front, some turned sideways to make room for even more chompers that look like they belong to movie monsters.

“What the hell?” Keith whispers, his skin crawling. “What…”

“They’re changing them,” Lance mutters, firmly crossing his arms across his chest. “This must be some kind of lab.”

“Then why is Shiro here?” Keith says, confusion scrawled all over each and every brain cell.

“I don’t-“ Lance begins, but his voice cuts off immediately at the new rays of sunlight that slash erratically through the room, shining through the large pair of doors that open.

Well, slam open.

A scream rips through the warehouse just as a body crashes to the ground, and Keith quickly crouches to better peer through the undead’s legs and sturdy bars of the cage, his breath frozen in his chest. The fallen is crushed against the ground, surprisingly nice clothing scuffed and painted with all kinds of dirt and dust, blood dripping down his nose and burying itself into its fur.

Wait. Fur?

Keith squints his eyes. Perhaps he needs glasses. He always thought the world did look a little -

No. Nope. Those are indeed ears. Fluffy ears, sprouting from both sides of the creature’s head.

“Lance?” he whispers, the voice barely leaving his lips. “Can you -“

“Yes. Mhm. It’s as weird as it looks,” Lance mutters in return, silently bending down beside Keith.

“Where are the rest of you?” demands a heavily accented female voice, and a pole shoves down into the man’s chest, burying itself into his belly. “Why aren’t you all here?”

“They went…to report…” the furry creature wheezes in surprisingly well-stated English, his throat working down difficult swallows.

“Report to who?” The pole lifts to whack the portly man in the side, and Keith can see every crease of fear and hurt folded onto his face.

“Haggar! Report to Haggar!” he cries, lifting his clawed hands to his face. “Please! I am only a scientist! I -“

A swift kick to the head, and the light of consciousness drains out of his eyes. Her voice whips through the warehouse with the force of a horse’s kick.

“Inspect.” At her word, dozens upon dozens of legs pour in from the door, ripping what little light remains into even smaller, bite-sized pieces. Their flesh is a rainbow of every color imaginable, but all within human limits, which is comforting to Keith - no purple or blue, nothing to tell of far-off aliens or horrifying mutations like the person knocked out on the floor. Their calves are corded with heavy muscle, pockmarked with differentiating scars that tell individual stories based on width and placement. The head of an axe drags behind one of them, and a newly sharpened sword is held by another, weapon upon deadly weapon visible and bloodcurdling.

“Get ready,” Keith whispers to Lance, balling his hands into fists for what feels like the hundredth time since he’d awakened.

“Keith. We can’t take them. There’s too many.”

“We can try.”

“There he is!” An excited male voice calls from the center of the warehouse, gesturing for the female that seems to be in charge. She walks toward him with a certain type of grace that Keith would expect of a queen, but less on the delicate side and more on the strong side - firm, muscled, confident. They’re the footsteps of somebody privy to the heat of battle and familiar with the ins and outs of leadership.

But right before she can reach the cot, a pair of broad legs step in front of the cage, obscuring Keith’s limited view. Equally thick fingers wrap around the bars, apparently ignorant of the scrabbling of the zombies, and the man shoves the cage out of his way, the wheels beneath shrieking like a cave full of bats.

They’re exposed.

“Go!” Keith roars, flinging himself from the confines of the space. His hands almost flit to where his sword would normally be, strapped safely to his hip, but there’s no time for that - they fly toward the man’s neck instead, squeezing as Keith slams him down into the concrete like a pro wrestler.

A snapshot of Hunk and Pidge bursting from their own prison of cages registers in his mind as the two fly out across from him and into view. Hunk’s face is slightly frightened but determined, but Pidge is sneering like a savage, her small hands outstretched.

Keith quickly focuses back on the man beneath him, watching as his face flushes scarlet, but he isn’t bucking, twisting, or fighting back at all in any way. His eyes connect with Keith’s, wide and truthful, and he almost seems to be conveying a message, like -

“Stop! We don’t mean to hurt you!” It’s the leader, her staff defensively pointed outward and her legs bent into a crouch.

Keith doesn’t trust her. Not at all. He hasn’t fully trusted anybody since this whole thing started, and possibly even far before that.

Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to be the only one.

It all happens in a few seconds. Keith whips his head toward Pidge’s quick form that dashes as quickly as any track athlete in first place. Watches as she pulls something out of her pocket, wriggling it inside the chained padlocks. And widens his eyes as she desperately flits hers toward Hunk. Lance. Himself.

“Run,” she says, and Pidge rips the chain from the cage before she can change her mind.

The dead slam into Keith like a typhoon, and his hands fail to catch himself on the cold ground - his nose goes down first, smacking against the floor, and he feels hot blood well immediately, pouring from his nostrils in a faucet-like fashion.

A hand slams on top of his, but the skin is knitted together instead of flayed with knives and nature, colored a familiar shade.

“Get up!” Lance screams, singlehandedly hauling Keith to his feet, and Keith didn’t know he had that much muscle - or maybe it’s adrenaline - but either way they’re running, hand-in-hand, and Keith is too terrified to think about the press of skin against skin with the dead streaming around him on all sides.

An axe swings. Blood splatters against Keith’s face, but he keeps running.

A gun shoots. A zombie collapses to the ground at his feet, but he keeps running.

A familiar pole smashes into an undead’s throat, pushing all the way through. Keith has to swiftly duck, but he keeps running, running, running.

Until the pole smashes into his own back, sending him and Lance sprawling across the ground.

“You could’ve just listened to me, you know,” the leader sighs, and he feels the air shift as she whips the pole around into a new position. “We don’t have time for this. You’ll hear me out later.”

A crack of pole against skull, and Keith suddenly ceases to be.

#klance #lance #keith #voltron #vld #keith x lance

1 note · View note

writerly-owl-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Undead: Chapter Three

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Four

On AO3

CHAPTER THREE

“79 bottles of beer on the wall, 79 bottles of beer…”

“Lance, I swear to god, if you keep…” Pidge starts, slamming her head against the back of his seat in misery, too tired to even finish her argument. Lance grins a wicked grin, feeling it stretch across his mouth, telling of trouble.

“Take one down and pass it around, 78 bottles of beer on the wall…” he continues, his voice gaining volume.

“Whatever threat Pidge was about to make, I second that,” Keith sighs from the backseat, his voice scraped with exhaustion and the pure, unadulterated sound of somebody done with the cruel ways of the world. Including Lance’s awful voice. Even he admits his vocal chords were cursed at birth, but if the zombie apocalypse itself couldn’t stop him from singing every once in a while, neither can Keith.

“78 bottles of beer on the wall, 78 bottles of beer…”

“Lance!” It’s Keith again, hissing through his teeth, and when Lance throws his head over his shoulder with a teasing smile he sees nothing but Keith’s cherry-red, frowning face, his vivid violet eyes burning with annoyance.

Actually, they look pretty like that - more of a sparkle to them, something more than his usual contemplative, deep gleam.

Besides, Keith can survive one more verse.

“Take one down and pass it around, 77 bottles -“

Sput-sput-sput.

“No!” Hunk cries from the driver’s seat, slamming his large foot into the gas. “Stay with me!”

Sput-sput…put.

And the car rolls to a slow, steady stop, parking itself in the middle of the two-lane road.

“Damn it,” Pidge sighs, sagging back against her seat, wearily clicking her seat belt and flinging it off of her chest. “Guess we’re on foot from here, folks.”

“I thought we had more time than that,” Hunk sadly says, his hands plopping onto his lap.

“Such is reality, Hunk,” Pidge responds, her palm raised, fingers stretched out like a cop directing traffic at a broken light. “Nobody get out yet. Scan for them.”

Lance shifts to the edge of his seat, the jubilant shanty verses bleeding into the back of his mind like a movie soundtrack as his eyes scan to the left, the right, picking up on scrubs, trees, weeds sprouting through the cracks in the road like new carpeting. Nothing more, nothing less.

“I see nothing,” Hunk comments from beside him, his eyes squinted as he pushes his orange headband up, securing his bangs in place. “What about you guys?”

“Nope,” Lance answers, adding an extra pop to the p. “Keith?”

“None.”

“Me neither,” Pidge finishes, her voice razor-sharp with worry. “This isn’t right. Where are they?”

“I don’t know, but we have to get out,” Keith tersely responds, his hand gripping around his sword with familiarity. “If we don’t, whatever’s around will find us eventually.”

“Wait,” Lance suddenly interrupts, still as a deer in the headlights. “Stop.”

“What?” Hunk asks, his hand braced against the car door.

“Shh.”

Lance pauses. Stops all of his limbs, steadies his bones, and <i>listens,</i> and as he falls silent, so does the rest of the car.

It begins as a subtle shuffling, dulled by the barrier of the car doors - something shifting, moving together, scrambling to be free. And then it erupts into a chorus of moans. A scream, piercing through the air. A yell, but not one that Lance recognizes from any living, breathing human or animal.

“Is it a hoard?” Hunk immediately asks, snatching his hand away from the car handle as if it had suddenly gone up in flames.

“It can’t be. There’s nothing here. I can’t even hear them running,” Pidge responds on the dot, mashing her nose against the car window in her attempt to get as close to the source as possible.

“But what if they’re just standing there?” Lance asks, voice quavering.

“I don’t even hear footsteps,” Keith argues, pressing his cheek against the window to peer down the long, barren road. “Besides, I don’t see any. They’re not on the road.”

“They could be in the woods,” muses Pidge, pulling back from the window. Her nose had left little smudges, the green of the woods blurred as a consequence.

“We would be able to see them if they were on the edges. It’s coming from somewhere else. Maybe deeper in?” Keith continues.

“We should get out of the car,” Lance suddenly starts, his heart thumping in his throat like a constant, brutal conga drum.

“Are you kidding?” Pidge yells, glaring in Lance’s direction so hard that he imagines it could give the back of his neck third degree burns in an alternate universe. Maybe even in this one. He puts nothing past Pidge, supernatural or not. “We don’t even know where they are!”

“Let’s just walk out, get a scope of the place, see what’s there, and if the group’s too big, we run back to the car and wait them out. If it’s smaller, we can kill them and be done with it. Keep walking.”

“Sounds good to me,” comments a nonchalant voice from the back seat, calm as the wisps of clouds floating overhead.

Pidge whips her head to the side, jaw dropping. “Keith? What are-“

But before anyone can lock the door, Keith swiftly opens the door and rolls out at the speed of light, sword barely trailing against the ground as he trots forward, his entire body tensed and ready for action.

“See? Somebody trusts me,” Lance snorts, his fingers tightening around his pistol as he scoots his body toward the car door.

“Lance, don’t you dare, I will lock this car!” Hunk warns, eyes wide, but Lance is already halfway out the door, breathing in the rancid air, slamming the door shut behind him with a finality that shocks even him.

Keith, a few steps ahead of the car, jumps at the sound and turns on his heel, locking laser-focused eyes with Lance, his gaze charged with the kind of intensity that makes Lance feel like he’s the only thing in the entire world, as if everything else has melted away into soup and trailed down the street gutters. He stands there for a moment, jaw loose, his pistol lowered, but Keith doesn’t so much as blink, and Lance has no idea what’s going through his head, no idea at all, and there’s bigger things going on that he should be focused on, but -

“Can you turn those off?” Lance blurts out, forcing his gaze to the side, his ears registering the new volume of the dead, undiluted by the fiberglass walls and scratched paint slathered on the outside of the car.

Keith’s eyebrows soar high. “Turn what off?”

“Your…eyes.”

“What?”

“Never mind, just… Let’s go,” he finishes, shaking his head to clear it of its swarming.

“Okay?”

“Shut up,” Lance mumbles, clicking the safety off, checking his rounds. Just a few. He would have to make do, with the rest of the rounds tucked safely inside his backpack in the back seat.

“It’s coming from the side of the road,” Keith comments, carefully stepping into the grass, his shoes crackling over what remains of the leaves. “Pidge was right. They’re in the woods.”

“Maybe someone made a trap. People do that, right?”

“For that many?” Keith shoves a branch out of his way, ducking under it irritably as they crawl into the messy undergrowth. “I doubt it.”

“Then what the hell?”

“I dunno, guys. This is pretty creepy.” The voice comes from directly behind Lance’s left shoulder and Keith jumps, whirling around to point his blade directly at the newcomer’s stomach.

“Whoa, whoa!” Hunk raises his hands, his eyes widening as he takes a hearty step back. “Chill, Keith!��

“I thought you were staying in the car,” Lance says, bringing a hand to rub at his temples, a gesture he’s found himself doing more and more lately. He’s turning old for sure. Like his mother. Like Keith. “Go back. We’ll just scout, see what’s up.”

“And leave you to face the undead alone? Buddy, I don’t think so,” Hunk scoffs. “I may have lost my gun a while back, but I still have my fists.”

“Do you even know how to fistfight?”

“Well. Sort of. Not really, but -“

“I have a knife. Plus, you have a gun. Long-range.” Pidge pops from behind Hunk’s back, a sharp, long hunting knife palmed in her hand, the handle colored a deep forest green. “You need backup, even with two good weapons.”

“We’ll be fine on our own,” Keith argues, his voice scraping against the bottom of his throat, but Lance grabs his arm, ignoring the intense heat thrumming through the jacket. Why can’t he just take his jacket of before he catches on fire himself? Lance will never understand.

“We’ll be even more fine with some extra hands. C’mon. Let’s go.”

Keith works his jaw. Closes his eyes. And then steps forward with the rest of them, that same dangerous gleam still wedged in his eye, as if it’s an internal alarm for danger, almost the same look that had fixed been on his face earlier when the zombie had been on top of him. Frozen. Panicked. Harsh. Ferocious.

And back then, even now, Lance almost wants to scoop him, this half-stranger, into a hug. Tell him everything’s going to be okay, even if it’s a lie, for his sake as much as Keith’s - to calm his shaking hands and shaking nerves, as sensitive as a new sunburn.

But there’s only the grass, the trees, the dirt, and the humidity. No comfort. And Lance can’t exactly just ignore the rising screams, the wild things clawing into his ear cavity with sounds that remind him of fresh wounds and primality, something subhuman and not worth a moment of anybody’s time. Something that shouldn’t exist at all.

“There!” Hunk points his finger toward a pocket of the woods thickly guarded by trees and hedged with bushes wilting with dead pink flowers, drooping toward the long grass.

“What are you pointing at?” Pidge whispers, narrowing her eyes, and just then Lance sees it - a patch of grey amongst the blue and green colors of nature, wedged behind the row of oaks and tall, swaying weeds egged on by the breeze.

“That’s the side of a building,” Keith mutters, creeping almost soundlessly in the grass until his half-gloved hands are perched on the bark of a particularly large tree, peeking out toward the structure. Lance follows close behind, his breath bated, his eyes picking and hashing through the individual strands of pine needles and leaves to catch the rusted warehouse that lies behind in a cleared patch of woods, the sounds louder than ever, seeming to reverberate off of the trees and screech through strong metal walls.

“Why capture but not kill?” Keith whispers, his fingers tightening around the tree, scraping into the bark.

“That’s a good -“ Lance starts, but Keith is suddenly darting faster than Lance had previously thought humanly possible, sprinting out of the cover of the thick, safe bushes. Lance yelps, the sound like a gunshot as he dives forward, grabbing a heaping fistful of Keith’s jacket to yank him backwards, scooping him off of his feet.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, speed racer! Where do you think you’re going?” he hollers at him, hauling him back behind the trees with a strong arm fueled with pure adrenaline. Keith whips his head toward him, his soft mullet brushing Lance’s nose, and wow, they’re pretty close. Very close. He can see those eyes again, and they’re fascinating, but also terrifying. Extremely terrifying. This proximity, that is. Everything about this, really. Terrifying.

Time to stop.

Lance backs away, but it’s more like a leap, picking up the scraps of his composure to send a glare at Keith, eyes flashing with hot, sparking irritation.

“You can’t just go running in like that!” he yells, raising his arms, and Pidge smacks her small hand over his mouth.

“Be quiet! We don’t know if there’s anyone in there!” Pidge harshly whispers, her face set in an angled scowl.

“Uh, excuse me? We know there’s dead people!”

“More than them, I mean! Alive people!”

“Let me take a look,” Keith urges them, his eyes wide, yearning for action. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got a sword.”

“Let you go in alone? That’s a no, Mr. Impulsive,” Lance bites back, but is voice is quieter, brought down a few notches.

“Guys, how about we all go in there? Deal?” Hunk says, his voice pleading, his hands raised in the air, patting up and down in their call for peace. “We’re gonna get nowhere, fighting like this. Let’s just check it out. Be done with it.”

“That’s what I thought we were doing in the first place!” Pidge sighs, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. “Let’s just go!”

She leads the way, crawling out of the bushes like a lithe gymnast, the green of her shirt blending in surprisingly well as she darts across the field, wildly looking around for any attackers. Keith follows, his long legs striding across the ground, and Hunk and Lance take off at the same time, weapons sweeping in all directions.

Nobody shoots at them. Nobody runs out, calling at them to get away while they still can. There’s nothing except the increasing calls of the zombies from inside the warehouse, scrabbling at the walls, moaning like they’ll never hear or experience anything good ever again. Like Beyonce’s album Lemonade. God, Lance misses that as much as he misses Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

The entrance is a pair of enormous double doors, almost like those of a barn, firmly locked with a large wooden latch that fixes into a hardy metal square.

“All right,” Hunk starts, sucking a breath in through his nose, out through his mouth. “Slow and steady now. Slow and - Keith!”

Keith had ripped the wooden bits out of their rightful places, barreling his shoulder into the double doors to slam them open.

“Keith! Get back!” Lance strides forward, ready to grab him by the scruff of the neck again, his gun raised and ready, but nothing comes racing out, filled with rotting smells and broken teeth and grey, flayed skin.

Instead, they’re in cages. Larger-than-life cages, the kind that span halfway up the warehouse’s enormous walls, latticed in a pattern that keeps anything from getting in or out, padlocked to the max with thick silver chains. Long, skeletal fingers grasp through the holes in their containers, teeth closing around the wires as if trying to gnaw their way through, but they’d fall out sooner than they’d ever do that. In fact, some of them are already laying on the floor, yellow and cracked through, and Lance has a mental image of every movie he’s ever seen with a creature’s teeth strung on a necklace as a show of power. Do people actually do that? Even today? It would be odd to have a string of teeth, but still, if it would make him look like a person not to mess with, he’d be down for it.

Well. Actually. On second thought. Those are technically human teeth, no matter how much he thinks of the zombies as monsters with no humanity attached to them whatsoever, and that would be weird. So no. He wouldn’t be down.

He shakes his head again to untether himself from the random refuge of his own mind. Focus, Lance.

“Who did this?” Pidge wonders, glancing in the warehouse, her head poking even further through the entrance. The area is well-lit, furnished with a multitude of gas lamps and candles placed on the ground, illuminating the eight cages that are filled to the brim with the undead, the firelight bouncing off of their unfocused, glassy eyes. The farthest wall directly across from the entrance is packed with old-fashioned wooden tables, cabinets, chairs, all of them crammed with enormous glass jars that emit a strange purple glow, almost ethereal in nature.

But the thing that first catches Lance’s eye among all of the odd sights is the enormous structure in the middle that glows with a purple-black sheen, painted immaculately, covered with all kinds of symbols and nozzles that bow to something similar to an eccentric microscope in the center, surrounded with stove-like circular tops. And as if the piece of technology wasn’t weird enough on its own, a dilapidated cot bed stands beside it, a silent, sturdy body strapped to the frame with what looks like ripped-off seat belts.

Keith screams something. His voice cracks. It’s a name, Lance knows, but none that he’s heard before.

“Shiro!” He runs forward, past the grasping hands of the dead through the cages, past the machinery, a blur of excitement and emotion and something else that Lance doesn’t understand, but sees all the same. He scrambles forward to follow him, followed by Hunk and Pidge, stopping at the edge of the cot to finally see the man. A new-looking scar is stretched across the bridge his nose, a puff of white hair drifting onto his forehead, and as Lance trails his eyes down him he notices the tattered, ruined clothing, the deep wounds, the purple bruises -

And the missing arm. That too.

“Shiro! Wake up!” Keith yells, grasping Shiro’s jaw, slapping his face. His face is pinched, his eyes watering, his teeth gritted as he gazes down at the place where his arm once was, where it should still be. “Who the hell did this to you? Wake up!”

Shiro’s eyes squeeze. He lets out a weak cough, but the sign of life is enough for Keith, who grasps his shoulders with an iron grip.

“Keith, who is he?” Lance asks, his voice colored in shades of worry.

Keith doesn’t listen. Shiro’s eyes are opening.

“K-“ He starts, but the syllable ends in a gag reflex, and then a choke, before he tries again, wheezing thin breaths through his chest. “Keith.”

“Shiro!” Keith shouts, his voice slamming through the air, causing the zombies to hop in their cages in stimulation. “I thought you were dead! What are you doing here? Who took your arm?”

“Keith,” Shiro starts again, licking his dry lips, his eyes fluttering closed. “Go.”

“Are you serious?“

“Leave!” Shiro shouts - or his voice hits as close to a shout as he can in his current state, at least.

“Who’s-“

And then it all happens at once.

The door opens behind their backs with a creak that only wood can make, bending on its hinges. Something smacks into the back of Lance’s leg, hot and steaming and surprisingly comforting, unlike the solid floor that his skinned knees slam into at the last second. His chest is down, his cheek is pressing against the floor, impossibly squished, and he would probably think it’s uncomfortable if he weren’t too busy passing out, swimming into a vat of nothing at all.

#klance #keith #lance #voltron #vld #keith x lance

1 note · View note

writerly-owl-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Undead: Chapter Two

Chapter One

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

On AO3

CHAPTER TWO

Keith still isn’t really sure about this guy, if he’s honest with himself.

It isn’t what he says - although what he does say is animated, his face twisting every which way, his hands flapping in the air, his blue eyes flashing deeper than the sky, glinting with clouds. It’s the fact that his hand is on that gun every damn second of the day, even when he was curled up on his backpack last night, his face squished into it as if it were a pillow, his hand twitching on the ground whilst laid atop the pistol, an old, chunky device that looked like it had teleported straight from the 60’s, if not earlier than that.

Thank god for that safety setting. Keith would be having a heart attack without it, even more than the average undead give him.

Sometimes Keith doesn’t even know why he’s so afraid. If he were to go, pitched facedown in the ground, two zombies brawling over his intestines while another hacks off his ear, there would be nobody to miss him. Nobody to bury him, to mutter words of meaning above his grave.

Except for -

No.

He’s gone. He’s never coming back.

Keith shoves his chin into his collarbone, glaring down at the dilapidated road in thought, his feet tracing the dull yellow lines that once guided the flow of cars on this pathetic two-lane highway. It had probably been flooded with semis and cross-country travelers, their belongings stuffed in the trunks of their car, like the time he drove to Texas with his dad to visit family when he was small. The memories are hazy, stained with accents and wrinkled smiles of aunts and uncles, the excited grins of youth, scaling trees, scabs on knees, but he cherishes them all the same.

Or maybe the traffic had been scattered, the way it is now - cars pulled over on the side of the road, rusted over and marked with the claws of nature and time, or simply stopped in the middle, doors still open, keys still jammed in the ignition.

Like the blue Camry parked right in front of them, the car door sticking out like a friendly wave, the paint mauled and scratched, scattered with bird shit and handprints and glops of substances that Keith can’t identify, although it kind of looks like his father’s homemade chili mushed up with an angry fist and sprawled on the ground, on the car, next to a -

Oh.

Thankfully, the body is facedown, flies burrowed into the skin, digging tunnels into the open sores and wounds, but Lance stops immediately, swiftly flicking off the safety like his life depends on it.

“Is it moving?” he whispers, dramatically louder than any typical run-of-the-mill whisper, and for the thirtieth time that day, Keith wonders if Lance was once in the thespian society.

“I don’t know! Shh!” Keith hisses, his voice almost raw from scraping out its first few words within the past few hours. Lance had tried to talk to him, sure, but Keith’s head is chock full of wooden walls and conspiracy theories, not other faces and other words, not counting him muttering to himself, walking about the small cabin in the twilight. As it turns out, his mouth doesn’t quite know how to word what he wants it to word. Like it’s forgotten. Dropped Keith completely. See ya.

Lance steps forward, his teeth gritted, his mouth stretched open to reveal the teeth that are slotted together, nostrils flared, and the whole scene is so over the top that Keith would almost find it amusing if he weren’t doing something so stupid. Like tapping the edge of his ratty boot to the corpse’s arm, kicking it, before scattering backwards.

“You idiot! What are you doing?” Keith yells, his voice ripping out a crack as if he’s twelve again.

“Seeing if it’s faking it! Like a opossum!” Lance yelps, his gun pointed straight toward the body’s head, eyes narrowed.

“Just leave it alone!” Keith sighs, throwing his hands up in the air. “You keep an eye on it, I’ll check the car out.”

“So you admit it is dangerous!“

“Just.” Keith breathes a heavy sigh through his nose as he slides into the lava-hot leather seat of the car, his eyes widening. The tank is half full, the point resting halfway between the two extremes.

“Lance!” he yells, voice leaping with excitement, but Lance responds with a scream, one that isn’t quite as jubilant as he would expect.

“What’s-“ Keith starts, swinging his legs out of the car, but his blood runs ice cold as he pokes his head out of the safe shell of the car, only to see Lance’s body backed by the side of a red semi, his shirt wiping the dust and grime off of it like a rag as the dead body slams him against the hard surface. Lance struggles in its grip, squirming like a fish out of water, but he can’t quite move, the mutilated fingers pinning his arms in place, locking his body into something rigid, throwing away the key.

Bang. The gun goes off, but the bullet ricoches off of the dilapidated road, harmlessly taking out a chunk of ground.

“Keith!” Lance screeches, his voice several notches higher than usual, squeaking with tension. He fiercely sucks his cheeks in, banging his forehead against the zombie’s like a tried-and-true street fighter, but the thing doesn’t so much as move, leering forward, its crooked, rotted teeth darting forward toward Lance’s neck.

“No!” And at first Keith doesn’t even realize he’s saying it, his throat on fire, until he’s rushing forward, his rusty blade pointed in front, burying into the thing’s ribs, carving through flesh, guts, organs that once pushed blood and nutrients but now rot uselessly. The zombie stumbles into a messy back-step, hacking blood, and the stuff erupts onto Lance’s chest, staining his jacket, dashing across his face like freckles.

“Get it’s head!” Keith yells hysterically, his blade aimed for the zombie’s neck. The being snarls at him, one of its eyes morbidly sliding halfway down its cheek, and it stumbles for him, muscles still well-defined even after its unfortunate demise, one of its arms reaching to grasp his and the other knocking his sword out of his arm with surprising force. The two slam into the road, Keith’s head smacking against the gravel, and he gasps in a rattling breath, eyes squeezed shut, his mouth opening in a painful noise of exertion.

Its rotting smell enters his nose, causing him to him choke, and the fingers press against his bare skin, rotted and chafed, and Keith gags, desperately kicking his legs, wrenching his shoulders back and forth, every bit of him bucking and struggling and -

Bang.

The body collapses on top of him, limp and rancid, and Keith feels familiar panic rising in him like a tsunami at its smothering weight, at its dead skin pressed against his cheek, at the blood pouring from it like a steady river.

“Hold on!” The voice is faint, from some above place that Keith can’t quite fathom, but he can suddenly breathe clearly, the body rolled off of him, and the bright sun is on his skin again, almost cleansing. He never thought he’d miss the smothering heat so much, but given that he almost wasn’t about to feel the sun on him at all for the rest of eternity, he found himself craving it.

A hand wraps around his, warm and comforting.

“Keith? You okay?” Clothing rustles as the person bends down to his knees, placing a single hand on Keith’s cheek, but Keith feels as if he’s falling, falling, melting through the road to another place, one full of -

“Hey!” The hand strikes him as quick as a snake’s bite, hard, stinging, and Keith jerks back to life, his chest lifting off of the ground in a swell of restless energy. Lance falls back at the sudden movement, but his face breaks into a relieved smile, beaming like the merciless sun.

“Keith!” he pants, scuttling back on all fours like a crab to give him some breathing room. “Are you…okay?”

“Fine,” Keith wheezes out, kneading at his temples. A headache has settled into his brain, pressing at its sides as if his brain is fixing to escape, to melt out through his ears. “I just…”

“It’s okay,” Lance says, his voice sincere, his eyes darting all about the road, searching for any more of the beasts. “Can you believe how strong it was?”

“No, I really can’t,” Keith responds, his voice faint. He’d come close, so close to -

“Hey. Keith. You’re okay.” Lance’s eyes bore into his, smooth as the ocean, dappled with the crests of its waves.

“I know,” Keith shoots back, a sudden wave of embarrassment surging through his body, pushing him to his feet after he swipes his nearby weapon from the ground. His sword is heavy in his hands, almost scraping against the ground, and his eyes scan across it, studying the old splatters of drying, mucky blood, the destruction it’s left in his wake.

All those zombies gone by his hand. All those days he’d walked alone.

And yet, through it all, he’d never been this wired, this tired, not knowing what to expect next. And he’d never seen one that unbearably strong, with a grip even more sure than a living human’s.

“Something was wrong with that thing. It was way too powerful,” he says, uneasily gazing at what remains of it on the ground, gazing at the brownish blood swimming in its wake, as if somebody had mixed beer with red food dye and splattered it into the dead’s hair.

“I know,” Lance responds, and despite his sharp grin of victory, Keith hears the tremble of his voice. Sees that silvery gun of his reflect the sun as it moves erratically under his uncertain, shaking hands, one of his fingers refusing to flick the safety on this time. “What’s…”

“I don’t know. But we have to keep moving,” Keith says, his voice gaining strength as he begins to march toward the car like he’s on a sacred mission given to him from God himself. “This car still has half a tank, so we’ll see how far it can go.”

His hand seizes on to the door of the car, and he hisses a breath as his fingers touch the steaming exterior, but Lance isn’t following. His voice rings from behind Keith’s back, low and uncertain.

“Keith.”

Keith turns on his heel, his shoes rumbling against the gravel, and Lance simply stands. Seeming small. His face drawn in, his shoulders hunched.

“Where are we even going?” he asks, his face flickering with hope. As if Keith has the answers.

“I guess we’ll know when we get there,” Keith responds, his voice hard and firm. “C’mon. Get in the car.”

And Lance waits for a moment, loitering in the middle of the road, but one last, fleeting at the body on the ground sends him trotting toward the car, his eyes lighting in mischief anew. Keith can practically feel the clever comments about to pour from his mouth, like he has a sixth sense predicting it. Maybe he does. In a land filled with corpses walking around like they own the place, nothing surprises Keith anymore.

“I call shotgun!” Lance cries, his ripped leather boots unearthing gravel from the old, half-abandoned road, and he scrambles into the car before Keith can so much as blink, shrieking at the apocalyptic, dooming heat that spreads across his skin inside of the vehicle.

“That’s what you get,” Keith halfheartedly calls at him as he eases himself into the driver’s seat, feeling the sweat roll down his skin like raindrops on a window.

“Better to get it all over with at once,” Lance laughs, and his voice sounds thin, slightly forced, but Keith allows himself to bask in its silliness anyways, diving headfirst into the new churning waters that he calls Lance.

He opens his mouth to snap something back, but nothing pops out of his mouth, so he snaps it shut and locks the doors, turning on the ignition.

Meanwhile, Lance’s speech rattles on like gunfire, sending sprays of comments into Keith in a way reminiscent of an automatic weapon.

“Do you think we’ll ever taste anything good ever again?” he says, his voice aching with remorse. “Like…Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Man, those were amazing.”

“I’m allergic to peanuts,” Keith dryly responds, swerving to avoid a truck parked in the middle of the road, and Lance lets out a swell of laughter, his chest bending over, his head firmly perched against the dashboard.

“What?” Keith defensively responds, his fingers curling around the driver’s wheel. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing, it’s just…so…” Lance wheezes. “It’s so Keith.”

“You’ve barely known me for a day,” Keith complains, but the corners of his mouth twitch despite himself in a way that feels foreign, but good. Undeniably good.

And then Lance talks about Milky Way Bars, and then the Milky Way itself, and his dreams of space, being an astronaut, how his family encouraged him, and -

His family.

His abuela’s hugs, his mother’s fierce kindness, his sister’s sarcasm, his little brother’s joy. The way they fought, but got along in the end, when it was all said and done. Everything he’d ever learned from them - how to laugh, how to cry.

And after a small while he’s on the verge of tears, his eyes shining, glimmering, his face crumpling, and Keith has never had a family, but he recognizes this feeling. The sharp pain of losing people close to you. Knowing that you would never see their familiar smile, feel their touch ever again.

And he wants to say something, but he has no idea how to start. Damn his traitorous mouth.

Eventually Lance picks himself back up. Dries his eyes. Carries on about something else.

But Keith’s mind is whirling, forming sentences, destroying them just as quickly.

What to say?

What to do?

What do -

“Keith!” Lance’s voice leaps up, tinged with panic. “Break!”

Keith’s foot slams into the break, the tires skidding miserably across the road, and not a moment too soon.

“Whoaaaaah!” The front of the car lightly taps the stomach of a boy the size of a solid boulder as it slows, Keith beholding two thick hands hands thrown across a face, two equally broad shoulders hunched.

“Pidge! I’m gonna get run over! Pidge!” he yells, cringing even more.

“Open your eyes, Hunk!” another voice rings out, exasperated. Hunk trembles. Shifts his fingers apart, one eye staring directly into Keith’s.

“We’re alive!” he yelps, whirling around to pluck up a person much smaller than himself, smashing her in a solid hug.

“Put me down! You’re choking me!” the girl yelps, pounding against his chest, and Hunk quickly places her back on the road, backing away a few steps.

“Right. Yeah. Sorry. I just got really excited there for a second,” he says, his eyes leaping toward the passenger seat. They widen. His square jaw drops.

“Lance!” he exclaims, and Keith whips his head to the right, but Lance has already thrown himself out of the car and careened into Hunk’s arms, laughs that sound close to sobs racking his chest as Hunk swings him in a fluid, graceful circle befitting for a dancer.

“I thought you were dead!” Hunk cries, his voice choked, and Lance throws his head back to let loose a bellowing laugh.

“Me? Nah,” Lance says, stepping back and stylishly crossing his arms. “It takes more than a few dead people to kill me.”

“I told you he’d be fine, Hunk,” Pidge cuts in, her voice smug, and Lance scoops her up into a light hug, beaming.

“You cut your hair, Pidge!” he says, poking the top of it. Her light brown hair flies every which way in a spiky, curly mess, shorn unevenly with kitchen scissors.

“Yeah, I had to. The zombies kept grabbing on to it as I was running,” she states, her voice tinged with sadness. Lance grins a smile made of sharp glass and cockiness as he shoots a look at Keith, who’s finally clambered out of the car.

“You hear that, Keith? Better chop your mullet off before the deadies get to it,” he cackles, lightly tugging at one of Keith’s bangs, looping his finger around a thick strand.

“I’ve never had a problem,” Keith smoothly responds, batting Lance’s hand away from his hair. “Who are these guys?”

“We went to school together, back when…you know. School was still a thing. Guys, this is Keith,” Lance says, stepping aside, his arms drawn wide as if to present Keith as a newfound anomaly.

“Hey, man. I’m Hunk,” Hunk says, waving, but Pidge steps forward, professionally sticking out a small, slender hand.

“And I’m Katie, but you can call me Pidge,” she introduces herself, grinning amiably as Keith awkwardly shakes her hand. She has the grip of a lawyer, or a doctor - the surefire handling of a genius that knows they’re a genius and won’t let anybody forget it.

“How did you guys get here?” Lance asks, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen anybody for ages, until I ran into Keith.”

“We just sort of…followed the areas where there were less of them,” Hunk explains, shrugging. “We ended up cutting through those woods, onto the road. Thought we’d figure out where it goes.”

“But why aren’t they here?” Keith presses, blood picking up in his veins. “I’m telling you guys, this is weird.”

“Who cares? Maybe we just got lucky,” Lance says, shrugging.

“But there’s no survivors like us, either,” Pidge pipes up, locking eyes with Keith. “You’d think they’d find their way here, just like we did.”

“Either way, guys, we have nothing to do but go back down this road,” Lance argues, jerking a thumb back toward the car. “Plus, we got a sweet ride. Half a tank, baby.”

“Quarter of a tank,” Keith pipes up, but his words are lost to the wind and the slew of conversation that erupts at the news.

“Oh, nice!” Hunk says, sagging in relief. “Man, my feet have been aching.”

“A car would be nice,” Pidge slowly admits, chewing on her bottom lip. “You have enough space?”

“Holy crow, of course we do! C’mon, let’s pile in,” Lance cries. “I’ll drive.”

“No no no, you are not driving,” Hunk interrupts, waving his hands in the air. “I’ve been in the car with you before, and lemme tell you, I did not have a good time.”

“Ditto,” Pidge admits, and Lance’s jaw drops, indignance scrawled across his face.

“Heresy!” he protests, but Hunk darts forward, his hand outstretched for the car door. Lance flies at him, arms wrapping around his waist, but Hunk flings his skinny body off within half a second, slamming the door shut, wedging himself between the wheel and the seat.

“Jeez, Keith, you have the seat so close up,” Hunk grumbles, his voice muffled by the car door as he adjusts it to his liking.

“Not all of us have long legs like you, Hunk,” Lance sings, sitting himself back in shotgun, but Hunk’s eyes pass skeptically over Keith’s legs, mouth dipping into a frown.

“Keith’s legs are longer than mine,” he argues as Keith perches down in the back seat, but Lance only rolls his eyes.

“Okay, okay, point taken. Show us your impeccable driving skills, buddy,” he says, slapping Hunk on the shoulder.

“Will do.”

#keith #lance #klance #voltron #vld #keith x lance #fic #klance fanfiction

1 note · View note

writerly-owl-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Undead: Chapter One

Summary: It’s been a year since the unexplained rising of the dead and mass infection of the millions, but Lance is managing to survive. He even thinks he’s doing pretty damn well, as fighting for your life goes, until he meets Keith - the boy with the sword and quiet words and constant plan. Mix in Hunk and Pidge, and they’ve got a solid team of four and a solid method of survival, but when they stumble into a hostage, an experimental, mad genius, and the odd truth, keeping some semblance of a nice, unconfrontational life may not be as easy as they had originally thought.

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

On AO3

CHAPTER ONE

Lance had gotten so used to the groans and moans of the undead that an actual, real life scream startles him more than anything.

He jumps in place a bit, broken glass crunching beneath his worn-out boots, and gingerly steps to the side to avoid getting properly speared via the wide gap in his shoe that spans from his callused toes to the middle of his foot. He isn’t having a repeat of the car window incident the other day, that’s for sure. He refuses.

“Oh, god,” Lance mutters with his mouth full, his eyes rolling of their own accord. His hand clenches into a fist at his side, the muffin wrapper noisily crumpling between his fingers.

Of course, a cry for help had to come around when he had a blueberry muffin half-stuffed into his mouth for the first time in what seems like years. His eyes close, his throat humming an old tune that he can’t quite remember the origin of, his tongue swirling around the bits of gloriously sugary yet admittedly stale muffin. Lance isn’t complaining about it, though. Not at all. Honestly, he’s had much worse, like the raw fish he’d somehow managed to catch a few weeks ago, his feet plunged into the muddy water, his hands attempting to grasp it by the tail or the middle. The fish was like a bar of soap in the way it struggled to escape from his damp fingers - a bar of soap that bites, leaving him a nice scab for his troubles.

So, given the risk of eating raw local wildlife in a land filled with the diseased undead, he’d been thrilled to see a prize for his troubles few days later while walking down the interstate with the sun beating on his back - a perfectly wrapped, dainty granola bar, sitting there in its tantalizing way on a piping-hot leather seat in the back of a car. Nice and shiny, its silver wrapping fiercely reflecting the sun. Undisturbed. Perfect.

Yes, the glass of the car window had stuck into Lance’s elbow - he couldn’t find anything else better to ram the window with. Yes, he’d spent a good thirty minutes afterwards picking it out by the car after he’d claimed his meal, hissing curses underneath his breath. And yes, once he’d stepped forward, patting himself on the back for a job well done, he’d stepped on a particularly nasty shard that found itself lodged in his foot.

No, he was not happy about it. So really, all fish and granola bars considered, the muffin was a steal.

“Hold on, m’comin,” he mutters to himself after he stuffs the rest of the pastry into his mouth, his hand reaching for the old-fashioned pistol that he’d swiped from a raid on what seemed to be an old woman’s house, judging from the doilies and the dolls. She’d had plenty of ammo, too, which made Lance question her hobbies, but whatever hobbies they were, he hopes she’s having a grand old time doing them in the afterlife. Or wherever she is.

Whatever. He doesn’t care. But he does care about the yell that rings out again, right from beside the gas station in a separate building that houses an old run-down car wash.

“I’m coming! Jeez, stop yelling!” he says again, louder this time. Lance quickly checks the ammo - five more rounds, wonderful - and he has to ram his shoulder into the rusted-out door in desperate need of WD-40 to burst it open, curving a hard left toward the Soap n’ Suds.

He vaguely remembers Soap n’ Suds from when he was very small, just a tot in a car seat, and and absolutely, mortifyingly terrified of car washes. Nothing struck fear into the heart of young Lance like the smiling red cartoon car looming outside of his window, telling of the horrors of strange tornado-like wipers that were looming just around the corner.

Nothing strikes fear into Lance’s heart like the rotting stench of walking corpses, either, which blasts into him like an unwelcome sauna of smell the moment he enters the car wash through the back end instead of the front. Call him a rebel. Bad to the bone.

Also call him a scared soul that screeches as a teen his age just about backs into him, his muscles straining as he hefts up an old-fashioned, rusting sword and swipes it toward one of the many zombies that stutter toward him on uncertain feet. One of them is nothing but half of a formerly full person, both of its eyes completely missing, but thankfully nowhere around, dragging itself forward by its surprisingly muscular arms, scrabbling at the boy’s ankles. The boy grunts, delivering a swift kick to the zombie’s head, but another zombie has just about caught up to him, its hand scattered with bloody hangnails, open flaps of flesh that ooze out purple and yellow and all the colors Lance would rather a wound not be, frankly.

“Get it!” Lance screeches, taking deep breaths to calm himself into the Sharpshooting Zone - a certain state of mind that he indulges himself in, whenever the situation calls for it.

Step back. Take a breath. Aim for the head. Shoot.

His finger slams against the trigger without a second thought.

His bullet smashes into the crawling zombie’s brain while the other teen sticks his sword clean through the neck of the other, grimacing as it crashes to its knees, gore and gut spilling from the cut. He plants a foot on its chest for leverage and yanks the blade out, looking toward Lance with wide eyes, and in that moment, Lance can only think one thing, zombies be damned.

“Is that a mullet?” he asks in bewilderment, pointing toward the other’s hair that curls ever so slightly at the nape of his neck. The other frowns, his self-consciously hand raising to his hair, but his eyes widen as Lance abruptly swings the front of his pistol toward his head, eyes narrowing, breath bated.

“Don’t move,” Lance mutters, gritting his teeth. The other freezes. Lifts his hands in surrender.

The pistol goes off, steadied by Lance’s hand, and something whizzes past the other’s ear, sharp as a whistle. A groan scooped from the pits of something’s belly wheezes into the air. Slick, hot blood pools against the back of his legs, spreads on the ground like a messy art project, minus the glitter. Glitter would be nice. Maybe a bit morbid, given the circumstances, but nice.

The other boy quickly takes a few steps forward, twisting around to glance at the fallen zombie for a moment or two, before locking eyes with Lance.

And oh. Lance has never seen eyes like that.

Or a mullet like that.

“Seriously, man, a mullet?” Lance says again, clicking the safety on his pistol, pressing a hand to his belly as he begins to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

“Hey!” the other groans at him, chin tilted up. “I love my mullet.”

“Good. At least someone does.” Lance cracks up at his own joke, flashing a smile at the pinched look on the other’s face. “You deserve to be teased after ruining my muffin moment.”

“Your…” The other trails off, eyebrows knitted together.

“My muffin moment. Yes. It’s hard to find food, y’know,” Lance says defensively, shoving the pistol into his oversized pocket attached to his oversized pants that barely hang on to his hips, their saving grace an old brown belt. “If you’re looking for some, it’s in that gas station over there.”

“Oh. Thanks.” The other pauses for a moment, pursing his lips, before his eyes flick back up toward Lance’s. “What’s your name?”

“Lance. Otherwise known as the man who just saved your life. You?”

“I’m sure I would’ve been just fine. And it’s Keith.”

“Nice.”

And the two stand in silence.

“Sooooo. Where’re you headed?” Lance awkwardly asks, shuffling a foot into the concrete.

“I…have no idea.”

“Cool. Same.”

More silence. Then -

“Safety in numbers.” It’s Keith, his eyes locked on Lance’s again. Purple? Blue? Lance doesn’t know, but he tries to search out every individual fleck of color, out of sheer curiosity, of course. Not because they’re pretty. Of course not. That would be ridiculous.

“Yeah. You wanna come with?” He pointed his thumb proudly to his chest, flashing a cheesy smile. “I’m the best sharpshooter on this side of the country!”

“Yeah, I saw,” Keith says, whirling his sword in his hands. “And I stab.”

“A sharpshooter and a stabber. What else does one need?” Lance jokes, beginning to stroll out of the small stall of rubber tornadoes and endless smiling car doodles. He doesn’t ask about the sword. He’s seen weirder weapons in this new world.

“That’s a good question,” Keith dryly notes, beginning to follow, and there’s no trace of a smile on his face. In fact, Keith hasn’t laughed at any of Lance’s jokes. Not a one.

Challenge accepted.

_______

One of the first thing Lance notes about Keith is that he isn’t a talker. Notably so.

This first occurs to him in the first few hours that they’re walking on the road, the dry, hot sun sending sweat pouring down their necks, pooling in the collars of their shirts, but besides the obvious, imminent heat stroke approaching, Keith still can’t seem to take that damn red jacket off.

“Aren’t you hot?” Lance pipes up a few miles down the road, his hand carefully rested on his pistol. Keith’s eyes flicker to his as if alarmed, or waking from a particularly intense dream. Or both.

“Uh. No.”

“Oh…well.” Lance chokes on his words, pulling down on the sleeves of his old green jacket that’s tied around his waist, marked with bold yellow rectangles on the side. He remembers when it wasn’t so tattered and faded, particularly in the house - draped over the wooden dinner table, hung up in him and his brother’s walk-in closet, in the corner of his eye during the occasional scuffles they’d get into over who was to wear it that day, or that week. It was rarely washed, always crusted over with the remains of beans they’d had for dinner, or a spot of sticky Coca-Cola, but when it was washed once in a blue moon it was as soft as a piece of prized felt, smelling of the old familiar detergent his family used. It was always the same brand, for as long as he can remember - it smelled of lilac and lavender, like clean, space-themed sheets and the hoodies he’d used to wear all the time.

He doubted he’d ever smell that ever again, given what’s happened. If they ever were blessed by the miracle of stumbling by a grocery store, he’d probably scan the cleaning aisles, searching for it. Just for a whiff of home.

Home. Safety. The opposite feeling that flashes through Keith’s eyes as they zero in on his arm, carefully scan over his trigger-happy fingers.

“Not for you, buddy. I thought I’d proved that earlier,” he says, pursing his lips.

“Yeah. It’s just. You can never be-”

“Too careful, yeah.” His sister had always said that. Her and her smart mouth, and her tough attitude that knew just when to be soft on him. Her and her sisterly advice to her clumsy, rambunctious younger brother.

Lance sniffs.

Keith whips his head toward him, an odd look plastered on his face, as if he were about to perform open-heart surgery on someone without even knowing how to ��do chest compressions.

The old Lance would joke. Flash him a set of finger guns, say some joke to throw the whole situation on its head, blowing the other person’s mind - obviously. When did he not blow anybody’s mind? Never, that’s when.

So the old Lance is still there. Obviously. Just dormant. Hiding, ever since his mother was the first to go. Afraid to let go, drown into itself, lose all the seriousness needed to survive.

But damn, if it didn’t burst out sometimes. Just…not now.

_____

During dinner, or during the meal in which what meager food they’ve both stacked up and traded is choked down as soon as humanly possible, Lance actually decides to try.

He had to admit that he was liking the current fire they had going - the land had a habit of turning from a summer-in-California kind of temperature to one of an indoor penguin exhibit the moment the sun dipped below the horizon, the kind that caused Lance to shrug his green jacket back on and lean towards the pocket of warmth, the leaping licks of orange and yellow. The two are closely surrounded by leafy greens in the untamed bits of vegetation on the side of the two-lane highway, just off the road sign that warns of deer and car crashes and things nobody has to worry about anymore.

“So you know how to make a fire, woodsy guy,” Lance says as they plop down on the ground, tearing into his beef jerky like a wild beast. He grimaces as soon as the unfortunate taste hits his tongue. Pepper jerky. He’d never been a fan of it, sure, but he’d be a fan of Spam itself if it meant he didn’t have to starve. “What were you, a boy scout?”

Keith doesn’t answer for a moment, and Lance thinks he’s not going to respond at all, before he does. “Nah. I used to live in the woods,” Keith muses, slipping those poor excuses for gloves off of his fingers, letting the flames flicker closer to his fingers than probably advised by Smoky the Bear. “I made a lot of them. It always came naturally.”

“You lived in the woods? Like, in a tent?” Lance hates camping. Poison ivy. Mosquitos. Which is a lot like the position he’s in, right this second.

Probably not a good time to mention that. Or think too hard about it.

“No, I lived in a cabin.”

“With your family?”

“Nope. Just me.” He says it so simply, without much emotion, and Lance can’t quite pick up on how he feels about that. Just a vagabond teen, living in the woods. No big deal.

Lance can’t imagine life without his family.

Well. Actually, he can, now.

“Oh. Did you like it?” Lance hesitantly asks, sipping loudly on one of the multiple water bottles that he has stuffed in his industrial-grade, probably atomic-bomb-proof backpack that he’s had since the 8th grade. He imagines himself like a Lance-shaped camel, hoarding his goods in the bag hump for a later day. Or a camel-shaped Lance? Either way, Keith speaks before he can delve into that particular topic.

“Sometimes.”

And that’s all Keith has to say about that.

The silence means that Lance can hear the fire peacefully crackling, a low, comforting noise that reminds him of home almost as much as lavender and lilac, taking him back to the fire pit they’d built in the back yard when he was six and had a hankering for some s’mores, a trait that never really left him. But it also means that he can hear the eerie whistling of the wind rusting through the trees as if disturbing them on purpose, cruelly tearing its leaves off and slamming them into the ground. One of them, an enormous, broad oak leaf, slaps Lance square in the forehead, pasting itself firmly to his face thanks to the wind, and Lance lets out an almost feral growl as he scrabbles at its edges, flinging it into the fire.

“Stupid leaf,” he mutters, scrubbing his hands all over his face to rid it of its itching, and Keith’s head is bowed, his bangs flopping over his forehead in an oily mess.

It takes Lance far too long to recognize the solitary shake of his shoulders, the crest of a grin glinting on his face for a blessed moment, before it disappears.

“Are you laughing at me?” Lance squawks, winding his arms together in a tight knot. “I’ll have you know, that leaf was brutal! I could have died!”

Of all the things that made Keith laugh, it had to be a leaf attacking Lance’s face. If that momentary scoff could be counted as a laugh, that is.

When Keith looks up, however, his expression is much more sober, his eyes glinting with something drained of all amusement and filled with wary, careful flickers of…something. Fear? Apprehension? Confusion?

“I wonder where they are,” he quietly says, his voice carrying along with the wind, but Lance manages to hear it.

“Who?”

“I mean, we haven’t seen many today. I wonder if they’re hiding.”

Oh. Them.

“Or maybe there aren’t many in this area. We’re kind of in the middle of nowhere, here,” Lance counters.

“It’s still not…right.” Keith’s face is pinched, even more than the regular, run of the mill Keith-pinch that Lance has begun to recognize in such a short time. His hands fiddle in his lap, turning something over, and over, and over, and Lance would ask, pry into it, if he wasn’t hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion. His little-sleep high had just crashed. Shit.

“Hey, I’m gonna get some sleep. Wake me up when it’s time for me to be sentry,” Lance murmurs, wincing as he shoves his backpack off his back and huddles onto it like a pillow. Only the pillow is filled with the uncomfortable edges and bumps of plastic water bottles.

Water bed. It’s a water bed. Sure.

And despite the screeching of the wind grating against his eardrums, and Keith’s constant poking at the fire, leaving the logs of wood rolling over each other, he somehow finds solitude, pulled down into an uneasy yet dreamless sleep.

#keith #lance #klance #vld #voltron #I first posted this on my side blog and then decided to just #post it on tumblr #haven't written fan fiction in a while here we go

0 notes