#h4rr3h

He’s been in stickier situations before, but he would really rather not piss his own pants while decapitating a zombie with his baseball bat. He hates to stop to do laundry.

There’s a gas station just up the road, Harry holding his bat in one hand at the ready as he walks toward it, ears intent on any kind of movement. Most of the time, he’s pretty good with not giving into such temptation—gas stations, especially this one in the middle of nowhere, are beacons amongst miles of nothingness. Harry has learned quickly to avoid places where people used to be unless absolutely necessary.

Because where there used to be people, there’s now zombies.

These days, you have to learn quickly if you want to stay alive.

Quinn has learned quickly, too, but that hasn’t stopped her from getting trapped in a gas station bathroom in Idaho.

There were three zombies (a former spelling bee state champion, a former pizza delivery boy, and a former mechanic, if you must know) clawing at the door to the bathroom for every one of the six hours she was there. With every squelching scratch against the door, Quinn feels her sanity slipping further and further away.

Her bag is lying on top of the front counter of the store, and there’s nothing, nothing, that she can improvise as a weapon. She’s come close to death several times before, but she’s at least hoped she’ll die of something cooler than dehydration in a locked bathroom.

Outside that same gas station bathroom in Idaho, Harry walks with his baseball bat held in one hand, just far enough away that he can’t hear the rhythmic tapping against the bathroom door. His head is darting in every direction, ears perked for any sign of shuffling footsteps or heavy breathing that indicates he has company.

Harry stops when he hears the first thump—that’s what he always does, stops. Most of the time, at this point, he would turn around. As much as he’s had to deal with zombies for the past few months, he’s more inclined to run than face confrontation.

Running is generally the better option—unless they’re really fresh, ‘fast’ isn’t a word that comes to mind to describe them. He knows this strategy is one of the reasons he’s still alive. But asides from needing to pee, Harry wants something sweet—he hasn’t had anything sweet in weeks.

It’s indulgences that get you killed, but it’s either go in or spend the rest of the day dreaming about the roll of Mentos that could have been. Harry doesn’t have room in his head for dreams.

A few steps farther and he finds the source of the groaning and thumping, giving the corner a wide berth, his bat raised and at the ready for anything that comes running at him.

And it’s good that he’s gotten into that stance, because the former mechanic picks up on the sound of glass crunching beneath his shoes, giving up its pawing to pursue the source of the sound that means snack.

For Harry, it means he won’t be taking on three at once. His stomach twists both at the prospect of being bit and the smell of decaying tissue. However, after a few moments of shuffling toward him and moaning, it’s within reach and Harry swings, putting everything he has into it.

Because the former mechanic isn’t very fresh, its head caves right in like a rotten pumpkin, bits of red-black blood spattering everywhere. After the body hits the ground, Harry swings the bat against the head once more for good measure. These days, if you want them to stay dead, you need to go for the head.

Next comes the former pizza delivery boy, part of its visor chewed off, probably at the same time most of its ear and neck were chewed off. It’s a little less rancid than the former mechanic, coming at Harry at a pace that is almost considered a jog, but he still has more than enough time to plant his feet, aim, and take a good crack at its head. It comes right off, small bits of flesh sailing after it, landing with a satisfying thunk against the pavement. At least Harry doesn’t have to worry about the double tap.

It’s good that he doesn’t, because former spelling bee champ is eager for him, a low shriek sounding, arms outstretched as it barrels toward Harry. He’s much easier to get to than the girl behind the door it’s been clawing at for the past several hours. But Harry has a bat.

When he sees the zombie teen coming at him, he may piss his pants a little at the sight of the jaw with little bits of skin dangling off of it, missing his first swing and staggering back a couple of paces. Teeth snap inches from his arm, teeth coated in a saliva that would begin the process of turning him into one of them as soon as they broke skin.

This is why he hates getting up close and personal. His mind screams for him to focus as he steps back, dirty hands clawing after him as he swings again. He hits the shoulder, but puts enough force into the swing that it goes sprawling down to the ground. Before it can get up Harry finishes it with two swings to the head, which is more the consistency of watermelon than rotten pumpkin.

For one second, all Harry can hear is the sound of his own shaky breathing, knuckles white with his grip on the bat, except where they’re spattered with blood. Interrupting his thoughts of ‘there better be some fucking Mentos in there’ is the quietest “Hello?”. It’s so quiet that Harry is sure he’s imagined it at first, a strange echo to the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

He hasn’t heard another human’s voice for two weeks, but he brings his bat back up anyway.

“Is anyone there?” Harry calls out, but not too loudly, lest any of them are left nearby.

Quinn is staggering to her feet in the bathroom stall, having heard the beginning and the end of the confrontation outside. She’s resting heavily on the wall for support, being a little dehydrated, her muscles aching from holding back the door for all those hours.

“Are they gone?” she rasps out, as loudly as she dares, leaning her head against the door.

She hears footsteps coming to the door, assured with each and every non-zombie sounding noise that this isn’t just some hallucination. “They’re gone—for now,” Harry says, closer now, Quinn frowning as she hears the accent of his voice.

When she heard the commotion outside, she couldn’t quite believe it, that she’s actually this lucky. Worst case scenario, she’s just gotten herself a nicer death—now that everyday is a struggle for survival, some people kill for less competition, but at least she won’t be torn limb from limb and won’t have to worry about coming back as one of them.

“I’m coming out now,” she says, just in case they have a gun and a twitchy trigger finger. Unfortunately, her gun is still in her bag, useless fifty feet away.

In fact, when she pops her head out of the bathroom and Harry lays eyes on her, he wonders if he’s hallucinating. Because not only are the chances of him rescuing her in a timely manner on this side of improbable, but finding a pretty girl who looked to be around his age in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? Those odds are fucking ridiculous.

Harry stands in front of her, curls held back by a dirty American flag bandana, blood dotting his cheeks where his dimples would be if he wasn’t scowling, baseball bat raised and ready to crack her head right open if she makes one wrong move.

Quinn is in a state of disbelief herself—she’s inadvertently been saved by only human with a fully functioning brain for miles. “Um, thanks for saving me,” she says, keeping her hands out at her sides as she slowly steps out of the bathroom.

Harry almost feels safe enough to lower the bat as he looks at the girl in front of him—she’s short, the gauntness to her cheeks and paleness of her face suggesting anything but strength. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know, but thanks. I—I don’t have any weapons on me, which was why I was trapped in there—you can put the bat down, you know,” she says, now fully out of the bathroom, the last of the alarm she has left in her sparked by his virulent gaze.

“How am I supposed to know—” Harry begins to growl in his best ‘don’t fuck with me’ voice, but it isn’t necessary.

In trying to step away from him, Quinn trips over her own two feet, stumbling down onto her hands and knees, because she’s dehydrated and strung out. It is very safe to say that she’s had a shit week.

Harry’s bat lowers an inch. “Are you okay?”

“Just thirsty—been trapped in there for a while,” she rasps, not making an attempt to get back up—she isn’t sure if she could get up if she wanted to, and Harry can see that.

“Stay there—I’ll see if there’s anything to drink in the gas station,” he says, staying well out of her reach as he navigates past her.

Quinn stays silent, saving her breath as Harry enters the station, bat at the ready in case there’s anyone inside.

If he wasn’t looking for water specifically, he would have noticed Quinn’s bag on the counter, but instead grabs one of the bottles that are scattered around the floor of the station, which hasn’t been completely cleaned out. At least there’s still some candy around, but he can come back for that.

Emerging from the gas station, Harry crouches down and rolls the bottle toward Quinn, his bat still in one hand.

“Why aren’t you coming near me?” Quinn asks, now sitting crossed legged on the pavement, nearly sending herself to the ground again as she lunges for the water bottle.

“I don’t know if you’re faking weakness,” and I don’t know if you’ve been bit.  

Harry has to wait a few moments for a response as Quinn takes a few small sips from the bottle, not chugging it like an amateur would, he notes.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a bit paranoid?” she asks, looking over at him, black hair hanging in front of her face.

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” He responds.

“I’ve been trapped in there for hours,” Quinn sighs, evidently too exhausted to even be intimidated by the tough act, “and you just saved me. I really am in no condition to be taking you out and running off with your stuff, alright?”

Harry can see that, but he always likes to be cautious. “Fine.”

There’s more silence between them, Harry leering down at the girl in front of him as she slowly sips at the water.

The spinning in Quinn’s head is getting slightly better, the more water she drinks.  

“So, what’s your name?” she asks.

Harry debates for a second whether or not to just walk away, go back into the station and grab all the candy (Mentos, to be specific) he can reasonably fit into his bag, and leave her to her own devices. He doesn’t have an obligation to stand there and chat—in fact, it isn’t a good idea to—he needs to find somewhere safe to spend the night, anxiety creeping upward with the sun creeping downward in the sky.

He likes being on his own. Names mean formality, getting to know you, some vague sense of obligation. He doesn’t need that weighing him down.

But he stays. “H.”

“Just because the world has practically come to an end doesn’t mean names with multiple syllables are blasphemy. We aren’t that short on time,” Quinn says from her place on the ground.

“Names aren’t that important, are they?” Harry says, crossing arms over his chest. Nobody’s ever questioned his one-letter response before.

“Is it Henry? Hector?” she asks again. Harry wonders if she’s still feeling woozy or if she tries to be this annoying most of the time.

Harry lets out a laugh that cuts off halfway, the sound unfamiliar to him—he doesn’t laugh, not after everything that’s happened. “What’s your name, then?”

“Q,” she responds, chin held up high.

Unfortunately for Quinn, there isn’t the same catalogue for Harry to guess from. “Quinn?” Harry guesses, and almost laughs again at the comic frown of her lips, dimple deep in his cheek.

“That isn’t fair.”

“Is anything, these days?” Harry asks, twirling his bat around, Quinn’s eyes immediately going to it.

She realizes that ‘H’ is still in a prime position to bash her head in, though he said he wouldn’t, Quinn struggles to get to her feet, stumbling slightly. “So, um, thanks for the water. I’m just going to go—” she moves a couple of steps back, nearly tripping over an old jug. Just because he’s gotten her her water doesn’t mean she can trust him. She’s weak and vulnerable, lower down on the food chain than he is.

Harry realizes this, too—she’s an easy kill for a half-rotten former grandma. Then, an awful thing happens—his conscience kicks in.

He tries to resist it, staying where he is as he watches her walk into the station, but then he sees the colour drain from her face as she walks out with her backpack (which is nearly as big as her). He takes a couple of steps toward her, but then stops when he sees how her hand twitches for the gun strapped to the side of her bag.

Maybe she isn’t as defenceless as she seems, but he knows as well as she does that you use a gun as a last resort. The sound is like a homing beacon for anything that can hear it, and finding ammunition is a pain, even in a country as fond of guns as America was.

“You haven’t been bitten, have you?” Harry asks her, because his conscience isn’t quite that strong that he’ll willingly take care of a girl who’d been bit.

Despite her small stature and general malaise, Quinn manages to sound threatening. “Do you think I’d be this cavalier if I’d been bit? Would I have thanked you for saving my life?”

She has a point, because if she was bit, there’s no life to save. “Er—no, sorry. Was just wondering. You don’t look so great,” Harry says, awkwardly tapping the end of his bat on the ground.

“I’m fine. I’m going to go now,” Quinn says, but as she moves too quickly in an attempt to make a dramatic exit, her feet stumble a few times. The dehydration must be bad if she’s so uncoordinated.

Quinn hears Harry’s footsteps coming from behind her, but this time she doesn’t reach for her gun, instead trying to push the dizziness out of her head, but it isn’t working.

“I was just about to find somewhere to spend the night—it’s getting late. I don’t know where you’re headed, but I don’t plan on going far,” he says, speaking like he would to a wounded animal, holding back an urge he hasn’t felt for a long time—the urge to put his hand on her shoulder, just to steady her. But Quinn stops and turns around on her own.

He doesn’t have to add ‘and you look like you need help’ onto the end of his sentence. That’s implied.

“How do I know you’re not just faking concern?” Quinn asks, twisting Harry’s earlier question back at him. She doesn’t want to be sceptical, that’s the thing—she can feel the ache of loneliness that weeks of solitude created beginning to ebb away just with a couple minutes of conversation.

“If I wanted to steal your shit or hurt you, I would’ve done it already.”

Quinn closes her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning. She knows it isn’t good that she isn’t thinking straight, that her limbs feel like jelly when there were so many of them around. She needs rest, but can’t rest in a place like this.

It’s take a chance trusting Harry, or take a chance facing them on her own.

Quinn takes her gun in her hand and lets her bag fall to the ground. Harry picks it up.

+++

They walk down the road in silence, Harry managing the two bags with ease and Quinn sipping on water and eating a Mars bar, gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans. Harry’s been munching on andMentos leaving wrappers in his wake. Humans won’t be around long enough to give a shit about the environment, anymore.

Harry still really has to piss. The zombies coming at him were enough of a distraction, but now that they’re on the road and his heartbeat has levelled, fields stretching out on either side of them, his bladder becomes a priority again.

After an hour of walking, when they reach the second house along the road (you never stop at the nearest house, that’s stupid), Harry suggests they check it out, even though it looks like a disaster. The windows are smashed to bits, which means they’re no good for keeping them out.

Really, what Harry wants is to be able to slip away to relieve himself without it seeming like the express purpose of them stopping is so he can pee.

“Wait here a second,” Harry says, dropping the bags in the driveway.

“Where’re you going?” Quinn asks through a mouthful of Mars bar.

Harry rolls his eyes out of sight of Quinn.

“I need to piss,” Harry explains. The words feel like a mundane custom—if living in post-civilization had made him realize anything, it’s how ridiculous most social customs were. He seriously enjoyed not having to excuse himself for every little thing. Being able to grow his hair out without getting shit for it was another perk.

“You have it so much easier than me, honestly.”

Is Quinn honestly trying to talk to him while he’s taking a piss?

He hopes that it was just a stray comment as he slips behind a bush and pulls down his fly, looking up at the sky and trying to forget that Quinn is so close nearby.

“It took me, like, weeks to get the hang of it without getting it all over my clothes. Unfortunately skirts are completely impractical—”

Harry suppresses a groan, trying to tune her out as he finally pisses against the hedge. He wonders if inviting Quinn along was the right thing. Of course, he’ll be kicking himself if wakes up tomorrow morning with all his shit gone, but she seems decent enough not to. He just hopes he’ll be the last one asleep and the first one awake.  

Coming out from behind the tree, Harry wipes his hand on his jeans. Quinn is sat on the ground between the bags in the driveway, and pops the last bite of Mars bar into her mouth.

“So, are you really not going to tell me your name? H sounds kind of stupid.”

Harry shakes his head, and reaches over to pick up his bag, not even bothering to inspect the ruined shack beside them. There was something endearing about the way she asked him, and he doesn’t want to get attached—can’t afford to.

+++

The third place they stop at Quinn would have settled for, but Harry doesn’t like how close to the road it is. She doesn’t complain, because they’re headed West, and she’s going in that direction anyway. Also, even though Quinn has to admit she’s feeling better, Harry is still carrying her bag, so she doesn’t have much to complain about. Asides from the near-brush with death earlier, this is the easiest day she’s had in weeks.

By the time they’ve reached the fourth farmhouse down the long, winding road, it’s getting dark. But they’ve gone far enough into the country that there are still cans left in the pantry, dirty dishes left in the sink as the former occupants of the house fled in a hurry.

“So, what do you think, dead or reanimated?” Quinn asks, pointing to the people in the pictures on the walls, frames covered with dust but their girths clearly visible.

“What?” Harry grumbles from his place by the hall table, where he’d just been flipping photographs facedown so he wouldn’t have to look at the faces.

“The people who used to live here—” Quinn starts, but Harry cuts her off with a shake of his head.

“I really don’t care, Quinn,” Harry snaps. If only Quinn knew he’d just been thinking how much nicer it was to walk into an abandoned house when you weren’t on your own. “Let’s go upstairs and put our bags down.”

At this point, with the amount of noise they’d been making, if there was anything capable of harming them it would’ve made itself known, so Quinn isn’t particularly anxious as they climb upstairs.

Harry isn’t talkative, just tells Quinn she can rest as he dumps the bags on the bed (dusty, but neatly made). He goes into each room upstairs—she hears him testing windows and shutting doors, returning occasionally with armfuls of blankets and any other objects he thinks could be useful.

When he starts affixing blankets to windows, Quinn gets up to help him. He’s making sure light can’t escape, so undead and any other humans who happen to pass won’t see it shining out like a beacon. Harry isn’t just getting by on his looks and brawn, Quinn sees—he’s smart. Quinn’s spent her nights in darkness, too afraid to risk candles most nights. But it has kept her alive.

It’s like Quinn can almost forget that a few hours ago she was pretty sure she was going to die, except when she flinches away from Harry like he’s hot metal as he tries to help her lift a blanket to a corner she can’t reach, his arm brushing by hers. Her mind isn’t what it usually is, slow to respond to his quickly mumbled ‘sorry’ as he moves away from her.

This isn’t normal Quinn, this is ‘I almost died today’ Quinn, and she has a feeling Harry can tell. He keeps his distance, avoids eye contact, lights candles in silence, brings them food. He doesn’t comment that Quinn still has the gun tucked into the waistband of her pants.  

Dinner is a can of cold tuna, a can of peas, and a chocolate bar each between them. A bedroom floor feast, really—there’s more cans, of course, but their stomachs can’t handle much more.

Quinn wants to ask questions, has a million and one itching behind her teeth, but she’s woozy, a separation between her head and her hands and her tongue. She settles for the scrape of metal fork on metal can instead of conversation. At least she isn’t alone, at least she isn’t dead, she tells herself over and over, because she doesn’t trust herself to speak.

After it gets dark and Harry blows the candle out, Quinn is suddenly awake, senses sharp again. Dark means danger, means she can’t see them coming. She’s always found it easier to sleep during the day, where at least she can see the half-decayed flesh looming over her if it does happen like that.

Another important point of note: when you get bit but not eaten alive, you’re still yourself for a while. In order for one to join the ranks of the undead, sleep or unconsciousness is a necessary ingredient. Before she’d gone to bed, using the precious batteries on her flashlight, Quinn had gone over every inch of her body in the bathroom, just to be sure she hadn’t been nipped.

But sleep isn’t as nice as it used to be. It doesn’t come as easy when you don’t feel safe, and Quinn feels this to her very core, pulling her farther away from sleep instead of towards it. She hears Harry shifting beside her.

“H? Are you still awake?”

There’s only a grumble from mattress on the floor.

The following conversation is had with Quinn lying on her back, staring straight at the ceiling, and Harry half exasperated, half resenting the sliver of endearment he feels at the interrogation. If his Mentos weren’t so precious to him, he’d throw some at her to try and get her to shut up.

“Are you really not going to tell me your name?”

“I don’t see the point.”

“How do you expect me to fall asleep in the same room as someone who’s name I don’t know?”

(They could have slept in separate rooms, sure, but the security found in numbers can’t be underestimated.)

“I’ve done it. It’s not that hard.”

“Well, I can’t.”

“Rough world these days, isn’t it?”   

“So… is your name Harvard?”

“No.”

“Is it a really weird name? Would I know it?”

“I am sure you know it.”

“Harold? Herschel?”

“Are you serious—?”

“Herman?”

“Am I a grandpa now, or something?”

“Henry?”

“That was your first guess.”

“No, my first guess was Harry—”

“It was Henry. Take it from the person who wasn’t nearly passing out.”

“Harrison? Hansel? Hunter? Heathcliff?”

“You’ve already said it.”

“I have?

“Yes, just now.”

“What—Harry?”

“Yeah. Can I go to sleep now?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Goodnight, Harry.”

“Goodnight, Quinn.”  

+++

When they wake up, still human, still alive, it’s raining. Another sign that summer is coming to an end, and that winter in Idaho is shit, so they need to get the fuck out of Idaho.

Quinn has no idea where she’s going, but Harry has a plan.

“Which way are you headed?” she asks, leaning over to where he’s looking at a map.

“West,” Harry murmurs, engrossed in his maps. Quinn wouldn’t have pinned him to be such a boy with a plan, but he had sheets and sheets laid out in front of him, pencil scribbles and calculations and everything. She has always been a more ‘follow the pack’ type.

“What’s West?” Quinn asks. She isn’t looking for background—they don’t need backgrounds. Background is personal. Harry couldn’t give less of a shit how Quinn got herself into the gas station bathroom in the first place. All that matters is he got her out.

“Canada. Or Washington State,” Harry explains.

Quinn wrinkles her nose, pointing out Canada on the map. “Canada? Why would you want to go to Canada?”

“So you’re one of those Americans who does know where Canada is on a map then?”

“Shut up,” she says, flicking his hand where it rests on the map. “Think I would’ve made it this far if I hadn’t been able to read a map?”

“Probably not,” he admits, shuffling through his papers, almost more intent on his task than he is on Quinn.

Quinn likes that he isn’t giving her a hard time for the incident at the gas station yesterday. It was a bad day for her, really.

“What’s this map?’ she asks, hand covering his as she spots a piece of paper buried underneath the rest, probably torn out of a book, multicoloured squares over a map of North America.

“A population map.”

“Oh, so you know which places to avoid?” Quinn asks, an easy enough conclusion to come to.

“Yeah—cities are a fucking nightmare, even small towns can be some trouble.”

“I know,” Quinn says, and from her tone leaves no room for argument. The last time she entered a small town with a group of people, she walked out alone.

“Yeah, so I’m headed that way,” Harry explains, tracing his finger along the map. He doesn’t see the harm in telling Quinn, she’s had plenty opportunity to steal from him or kill him, and she hasn’t.  

“Any destination in mind?”

Harry traces his finger along the coast. “An island.”  

Quinn can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of her. “You’re going to live on an island?”

“Yes.”

“Why an island?

“If it’s small enough, you could get rid of all of them. Have some peace,” he says, tongue wrapping around the words like an ache. It’s a split second of vulnerability that Quinn picks up on. She can’t help but relate to it.

Last night’s sleep with the knowledge that there were several sets of steady wooden doors and shuttered windows between them and the undead had been a luxury. Quinn can’t imagine how free it would feel, to roam outside and not have to look over her shoulder.

“And you’d go and hunt them down?”

“Yes, as you saw yesterday, I can handle a few of them,” he smirks.  

The requests bursts out of her before she can think about it. “Can I come?”

“What?” Harry looks at her, brow furrowed like she’d just asked him to help her repopulate the planet.

“Can I come?” she repeats, unfazed by his incredulousness.  

“You want to live on an island with me?”

With her wide eyes and steady smile, Quinn knows she’s an easy face to trust, and right now, staying with Harry is her best bet of surviving the winter. “Sure beats hiding in a gas station bathroom. Islands must get lonely, too.”

“I haven’t even known you for twenty four-hours,” Harry says, but with her last sentence something clicked into place.

Quinn watches patiently, sees the way his hands stops tracing across the page, eyes fixed in one place, pink lower lip becoming tucked underneath his teeth. The silence stretches on and on, but Quinn cradles her hope like a flame. Harry doesn’t have any reason to let her come along, but there must some some shreds of humanity left in him, she knows that already.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to marry me, I’m just asking to travel across two states and possibly across a border with you and then live with you for the winter, at least. I didn’t peg you as the commitment-phobic type, Harry,” Quinn says, bouncing up and down, yesterday’s terrors gone—you had to get over things quickly, and teaming up with Harry was the perfect distraction, the perfect way to get some semblance of security.

Harry figures he has nothing to lose when he says yes—he’s gaining a partner in this hellscape.

If only he knew.    

+++

After breakfast, Harry’s working on hot-wiring the car while Quinn goes around the house, looking for anything potentially useful. The car is a truly obnoxious colour of yellow, an old pickup that probably won’t be the quietest thing, but a car is better than no car.

If Harry manages to start it, Quinn has sworn that she’s going to give it a name.

He looks up from the mess of wires in his lap to see Quinn striding out of the house, a large axe in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

From the way she holds in axe, it’s like she was born with one in her hand.

Harry leans out of the car, watches as Quinn leans the axe against the house so she can hold the bat with two hands. “What’ve you got, there?” he asks.

Even with his eyes squinted against the rain, her smile is clearly visible. “I saw your handiwork with one of these bad boys, so I figured I’d pick one up for myself.”

+++

Quinn knows she made the right choice to go with Harry when she discovered he had the ability to hot-wire cars. A couple of times, she and whomever she was with had gotten lucky enough to find a pair of keys (usually in the pocket of an eviscerated body), but you can’t rely on cars. Gas runs out, roads are blocked.

This is the kind of travel she can get used to, their stuff not on their backs but in the back seat, windshield wipers keeping a steady rhythm as Harry weaves back and forth, more cars on the side of the road than Quinn can bother to count. Harry’s started his second roll of Mentos, and Quinn had a pack of Reese’s for breakfast.

Phil The Puttering Yellow Pickup is her new favourite thing. She was tempted to call him her new best friend, but she thinks that title might belong to Harry. But she’s still hesitant to call him a friend, even if she’s now going to be spending the foreseeable future with him.

A couple of times they see limping undead on the sides of the road, but Harry swerves out of the way. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to hit them, unless it’s your only way out. Quinn’s learned this from experience, and assumes Harry has, too.

Quinn was never a good kid to take in the car on the road trip. She fidgets. She is the one who asks ‘are we there yet?’ repeatedly until they stop or she is voraciously told to shut up.

She tries her best to be good for Harry, she really does. He’s being nice and letting her live out this island fantasy with him. But it’s rainy and it’s boring and Quinn actually had a half decent sleep last night so she doesn’t feel like napping.

First she checks the glove box, but someone’s cleaned that out, so that’s a non-starter. The pocket in the door as well. Quinn makes it to the centre console before Harry notices, eyes glancing over he way before focusing back on the road.

Next, Quinn reaches for the radio, hand already on the dial to turn down the noise of the inevitable static.

“What are you doing? The radio stations haven’t worked for months,” Harry says, as Quinn slowly turns the other dial, the static of the radio mixing with the rain outside.

Quinn shrugs. “You never know until you try.”

“There isn’t even an electricity for radio stations to run on.”

“I’ve heard there are some substations that are still running.”  

“You’re one of the people who believe in those urban legends, really?”

“Zombies were an urban legend once, weren’t they?”

That shuts Harry up pretty damn quickly, as he licks his lips and looks back out on the road. For a moment, Quinn is distracted by how pretty his jaw is, notes the spots of blood still staining his scarf. She wonders if they’re the stains from yesterday, or if bashing heads in is something he does on a regular basis. She did take a look at his handiwork yesterday—she was impressed, because it took a certain flick of the wrist to decapitate them like Harry had, especially the half-rotten ones.

She had to admit it’s kind of a long shot, since they are in the middle of nowhere, just on the edge of Washington state. They use lesser-known highways because all the interstates jammed when the virus first started spreading, but Quinn admits, she misses music.

She never lets herself think of specific nights or faces, but she does allow herself to remember how it felt to dance and get drunk, though remembering how carefree she felt is also painful.

She gasps so hard when she heard someone on the radio that Harry jerks the car to the side, he looks at Quinn so quickly.

“What?”

“Shh,” Quinn shushes him, turning the dial ever so slowly, leaning her ear toward the speaker. She watches as the numbers creep up the screen.

There’s a second of hissing, another second of hissing, and then a garbled mix. Harry’s about to tell Quinn to give up when music fills the car, loud and clear, followed immediately by Quinn’s laughter.

“No fucking way,” Harry remarks from his place in the front seat, shaking his head.

What Quinn definitely doesn’t miss is the dimple on his cheek.

“I told you,” she sing songs, leaning back in her chair.

It’s a country station. Of course, the world has come to an end, but one can still find a country music station on the radio while driving through the middle of nowhere.

Harry is of the persuasion that country music sucks, just like many others (or, rather, the many others there used to be) who seemed to have a certain vendetta against the genre. “This music is shit.”

“It sure is,” Quinn says, but she’s swaying her body to the beat.  

“Then why are you dancing?”

“Because it’s music. Do you know how damn long it’s been since I’ve listened to music?” she asks. She brings her arms up, looking at Harry and daring him to tell her to stop, to lash out like she thinks he might but is hoping he won’t.

They’ve barely been together for twenty-four hours, but there’s something about him which lets her hope. She likes him more than she should already.

Like she does many people (unknowingly most of the time and realizing when it’s too late) she breaks Harry. “You are right about that,” he says.

He doesn’t tell her to turn off the music, doesn’t complain when she tries to sing along with the final chorus of every song even if she’s never heard it before. It’s a peaceful morning, the most peaceful either of them have had in a while.

+++

Phil takes them to the Spokane River—they hadn’t actually gone through Spokane or Coeur d’Alene, had even gone the long way around Deer Park to try and avoid cars in the road. It turned a two-hour drive into a five hour one and there were several heated debates over maps and directions, but their affair with Phil was destined to be a brief one.

What faces them is a narrow, rickety bridge, just two lanes, a bit eerie in of itself, even if it weren’t for the blackened wreckage of cars that are mangled in the centre, making it passable only by foot.

The lack of aimlessness is a bit startling to Quinn—they aren’t working within a timeframe, but there’s a goal, a spark, more than just survival.

Quinn tries to look on the bright side—at least the rain has let up, so she and Harry at least won’t be getting soaked as they go back on foot again. Her feet have just begun to feel rested, but she knows there’s no point in complaining. The distance they’d covered in the car would have taken days upon days by foot.

The exposure settles in when they climb out of the car and throw their bags over their backs, sturdy shoes crunching on gravel. They can’t drive away from danger like they have for most of the day. Quinn checks that the gun is still strapped to the edge of her bag and slides out her baseball bat. Harry follows her lead.

Now that they’ve gotten used to the music playing in the car, the silence is unsettling. Knowing that at any moment someone could come wandering out of the woods and attempt to eat her alive is unsettling enough for Quinn, so she starts to talk.

“What this whole thing has made me realize is how much of the country I hadn’t seen before,” she comments, looking out over at the river and the valley beyond.

“America’s pretty nice, yeah,” Harry agrees, none too enthusiastically.

“It’s not I’m ever gonna go to Europe now, or anything, because who’s even alive over there—”  

The sharpness of what Harry says next isn’t entirely directed at Quinn, but the veracity of the bitterness causes her to wince. “Not my family, that’s who.”  

“What—oh shit.” Quinn momentarily considers throwing herself off a bridge, but she’s spent so much effort trying to survive, it really would be a waste. “I just stuck my foot in my mouth, didn’t I?”

“It’s fine, you’re right. England was so overpopulated that they didn’t stand a chance.”  

“Harry—”

He’s getting angry now, voice rising. “At least I don’t have false hope—”

This is getting messy. The last thing Quinn wants to do is think about her family.

“No, this isn’t going to do.” She stops, resting her bat against the ground.

“What isn’t going to do, Quinn?” he snarls, restlessly turning his bat between his hands.  

“We’re not going to talk about how things used to be, because that makes me sad and I’m going to end up crying. Do you want me to end up crying?”

Her arms are crossed over her chest and her eyes just wide enough to suggest that she could start putting on the waterworks at any second. Quinn isn’t particularly proud of this movie or this line, but it’s worked before and she just really hates talking about how things used to be. It hurts too much.

“Preferably not, thank you very much,” Harry sighs, turning back around, hoping he’s avoided the bullet of having to deal with a crying Quinn.  

“Great,” Quinn starts walking again. They’re nearly at the end of the bridge. “So let me tell you about otters. Because otters are really cute, and it’s better than thinking about anything else.”  

Harry can’t tell whether or not she’s being serious. “Alright, then?”

“Have you ever seen an otter, Harry?”  

“No, I haven’t.”  

Quinn jogs a couple of paces so she isn’t so far behind him, doesn’t have to raise her voice so Harry can hear her. “Well, maybe we’ll see one when we get to the island. They love living in coastal kelp forests, and there’s tons in the Pacific Northwest. Did you know they just have, like, their favourite rocks and they keep them just so they can get at their food? But they use their same rock every time. Like, I had my lucky—“ Quinn pauses for a moment, not wanting to get into the memory, “...so they just keep it with them and use it whenever…”  

An hour later, and Quinn has moved on to dolphins from otters, and she can’t remember the last time Harry has said a word. She has a bit of a tendency to talk and talk and talk and not let anyone get a word in edgewise, but she likes it much more than trudging along as it gets darker and she and Harry haven’t seen any kind of suitable shelter in hours. It’s better than being scared. It’s better than feeling the ache in her tailbone from her pack.

“I’m sorry, you probably want me to shut up now, don’t you? I’m surprised you haven’t whacked me in the head with your baseball bat, yet.” (Harry’s been carrying it by his side this entire time.) “I know I talk too much and you’re probably sick and tired of hearing my voice—“

Harry has to interrupt her, because Quinn’s still in soliloquy mode. “I’m not actually—”

“What?”

“I’m not sick of hearing your voice,” Harry persists, chewing his lip. There’s a pause, and if Quinn had been standing still, she would have waited, rising on her tip toes until he answered. “It’s—it’s nice to have someone else around to listen to, instead of talking to myself.”

“Oh, that’s—I didn’t think of that.” Quinn wonders if the flush of his cheeks is just the way the sunset light is hitting him

“Er, yeah. So what were you saying about—like, what was it, echolocation?”

“No, bats do the echolocation thing. In dolphins, it’s called biosonar…”

When they go to bed that night, Quinn comes to the startling conclusion: Harry hates to be alone.

+++

Three days after they left the car on the other side of the river, they haven’t been able to find another one, and both of them are showing some wear.

Quinn doesn’t talk as much as she used to, something Harry wishes he didn’t miss so much but he does. Even now, when Quinn speaks, it isn’t as bright and chipper.

They’re running out of food, they’re drinking water from creeks and just hoping it won’t make them sick. Things are looking grim for the two of the, fatigue slipping deep into their muscles and their heads, everything a bit foggy, a bit cloudy. If they do speak, they bicker, and neither of them has the energy for it.

They stopped early for the day, neither of them admitting it but feeling too weak to go on, and where decent houses were few and far between.

It smells like something has died in the bathroom, so Harry isn’t surprised when Quinn goes outside, probably to relieve herself.

When she rests the axe against her shoulder as she leaves, like one of Snow White’s dwarves, it’s with a little less pizazz than usual.

It’s one of the rare moments where the two of them aren’t together, and being alone feels strange to Harry as he sits, making the most of the fading light to do some reading. Quinn’s become almost like his shadow, albeit one made of sun and not shade.

Harry’s head is in his book when he hears his shadow scream outside. In an instant he stands up, tossing the book to his side and grabbing his baseball bat from where it was resting by the door.

His feet aren’t moving fast enough, no parts of him are moving fast enough as he runs out of the house, having to bite his tongue to stop himself from yelling Quinn’s name, in case more of them are nearby. The less noise they make, the better.

The smell hits him first, sets his stomach turning even more even as he sprints into danger. He doesn’t wonder where this heroic streak came from, this time knowing that a human life is at stake, not only that, but Quinn’s life is.

The next scream he hears is his name, just as he comes upon the scene.

There’s a former housewife laying on the ground, axe in her head, purple dress rucked up to her waist, revealing a spectacularly unpleasant sight underneath.

What grabs his attention, though, is Quinn, her bare hands all she has, around the neck of the former accountant on top of her. What’s left of his broken teeth are coming closer and closer to Quinn’s face, her arms shaking at the effort as his teeth click together and bits of rotting skin flake off onto her face.

His first instinct is to run to Quinn, but he forces himself to look around, to see if there’s any others, but as far as he can see, it’s just the one on top of Quinn.

The seconds it takes him to cross the yard feel like ages upon ages, Harry doesn’t think as he grasps the back of it’s shirt and pulls, fabric ripping, but it’s enough to get it off of Quinn.

It registers that she’s out of the way, and then Harry’s swinging, the first blow sinking into the cranium, a thick thud as the bat connects, and then again, the nose breaking clean off. Harry’s particularly pissed off at this one, so he swings one more time, and now what once was a head resembles a bloodied, warped, black and pink bowl. The stench is awful, too, Harry’s face screwed up in revulsion as he turns, bat still at the ready as he surveys the scene.

The bat is shaking slightly in his grip, his white shirt is dotted with blood and other unsavoury fluids once more, and there’s more blood splattered across his face. He hates this, when he’s relaxed and not expecting it, a normal day turned into half a nightmare that there’s no waking up from. If he’s going to have to go running into death, he’d rather know ahead of time.

Despite Quinn’s screams, no more have appeared—the two were probably strays. Harry and Quinn had seen some from a distance, walking around the past few days, and Quinn was unlucky enough to be caught off guard.

Unlike the last time Harry saved Quinn from certain death, this time she isn’t so composed. She’s covered in dirt, sweat, blood and pus, standing and shaking, staring at the two bodies on the ground, eyes wide and unseeing as they pull to Harry with his bat.

“Quinn, are you—“

Something snaps.

“They got me they got me they got me,” Quinn sobs, her hands running over her arms, making a frantic move to her waist, like she’s looking for an injury. “I’m bit, I’m bit, I’m—”

Harry’s heart sinks, stops—it had just been getting good this can’t happen, this isn’t fucking fair. He takes a couple of steps toward her, unsure of what to do or what to say. He’s allowed them to make the kill instead of pulling them off of someone so he doesn’t have to deal with the psychological and physical ruin of someone’s who’s been bit.

But as her hands keep wandering around her body, not resting anywhere for more than a second, Harry thinks it might be just the shock talking. He can’t see any blood or open wounds.

Either way, Quinn is, at the moment, harmless, and so Harry puts the bat down, goes toward her as she repeats her mantra. She’s sobbing, hands trembling over the front of her stomach, where the fly of her jeans is still unzipped.  

“They got me they got me they got me they got me.”

Harry takes one last look around them before dropping the bat so he has both hands free.

“Quinn stop,” he says, taking both her hands in his own. “Where is it?”

But Quinn is just shaking, shaking underneath his palms. Her hands are trying to move but Harry’s gripping her wrists, suddenly aware of just how easily his hands encircle them. She’s never seemed fragile to him, not even when she first walked out of the gas station bathroom, but she seems fragile now.

“Show me where it is, Quinn,” he says, a little more panicked now, but his eyes are searching—her neck, her arms, but there’s no red. Old brown blood and dirt speckled everywhere, but no red.

“They got me they got me they got me.”

Fuck, he can’t fucking see in the dimming light, can’t with deal her here. He grabs his bat and Quinn’s hand, leads her inside the house, making sure to lock the doors behind them.

At least she’s stopped muttering to herself, compliant as Harry sits her on the floor. He leaves her, just for a second to gather a flashlight, a bucket of water, and a cloth.

When he returns, he finds that Quinn’s retreated to a corner, but he doesn’t mind.

“Where is it?” he asks her again, but she doesn’t respond.

Harry wonders how much of a mess he would be if he knew that the next time he went to sleep he would wake up with the taste for human flesh.

“I’m gonna take your shirt off and check you out,” he says, because he’s seen doctors do that in shows before. He tries to not let his voice break, but it’s hard. Quinn’s held her own these past few days, hasn’t complained about sore feet or climbing up hills, didn’t bat an eye when Harry suggested they take care of a couple of stragglers that were following them.

Now she’s crumbling (possibly literally) right underneath his hands.

Holding the flashlight between his teeth, Harry dips the cloth in the freezing cold bucket of water, starts wiping away the grime that Quinn’s covered in. Her bra is black and threadbare, and it’s been a couple of months since he’s been with anyone, sure, but Harry doesn’t let her pale skin distract him as her looks over her arms, one of the most likely places she would have been bit.

But he wipes the cloth over her right arm, then her left, and finds nothing but smooth, unbroken skin, long-faded scars, nothing to suggest she’s going to be waking up tomorrow with a craving for his brain.

Harry has become excellent at quashing his own hope. He keeps it quashed as his hands run down down her jeans—the material isn’t ripped—to her ankles. His hands are so large compared to her delicate ankle that it takes a second of feeling nothing but smooth skin before he lets the hope uncoil and flare.

“You’re fine, Quinn, you’re fine. You haven’t been bit, you’re gonna wake up still Quinn,” Harry says, resting his hands on her shoulders, still crouched in front of her. Quinn doesn’t really pay attention until the last sentence.

“What?”

“Do you feel like you’ve been bit anywhere? I can’t find anything,” Harry says, trying to see if her eyes are focusing on him.

She closes her eyes, but at least her breaths are steady. “No—I—I—”

The ‘no’ is all he needs to gather her into his arms and pull her close, palm running over unbroken skin. This much human contact is weird and foreign and her hair still smells like dirt and sickly stench, but Harry holds onto her and she holds onto him just as tightly.

+++

Harry sits splayed out on the bed which Quinn insisted they push into a corner. He has a warm beer, the warmest one he’s had since he was sixteen and nicking them from the garage, but it’s also the first beer he’s had in months, and therefore it is delicious and refreshing.

The windows are blacked out, but they’re up in the large attic in the home of a former candle aficionado with a partially intact pantry. Tonight, there’s no need to ration or skimp.   

After the horrors of the few days past, they’ve found their own little oasis.

Asides from the nasty bruise on her shoulder, Quinn shows no signs of the recent terror as she spins around the room in the candlelight, quarter-empty bottle of red wine in one hand. She hums a bit tunelessly, and Harry can’t help but admire the curve of her jaw in the candlelight and the subtle sway of her hips.

Out of all the morals he’s thrown away since it started, there’s a few he’s kept intact. As much as it’s nice to look, he knows he’s in a position of power here. Quinn’s nice, sure, but Harry doesn’t have to see her with another human being to know she’s nice to everyone. He’s not going to exploit or misinterpret her kindness and cheer.

She does a slow twirl, feet gently padding against the wooden floorboards. “Come dance with me?”

She’s all softness, all allure, all mischief in her eyes when she looks at Harry in invitation.

“Really, Quinn?” he says. Like he isn’t at all interested in putting his hands on her waist.

“Listen, it’s either you or the broom at this point, and I think I am much less likely to set you on fire than I am the broom.” She gestures with the wine between him and the broom to get her point across.

Harry shuffles off the bed, wondering how in the hell Quinn has the energy for these things. “Let’s not turn this place into a lighthouse. then.”

“Great,” Quinn gives herself another spin. “Come here and I’ll tell you the plans I have for this island of ours.”

“You’ve got plans, do you?” he says, walking into her arms, already open and waiting and beckoning—a breeding ground for hope.

She throws her arms around his shoulders, wine and all as he rests his hands on her waist—the perfect picture of dancing middle schoolers. “Yes, I’ve even accounted for getting a Mentos supply for you.”

He tries not to stare too much at her lips, stained red with wine.

“A Mentos supply? I’m sold, then.”

+++

It’s strange, how quickly two people can grow close when they spend all day together, when they only have one other person to voice their thoughts to. Quinn sometimes catches Harry muttering under his breath to himself. She wonders how long he was alone for in order to pick up the habit.

She wakes up the morning after the wine, actually warm for once. September’s getting cold and working cars these days are few and far between. They were lucky enough to go to bed with full enough stomachs last night, so Quinn didn’t think sharing the only bed in the place as too much of a hardship.

Excuse the pun, but that morning, there was something hard poking into her back.

Her eyes fly open (though this isn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence—she’s surprised by her heartbeat most mornings) but she doesn’t move. Harry’s got his legs tangled in hers, breath tickling the back of her neck, arm slung over her side. It’s a bit awkward, sure, but she’s not exactly uncomfortable.

Far from a stranger to this kind a thing—it has been a while, but she knows there’s the options of trying to slip out or pretending to be asleep or confronting the problem head-on. She doesn’t have time to decide which course of action to take, however.  

Quinn has to purse her lips to stop from giggling when she feels Harry tense the moment he wakes up, jerking away from her. There’s no way he could expect her to sleep through that. Doing him a favour, Quinn rolls away from him, arms stretching above her head.

“Morning,” she yawns. “Sleep well?”

“Ah, er, yeah. Was—warm,” he stutters, sitting upright.

Quinn giggles at his broken speech, “Male anatomy’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“What, I—”  

There’s not enough light in the room to see his face, but if she could, Quinn is sure it would be be red. “Charade’s up. I’ve been awake for the past couple of minutes while we were, let’s say, awful close.”  

Harry has the covers strategically placed around his waist, running a hand through messy curls. “I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t, but here’s how I see it—this is inevitable.”  

Harry goes from chagrined to piqued interest so quickly Quinn has to stifle a laugh. “It is, is it?” There’s no lack of interest in his tone.   

“The world’s ending, and people I’d like to fuck are few and far between,” she says, still stretched out on the bed, a casual observation.

“Who says I want to fuck you?”

“Your morning wood and the way you’re looking at me now.”

“I mean—”  

“We’re going to be living on an island together for months,” she says, relentless in getting to her point. She can already feel it between her legs, thinking back to the times she’s seen Harry shirtless (she was perfectly capable of chopping firewood herself, but letting him do it was the right decision). “It’s going to happen there, it maybe should have happened a few days ago, if I’m being honest, so why not now?”  

“Like, right now?”

It’s like she’s told him Christmas is coming four months early.  

“Are we on some kind of urgent schedule?” she asks. It’s hard to read his face in the dim light, but she can see the way he’s tucks his bottom lip behind his teeth.   

“No, we aren’t,” he shakes his head, almost shy, now.

“I think you should come over here and kiss me, then.”

And Harry does just that, one arm reaching for her so he can pull her on top of him, their lips reaching together. Okay, he’s definitely thought about this before. He couldn’t blame himself for it. The world’s ending, so he might as well indulge.

He’s all too happy to savour as his lips press against hers, both sets chapped, listening to the hitch of her breath and the way her hands fist into his shirt. She’s right that they aren’t shackled to a schedule, practical thoughts slipping in for just a moment as he figures they have enough supplies that they can justify staying in one place for the day.

The idea of spending all day in bed with someone is almost incomprehensible—he can’t remember the last time he’d had something more than a quick fuck.

They’re already horizontal, but nothing is hurried, Harry taking his time to weave a hand through her hair and suck on her bottom lip before opening her mouth to his. Their breaths are certainly more sour than sweet as his tongue does a lazy glide against her teeth, but neither care.

Harry has to stop his hips from shifting against the bed, glad that Quinn is just half-leaning on him, already so aroused he has to stop himself from slipping his hands under her shirt or sweats.

He has the day, has the time to kiss her till she’s breathless, to lick down her jaw and suck on her neck. He can feel her heartbeat under his lips, reminding him that they’re alive today and that’s what counts.

It’s Quinn who takes initiative, throwing one leg over Harry’s waist so she’s straddling him, resting her ass in the perfect place so Harry throws his head back, low moan coming from him.  

“This good?” she murmurs, rocking lightly over him as she nips at his ear.

“Yeah, fuck,” Harry says, going for her lips again as his hands slip around to the bare skin of her back. Grasping her ass and encouraging her to grind against him, he swears he could come in his pants from just this, pathetically enough.  

Now that’s she’s on top of him his patience is limited, lips still on hers as he leans up so he can take his shirt off. He’s pleasantly surprised when Quinn mirrors his actions, pulling hers off as well. He cups her breasts in both his hands, squeezing lightly as she sighs, eyes closed and looking so desirable Harry begins to really look forward to the rest of the day.

There’s so much skin to feel against his own—touching someone with a beating heart is a special occasion, a startling intimacy between them. Even after a week of being around Quinn, they hadn’t started touching regularly until the last couple of days. And just the warmth of her hands against the blades of his shoulders is foreign.

Quinn leans down to give him a kiss, both of her hands cupping his jaw as she licks into his mouth, pulling away but still resting her forehead against his.

“The way I see it, we have plenty of time to make out later. I want you, now, please,” she explains, lips pressing to Harry’s one last time.

It’s the encouragement he needs, flips them over and slips his fingers underneath the bands of her sweats and underwear. “Time for these to come off, then?”

“It would be kind of difficult to do this, otherwise.” She lifts her hips as Harry slides them off with ease, her hands going to grab him as soon as they’re off, kissing him one once more as she directs his other hand to between her legs. What she is is not shy about is what she wants.

She’s so eager he can’t help but tease, fingers lightly tracing before he dips them in to feel that she’s wet and ready.

“Wait.”

Harry pulls his hand away immediately, sitting up, awkwardly resting on one of her legs.

“I can’t fucking see anything,” she continues, slipping out from underneath him and rolling off the bed. “Jesus Christ, the floor’s cold.” She walks across the room, naked, Harry’s gaze resting on her ass as she walks to one of the windows they covered the night before, pulling away a corner of the blanket, spilling soft light over the room.

When she turns around, she’s pleased that she can now do more than just guess at Harry’s facial expressions. She’s had hookups that have been a little off put by her forwardness, but Harry’s mouth hangs a little open as she crosses the room, and from the bulge in his boxers, this could be the beginning of a beautiful arrangement.

Another plus side to the light is Quinn can see that tattoos she’s never asked about, the swallows on his chest, birdcage on his ribs, the smattering of designs up his left arm.

“Better?” Harry asks as soon as she’s within reach, pulling her down onto the bed with him, hands warm over her cooled skin.

“Much,” she agrees, hands wandering around to snap the elastic of his boxers. “Off, now, please.”

She rests her hands against the birdcage tattoo on his ribs, feeling the vibrations of his laughter against her palm as he pulls of his boxers. His head is dizzy with it, thinking about how great she’ll feel around him, he just needs—fuck.

“Condom.” Harry says, freezing up. He doesn’t have any.

“I don’t care,” Quinn says, a little breathless herself.

That’s definitely the first time Harry’s heard anything like that from a girl.

“But—”

Quinn flops back down on the bed, eyes Harry with a hazy kind of stare. “As dramatically unsexy as this may sound, I stopped getting my period about three months into this thing. All condoms are going to expire eventually. Sure, with that and everything else, it’s still a game of roulette, but I trust you if you trust me.”

She’s so open, so willing to give in and do what feels best, but even the barest possibility of bringing another life into this world is terrifying. Harry puts his survival first and foremost, lust not even able to overpower that instinct in this moment. Getting Quinn pregnant is not conducive to survival.  

Even the barest possibility of bringing another life into this world is terrifying. Harry shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I—”

“That’s okay,” Quinn says, reaching up to kiss him again, lips sweet and assuring. “We can still have fun.” She seems intent on keeping her promise, slowly running her hand down his chest until she reaches his dick, hard against his stomach.

His chest is already heaving as she wraps her hand around him, touch delicate but sure, hand pressing against his shoulder so he goes back down on the pillows. There’s no complaint he can think of as she takes her hand away and her lips begin a promising trail down his chest, paying attention to tattoos, running her lips over his shaft until she takes him into her mouth.  

The groan he lets out is louder than is safe as she swallows around him, mouth wet, tight, and perfect, using plenty of spit and hollowing her cheeks. It’s been too damn long, Quinn nothing but enthusiastic as she digs her fingers into his thighs and bobs her head up and down, taking him in until he’s hitting the back of her throat.

It feels good, so damn good, and he has to bite on his arm to quiet himself down as Quinn swirls her tongue around the tip, working her hand around him now that it’s slick enough with her spit.  

“I’m gonna,” he warms, mouth still pressed against his arm. She’s barely had her mouth on him for long at all, but it’s been a while, longer still since someone’s sucked him off.

“Come on, babe,” she mutters, voice hoarse, lips fluttering along his ribs, and with a twist of her wrist he comes, spilling all over his stomach, his back arching. The release is overwhelming, every sense he has focused on how good her hand feels around him, how good her body feels half draped over him, the tingling he feels in his fingers and toes. He’s a bit boneless as he flops back onto the mattress, breathing hard.

Quinn comes onto her knees, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, hair a mess and sunlight draping just the right way across her torso. It’s an instant reminder that Harry still owes her an orgasm, a favour he’ll be all too happy to repay.

But first, he’s hit by his t-shirt that he’d shed earlier, landing on his stomach so he can clean himself up.

“This shirt wasn’t that dirty,” he slurs out, dragging the material across his stomach anyway.

“I’ll wash it for you, I know how much you hate doing laundry.”

It’s an offer than he easily accepts, throwing the shirt out of the way.

“Your turn,” he says, still feeling good and loose as he gets up, rolls them over so now he’s straddling her.

“Is it—” Quinn’s breath hitches as he circles her nipple with his tongue “—bad that I have definitely thought about the sinful things you’re capable of doing with that mouth of yours?”

“Hope you’ve kept your expectations high.” Harry mouths the words into her stomach, skinnier than it should be (but neither of them have much fat to spare) at the same time as he cups her, fingers sliding along easily.

“Fuck, fuck fuck,” Quinn starts as soon as he rubs the pads of his fingers against her clit.

As he nuzzles his mouth into her centre, he almost thinks of stopping to tell her to be quiet, but Quinn sticks to whispered curses, her vocabulary particularly impressive as he licks and sucks. Quinn has no shame in grinding her hips against his face, winding a hand into his hair and tugging.

Her hand withdraws, resting on Harry’s shoulder instead, unsure, but he quickly puts it back where she had it. He hums appreciatively when she tugs again, vibrations making her toes curl. She tastes like salt and bitterness and girl, his tongue eager to find out just how many times he can make her say ‘fuck’. The sound of the word, muffled by her thighs around his ears, is moaned, muttered, gasped again and again, as he curls his fingers inside of her.  

She goes incoherent as he continues, and Harry’s jaw is aching, unused to this kind of activity, but he knows she’s close, the way her hips move and and fingers pull. He brings his lips up to her clit and laps quickly, pulling the moan from her that he was looking for, keeping up slow broad strokes as she rides through it. He distracted that he’s half-hard again, but lets himself pull away when she finally collapses. There’s a perfect view of her heaving breasts as he peeks his head up.

“So, did that meet expectations?” he asks, crawling out from between her legs, flopping down on the mattress beside her.

“Good—really, really fucking good,” Quinn pants, not quite making sense, fingers crawling over to entwine with his.

They both lay in silence as their heart rates slow and the sun crosses the room, the presence of the other enough for the moment.

And then Quinn breaks the silence.

“Maybe I should swallow next time,” she muses beside him. “Could use the extra protein.”  

+++

It’s another carless day, but Quinn and Harry are walking hand in hand down the road, baseball bats in their free hands and backpacks on their backs.

They’ve spent the last couple of days driving (in Gary the Green Machine and Phyllis the Prius), cars that had unfortunately short lives, but twenty miles was better than nothing.

It’s one of the last warm days of summer, sweat dripping down the backs of both their necks, the sun unrelenting as they walk up the main road. The sun is setting, and they haven’t happened upon any type of civilization or even shade for hours. At lunch, they’d walked an extra ten minutes out of their way because they’d seen a tree in the distance, and shelter from the sweltering sun sounded that good.

Aside from a couple of figures wandering over the distant hills, it’s been quiet—they’ve been spared real confrontation for a couple of days. According to Harry’s maps, they’re still on track to reach Northwest Washington, even though it’s taking them longer than expected. Staying out of towns also means less supplies, but out here, even with the abandoned houses and ill-maintained crops, it’s almost possible to pretend that none of it ever happened. There’s a lot less looking over your shoulder when you can see a mile ahead and a mile behind.

When they happen upon the first house they’ve seen in three hours, Quinn knows that this is where they’re going to have to stay for the night, even without looking at Harry’s face—a rosy red, the watered-down sunscreen they used not enough to prevent a burn.

There’s a weird sort of contentment and sense of routine as she and Harry shrug off their bags at the end of the driveway, placing them out of the way so they won’t be tripping over them.

Quinn tucks her gun into her jeans before picking up her bat, and Harry takes the axe and his own baseball bat.

They speak in whispers, because they hear the tell-tale moans of zombies ahead. Not too loud, so there can’t be too many of them, but it’s a risky business all the same.

She has to admit that she’s a bit scared, wouldn’t have decided to spend the night here if Harry weren’t beside her. But facing some of them with him is certainly better than the alternative of spending the night somewhere without proper shelter.

As they cross the yard, bats raised and at the ready, their eyes dart around every corner, the groaning in the distance not coming much closer. But when they pass by a metal bucket, Quinn has a idea, stopping Harry so she can go up on her tiptoes and whisper the plan in his ear.

He whispers back that it’s brilliant, gives her a kiss on the cheek, and follows her to the field behind the house, where it’s impossible for anything to sneak up on them without them seeing.

Once they’re a fair distance out, Quinn rattles the handle of her bat in the bucket, using it as a bell. The loud sound makes them both wince, but it’s a sound with a purpose.

The hairs on the back of Quinn’s neck stand up as she hears the groaning get louder, more desperate and feral, hands tight on her bat as she waits for whatever’s around to emerge.

Suspense stretches out with time, but it never reveals itself, which is the exact opposite of what’s supposed to be happening. The groaning is too loud to be coming from anywhere inside, but nothing’s coming after them, either.

“What the hell?” Quinn mutters, unsettled.

Harry isn’t at ease as well, shifting from foot to foot. “Let’s just take a walk around, keep our distance.”

They do just that, and when Quinn gets the first glimpse of what they’re looking for, she bursts out laughing, can’t help it, and a second later Harry joins her as well.

When the world had ended someone had left their washing out on the clothesline to dry, and a former line cook had been unfortunate enough to get caught in it. Even though one of his arms is nearly falling off, he’s tangled in a lilac lace nightgown and enormous white bra, which proves to be quite the ridiculous picture. This is especially true for Quinn and Harry, and having spent the day in the hot sun, this sends them over the edge.

Indulging in their laughter, while still keeping a careful eye on the tangled thing, they laugh harder than they have in days. Maybe it isn’t so funny, more a reminder of the sad state of humanity than anything else, but it’s an excuse to laugh.

They still approach with caution, Harry handing Quinn the axe so she can do the honours, but keeping his bat at the ready just in case.

It’s still fairly fresh, skin and clothes mostly intact as it struggles against the wires, jaw snapping open and shut in their general direction. Quinn studies it with a carefully detached interest, hairs on the back of her neck still standing, but she’s never gotten to look at one so closely alive before.

The stench makes her wrinkle her nose as soon as she gets close enough to be in range, careful to avoid the grasping hands with seven and a half fingers left.  

She walks around so she’s facing the back of it, has a clean shot at the back of its neck as it fails to turn around, clothes and wires too restricting. Much like a golfer would tee up a shot, Quinn lines up the axe with the middle of the neck and swings as hard as she can.

The axe goes three-quarters of the way through. When Quinn pulls the blade out with a grunt, the head lolls to the side, heavy enough that it rips through the remaining flesh and thuds to the ground, streaking blood down one of the shirts hung on the line.

Harry comes up from behind her to admire her handiwork. “Not a bad swing you’ve got there, Q.”

+++

“Do we really have to stop at the drugstore?” Quinn growls.

Harry is equally irritated. “Yes we do, I want some fucking Mentos.”

“And I want some fucking pizza, but you don’t see me asking to stop at Dominos.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, Quinn.”

Quinn has no better retort than to repeat what Harry said in a poor imitation of his voice.

“If you’re pulling cards like that, there’s no way you’re going to convince me not to go in,” Harry snaps, removing his baseball bat from the side of his bag as he begins the trek across the empty parking lot.

Quinn makes the point of staying behind for five seconds before grabbing her own bat and following Harry across the lot. What’s stupider than the two of them going into the drugstore is Harry going in by himself.

It’s only natural that they start fighting at some point. It’s not a lover’s quarrel—Quinn isn’t sure how much better it can get, since once they’ve already ran into trouble when she came so loudly they alerted zombies nearby to their presence. With the aid of a fire extinguisher, fortunately, there’d been a easy fix to the unwelcome visitor.

Though they’re physically exhausted much of the time, there isn’t much else to do, and they’ve quickly discovered that a lot of pleasure can be derived from very little effort.

Simply, the arguing is a matter of too little sleep, too little food, and a lot of miles covered.

“Okay, take a look around and call if you need anything, just call for me—”  

“But not too loudly,” Quinn finishes, having become familiar with Harry’s extreme levels of caution a long time ago.

She goes the opposite way of Harry, bat at her side, wandering down the aisles. It seems like most of the food is gone (a secret, deep down part of Quinn hopes all the Mentos are gone, too), but there could also be other useful things to stash away in her pack.

A tube of toothpaste and a sewing kit (and, okay, maybe some Mentos) have already been added to her bag when she stops at the back of the store and looks at a shelf. A grin widens across her lips. Before she lets herself get too excited, she checks the expiry date.

The condoms haven’t expired.

Giggling to herself, she opens the boxes, shoving as many as she can into a couple of them. They’re good for another couple of years, and she and Harry are going to be on an island, so she may as well stock up.

She’s just put as many as she can justify the space for in her bag when she hears her name yelled from the other side of the store. It’s not the good, casual kind of yell, urgency and fear in the syllable.

Her boots squeak against the floor she’s running so quickly, her baseball bat in hand as she screams Harry’s name back with equal panic, following the sounds of his shouts.

Sometimes it feels like she’s cracked herself open and swallowed him whole, she cares about him so much. He needs to be okay, needs to be okay until she gets there and she can save him.

Aisle after aisle, she can’t find him, but when she does find him, she can barely see him.

He’s in much the same position as he found her in a few days earlier, bat wedged between the jaws of a former linebacker, pinned to the floor. The former linebacker’s head is too close to Harry’s to risk a swing, so Quinn brings her bat down on its legs, the muscles indenting—it’s fresh, but not quite that fresh.

Her hits are enough to get the attention of the hulking thing, as it removes its teeth from Harry’s bat in order to see its new enemy. However, it barely gets up onto its knees before Quinn is swinging, using the pointers Harry gave her a couple of days ago. The crack of bat on skull is so loud it echoes throughout the store, the former linebacker’s chin rotating so it rests between its shoulders. It goes down much like an elephant.  

When Quinn goes for the double tap, one of its eyes pops out, rolling across the aisle to rest by Harry’s foot.  

Panting, Quinn watches it for a moment, just to make sure it won’t get back up. It doesn’t move, so she raises her head to look at Harry. He’s looking dumbly back at her.

Their fighting earlier forgotten in its entirety, Quinn throws herself at Harry, not caring about the blood and flesh splattered across the two of them.

“Are you okay, have you—” she gasps, arms awkwardly bent around the bag still on his back, bat hanging from her hand.

Harry ducks his head into her shoulder, squeezing tight. “No, I’m good, I’m good.”

“Fuck—” she’s just about to promise she’s never going to let him out of her sight again while they’re fighting, but Harry lifts his head and drops his arms from around her.

“Quinn, RUN!” He pulls on her shoulder and starts sprinting toward the door. He’s seen the three looming figures, knows that they’re better off running than trying to fight them, especially with his ribs throbbing from where he’d landed on them earlier.

He doesn’t know what kind of power is looking over them, because while he was inside Harry had picked up a set of car keys that had fallen on the ground, meaning to see if the car they belonged to was still in the lot.

Now that they’re in a hurry, however, the only choice he has is to push the panic button on the keys as soon as they’re out the door. A wailing fills the lot and he hears Quinn swear behind him—loud noises are bad, very bad, but it’s the best plan he has right now.

As soon as he spots the car he shuts the alarm off with the keys, continuing his sprint and ignoring Quinn yelling at him how crazy he is and how he’s going to get them both killed. She might be right, or at least half-right. While crossing the lot, he spies at least five of them wandering toward the source of the noise.

There are many, many things that could go wrong with this plan. Someone could have siphoned the gas, the battery could be dead, amongst other things.

Bag half off his his back, Harry leaps into the driver’s seat, hands shaking as he tries to fit the keys into the ignition.

The first try, the engine stutters, and so does Harry’s heart.

But the second time, the engine roars to life, the needle on the gas going up to 1/2.

Harry isn’t sure when he’ll ever get this lucky again.

He’s about to step on the gas when he notices there’s nobody in the passenger seat. At that very same moment, there is a very angry slap of a palm against the window.

“HARRY, COULD YOU UNLOCK THE FUCKING DOOR?” Quinn screams from the passenger side, looking behind her at their pursuers.

In a few seconds of panic, he can only find the button that unlocks the back doors, and that’s how Quinn ends up diving into the backseat of the minivan.

“DRIVE, FUCKING DRIVE.”

And Harry does just that as Quinn scrambles to slide the door shut behind her. There’s a thunk against the back bumper, but they’re squealing out of the lot.

Pushing his bag out of the way, Quinn climbs into the front seat. “That—was a fucking—bad plan,” she pants, leaning over to put on Harry’s seatbelt for him before doing up her own.

“Did you have a better one?” Harry retorts, swerving around a body on the road.

“No, but—”

“What the hell is coming out of your bag?” he asks. He’d just checked his rearview mirror to make sure nothing was pursuing them, and noticed the foil squares littering the backseat.

Quinn shimmies her shoulders in excitement. “Guess who found some condoms?”

Considering she was being pursued by zombies no less than a minute ago, she’s very enthusiastic about the prospect of condoms.

“Good thing you saved me, then. Wouldn’t have had anyone to use them with.” He grins, high on adrenaline, high on being alive for another day, high on having someone to share this feeling with.

+++

They’re in the mountains, now, have been for a few days. The coast is getting closer and closer, the promise of some end to this journey. The routines are down to an art, and silence between them is like an old comfort.

It’s still new enough that there are things to discover, promises of the future enough to keep them talking about everything but the past. The past is something that’s best kept tucked away. The freedom of life on their island is what keeps them going.

Harry feels too relaxed as he leaves Quinn to unpack the car, kissing her on the cheek sloppily so she smiles and scrunches her nose before he heads inside. He can’t believe he ever preferred being alone.

They honked the horn once, quietly, just to make sure there was nothing lingering in the immediate area. Nothing came out of the trees, but you never know what could be lingering inside. Quinn absolutely hates to go through the house and check all the rooms, so Harry always volunteers.

He gives a low whistle intermittently as he enters, ears perked between each one for any sound of movement. He doesn’t hear anything out of the ordinary as he heads down the hall.

It happens in the most innocuous of ways.

There’s a table in there that he doesn’t check underneath. He’s too busy thinking about how many rounds Quinn’ll be up for that night—they’re always a little keyed up after spending hours driving in the car all day.

What he feels first on his ankle is a cold, dead hand, but before he can react, teeth sink into the joint, scraping and pulling. With a startled yelp, he brings his bat down, the mostly rotten head caving in with a thud.

But it’s too late. He’s been bit. Ten seconds of letting his guard down and everything’s over.

When Quinn comes in, having heard the commotion, she stops when she sees the blood around his ankle. Her eyes drag up, and her heart shatters when she looks Harry in the eye.

They have no lustre, like he’s already dead, already one of them.

Her bat is already in her hand and her next move is to bring it down against the corpse of the former toddler. She screams, animalistic, and Harry lets her as she hits it again and again, gore splattering the two of them, her shirt becoming more red than white, face freckled with blood.  

Harry has to pull her off when everything’s gone pulpy, limping on his ankle, a numbness seeping through him. He wonders if it’s a side effect, this detachedness he feels. This isn’t real. Can’t be. He’s done so much to survive. He finally has some semblance of a future with Quinn. He can’t wake up tomorrow morning not himself.

It isn’t fucking fair.

But these days, nothing is.  

Quinn, his sunshine, buries her face into his shirt and pounds her fists against his chest.

“No, no, nonononono,” she repeats until she’s crying too hard to say anything coherent at all.

Harry slides down the wall with her still in his arms, staring blankly ahead. It’s over. It’s all over.  

He tries to be rational, tries to talk himself through it. He’ll be fine, but then he’ll wake up and be one of them. With a sick twist he wonders if he’ll remember anything of himself. But he has no intentions of letting it get that far.

“You’re gonna have to shoot me.” He means to say it too quietly for Quinn to hear, but she screams a ‘no’ into his chest when she does, trying to pull away from him.

Harry tries to hold her fast, but she scrambles away, sliding along the bloodied floor.  

“I’m not shooting you,” she says, her voice high and shrill, Harry not used to the tone that grates his ears with the grief embedded in it. They never talk this loudly, used to hiding from predators, but it’s obvious that Quinn doesn’t care anymore.

“You have to, Q, you have to,” and Harry’s crying now, too, a hot tear slipping down his cheek. He’s sad because he’s going to die, sad because he’s going to leave Quinn alone, the deepest, most crushing kind of alone someone can be.

Quinn collapses on her knees a few feet in front of Harry, covered in blood, but doesn’t argue. She knows she has to do what it takes to survive. Harry wouldn’t want her to give up.  

They don’t talk as Quinn gets their things and helps Harry up the stairs and settles him into bed. She gets him a new shirt, gives him a cloth to wipe the blood off his face, wraps his ankle, and hands him a roll of Mentos that he doesn’t eat.  

She wants to cry some more about unfair it is, how her chest feels like it’s been shot at point-blank with a shotgun, but Harry’s time is ticking. The moment he falls asleep, he’ll be gone—he can’t stay awake forever, and Quinn knows he deserves better than to spend his last hours listening to her cry.

Harry insists she take her gun out of her bag and put it beside the bed.

She changes her clothes, washes the blood off of herself and curls up beside him, trying to think of something, anything to say, and Harry assures her that he’s still awake and alive by rubbing his hand up and down her arm. He refuses to kiss her on the mouth, lips pressed tightly shut as he kisses the top of her head.

They don’t waste the last hours. They talk and they talk and they talk, because Harry’s eyes are getting heavier with every passing second no matter how many questions Quinn pesters him with, no matter how many stories she tells.

Now there’s no topic that’s off limits, Harry tells her about his mum and sister back in England, the friends he came to America with for a road trip when it began. He also tells her every secret he’s ever kept, secrets that don’t matter anymore because the other people they mattered to are dead now.

Secrets spill from Quinn, too. She tries to cry as little as possible because she hopes if she can empty herself of the ashes of the hope she had held onto so fondly in her chest she won’t be able to feel, can continue on numb. It doesn’t seem possible that she can continue on after this and still feel.   

She’s the survivor, she’s the one who has to suffer with the grief and the guilt and the what ifs. She’s going to be the one to bury the body, to have to pull herself out of bed and move on day after day when Harry isn’t beside her.

She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to do that, as many times as Harry says she’ll be okay. She has to be okay, she’s the toughest girl he’s ever met.

There’s one secret he keeps to himself, because telling her that he loves her seems like unnecessary cruelty at this point.

The sun is rising and Harry can barely keep his eyes open where his head is resting in her lap, the fingers tracing circles along Quinn’s arm slowly coming to a stop. The first two times this happens, she calls his name sharply, hand clenching into a fist so she doesn’t slap him awake like she wants to. She wants those last five minutes so badly, needing to see his eyes focused on her one last time.

Both times he wakes up, his lips pulling up when he sees Quinn looking down at him, eyes opening for a few has seconds before fluttering shut, fingers continuing their motions on her arms for a few minutes afterward. The third time, she doesn’t say anything, tears streaming down her face instead.

Harry falls asleep for the final time with one of Quinn’s hands stroking his hair, the other curled around the handle of her gun.