Chapter Text
You suspected something was wrong with the man the moment he tried to breach the abandoned apartment unit you and your ragtag group of survivors were holed up for the night.
He was but a wounded survivor looking for shelter, you and your group tried to turn him away, fought him off for hours and in the end he relented and left..you thought you'd never hear that voice again but it wasn't the last you saw of him.
He had claimed to be a soldier with an arsenal of weapons at his disposal, the most your group had was an old baseball bat, and a hand saw saladin bought from his boss's garage sale last year.
Hardly weapons of choice but coupled with your muscle strength and Efrideet's martial arts training it kept your blood clean and the infected at bay.
He tried to barter, his weapons for shelter, but Radegast said no, he didn't trust him, not with all psychopaths running around, and barbaric cults forming after the quarantine, skorri quickly agreed, the scars on her face still fresh from Dryden's razor, it would scar but ultimately it would heal, but the trauma that bastard instilled in the timid singer would cling to her until the day she died.
You trusted your group and respected their opinions, they were your friends and co-workers and frankly all you had left in this world on fire.
So even if it meant leaving someone to those..things, even If it felt so many levels of wrong, you heed their warnings and trusted their decisions.
You tell him no, there is no shelter there, urge him to move on before the sun sets and the lost come trailing after him.
He begs, his tired voice was hoarse and full of a desperation that makes your throat tighten, and your stomach flip, and for a moment you don't want to be you anymore.
To be the man on the other side of the door, capable of helping save a life but turning a blind eye, it feels disgusting to know days earlier you were in the same dire predicament.
You don't want to be the one to sign his death warrant, so you insist in a voice tight with guilt, that he finds a safe hiding place elsewhere, you silently pray to god his silence meant he had followed your advice.
He doesn't answer after that and you sigh to yourself in guilty relief, noting with shame that if he was to die you didn't want to hear it, selfish ignorance in many cases was bliss.
The night comes and with it the howling screams, they not only sound of the dead but of evil, wretched beast festering on hate and agony, the sounds of the unfortunate snared in their endless dance join their ranks and for hours it's a cacophony of chaos.
You've lost hope that tomorrow will bring a better day, it's been weeks and no one has come to save you, part of you is half convinced the government was simply waiting for you all to die out before they act, cull the virus out by starvation, and no matter how long they scrounge and scrape to survive nothing was coming to banish the darkness back to where it belonged...
But here in this boarded up apartment filled with a dozen weeping candles and a handful of heavy hearts, your alive and your people are safe...so that's something.