Abide with Me, 2/6
Part 1
“This is a terrible fucking idea,” Arthur said. Merlin was keeping his thoughts to himself as he finished his breakfast of tinned pears, but privately he didn't disagree. He made eye contact with Gwen, who sat on the couch with a bemused look on her face. She smiled at him.
Morgana practically snarled at Arthur. “What's so terrible about it?” she shouted. “I told you the fucking car's downstairs in the car park; the tank's full and it runs fine! We can all get the hell out of here! Today!”
“And go where, exactly, Morgana?” he shouted back. “Are you planning to drive to France? Do you have a little map with Infected-free areas marked out on it? Because if they're all in blue, you know, they're actually the sodding sea, which is the only place we'd be safe!”
Now would be a terrible time to laugh, Merlin told himself sternly. Morgana had a look on her face that made him wonder where the taser was at this moment. She took a breath and opened her mouth again, probably to shout at Arthur some more, but Gwen cut her off as she levered herself off the sofa.
“Oh, Morgana, would you stop? And you, too, don't encourage her.” Gwen settled her sling across her chest and looked like someone's stern mum. “We can't stay here much longer and we all know London isn't safe; let's find supplies for the car and drive out to the country. There were fewer people there to begin with so surely there are fewer Infected, yeah? We'll find a sturdy cottage or something and wait it out.” She smiled suddenly. “There'll be fresh water, and we could grow vegetables or something!”
The country sounded more attractive to Merlin already. He looked at the other two, saw the matching disgruntled looks on their faces, and spontaneously made up his mind. He sidled up to Gwen and threw an arm over her good shoulder.
“Well,” he said. “Where's that car, then?”
Morgana gave him a smile which he hoped to have directed at him again someday before skipping off to get the car keys and some other things. Gwen followed her, talking about suitcases. As their voices faded into another room, he looked at Arthur, took in his scathing glare, and suddenly felt very tired.
“Oh, get over yourself. You're hardly the boss of us,” he snapped, picking up his empty tin and spoon and heading for the kitchen.
Annoyingly, Arthur followed. “I never said I was the fucking boss, but surely you can see what a shit idea this is.”
Merlin looked at his tin and spoon and finally just dumped both in the sink. They couldn't exactly clean up, anyway. He turned round and leaned against the counter to face his erstwhile companion.
“It's the least shit of a heap of shit ideas, though, so unless you can put your brain to something besides pissing on other peoples' plans and make up a better one, I would rather not hear about it.” Arthur straightened a bit but Merlin just glared back. “No one's forcing you to come, either; if you'd rather stay then stay. The three of us should be just fine on our own, especially once we've got that cast off Gwen.”
He headed for the doorway, brushing past Arthur in the process, and was stopped by a hand grasping his arm. He looked down at the hand and then up at Arthur, knowing his face was still angry and not caring in the slightest. When Arthur didn't do anything except stand there looking back, Merlin finally raised his eyebrows, signalling that he should get on with it already.
And still the prat took his sweet time, possibly having taken himself by surprise as well.
“Look,” he said finally. “I-you-I'll come with you. You're... you're right. We can't really stay. We should go. To the country if we must.”
It took another moment for him to let go of Merlin; he gave him a thump on the back as he did that was probably meant to be friendly, but just winded Merlin slightly.
“Come on, then,” Merlin said, once he'd managed to fill his lungs again sufficiently to speak. “Things to do.”
Once they'd packed all the leftover food and potentially useful items from the flat into boxes and suitcases (the girls had even found some jeans and a coat in next-door's closets that fit Merlin, and he'd never realized how exciting it could be to own more than one pair of trousers), it was time to go pack up this car of Morgana's and leave. Morgana and Arthur went first, hauling an armload each and keeping a lookout in the shadows for lurking Infected, and Merlin and Gwen brought up the rear, Merlin hauling the last box of tinned food and Gwen dragging a wheeled suitcase stuffed with clothing with her good hand.
“I heard you two talking last night, you know,” Gwen said.
Merlin was so distracted by thinking he saw Infected round every turning of the stairs that it took him a moment to register what she was talking about. When he put two and two together, he winced.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Arthur's a bit of a prat, but he wasn't really thinking of leaving you two behind. I really don't think he has it in him to do a thing like that.”
She smiled. “You both certainly had valid points,” she said, “but you were wrong about one thing.”
“What's that?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You need us as well.”
Merlin's cheeks got hot. “I, er-I don't think he really meant anything by-by that bit about repopulating the planet,” he stammered.
She started laughing. He really needed to meet some people who wouldn't be so quick to laugh at him. If anyone fitting that description existed.
“Oh, Merlin, that's not what I was driving at.” She giggled some more. “What I meant was... you're not in very good shape yourselves, alright? Two people-even two fit, fairly capable people-won't last long, will they. Something happens to one and then the other's on their own. Four is a better number, I think. And anyway,” she nudged him in the side as they stepped onto the fourth storey landing, “my arm may be broken but you were just in a hospital, weren't you? You've had two nights' sleep and some exercise now and you still look knackered all the time! Think I'll take my chances with the cast.” She grinned and he couldn't help grinning back a bit. She seemed to have a talent for making a point without sounding hostile about it.
“Speaking of knackered,” he said, stopping to put down his box on the landing, “my arms are about to fall off.”
They sat for a short rest, trying to relax a bit but keeping their eyes open. Infected weren't much for sunlight, apparently, but the cool darkness of buildings was an ideal place for them to roam during the daytime.
They saw nothing and shortly got up to finish their trek, with Merlin helping Gwen manhandle her suitcase over the shopping trolley barricade.
“About time!” Arthur called when they appeared at last in the car park. “We'd nearly given you up for dead! Merlin,” he continued as Merlin approached him, “convince this madwoman to give me the keys. I don't trust her to drive that thing and I'm not sure she even has a license.”
“I heard that and you can't have them, so stop moaning and get in,” Morgana said, moving round to the driver's side from the back of a blue Ford Fiesta and opening the door. The boot was just large enough to accommodate the box he was carrying, so Merlin loaded it carefully and climbed into the rear door behind the driver's seat. Gwen sat next to him and they were off, with Morgana driving and Arthur complaining loudly about it from the front seat.
After a short but animated discussion about exactly how foolish it would be to go north with winter approaching, no functional power grid anywhere in the country, and no idea where they were to hole up anyway, it was decided that they should drive in a south-southwest direction and so they made for the M4. First, Arthur insisted on stopping at a random corner shop in Waterloo and hauled a puzzled Merlin out of the car with him.
“Come on, I need two pairs of hands,” he said, making for the security gate of the shop (which sported a large dent in the metal grating as well as some black streaks that looked like scorch marks) and hauling it upwards. Merlin ducked inside and managed to crank it up high enough for them both to walk under, and then turned round to come face-to-face with what Arthur had demanded they stop for.
“Fuck me,” he breathed. “What are you, Rambo?”
Arthur ignored him and started sorting through the cache of weapons, which looked large enough to have been assembled from every shop for miles that sold them, and perhaps a military installation or two as well. He picked up two shotguns, a handgun, and what might have been an assault rifle, putting them aside near the door. “Help me find the right ammunition,” he said, waving Merlin toward a pile of bullets and things like he was supposed to know what was going on.
Merlin took a couple of steps toward it and then decided that was close enough, frowning at it and at Arthur as he scowled back.
“Well, come on then, if you're going to be mostly useless you can at least carry things.” He grabbed a plastic shopping basket from near the counter area and thrust it at Merlin, who hung onto it obediently as it was loaded up with ammunition. When the basket was nearly full, Arthur nodded decisively and stood up.
“That should do it,” he said, picking up the weapons and handing Merlin a shotgun of his very own. After examining the assault rifle (and where in the hell had he found that, anyway?) a moment more, he shook his head a bit and then left it, choosing another handgun instead.
As they walked back toward the car where the girls waited, watching them curiously, Merlin grinned at a thought. “I knew you had caches all over the place,” he said cheerfully. “Like a fucking squirrel! Hidey-holes up and down the South Bank!”
Arthur glared, probably because Merlin had just called him a squirrel. He just grinned back some more and they got in the car.
The girls didn't say much about the guns, except for a cheeky comment from Morgana about the shopping basket, and they continued quietly on their way out of London. After about ten minutes, though, Merlin spotted something.
He leaned over the seat and poked Arthur in the shoulder. “Look, it's a petrol station you haven't blown up yet!” He pointed and amazingly, Arthur snorted in what seemed to be amusement.
Morgana pulled the car up to the pumps; it was actually a Sainsbury's with petrol. They all peered out the windows. “D'you think the pumps still work?”
“Unlikely.”
“There should still be lots of food, though. It'd be nice to have more food.”
They brought the car round to the front doors.
“It's completely dark in there,” Merlin said, wondering if lowering the window would help him see inside better. “Could be full of Infected.”
Arthur shifted in his seat. “Probably is.”
Merlin chewed his lip as he thought. “Is it worth the risk?”
The boys looked at each other as if it was going to help them read each other's minds.
“Yeah,” Arthur said eventually. “Let's just be careful and we should be fine.”
Arthur tried to make Merlin take a handgun but Merlin firmly refused, preferring his bat. Once the girls had armed themselves (and Arthur didn't try to give them guns, the twat), they grabbed two shopping trolleys and gathered in front of the doorway.
“Have we got a torch?” Gwen suddenly asked.
“In the back,” Morgana sighed, going to get it. It was, in fact, better than a torch: it was a Maglite, which practically made it a weapon as well. They assembled again.
“Are we going to have to pry the doors open?” Merlin asked, looking at the powerless automatic doors.
Arthur, instead of answering, merely brought out his gun and shot the glass until it shattered onto the pavement. The noise was incredible and they all held their breath, straining to hear any sounds of Infected inside, reacting and maybe ready to burst out at them.
Nothing. They exhaled almost as one and then started pushing the trolleys through the broken glass, lifting the wheels over the doorframe.
“Stay alert, and make sure you don't pick up anything that needs to be cooked,” Arthur said, steering a trolley one-handed with his gun ready in the other. Gwen held the torch, Morgana pushed the other trolley, and Merlin brought up the rear, his hands twisting nervously around the grip of his bat.
It had to be said that supermarkets were beyond creepy in the dark, regardless of the possible life-threatening things hiding in the shadows. Merlin decided he was changing his stance against fluorescent lights: if he ever again set foot in a Sainsbury's with the lights properly going, he thought he might weep with joy over every glaringly-lit inch.
It was slow going in the dark, trying to navigate the place with only a big torch, but they soon filled their carts with tins and boxes and jars of anything they thought might still taste somewhat fresh. By unspoken agreement, the boys stayed clear of the sweets, although Gwen and Morgana grabbed several Terry's Chocolate Oranges. Merlin tasted bile just at the sight of them.
Probably, though, the best finds of the trip were a handful of torches with batteries, several bottles of good whiskey that Arthur found stashed in a corner, of all places, and most amazingly, an entire crate of apples that were still edible, standing out in the middle of a produce cart full of otherwise mouldering compost.
“There's an argument against organic food if I ever saw one,” Arthur said delightedly as he grabbed an apple from the top of the crate and cleaned it on his trousers (which were barely clean themselves). He took a big bite and juice ran down his chin. Merlin's mouth watered and he picked up an apple for himself.
“All right,” Gwen said as he chewed his first bite noisily, “let's get back outside before we start eating all the food, yeah? I'd like to get out of town before dark, myself.”
Merlin felt fleetingly wrong about leaving without paying, and then laughed quietly at himself as he helped hoist the heavy carts back over the broken doorframe. As they opened the back hatch of their car, Morgana produced with a flourish a bundle of carrier bags from the registers, and so they dumped their loot into those before chucking them into the boot.
They were just pulling away, with Morgana still driving but Gwen in Arthur's former seat, when Merlin caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He whipped round in his seat to look properly at the front of the Sainsbury's and could have sworn he saw an arm outlined in the doorway, but it was gone the next instant.
“Did you forget the milk or something?” Arthur asked lazily from his left.
“No, it's nothing. I'm just seeing things. Bit twitchy, I suppose.” He faced forward again as Morgana accelerated onto the spookily vacant M4.
***
They opted to drive slower than one usually drives in the country when they can get away with it, to conserve fuel, but even given their speed and the detour to loot Sainsbury's on the way out of London, they found themselves near Bristol by the late afternoon. After a quick debate while idling at the junction of the M4 and M5, the consensus was to head south, along the coast, which was somewhat more populated than if they'd kept on toward Wales but also likely warmer in the wintertime. Morgana aimed the car down the M5 and about ten minutes' drive past Bristol, pulled off into a field. The sun was out and the grass still green as they bounced along, coming to a stop near the middle of the field where they could see all around for a mile.
“Right,” Morgana said cheerfully, “Teatime!”
They spread out some of their food on blankets and had a picnic, of all things, laughing and smiling as though everything were normal. And maybe, Merlin thought as he grabbed another apple, this was their new 'normal'. What else were they going to do with their lives, after all? He leaned back, chewing, and looked round; there was a cottage half a mile away, back near the motorway. He squinted at it some more but could make out no details or movement. Perhaps, he thought, they'd go have a look later.
When they had all eaten their fill and stretched and lazed in the autumn sunshine for a while, Arthur spoke up. “What next?” he asked. “Do we keep going south or stay here for the night?”
“Camping under the stars?” Gwen murmured, smiling up at the sky.
Merlin sat up. “Well, it's safe at least. If we keep watch, we'll have lots of warning if any Infected come out. It doesn't look like rain, and if it did we could sleep in the car.” He shrugged. “I vote we stay. We're here already and I'm quite comfortable.”
He grinned at Arthur, who rolled his eyes. Lazy git, his face communicated clearly.
“Yeah, alright,” Morgana said through a dainty yawn. “I don't think I fancy driving any more today, anyway.” She stretched like a cat and sprawled on her blanket, her eyes closed against the sunshine.
“Well,” said Arthur, “if you ladies are planning to nap and work on your tans, then Merlin and I are going to go have a look at the house over there before it gets dark.” He got up, brushing off his jeans. “Come on, Merlin, get off your arse.”
Merlin, who was sure he'd just pointed out how comfortable he was right there, opened his mouth to say as much but then thought better of it. With as aggrieved a sigh as he could force out, he hauled himself up to follow Arthur, grabbing his trusty bat almost as an afterthought. Time spent in a meadow this peaceful and sunny made the idea of Infected seem like a bizarre nightmare, and yet Merlin knew better: this was a nightmare he was caught in. He trudged through the grass after Arthur, studying the details of the cottage as they got closer.
It was large enough to have housed a family and still seemed to be mostly intact, which surprised him a bit; it was quite close to the motorway and seemed like it might have been a target for squatters or looters already. But no windows were broken and indeed it seemed shut up tight. When they reached the door, he almost wanted to knock first, but Arthur just tried the knob. It turned easily, which was perhaps worrying. With a look back at Merlin, he opened the door and walked into the dusty gloom inside.
He stopped in the entryway, hands on hips, looking about the room with rapidly declining interest. “Hmm,” he grunted, “nothing but a lot of dust. Have fun, Merlin; I'm going to look round the outside.” With a clap on the shoulder that nearly sent Merlin sprawling arse over teakettle, Arthur marched back outside.
Merlin squinted into the gloom. Besides the adjustment from the brightness outdoors to indoors, all of the shutters were closed. He moved across the entryway, which was also the sitting room, to open the shutters on the nearest window. Barely had he flicked the latch, sending a beam of dusty sunlight across the floor, when there was a creak behind him. Thinking it was Arthur, come back to announce his continued boredom, he turned nonchalantly.
The child screeched at him and lunged.
“Oh fuck me!” Merlin felt his back slam into the wall as he grabbed blindly for his cricket bat, which he had foolishly set down to open the shutters.
The hissing, spitting, infected boy leaped at him and by pure reflex he was able to plant a foot in the boy's sternum, shoving him off. The bat clattered onto the floor and the boy-thing-the Infected shook himself, looking like he was about to go for Merlin's throat once more.
Oh please don't you fucking dare come at me, Merlin prayed to whoever might yet be listening, holding up a hand in front of him like he thought that might do some good, reaching for the handle of his bat with the other.
The Infected twitched like he was about to attack once more, and then curiously, he stopped. His sides heaved for breath and his eyes still looked wild but he stood rooted to the spot, as if mesmerized by Merlin's hand. When Merlin noticed that this was happening, he was so startled that he forgot what he was doing, and then suddenly the moment passed, the child snapped out of his trance, and Merlin had about the space between heartbeats to lay his hands on his weapon again before he was dead or worse.
He shoved himself to his feet just in time and swung two-handed, squeezing his eyes shut and wishing he couldn't hear or feel the crack when he made contact.
Reluctantly opening his eyes again, he was endlessly thankful that only one hit had been necessary, and then he was violently ill right there on the floor.
He ripped a cheerfully patterned curtain from the door to wipe the fresh blood from the bat and dropped it on the floor before leaving the cottage as quickly as he could. Arthur was coming round the far side as he stepped out, blinking, into the sunshine.
“Find anything useful?” he asked, grinning and twirling his machete in that infuriatingly competent way.
“No,” Merlin said, pulling the door shut and setting a fast pace back to where the girls were still enjoying the late sun. He saw Arthur's quizzical look from the corner of his eye and released a long breath when he didn't say anything else.
***
They did stay in the meadow that night, and Merlin took first watch, promising to wake someone up to relieve him after a few hours and then positioning himself on the roof of the car with his bat and a shotgun. The bat was hardly effective in his position but he couldn't deny a strong attachment to it by this point. Anyway, he didn't trust himself to hit anything with the shotgun, let alone in the dark, and so he happily kept his extra weapon while everyone else bedded down with blankets on the grass. It was a warm night and they thought they would be alright sleeping on the ground.
After an hour, he heard quiet, even breathing (and snoring from Morgana, and he was filing that away for future blackmail) and, assuming that the other three were all asleep, was shocked nearly to death when Arthur hopped up from nowhere to sit on the roof beside him.
“Some lookout you are,” Arthur mocked when Merlin had gotten his heart rate back under control.
“You shouldn't shock a sick man; I could keel over dead, you know,” Merlin gasped.
“And yet, I think you'll survive,” was Arthur's response as he peered out at the horizon, which was at this point indistinguishable from the black sky above it.
“How come you're not sleeping?” Merlin asked, not really caring, because he felt glad for the company to keep him awake.
Arthur shrugged, a subtle movement in the dark; there were only stars and a half-full moon for light. “I may go to bed when you do; wake Morgana for next watch,” he said. Already those two had a complex system of mutual torment going, and naturally now Merlin was being dragged into it.
They shared a comfortable silence for possibly half an hour, just feeling a soft breeze and the still-warm metal of the car underneath them. Arthur was the one to finally break it.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
“You'd get change back,” Merlin replied, which got a snort. “Seriously, I was only thinking of how quiet it is. I've never been anywhere this quiet. I nearly feel like I've gone deaf.” He cast a sideways glance at Arthur. “What are you thinking of?”
“Just... the future.”
“And you said it was madness to think about the future,” Merlin chided softly.
“Well, I never said I wasn't a bit mad.” And that was certainly true. “But now we've left London and I've left my life of the past four weeks, all that hiding and hoarding food and weapons and darting place to place-no squirrel comments, you twat-and now... we're in Somerset and sleeping in an open field. It's daft. I can't help wondering what tomorrow and the day after and the months and years after will look like. Now that I might live to see them.”
And suddenly Merlin got it and he had to bite down a laugh.
“You can't sleep. You can't sleep in the open,” he said. A snicker escaped him anyway.
Arthur moved in the dark and it looked like he was rubbing his knuckle against his lip, a tic that Merlin had already noticed. It made him smile and he nearly wanted to tease some more, but kept it to himself. Arthur likely had enough neuroses to deal with that he didn't need Merlin laughing at them to top things off.
“It's all right,” he said instead. “I won't tell anyone you have a weakness.”
“Thanks,” Arthur growled back, but Merlin could hear a smile in it. They were quiet for another long while and Merlin thought that might be it for the sharing, but then Arthur spoke yet again, shattering his preconceptions.
“You know,” he said, and he was speaking so softly that Merlin nearly had to strain to hear him, “before you came along... I said I'd had a friend with me. And I lost him.”
Merlin remembered. Arthur's friend who'd been gone four days. Infected. Merlin knew exactly what had happened to him, now.
“For four days,” Arthur went on, still quiet, sounding almost unsure of himself, Merlin thought, “I was all alone. Running and fighting. And I told you how one person can't survive for long alone.” He paused. “I was figuring I had days left. If I was very lucky. I couldn't keep it up, not for long. There's the physical danger, obviously, but besides that, the loneliness... it wears on you, Merlin.
“Owen and I hadn't seen anyone else alive in a week before he was infected, and I was starting to think there was no one else left at all, in the whole of London. In the whole country, maybe. Actually, that same afternoon before I met you... well, that's not important.” He stopped again and looked at Merlin, which Merlin knew because he was looking back at Arthur. “Anyway, I just wanted to say. Thanks. For showing up when you did. Even if you are an idiot.”
Merlin smiled at him in the dark and wondered if he could see it. “Go to bed, you prat.”
“Yeah, alright.”
Arthur jumped down from the roof and got his blankets, and Merlin settled himself for another hour or two of lookout duty before waking Morgana. He didn't think he would be able to get to sleep if she was snoring like that.
***
Part 3
“This is a terrible fucking idea,” Arthur said. Merlin was keeping his thoughts to himself as he finished his breakfast of tinned pears, but privately he didn't disagree. He made eye contact with Gwen, who sat on the couch with a bemused look on her face. She smiled at him.
Morgana practically snarled at Arthur. “What's so terrible about it?” she shouted. “I told you the fucking car's downstairs in the car park; the tank's full and it runs fine! We can all get the hell out of here! Today!”
“And go where, exactly, Morgana?” he shouted back. “Are you planning to drive to France? Do you have a little map with Infected-free areas marked out on it? Because if they're all in blue, you know, they're actually the sodding sea, which is the only place we'd be safe!”
Now would be a terrible time to laugh, Merlin told himself sternly. Morgana had a look on her face that made him wonder where the taser was at this moment. She took a breath and opened her mouth again, probably to shout at Arthur some more, but Gwen cut her off as she levered herself off the sofa.
“Oh, Morgana, would you stop? And you, too, don't encourage her.” Gwen settled her sling across her chest and looked like someone's stern mum. “We can't stay here much longer and we all know London isn't safe; let's find supplies for the car and drive out to the country. There were fewer people there to begin with so surely there are fewer Infected, yeah? We'll find a sturdy cottage or something and wait it out.” She smiled suddenly. “There'll be fresh water, and we could grow vegetables or something!”
The country sounded more attractive to Merlin already. He looked at the other two, saw the matching disgruntled looks on their faces, and spontaneously made up his mind. He sidled up to Gwen and threw an arm over her good shoulder.
“Well,” he said. “Where's that car, then?”
Morgana gave him a smile which he hoped to have directed at him again someday before skipping off to get the car keys and some other things. Gwen followed her, talking about suitcases. As their voices faded into another room, he looked at Arthur, took in his scathing glare, and suddenly felt very tired.
“Oh, get over yourself. You're hardly the boss of us,” he snapped, picking up his empty tin and spoon and heading for the kitchen.
Annoyingly, Arthur followed. “I never said I was the fucking boss, but surely you can see what a shit idea this is.”
Merlin looked at his tin and spoon and finally just dumped both in the sink. They couldn't exactly clean up, anyway. He turned round and leaned against the counter to face his erstwhile companion.
“It's the least shit of a heap of shit ideas, though, so unless you can put your brain to something besides pissing on other peoples' plans and make up a better one, I would rather not hear about it.” Arthur straightened a bit but Merlin just glared back. “No one's forcing you to come, either; if you'd rather stay then stay. The three of us should be just fine on our own, especially once we've got that cast off Gwen.”
He headed for the doorway, brushing past Arthur in the process, and was stopped by a hand grasping his arm. He looked down at the hand and then up at Arthur, knowing his face was still angry and not caring in the slightest. When Arthur didn't do anything except stand there looking back, Merlin finally raised his eyebrows, signalling that he should get on with it already.
And still the prat took his sweet time, possibly having taken himself by surprise as well.
“Look,” he said finally. “I-you-I'll come with you. You're... you're right. We can't really stay. We should go. To the country if we must.”
It took another moment for him to let go of Merlin; he gave him a thump on the back as he did that was probably meant to be friendly, but just winded Merlin slightly.
“Come on, then,” Merlin said, once he'd managed to fill his lungs again sufficiently to speak. “Things to do.”
Once they'd packed all the leftover food and potentially useful items from the flat into boxes and suitcases (the girls had even found some jeans and a coat in next-door's closets that fit Merlin, and he'd never realized how exciting it could be to own more than one pair of trousers), it was time to go pack up this car of Morgana's and leave. Morgana and Arthur went first, hauling an armload each and keeping a lookout in the shadows for lurking Infected, and Merlin and Gwen brought up the rear, Merlin hauling the last box of tinned food and Gwen dragging a wheeled suitcase stuffed with clothing with her good hand.
“I heard you two talking last night, you know,” Gwen said.
Merlin was so distracted by thinking he saw Infected round every turning of the stairs that it took him a moment to register what she was talking about. When he put two and two together, he winced.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Arthur's a bit of a prat, but he wasn't really thinking of leaving you two behind. I really don't think he has it in him to do a thing like that.”
She smiled. “You both certainly had valid points,” she said, “but you were wrong about one thing.”
“What's that?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You need us as well.”
Merlin's cheeks got hot. “I, er-I don't think he really meant anything by-by that bit about repopulating the planet,” he stammered.
She started laughing. He really needed to meet some people who wouldn't be so quick to laugh at him. If anyone fitting that description existed.
“Oh, Merlin, that's not what I was driving at.” She giggled some more. “What I meant was... you're not in very good shape yourselves, alright? Two people-even two fit, fairly capable people-won't last long, will they. Something happens to one and then the other's on their own. Four is a better number, I think. And anyway,” she nudged him in the side as they stepped onto the fourth storey landing, “my arm may be broken but you were just in a hospital, weren't you? You've had two nights' sleep and some exercise now and you still look knackered all the time! Think I'll take my chances with the cast.” She grinned and he couldn't help grinning back a bit. She seemed to have a talent for making a point without sounding hostile about it.
“Speaking of knackered,” he said, stopping to put down his box on the landing, “my arms are about to fall off.”
They sat for a short rest, trying to relax a bit but keeping their eyes open. Infected weren't much for sunlight, apparently, but the cool darkness of buildings was an ideal place for them to roam during the daytime.
They saw nothing and shortly got up to finish their trek, with Merlin helping Gwen manhandle her suitcase over the shopping trolley barricade.
“About time!” Arthur called when they appeared at last in the car park. “We'd nearly given you up for dead! Merlin,” he continued as Merlin approached him, “convince this madwoman to give me the keys. I don't trust her to drive that thing and I'm not sure she even has a license.”
“I heard that and you can't have them, so stop moaning and get in,” Morgana said, moving round to the driver's side from the back of a blue Ford Fiesta and opening the door. The boot was just large enough to accommodate the box he was carrying, so Merlin loaded it carefully and climbed into the rear door behind the driver's seat. Gwen sat next to him and they were off, with Morgana driving and Arthur complaining loudly about it from the front seat.
After a short but animated discussion about exactly how foolish it would be to go north with winter approaching, no functional power grid anywhere in the country, and no idea where they were to hole up anyway, it was decided that they should drive in a south-southwest direction and so they made for the M4. First, Arthur insisted on stopping at a random corner shop in Waterloo and hauled a puzzled Merlin out of the car with him.
“Come on, I need two pairs of hands,” he said, making for the security gate of the shop (which sported a large dent in the metal grating as well as some black streaks that looked like scorch marks) and hauling it upwards. Merlin ducked inside and managed to crank it up high enough for them both to walk under, and then turned round to come face-to-face with what Arthur had demanded they stop for.
“Fuck me,” he breathed. “What are you, Rambo?”
Arthur ignored him and started sorting through the cache of weapons, which looked large enough to have been assembled from every shop for miles that sold them, and perhaps a military installation or two as well. He picked up two shotguns, a handgun, and what might have been an assault rifle, putting them aside near the door. “Help me find the right ammunition,” he said, waving Merlin toward a pile of bullets and things like he was supposed to know what was going on.
Merlin took a couple of steps toward it and then decided that was close enough, frowning at it and at Arthur as he scowled back.
“Well, come on then, if you're going to be mostly useless you can at least carry things.” He grabbed a plastic shopping basket from near the counter area and thrust it at Merlin, who hung onto it obediently as it was loaded up with ammunition. When the basket was nearly full, Arthur nodded decisively and stood up.
“That should do it,” he said, picking up the weapons and handing Merlin a shotgun of his very own. After examining the assault rifle (and where in the hell had he found that, anyway?) a moment more, he shook his head a bit and then left it, choosing another handgun instead.
As they walked back toward the car where the girls waited, watching them curiously, Merlin grinned at a thought. “I knew you had caches all over the place,” he said cheerfully. “Like a fucking squirrel! Hidey-holes up and down the South Bank!”
Arthur glared, probably because Merlin had just called him a squirrel. He just grinned back some more and they got in the car.
The girls didn't say much about the guns, except for a cheeky comment from Morgana about the shopping basket, and they continued quietly on their way out of London. After about ten minutes, though, Merlin spotted something.
He leaned over the seat and poked Arthur in the shoulder. “Look, it's a petrol station you haven't blown up yet!” He pointed and amazingly, Arthur snorted in what seemed to be amusement.
Morgana pulled the car up to the pumps; it was actually a Sainsbury's with petrol. They all peered out the windows. “D'you think the pumps still work?”
“Unlikely.”
“There should still be lots of food, though. It'd be nice to have more food.”
They brought the car round to the front doors.
“It's completely dark in there,” Merlin said, wondering if lowering the window would help him see inside better. “Could be full of Infected.”
Arthur shifted in his seat. “Probably is.”
Merlin chewed his lip as he thought. “Is it worth the risk?”
The boys looked at each other as if it was going to help them read each other's minds.
“Yeah,” Arthur said eventually. “Let's just be careful and we should be fine.”
Arthur tried to make Merlin take a handgun but Merlin firmly refused, preferring his bat. Once the girls had armed themselves (and Arthur didn't try to give them guns, the twat), they grabbed two shopping trolleys and gathered in front of the doorway.
“Have we got a torch?” Gwen suddenly asked.
“In the back,” Morgana sighed, going to get it. It was, in fact, better than a torch: it was a Maglite, which practically made it a weapon as well. They assembled again.
“Are we going to have to pry the doors open?” Merlin asked, looking at the powerless automatic doors.
Arthur, instead of answering, merely brought out his gun and shot the glass until it shattered onto the pavement. The noise was incredible and they all held their breath, straining to hear any sounds of Infected inside, reacting and maybe ready to burst out at them.
Nothing. They exhaled almost as one and then started pushing the trolleys through the broken glass, lifting the wheels over the doorframe.
“Stay alert, and make sure you don't pick up anything that needs to be cooked,” Arthur said, steering a trolley one-handed with his gun ready in the other. Gwen held the torch, Morgana pushed the other trolley, and Merlin brought up the rear, his hands twisting nervously around the grip of his bat.
It had to be said that supermarkets were beyond creepy in the dark, regardless of the possible life-threatening things hiding in the shadows. Merlin decided he was changing his stance against fluorescent lights: if he ever again set foot in a Sainsbury's with the lights properly going, he thought he might weep with joy over every glaringly-lit inch.
It was slow going in the dark, trying to navigate the place with only a big torch, but they soon filled their carts with tins and boxes and jars of anything they thought might still taste somewhat fresh. By unspoken agreement, the boys stayed clear of the sweets, although Gwen and Morgana grabbed several Terry's Chocolate Oranges. Merlin tasted bile just at the sight of them.
Probably, though, the best finds of the trip were a handful of torches with batteries, several bottles of good whiskey that Arthur found stashed in a corner, of all places, and most amazingly, an entire crate of apples that were still edible, standing out in the middle of a produce cart full of otherwise mouldering compost.
“There's an argument against organic food if I ever saw one,” Arthur said delightedly as he grabbed an apple from the top of the crate and cleaned it on his trousers (which were barely clean themselves). He took a big bite and juice ran down his chin. Merlin's mouth watered and he picked up an apple for himself.
“All right,” Gwen said as he chewed his first bite noisily, “let's get back outside before we start eating all the food, yeah? I'd like to get out of town before dark, myself.”
Merlin felt fleetingly wrong about leaving without paying, and then laughed quietly at himself as he helped hoist the heavy carts back over the broken doorframe. As they opened the back hatch of their car, Morgana produced with a flourish a bundle of carrier bags from the registers, and so they dumped their loot into those before chucking them into the boot.
They were just pulling away, with Morgana still driving but Gwen in Arthur's former seat, when Merlin caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He whipped round in his seat to look properly at the front of the Sainsbury's and could have sworn he saw an arm outlined in the doorway, but it was gone the next instant.
“Did you forget the milk or something?” Arthur asked lazily from his left.
“No, it's nothing. I'm just seeing things. Bit twitchy, I suppose.” He faced forward again as Morgana accelerated onto the spookily vacant M4.
***
They opted to drive slower than one usually drives in the country when they can get away with it, to conserve fuel, but even given their speed and the detour to loot Sainsbury's on the way out of London, they found themselves near Bristol by the late afternoon. After a quick debate while idling at the junction of the M4 and M5, the consensus was to head south, along the coast, which was somewhat more populated than if they'd kept on toward Wales but also likely warmer in the wintertime. Morgana aimed the car down the M5 and about ten minutes' drive past Bristol, pulled off into a field. The sun was out and the grass still green as they bounced along, coming to a stop near the middle of the field where they could see all around for a mile.
“Right,” Morgana said cheerfully, “Teatime!”
They spread out some of their food on blankets and had a picnic, of all things, laughing and smiling as though everything were normal. And maybe, Merlin thought as he grabbed another apple, this was their new 'normal'. What else were they going to do with their lives, after all? He leaned back, chewing, and looked round; there was a cottage half a mile away, back near the motorway. He squinted at it some more but could make out no details or movement. Perhaps, he thought, they'd go have a look later.
When they had all eaten their fill and stretched and lazed in the autumn sunshine for a while, Arthur spoke up. “What next?” he asked. “Do we keep going south or stay here for the night?”
“Camping under the stars?” Gwen murmured, smiling up at the sky.
Merlin sat up. “Well, it's safe at least. If we keep watch, we'll have lots of warning if any Infected come out. It doesn't look like rain, and if it did we could sleep in the car.” He shrugged. “I vote we stay. We're here already and I'm quite comfortable.”
He grinned at Arthur, who rolled his eyes. Lazy git, his face communicated clearly.
“Yeah, alright,” Morgana said through a dainty yawn. “I don't think I fancy driving any more today, anyway.” She stretched like a cat and sprawled on her blanket, her eyes closed against the sunshine.
“Well,” said Arthur, “if you ladies are planning to nap and work on your tans, then Merlin and I are going to go have a look at the house over there before it gets dark.” He got up, brushing off his jeans. “Come on, Merlin, get off your arse.”
Merlin, who was sure he'd just pointed out how comfortable he was right there, opened his mouth to say as much but then thought better of it. With as aggrieved a sigh as he could force out, he hauled himself up to follow Arthur, grabbing his trusty bat almost as an afterthought. Time spent in a meadow this peaceful and sunny made the idea of Infected seem like a bizarre nightmare, and yet Merlin knew better: this was a nightmare he was caught in. He trudged through the grass after Arthur, studying the details of the cottage as they got closer.
It was large enough to have housed a family and still seemed to be mostly intact, which surprised him a bit; it was quite close to the motorway and seemed like it might have been a target for squatters or looters already. But no windows were broken and indeed it seemed shut up tight. When they reached the door, he almost wanted to knock first, but Arthur just tried the knob. It turned easily, which was perhaps worrying. With a look back at Merlin, he opened the door and walked into the dusty gloom inside.
He stopped in the entryway, hands on hips, looking about the room with rapidly declining interest. “Hmm,” he grunted, “nothing but a lot of dust. Have fun, Merlin; I'm going to look round the outside.” With a clap on the shoulder that nearly sent Merlin sprawling arse over teakettle, Arthur marched back outside.
Merlin squinted into the gloom. Besides the adjustment from the brightness outdoors to indoors, all of the shutters were closed. He moved across the entryway, which was also the sitting room, to open the shutters on the nearest window. Barely had he flicked the latch, sending a beam of dusty sunlight across the floor, when there was a creak behind him. Thinking it was Arthur, come back to announce his continued boredom, he turned nonchalantly.
The child screeched at him and lunged.
“Oh fuck me!” Merlin felt his back slam into the wall as he grabbed blindly for his cricket bat, which he had foolishly set down to open the shutters.
The hissing, spitting, infected boy leaped at him and by pure reflex he was able to plant a foot in the boy's sternum, shoving him off. The bat clattered onto the floor and the boy-thing-the Infected shook himself, looking like he was about to go for Merlin's throat once more.
Oh please don't you fucking dare come at me, Merlin prayed to whoever might yet be listening, holding up a hand in front of him like he thought that might do some good, reaching for the handle of his bat with the other.
The Infected twitched like he was about to attack once more, and then curiously, he stopped. His sides heaved for breath and his eyes still looked wild but he stood rooted to the spot, as if mesmerized by Merlin's hand. When Merlin noticed that this was happening, he was so startled that he forgot what he was doing, and then suddenly the moment passed, the child snapped out of his trance, and Merlin had about the space between heartbeats to lay his hands on his weapon again before he was dead or worse.
He shoved himself to his feet just in time and swung two-handed, squeezing his eyes shut and wishing he couldn't hear or feel the crack when he made contact.
Reluctantly opening his eyes again, he was endlessly thankful that only one hit had been necessary, and then he was violently ill right there on the floor.
He ripped a cheerfully patterned curtain from the door to wipe the fresh blood from the bat and dropped it on the floor before leaving the cottage as quickly as he could. Arthur was coming round the far side as he stepped out, blinking, into the sunshine.
“Find anything useful?” he asked, grinning and twirling his machete in that infuriatingly competent way.
“No,” Merlin said, pulling the door shut and setting a fast pace back to where the girls were still enjoying the late sun. He saw Arthur's quizzical look from the corner of his eye and released a long breath when he didn't say anything else.
***
They did stay in the meadow that night, and Merlin took first watch, promising to wake someone up to relieve him after a few hours and then positioning himself on the roof of the car with his bat and a shotgun. The bat was hardly effective in his position but he couldn't deny a strong attachment to it by this point. Anyway, he didn't trust himself to hit anything with the shotgun, let alone in the dark, and so he happily kept his extra weapon while everyone else bedded down with blankets on the grass. It was a warm night and they thought they would be alright sleeping on the ground.
After an hour, he heard quiet, even breathing (and snoring from Morgana, and he was filing that away for future blackmail) and, assuming that the other three were all asleep, was shocked nearly to death when Arthur hopped up from nowhere to sit on the roof beside him.
“Some lookout you are,” Arthur mocked when Merlin had gotten his heart rate back under control.
“You shouldn't shock a sick man; I could keel over dead, you know,” Merlin gasped.
“And yet, I think you'll survive,” was Arthur's response as he peered out at the horizon, which was at this point indistinguishable from the black sky above it.
“How come you're not sleeping?” Merlin asked, not really caring, because he felt glad for the company to keep him awake.
Arthur shrugged, a subtle movement in the dark; there were only stars and a half-full moon for light. “I may go to bed when you do; wake Morgana for next watch,” he said. Already those two had a complex system of mutual torment going, and naturally now Merlin was being dragged into it.
They shared a comfortable silence for possibly half an hour, just feeling a soft breeze and the still-warm metal of the car underneath them. Arthur was the one to finally break it.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
“You'd get change back,” Merlin replied, which got a snort. “Seriously, I was only thinking of how quiet it is. I've never been anywhere this quiet. I nearly feel like I've gone deaf.” He cast a sideways glance at Arthur. “What are you thinking of?”
“Just... the future.”
“And you said it was madness to think about the future,” Merlin chided softly.
“Well, I never said I wasn't a bit mad.” And that was certainly true. “But now we've left London and I've left my life of the past four weeks, all that hiding and hoarding food and weapons and darting place to place-no squirrel comments, you twat-and now... we're in Somerset and sleeping in an open field. It's daft. I can't help wondering what tomorrow and the day after and the months and years after will look like. Now that I might live to see them.”
And suddenly Merlin got it and he had to bite down a laugh.
“You can't sleep. You can't sleep in the open,” he said. A snicker escaped him anyway.
Arthur moved in the dark and it looked like he was rubbing his knuckle against his lip, a tic that Merlin had already noticed. It made him smile and he nearly wanted to tease some more, but kept it to himself. Arthur likely had enough neuroses to deal with that he didn't need Merlin laughing at them to top things off.
“It's all right,” he said instead. “I won't tell anyone you have a weakness.”
“Thanks,” Arthur growled back, but Merlin could hear a smile in it. They were quiet for another long while and Merlin thought that might be it for the sharing, but then Arthur spoke yet again, shattering his preconceptions.
“You know,” he said, and he was speaking so softly that Merlin nearly had to strain to hear him, “before you came along... I said I'd had a friend with me. And I lost him.”
Merlin remembered. Arthur's friend who'd been gone four days. Infected. Merlin knew exactly what had happened to him, now.
“For four days,” Arthur went on, still quiet, sounding almost unsure of himself, Merlin thought, “I was all alone. Running and fighting. And I told you how one person can't survive for long alone.” He paused. “I was figuring I had days left. If I was very lucky. I couldn't keep it up, not for long. There's the physical danger, obviously, but besides that, the loneliness... it wears on you, Merlin.
“Owen and I hadn't seen anyone else alive in a week before he was infected, and I was starting to think there was no one else left at all, in the whole of London. In the whole country, maybe. Actually, that same afternoon before I met you... well, that's not important.” He stopped again and looked at Merlin, which Merlin knew because he was looking back at Arthur. “Anyway, I just wanted to say. Thanks. For showing up when you did. Even if you are an idiot.”
Merlin smiled at him in the dark and wondered if he could see it. “Go to bed, you prat.”
“Yeah, alright.”
Arthur jumped down from the roof and got his blankets, and Merlin settled himself for another hour or two of lookout duty before waking Morgana. He didn't think he would be able to get to sleep if she was snoring like that.
***
Part 3