Chapter 2
Of all the people in the world to get trapped in a petrol station with, Sirius was glad that it was Peter Pettigrew.
Peter was pale and pudgy, with watery blue eyes and fluffy straw-colored hair. He had a friendly smile, a twitchy nose, and wispy facial hair.
In the three days they’ve spent together, Sirius has learned a multitude of things about Peter, like that he grew up with his mother in Scotland, but moved to England a year ago to live with his girlfriend Camille, whom he met on a school trip when they were fifteen. They have two rats together, one he named Wormtail and the other she named Dave. He enjoyed watching sports but he was no good at playing them, and his best friends are called Frank and Alice, who are engaged. Mountains of other little things as well, like his age (twenty-one) and his favourite colour (gold).
See, Peter works as a cashier in the petrol station Sirius ran into to get away from the freak that died and came back to life. And before he knew it, one freak became two, and two became eight, and eight became upwards of fifty. The monsters shuffled through the town, waiting, hungry. The unscathed townspeople hid themselves in their flats in droves, leaving streets and shops devoid of life.
A group of them had assembled themselves outside the entrances, leaving Sirius and Peter stuck inside.
Currently, Peter was using the toilet, and Sirius sat on the floor near a rack of magazines smoking a cigarette. He lolled his head, looked out the large windows at the creatures, watched them growl and knock themselves against the store. He blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Those will kill you,” Peter said, walking from the loo toward him.
“You’ve said.”
“And I’ll keep saying.” With an eye roll, Sirius laughed and took another drag.
“You sound like James,” he said.
“James has sense.” Sirius scoffed.
“Clearly you’ve never met him.”
James. Sirius missed James. Ever since he ran away when he was sixteen—ever since he jumped on a bus and found his way to England from France, showing up without warning on his doorstep in the middle of the night—he and James haven’t been separated for more than thirty-six hours at a time. Sirius hoped he was okay, safe, hoped Effie and Monty were okay.
Peter sat down beside him, drawing his knees to his chest, and then asked, “still upset about the motorbike?”
“What kind of question is that?” Sirius responded dully. Stupid bike. That was the whole reason he was in this predicament. He’d went out, two towns away from home, right as the fucking apocalypse started. He didn’t even get the bike for his troubles—the owners decided to keep it. Arseholes.
He was on his way home, actually, when he stopped to fill Monty’s car with petrol.
Standing outside near the boot, car off, pump in hand, was when he realised that something was off. It was as if the atmosphere itself was sinister, cold, as if the sky was desaturated. He could feel it in his bones, the sense of danger. Then he noticed the people—limping, stares vacant, clothes smeared with crimson. They were rushing toward him, all of them, like a hive-mind.
The one closest to him had a knife planted firmly in his heart.
And maybe he would have had time to get back in the car, start it, get away—maybe he wouldn’t have, either—but he wasn’t thinking about that, because the only thought blaring through his mind was RUN. So he did, pump clattering against the cement ground as he raced toward the safety of the closest building.
Well, at least he met Peter, so he couldn’t say it was all bad—more like ninety-eight percent bad.
“Stupid motorbike,” he grumbled, then shifted from a sitting position to lay on the floor, eyes directed at the ceiling. He sighed. “What do you think Camille is up to right now?” He didn’t care really, but talking about her usually put Peter in a good mood, so he made a point to mention her periodically.
“She’s probably so worried,” Peter whispered. “Probably pacing about the flat with the rats in her arms. They calm her down.” Sirius smushed the end of his cigarette on the cold tile floor.
“We’ll get you back to her.”
“Aye. I hope so.” Peter chewed on his lip, and then turned to Sirius.
“We’ll get you back to James, too.”
“Yeah, cheers.”
They sat like that for a spell, quiet, watching out the windows as the sun set. At some point Sirius got up and retrieved them each a bottle of beer. Like most things recently, it tasted like ash on his tongue and settled heavily in his stomach. He wondered if Peter felt the same.
—
The first day had been stressful.
Sirius ran in, breathless, yelling “what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck!?” and Peter startled, dropping his phone and saying “why are we yelling!?”
“Some dead guy was just chasing me!” Sirius had said once he began to catch his breath. “That somehow sounds even crazier when I say it out loud but there was a fucking knife in his chest and he fucking looked dead! And there were—fuck—like, a ton of them, I'm not kidding.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“No I’m not on fucking drugs, I’m telling you—does that TV work?”
“What?”
“The—that—the TV!” Sirius was pointing wildly toward the small television mounted high on the wall in the corner behind the counter. “Does it work!?”
“I think so,” Peter said. He grabbed a remote off a shelf behind him and clicked it. The TV switched on.
“Turn on the news, turn on the news!” Peter raised an eyebrow at him. Sirius closed his eyes for a moment, a hand on his chest, and tried to calm himself down. “Sorry,” he said, still breathing heavily. “Please. I need to see what the fuck is going on.” Peter smirked.
“That’s better.” He sifted through the channels and turned on the first news station he saw. The screen was divided into two. A dark-skinned woman with long braids and blazing red lipstick appeared on one side, reporting from an office filled floor to ceiling with books. Being filmed in what seemed to be the newsroom studio, a pinkish man with balding white hair and a rather square head was on the other side. The text block under them read “LrP Virus: live updates.”
“—fourteen hours ago now, when the first confirmed case of the LrP Virus was documented in Germany, though experts believe that cases may have been spreading since as early as two or three days ago,” the woman said. “Just fifteen minutes ago, once again, was the first confirmed case in Brazil, meaning that the virus has now officially made it to every continent minus Antarctica.”
“Can you run down all the things we know about this virus currently, Erin? What, er, effects it’s been observed to have on the human body?” the man said. The woman—Erin, apparently—nodded along excessively as he spoke.
“Absolutely, Donald. Reports show that after becoming infected with this disease, individuals will become progressively more and more aggressive, as well as develop flu-like symptoms including high fevers, headaches and body aches, chills, runny noses, sore throats, and dizziness. They will become weaker and tired, and ultimately, only a few hours after the initial exposure, they will die.” She took a long, mournful breath. “Because of the extreme tiredness, in most reported cases so far, these people die peacefully in their sleep, which is a silver lining.”
“It sure is. What’s not so peaceful is what happens after that—I mean, it almost sounds like it came straight from a fantasy novel. Why don’t you tell the viewers about that?”
“Certainly. And, as fictional as it sounds, it is very, very real. You see, once these people have passed, their corpses will become… In a word—mobile.”
“Now, how do we know that these ‘corpses’ aren’t still just people?”
“Scientists have shown that these people have, in fact, died. It’s quite fascinating, Don, their hearts are no longer beating and they emit absolutely no brain waves. The working theory is that the virus itself is controlling the corpse.”
“And these corpses are—what are they doing?”
“The corpses are mobile, like I mentioned—though it should be stated that they are not nearly as able-bodied as most people. They’re slower, they’re weaker, they’re clumsier. But they are still incredibly dangerous. It seems that all they’re interested in doing is hunting for food, and they seem to be particularly interested in live human prey. Viewers, I urge you not to seek these things out—one bite or one scratch, that is the way this disease is transmitted. And as I’ve said before, we’ve yet to find a cure.”
“Now, Erin, before you go, what’s some advice you want to give to the viewers?”
“Stay home,” she said gravely. “Do not go near them. Hide. Be with your family.” Donald nodded and thanked her, and then her half of the screen slid away, putting him on full display. He cleared his throat and shuffled a few papers.
“Now, once again, that was Erin Kropp. We will check back in with her for more updates in an hour. For now, I’m going to put the prime minister’s statement back on the scree—” Peter paused the TV. He was considerably paler than when Sirius first ran in. He couldn’t blame him, he could only imagine the horror exuding from his own face. He felt sick, dread surging in the pit of his stomach.
“No offence pal, but I was really hoping you were all drugged up,” Peter said with a grimace.
“I wish I was.”
There was a bang at the door, and the two jerked their gazes toward it. Three creatures shuffled outside, knocking into the store periodically.
“I’m locking that,” Sirius said, gesturing to the entrance and striding over to it. “I mean it, toss me the key. I’ll be damned if one of those things kills me because it accidentally opened a fucking push and pull door.” Peter fumbled for the keys behind the counter and threw them. Sirius caught them midair and locked it as the monsters banged on the glass, snarling. He could see others nearby notice the commotion and begin to limp over. Sirius held up his middle finger at them all before turning back to Peter.
“Nice throw,” he said.
“Nice catch. I'm Peter Pettigrew.”
“Sirius Black.”
—
It was late. They still hadn’t moved from the floor. Their beers lay empty at their feet.
Sirius was lifting his shirt, showing off the small tattoo on his ribcage.
“What does it mean?” Peter asked.
“Nothing,” Sirius responded. “Just thought it was nice.” He pushed his shirt back down. “James, though, he got a fucking—he got a tattoo of, like, deer antlers on the back of his shoulder,” Sirius said. “It was my first tattoo and I didn’t want to go alone, so he got that while I got mine.”
“Why a deer?”
“Fuck if I know. I think he just likes them. Thinks they’re cool.” Sirius laughed softly. “He calls it his Prongs, says it gives him good luck.”
“Do you have any other tattoos, or is it just the one?”
“No, it’s just the one so far. I’d like to be loaded with them one day but I haven't gotten around to it.” Sirius shrugged and then clapped his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “What tattoos have you got, Petey Boy?”
“Just a wee one. I’ve got my mum’s birthday above my elbow.”
“That is sickeningly sweet. I’m disgusted.” Peter laughed.
“Yeah. She cried.” A sad smile slipped over his face. “I was going to get Camille’s as well, sometime before we got married.”
“Oh. Are you engaged?”
“Not yet. Bought the ring, though. I was going to—well, it doesn’t seem all that important now, does it?” Silence enveloped them for a few beats, the distant mutters of monsters and gentle hum of freezers all that was left of the noise. Sirius looked down at his shoes, thinking about how messed up everything was, how quickly everything went to shit.
“I think maybe life being how it is now, maybe that makes it more important,” Sirius said finally. “Finding bits of light in the darkness makes the world seem less bleak. There’s no point in giving in to misery. Say ‘fuck you’ and be happy anyway.”
“That’s oddly optimistic. I hadn’t got that vibe from you.”
“I stole it from James. He rubs off on you after a while. I think you’d like him.”
“Yeah. Thanks. That helped, I think.”
“Pleasure.”
Without warning, an intense shattering of glass made its way to their ears from somewhere outside—and another, and another, and three more after that. The creatures at the door shifted their attention to something too far in the dark for Sirius or Peter to see, and went to hobble toward it.
There was a wolf-like howl, followed quickly by a loud “come get us, ugly motherfuckers!”
Sirius and Peter locked eyes, and then rushed to the door. Closer now, they could see the silhouettes of two people, jumping up and down, waving their arms erratically, throwing what looked to be glass bottles at the ground.
The two yipped and hollered some more, and then when the mob—now cleared from the store—got near enough to them, they began running toward the doors.
“Shit—Pete—the key!” Sirius said, rapping his hand against Peter’s arm. Peter cursed and dug through his pockets.
The duo—a boy and a girl, Sirius could now see—halted at the door, breathing heavily, and tried to force it open. The girl looked to them with wide, fear-filled eyes, while the boy glanced over his shoulder at the undead group circling back toward them, just metres away.
At last, Peter shoved the key into the keyhole, hands shaky, and then quickly ripped open the door. The mystery couple ploughed through them and Peter hastily re-locked it. They backed away as the flock reached them, throwing themselves angrily at the entrance.
The four stood, unmoving, facing each other.
The girl was small and freckled, with fiery red hair piled haphazardly in a bun on the top of her head, and the greenest eyes Sirius had ever seen.
The boy was tall, limbs gangly, leaving him swimming in his blue knitted sweater. He had light brown eyes and honey-colored hair. He was kinda hot—he was really hot.
Their faces were pink, flushed, smiles stretched over them as they tried to catch their breath.
“Are you nuts?” Sirius started, and they all promptly burst into fits of laughter, because what else were they supposed to do? That might have simultaneously been the coolest and dumbest thing he had ever witnessed—and being who he was, his best friend being who he was, that was saying a lot.
“That was—you guys are—wow,” Peter said.
“As eloquent as always Petey,” said Sirius. “I'd like to know which of you lovely people howled like a fucking dog.”
The boy raised a tentative hand, a shy smirk on his face.
“It's sort of an inside joke,” he explained. His voice was low and flat and endlessly attractive. “I'm Remus.” He looked to the girl.
“Lily,” she said, pointing a thumb at herself.
“You’re the one that cursed out those demons. I reckon the whole town heard that,” Peter said. Lily blushed and groaned, mumbling something unintelligible under her breath. “I’m Peter.” He glanced expectantly at Sirius, who was still stealing looks at Remus, and elbowed him in the side.
“Sirius,” he said. “Not the word serious, that’s—my name’s Sirius.”
“That’s a long way to say your parents don’t love you,” Remus deadpanned. Lily clapped a hand over her mouth, hiding a snicker and muttering “Remus!” and Peter bit his lips between his teeth, like he was trying not to react.
Sirius, though, absolutely roared with laughter, head tilted back and arms wrapped around his stomach. “It’s—it’s funnier because they don’t,” he said between breaths.
“Oh,” Remus said, eyebrows raising slightly. “Well, that’s fine. We could start a club. ‘People With Shitty Parents and Weird Names.’” They high-fived, both grinning.
“Oh huzzah, there’s two of them,” Lily said. “As fun as a club like that sounds, I think we have more pressing matters to attend to—particularly the fact that… I think we’re stuck here.” She and Remus shared a look at the twelve or so creatures crowding around the entrance. They seemed to be fighting each other for the best view of inside the store—of them—and they looked quite menacing as they did so, blood dripping from their mouths and staining their clothes.
“Hmm.” Remus tilted his head. “We should’ve thought of an escape plan.”
“Yeah, that would’ve been smart I suppose,” Lily said.
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault. Don’t apologise. Don’t start blaming yourself or I’ll hit you.”
“Bully.”
“I’m sorry—not that we don’t enjoy your company—but why exactly did you action movie your way in here?” Peter interrupted.
“I needed tampons and he wanted ciggies,” Lily explained with a shrug.
“Speaking of,” Remus said, making his way to a display of cigarettes behind the counter. “I’m sure whoever owns this place won’t mind me bumming some fags.” He swiped a pack and tore it open, and Lily excused herself to the toilets, shooting finger guns at Peter and Sirius as she walked away.
Peter let out a mellow whistle. “Well, that was unexpected.”
Sirius couldn’t help but agree.
—
For the next few hours, the four sat side-by-side on top of the counter, feet dangling over the sides and fizzy drinks in hand. They told jokes, swapped stories, and played games—truth or dare, would you rather, fuck marry kill, etc.
Sirius learned a lot about Remus and Lily—as they did him.
For starters, Remus and Lily were best friends—not a couple, Sirius was glad to note. They met when they were eleven—much like Sirius and James—because they went to the same public school. They were both twenty-one.
Lily was born and raised in England with her parents and older sister. Her parents divorced when she was nine, and her dad moved to Wales when she was ten, and so she stayed with her dad during the school year and with her mum during summer and winter breaks. She currently lived in England—in a flat in the town, walking distance from the petrol station they were presently in. She’d even mentioned seeing Peter on occasion.
She enjoyed journaling and playing football. In school she had excellent grades, but always got in trouble for her mouth. Her dream holiday was to Peru and she has a goldfish named Sammy. She’s slept with two guys and one girl—not en masse—and her sister was a bitch that was dating someone she called a “total walrus.”
Remus, on the other hand, grew up as an only child in Wales—where he was born—with his dad. When he was a few weeks from turning five, his father—a politician at the time—pissed off the wrong man, who took it upon himself to enact revenge by breaking into their home and stabbing both Remus and his mother Hope. Remus survived, miraculously, but his mother wasn’t so lucky. Afterward, his father became an alcoholic and a rather terrible parent.
He showed them the scar—old and stretched but still raised and gruesome. Sirius told him it looked badass.
Remus had an intense love for books. He liked old music—Queen and David Bowie were his favourites—and he wasn’t a virgin but he refused to give any details beyond that. He was mischievous, though he never got any credit for it because he never got caught, and he despised the color orange, saying, “no reason, it’s just fucking ugly,” which Peter didn’t seem to agree with.
Most of his clothes were second-hand, which at first Sirius thought was cool until Remus sharply pointed out that it was because he was poor. Growing up he was never allowed to have a pet, and now he can’t decide whether he wants a dog or a cat. He lives with his roommate in a flat in Wales, but was in England on holiday to visit Lily. The language he found sexiest was French, and he promptly turned bright red when Sirius had responded by saying “suis-je sexy avec toi?”
Sirius even learned a wide array of new things about Peter. For example, how he’d only ever slept with Camille, or that he was a film nerd. And that he was suspiciously good at being sneaky, which Sirius hadn’t expected.
All of that and a plethora of other things as well.
Remus and Lily he’d known for mere hours, Peter just around three days, and yet he felt so intrinsically intertwined with them as if they’d been mates for years. Outside of James, Sirius didn’t have very many close friends, and he couldn’t help but feel lucky to have gained three almost at once.
He felt the urge to amend his earlier thoughts—of all the people in the world to get trapped in a petrol station with, Sirius was glad it was these three.
—
Sometime a little after midnight, Peter’s eyelids became droopy and Lily was stifling yawns every few minutes. There were only two small blankets—stolen from the employee’s only room, which Peter and Sirius had been using up to that point—so the four decided that the best course of action would be to sleep in shifts, two at a time, starting with Peter and Lily who both looked like they’d keel over soon.
So they turned out the lights in the store, and Peter and Lily settled under their respective blankets on the floor, hidden from the large glass entrance between snack-filled shelves.
Remus and Sirius stowed themselves away in the employee’s only room, door shut so as to not disturb them. It was small, cramped, with a blocky wooden table, a wheeled office chair, and a vending machine. There was a small monitor hanging from the ceiling that showed live footage from the security cameras within the main body of the shop.
Sirius was in the chair, leaning back, gently swaying the seat from side to side. Remus sat cross-legged on the top of the table. They both had cigarettes hanging limply from between their fingers.
“You have nice hair,” Remus said.
“Oh, you think?” Sirius grabbed a clump of it, eyed it uncertainly, twirling it between his fingers. “Thanks. I started growing it out after I moved in with James just because I could.” Remus took a long drag.
“Right call,” he said, and then hesitated, before ultimately deciding to open his mouth again. “Realistically, how long do you think we’ll be in this place?” he asked. Sirius shook his head.
“Dunno,” he admitted with a shrug, and Remus nodded mutely. “But, you know, we’ve got food and water… fags and tampons. Could be worse.”
“Yeah.” Remus sighed. “It was my idea to leave her flat and come here. Wasn’t gonna let her use kitchen roll. But, you know, we didn’t really think of a way back out. I should’ve—I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me.”
“Maybe now that there’s four of us we could fight them off somehow. There’s a car outside practically waiting for us.”
“Maybe.” Remus locked gazes with Sirius. He could see now, under the lonely flickering lightbulb above them, that Remus’ eyes were the colour of amber. They were warm, pretty. He wanted to stare into them for hours, have Remus’ gaze wash over him, study the flecks of gold in his irises. “Not that I don’t love getting to know you,” Remus continued, blissfully unaware of Sirius’ awe. “You’re—Peter, too—you guys are a blast, but… I just think that with everything gone to hell it’d be nice to go through that in a place that’s familiar.”
“Agreed,” Sirius said, blowing out a puff of smoke. “I’d give anything to be at home right now.”
“Shame we don’t know how to kill them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… they’re technically already dead, yeah? So who’s to say they even can ‘die.’”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“We’re stronger than them, but if we fight our way out of here and… All they have to do is scratch us and we’re dead. We have no idea what it takes to put them down.”
Sirius bit his lip. He and Peter had been banking on the initial wave of creatures currently in the town starving to death, now that everyone had hidden themselves away—but now he was beginning to doubt the probability of that. Dead things didn’t need food, did they?
…Dead things didn’t walk, either, so there’s that.
He didn’t like how little he knew about them.
“What would you do if one got you?” he asked. He couldn’t fathom it himself.
Remus pondered for a moment, and then said “no idea. I’d like to think I’d—but no, I’d probably try and go on as long as I could.” He looked down at his lap. “Try and pretend it didn’t happen, live my last few hours, you know? And you?”
Sirius was still trying to grasp it. He’d be scared, he knew that much. He couldn’t imagine seeing such a mark on his body—a bite, a scratch—knowing that he’d be dead in hours; knowing that his corpse would doom others to the same fate.
He flattened his lips around his cigarette and shifted uncomfortably in the chair.
“I don’t even want to think about that to be honest,” he mumbled. “It’s so crazy how just a few days ago I was watching movies with my best friend and his parents, complaining about shit like the weather, and then going out to buy my dream motorbike. And now I’m, like, sleeping on the floor of a petrol station and dead people are walking.” Remus hummed.
“What movie were you watching?” he asked.
“I don’t even remember. Something about witches.” Sirius laughed. “Isn’t that sad? It was so uneventful at the time.”
“People always forget to live in the present,” Remus said. “Forever waiting for something big to happen—we don’t realise that those ‘filler days’ are life, too.”
“Okay, wise guy,” Sirius snarked, smirking, eyes dancing across Remus’ face. “Let’s forever remember this, then. Nothing significant, but we’re enjoying ourselves, I’d say.”
“This? A conversation in an office?”
“Precisely. This is the present, is it not? Let’s bask in it.”
Remus looked at him blankly, and then smiled. “When we’re both still alive in ten years we’re going to be bumming around telling Peter and Camille’s kid about that one time we sat in a room and talked.”
“Hell yeah we are.” Sirius tossed his cigarette on the ground and smushed it under his shoe. “You think we’ll be friends in ten years?” Remus cocked his head, eyebrows furrowing.
“'Course. Nothing builds friendship like shared trauma—and I’d say a cannibalistic undead pandemic is pretty traumatic.”
They let that stand between them for a while. Remus finished his cigarette and Sirius spun lazily in the chair. He tried to picture it—the future. It was tragically and irrevocably different now. No longer was there a point in thinking about his career, or university, or where he’d like to buy a home. Money was obsolete, and the stereotypical goal of marriage and kids was quickly replaced by the ultimate goal of survival.
Christ, he was getting tired of thinking about all of this.
“What’s the best prank you’ve ever pulled?” he asked, changing the subject happily.
“Oh, er…” Remus bit the inside of his cheek. “I’d have to think about that for a bit, actually. You tell me yours.”
“Hmm.” Sirius clicked his tongue a few times. “There was this one in year ten where James and I learned how to pick locks and then in the middle of the night we went around and stole every shoe in the school. A couple kids were still awake but they thought it was funny and promised not to tell. A few days later we tied them all together and hung them around the dining hall like a garland.”
“Holy shit, that’s—wow, that sounds like a lot of work. Did you ever get caught?”
“Not that time, no. But our maths teacher Miss McGonagall—she was my favourite, I called her Minnie—I’m pretty sure she knew. No clue why she never punished us for it, maybe she was secretly glad to be rid of those wretched heels she wore.” Remus laughed, head thrown back and eyes sparking. It was a delightful sound.
“Well I didn’t go to a boarding school, so I never had the opportunity to do something quite as extravagant,” he said after a moment. “But just before GCSEs I convinced Lily to help me set a hundred or so chickens loose around the building. Her dad has a friend that owns a chicken farm so it wasn’t too difficult.”
“That’s brilliant,” Sirius said, amusement laced within his tone. “You’re brilliant.” Remus scoffed, pinking, and then shrugged.
“Eh, I’m alright.”
Alright definitely didn’t cut it in Sirius’ mind. There was absolutely nothing just ‘alright’ about him. Maybe that was dramatic, especially considering they’d only known each other a few hours, but that was okay with him, because if there was any one word that could describe Sirius Black, it was dramatic.
“Did you get caught?” he asked.
“Of course not, I’m not an amateur,” Remus said, affronted. “Besides, I had a reputation to uphold.”
They continued to talk and joke and laugh for a stretch, and they each smoked another cigarette, and before they knew it, Peter and Lily were awake. Sirius and Remus took their turn to lay themselves on the floor, surrounded by crisps and candies and under square, thin blankets. They had small stuffed toys from a rack near the exit as pillows.
Remus said, “night, Sirius.”
And Sirius said “night, Remus.”
And he must’ve been more tired than he thought, because he closed his eyes and drifted into sleep quicker and smoother than he had in a long time.