They reached the dirt parking lot of the church at a dead run. Herbert fumbled with the door handle—too slow, too slow—and Dan turned to whack at their pursuers with an axe. There were half a dozen or more of them: the shambling dead, perfectly preserved in the moment of their re-awakening, eyes filmy-white and empty-looking in the fading twilight. Dan buried the axe blade in the skull of one. The bone gave way with a sickening crunch.
A hand grabbed at Dan and yanked him backwards across the threshold. Dan put his shoulder into the wooden door and shoved it closed, feeling the muffled thud all the way through his bones. Abruptly he was in the dark save for the last glimmers of daylight, just visible through a window high above his head.
Through the thick, heavy wood at the door, he heard the knocking and scrabbling of the dead people. His heart pounded, and sweat trickled down from his hairline. That was close, he almost said, but he knew what Herbert would say: It’s always close, like that would make Dan feel better.
From behind him came the rustling sounds of Herbert fiddling with the matches. From memory, Dan found the lantern they kept by the door and traded the axe for it. “Here, I’ve got the lantern.”
“Hell,” Herbert said, unexpectedly. “You do it.” He patted at Dan, found his empty hand, and pressed a matchbook into it.
“Uh, sure.” Dan lit a match without too much trouble, then the lantern. In its pool of light, he saw Herbert scowling and holding his hand. Blood trickled down his arm. In the dimness, it looked nearly black. “You’re hurt,” Dan said, alarmed.
“Really?” Herbert said sharply, in that particular tone he only used when someone was being especially stupid or when he was in pain.
It was a double whammy this time, Dan supposed. “How bad is it?”
“It’s fine,” Herbert said, scowling some more.
Dan gave him a hard look. Herbert scowled back. Fine. Lantern high, Dan led the way down the back hallway. The nave was to the west, and beyond it the narthex with its double doors taller than Dan, but the high ceilings of the nave felt uncanny after nightfall, stretching far beyond the reach of lantern-light and throwing back weird echoes. Anyway, it was much too difficult to keep warm, especially as the weather turned.
Instead they headed through another door, not as heavy as the outer one, but still solid wood, worth closing and bolting behind them, and they climbed the winding stone steps into the little room below the bell tower. The church had been using it for storage space. Herbert and Dan had cleared all that out, their first few days in the church.
That’d been five weeks after Hill had finally enacted his plan and about three weeks after he probably started to regret it. Whether he still existed in any meaningful sense, he definitely wasn’t controlling the dead anymore.
Dan hung the lantern from the ceiling, took their first-aid box out of the little cabinet—the rest of the medical supplies were down in Herbert’s laboratory, set up in the apse—and sat on the room’s one mattress. “Show me,” he said.
Grudgingly Herbert sat down next to him and unwrapped the crimson-soaked strip of cloth he’d tried to bind himself with. Dan hadn’t noticed before because Herbert had rolled the sleeve of his button-down over it. Trust Herbert to keep himself in button-downs and ties and tidy black slacks, even during the apocalypse.
Underneath the makeshift bandage, Herbert’s whole arm was streaked with blood, enough that Dan wasn’t sure where the injury was. He wet a rag with water from their boiled supply and began carefully cleaning the blood from Herbert’s skin. “What happened?” Dan asked.
“I had a disagreement,” Herbert said shortly.
“When?” Dan asked, startled. With one of the dead, Herbert meant. The two of them had stayed away from the other living settlements today, but they’d also stayed together almost the entire trip.
“When you were looking for garden tools,” Herbert said. That had been their last stop of the day before turning for home—and running into the group of dead that had chased them the rest of the way. “I was in the hardware department, looking for supplies for the lab, and it found me instead.”
“Jesus,” Dan said. He hadn’t even noticed Herbert slipping away, or his return, either. “For God’s sake, Herbert.”
“I’m fine,” Herbert said, his wound still bleeding freely. He might’ve been a little paler than usual under the smudges of grime on his face (courtesy of a creative exit they’d hade to make from a house in mid-afternoon). It might also have just been the lighting.
Then he hissed in pain, which told Dan roughly where the cut was. Dan poured more water on the rag and carefully wiped the blood away until he could see the long, jagged cut down the inside of Herbert’s forearm. It was deeper than he’d been hoping for, and it’d need stitches. He’d have liked to see Herbert do that for himself.
Dan’s hands shook as he stitched Herbert up. Good thing he had all that training. “There,” he said when he’d finished. “No strenuous activity for a while.”
“Thank you, Doctor Cain,” Herbert said, only mildly sarcastic.
“And don’t—don’t disappear on me like that, okay? Jesus.” Dan got up to put the supplies back in the cabinet, but somehow the suturing needle slipped from his fingers. He knelt to look for it, but once he was on his knees, he couldn’t seem to focus. His pulse was too high, he noticed, and he couldn’t seem to get enough air.
“Dan,” Herbert said, from far away. Then, closer, “Dan.”
Then Herbert was in front of Dan, cupping his jaw the uninjured hand. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”
“What if you weren’t?” Dan said.
“Well—”
“What would I do, if you just—just left me here by myself?”
“I won’t,” Herbert said, so confident—more certain of anything than Dan had been in months or maybe in his whole damn life. “I didn’t,” he added. “I’m still here.”
“Right,” Dan said. Sure. Obviously Herbert was there, and despite copious bleeding, he would be fine.
Dan must not have been convincing. Herbert gave him a hard look, and then he palmed the back of Dan’s neck, leaned in, and brought their mouths together. Dan sighed against Herbert’s lips and gripped his hip. He couldn’t quite kiss him like he wanted to; somehow he was still too shaken to settle into it. It was Herbert who guided the angle, who eventually coaxed Dan into opening his mouth.
That first time, a couple of nights after they’d found the church, Herbert had approached the project of kissing Dan (and eventually getting off with Dan) like it was an experiment Herbert was intensely interested in and probably taking notes on. Dan was more into that than he could ever have guessed, and okay, maybe he’d given it some thought.
This was something quieter, more familiar. Slowly Dan was able to kiss back, to get into the rhythm of it. In remembering Herbert’s body, he found that he remembered his. When Herbert finally pulled away, Dan realized he was finding it easier to breathe. “Sorry,” he said, feeling a little ridiculous.
Herbert regarded him with utter seriousness, a furrow between his eyebrows, and then he gave Dan’s arm a squeeze. “We should eat,” he said. “And make coffee.”
“Your arm,” Dan protested.
“I’ll be fine,” Herbert said firmly.
And he was. He got himself up the ladder with his injured arm tucked up against his chest. He cracked the trap door open and climbed up through it, and Dan followed, his backpack full of new provisions slung over his shoulder. Enough moonlight shone throw the wooden slats of the bell tower for Dan to start the little propane stove and set the kettle on top of it. He spooned instant coffee into each mug and then slumped down next to Herbert. By the smell of it, Herbert had broken into the package of beef jerky.
Dan shrugged a little closer, pressing up against Herbert’s side. Don’t leave me, he thought, but there was no point in saying it again. Careful not to bump Herbert’s arm, Dan reached for the jerky. It tasted good, rich, savory: almost like nothing had happened to the world at all.