January 5th, 2045
Remus woke up from his usual terrible sleep to the low, guttural groans and wet, raspy wheeze that he recognized all too well. He snatched up the gun he keeps beside his pillow and looked around through the first light before dawn for a clicker. He heard the squelching of flesh and crunching bones of his best friend and jumped up. But as quickly as the whole ordeal had begum, it had ended. There wasn't a zombie in sight and Aliya was dead. She had been dead for three days but every night was the same. Remus would hear the situation unfold again and he almost thought he could save her this time.
Mary and Lily hadn't so much as opened an eye at the movement so he returned to the usual staring up at the light beginning to pierce through the open sky.
The horizon was now smeared with streaks of orange and red as the sun lifted itself up a little, casting long shadows over the cracked asphalt road. Sparse patches of dry grass and skeletal trees dotted the countryside, their lifeless forms swaying in the faint breeze. The air smelled faintly of decay, an ever-present reminder of what the world had become.
Lily trudged ahead, her boots scuffing against the road. She tightened the strap of her backpack, her face grim and set. Every now and then, she glanced back to check on the others, her green eyes hollow with exhaustion and something heavier, grief.
Behind her, Mary walked in silence, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as if holding herself together. Her dark hair was streaked with dirt, and the streaks on her face weren't just from sweat. She occasionally wiped her sleeve across her cheeks, pretending it was just the dust irritating her eyes.
In the rear, Remus plodded along, his head down, shoulders slumped. He clutched the strap of his bag with one hand and dragged a battered bat in the other, its metal edge smeared with dried blood. His expression was unreadable, shaggy brown hair hanging over his face. All he could think about was the absence of their fourth companion that he knew cast a gaping void among them, and the excruciating pain in his hip. That's why he walked in the back, so no one could see his limp, and also he couldn't keep up being first.
“Does it get easier?” Mary broke the silence, her voice barely audible over the rustling of the wind.
Lily slowed her pace but didn’t turn around. “No,” she replied after a moment, her tone clipped. “You just learn to live with it.”
“She didn’t even have to come with us,” Mary said, her voice trembling. That was the first death she had ever dealt with, let alone directly in front of her. Lily and Remus had each seen at least a few during the start of this, and Remus facing even more than that. “She could’ve stayed back at the camp. She didn’t deserve-” Her words broke off, and she sniffed hard.
Lily stopped and turned to face her, adjusting the straps even more, Remus realized she had taken on all of Aliya's supplies and doubled the weight of her bag. Her expression was hard but not unkind. The tear stains across her freckles betraying any ounce of composure her friends might have thought she had. “None of us deserve this, Mare. But she chose to fight for us. For you. Don’t dishonor that by falling apart now.”
Mary glared at her, tears welling up again. “I’m not falling apart,” she snapped.
“Enough,” Remus said quietly. Both girls turned to him. He looked up, his dark eyes meeting theirs. “It doesn’t matter who deserved what. She’s gone. And we’re still here. That’s... just how it is.”
His voice was steady, but there was a hollowness to it, a resignation that made Mary's anger dissolve. She nodded once, her lips pressed into a thin line. She took one last shaky breath before starting to walk again after neither of her accomplices had. Lily lingered for a moment before falling into step beside Remus. She glanced at him, her voice softer now. “You don’t even want to do this, do you?”
Remus shrugged, his grip tightening on the bat. “No,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t matter what I want.”
Lily frowned. “It matters to me.”
He glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “If we don’t do this, more people will die. Maybe everyone. I may not have chosen for this to be how I live but I can’t change that... so maybe I can help end it. It's not like anyone else can”
Mary's voice floated back to them, cutting through the tension. “Less talking, more walking. We’re exposed out here.”
The three of them lapsed into silence again, the only sound the crunch of their boots on gravel and the occasional extra wheeze escaping Remus as he tried not to think about the feeling of his bones moving around in his hip with a crack every step that painfully reminded him of the last sound he heard before they're group of four turned to three.
The sun lifted and streamed past the clouds, not matching the mood the travelers faced.
-
The group had stopped for the night, huddled in the shell of an abandoned gas station. Dust and grime coated the cracked windows, and shelves lay toppled, their contents long scavenged. The silence was depressing, broken only by the occasional groan of the wind outside.
Lily sat cross-legged near the doorway, her rifle resting across her knees. She kept her eyes on the horizon, where the last traces of daylight were fading into darkness. Mary sat at a small, overturned crate, scribbling in her notebook by the light of a dim lantern. Her hand trembled slightly as she wrote, the lines uneven. Every so often, she glanced toward Remus, who sat silently against the far wall, staring at the floor.
Remus stood, moving to the back of the store where they'd arranged their sleeping bags to lay. He leaned back uncomfortably on top of his and closed his eyes. He wasn't asleep, he was just in way too much pain to stay sitting any longer. His hip pain had spread down his leg from the long day of hiking, he had a migraine, his back killed, and the guilt that weighed down his chest hurt more than everything else.
Finally, Lily broke the silence once she'd figured that Remus must be asleep by now. “We can’t keep doing this.”
“What are you talking about?” Mary stopped writing, her head snapping up.
Lily turned, her green eyes boring into the ground with a strange sense of shame. “We’re researchers, Mary. We’re not soldiers. And we’ve already lost Aliya...” Her voice wavered on the name, but she pushed through. “We’re barely holding it together. If we can’t even protect one of our own, how are we supposed to protect Remus?”
Mary frowned, her fingers tightening on the notebook. “So, what are you saying? That we give up? That we just hand him over to someone else?”
That was, unfortunately, exactly what she'd been planning. But still, Lily shook her head. “Not 'give up'. Be smart. He’s too important, Mary. If we mess this up, if he doesn’t make it... it could mean the end for everyone.”
"You know his value, Lils. You know how much this mission lies on and if the next people don't fulfill that-"
"He's not a mission. He is a human. He's my best friend. And as hard as it will be to see him go knowing the risks, I know how much harder it will be for us to see him get taken and knowing that we could have avoided it."
Mary didn't reply as instead the rustling of his body moving on a sleeping bag filled the silence. Remus looked up, his dark eyes unreadable. “I've told you. If you don’t think you can do this, I’ll just go alone.”
“No,” Mary said sharply, standing up. “That’s not an option.”
“Mary,” Lily said gently, “you know I’m right. We need to find someone better equipped for this. Someone who can actually keep him safe.”
"So you guys just decided that while I slept, you would rethink my future for me? So glad that I get a say in who I might see for the last time before I save the world." Remus snapped. The girls' faces shifted to confusion at the end of his statement and Remus' flushed realizing what he'd said. "Forget it, what strangers are you shipping me off to?"
Lily hesitated. “Not strangers. There are people out there, people we trust. Fighters. We’ve crossed paths with them before. They could get him where he needs to go.”
Mary's jaw tightened. “You’re talking about James and his lot, aren’t you?”
Lily nodded. “They’re good enough to keep him alive. And with them handling the journey, we can go back to the research, figure out how to end this outbreak for good. It’s what Aliya would have wanted.”
Mary's shoulders slumped, and she sank back onto the crate. “I don’t know if I can do it, Lils. Just... hand him off like that. It feels like abandoning him.”
Liam spoke up, his voice quiet but firm. “It’s not abandoning me. If you think this is what needs to happen, I’ll go. No complaints. Like I said, this isn’t about what I want. And you can stop talking like I'm not even in the room.”
Mary looked at him, her expression pained. “It should be. You’ve already lost so much, Rem. You shouldn’t have to carry this alone. And I know you don't know James or Sirius but if you give them a chance you might really come to like them.”
Remus gave her a small, sad smile and ignored the end. He didn't want to have to mention that he would most definitely not like anyone he had to travel with.
Lily sighed, standing and slinging her rifle over her shoulder. “We’ll rest tonight. Tomorrow, I'll run the radio again. I know Sirius uses that bloody thing every night for his brother. Then, we head toward the West Country. I remember where James built his bunker, he stayed in the Hallows. If anyone can do this, it’s him.”
Mary hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “Fine. But we don’t leave until I’m sure they can protect him better than we can.”
Lily nodded, her expression softening. “Agreed.”
Remus let his tears roll down the sides of his face and onto his old pillow. He knew this was bound to happen at some point, Lily was too smart not to realize that she wasn't a fighter. But she was also a very emotional thinker and he had been praying that she would let her attachment to him get the best of her until it was too late to save him or they had successfully made it to the Hyde.
He didn't know James or the others Mary had been talking about and he really didn't want to find out. He had kept to himself before the outbreak so being forced into small groups of hiding did nothing but the opposite of helping his antisocial habits. But Remus knew he had to do this, for Aliya. She had died on a mission for him. He just needed to get into the Hyde with this group and it would all be over.
More or less.