A/N: This chapter has been in my head for months, but it's taken me a long time to get it all written out, what with school starting up, NaNoWriMo, and my original characters all assaulting me at once. Maybe I was a little less scary near the end, but I think it's because this chapter is really the end of one event and the beginning of one even bigger. It's a short-lived respite, and not all that calming, but I still feel as if I pulled back a little bit on the fear factor at the end.
I'm not sure if I'll ever see any more art for this thing done, as the whole project aspect seems to have fallen apart, but I'm still going to write it as long as I can (which will hopefully be until the very end; it's a very long story, you see). Much thanks to xXJeevas-SonXDXx, Living in a fantasy, Misha 2011, Shinra'sCrazyTurk, Shadow Dancer666, Maddasahatter, FlurryDivider, yumeniai, jrenee07, Mello-Mellon, RainbowJapan, Ninja Basket, Maybesunny. Werevampy (had to put a space in there because FF didn't like your username apparently ;A;), Delshay, parasitic, and Blondie-love for their awesome reviews. I'm sorry to keep you guys waiting so long! I hope you enjoy this next chapter! Remember to read and review!

As always, thank you to Cat for her unwavering support. I couldn't do it without you, wifey.

Disclaimer: Matt and Mello don't belong to me, nor any other DN characters that may or may not appear. The plot is mine though. Hands off, Ohba and Obata.

"In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming." - Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

Chapter 3 - Awakening

Matt's optimism was very short lived. The only workable door to the lobby was locked fast (the automatic sliding doors had been firmly jammed in place with heavy metal bars). Through the dingy glass of the sliding doors, he could see that the entire lobby was empty. Behind the vacant front desk, there was a paper sign against the wall reading "emergency shelter" and an arrow pointing down the hallway to the left wing of the building.

Slowly, he lowered his hand and searched frantically in his pocket. He had left his wallet chain with Mello, but the two picks he used before were still there, wedged in the bottom of the pocket.

They would have to do.

Picking the lock on the door took him longer than it should have, trying simultaneously to watch over his shoulder and keep quiet. He was safer now than he had been back at the convenience store. Sunrise was not far off now and the dark of night was slowly beginning to dissolve into the muted deep purple of pre-dawn.

It was always safer during the day. Most of those...things hid from the sun, avoided it as much as they could. Some of them came out during the daylight hours, but they usually chose to flee than attack, their movements clumsy and fatigued.

For a moment, Matt began to contemplate why, but then the lock clicked into place and the knob twisted easily in his hand.

"Heh," the redhead exhaled, allowing himself a tiny grin as he hurried inside. He poured more vinegar outside the doorway and over the threshold before closing and locking the door behind him.

The lobby was sweltering, the air heavy and thick with humidity. A peculiar odor, reminiscent of mildew, hung about, wet and pungent and grimace-inducing. Paired with the pale wallpapering of creeping vines and unidentifiable leaves and plants, it felt a bit like a jungle.

Each of Matt's steps were met with slight resistance as his soles stuck to the thin layer of cleaning solution and floor wax covering the tiles. Guns raised, he walked carefully around the lobby, squinting his eyes against the poor lighting. Once he confirmed that the lobby was, indeed, abandoned, he continued on past the front desk towards the door leading to the left wing.

He took a slow, shuddering breath, looking the doors slowly up and down. He could see no light seeping out from beneath them, just a hungry blackness that seemed to be devouring whatever light it could. He looked back over his shoulder. The doors to the right wing of the building had been closed off with heavy bars and biohazard symbols. A signboard warned him in bright red letters "DO NOT ENTER: Contaminated Area. Authorized Personnel Only".

Well, he wouldn't be going that way.

Another breath and Matt leaned lightly against the door. He positioned his feet as best as he could to keep a steady stance against the almost impossibly viscous floor tiles.

Slowly, he pushed the door open with his shoulder, peeking into the dark and endless hall.

The smell of death and decay hit him in a smothering tidal wave, invading and violating his senses like a slimy, wriggling fish through his nasal passages.

"Oh God," he choked, feet threatening to slip as he hunched over, giving dry heaves. Sweat beaded at his temple and dripped down the side of his face. He shuddered at the warm, slick trail it left against his already feverish skin. He raised his arm up and covered his mouth and nose with the sleeve that hadn't been torn away.

The smell still managed to get through the make-shift mask, seeping into his pores, absorbed by his clothes, clinging to his hair.

Futilely trying to fight back his tremors, he edged into the pitch black corridor, one small step at a time. The sound of his breaths, jerky and uneven, echoed the hall, eyes watering as the stench began to gradually overwhelm him.

Squelch.

Matt froze as his foot landed on something that was not tile, something slippery and thick.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck-

Lower lip beginning to tremble, his blood running frigid in his veins, he groped into his pocket (while trying to hold his breath) for his lighter.

Click!

He blinked once, eyes adjusting to the light of the flame.

The entire floor was covered with blood, entrails strewn about, and right next to his foot was a...a hand. A hand with a rather large bite-

Matt scrambled backwards, choking loudly. He stumbled and nearly fell, catching himself on the wall and shrieking when he felt something warm gumming against his palm.

"Safely" back in the lobby, Matt began to retch again. He felt his stomach turn and clench in protest; it had nothing left to give. He fell to his knees, furiously scrubbing his stained palm against the threadbare cushion of one of the chairs.

Everyone was...everyone was gone.

"No!" Matt grunted, giving the chair a frustrated shove. A few more tears, uncomfortably hot, slid down his cheeks. He brushed them away with a vicious swipe of his arm. "No...no..." he repeated hoarsely.

He hadn't come all this way for nothing. There had to be something, someone left!

He gazed desperately at the quarantined wing of the building, fear fueling his paranoia that just beyond those doors was food and water and doctors in crisp, clean clothing and some semblance of civilization.

And then his eyes landed on the door to the stairs.

And it was unobstructed.

He leapt for the door. When the doorknob turned easily in his hand, he gave a ragged, watery laugh. He pushed the door a little before there was a rattle and a sudden stop. Matt pushed harder, gritting his teeth, until finally, with a loud clanging, the door gave way. The chair that had been blocking the door lay on it's side on the stairs.

Someone had blocked the door from the inside, meaning that there had to be someone here!

The stairs were clear and clean and Matt took them nearly three at a time, the warm feeling of hope and optimism bubbling back up in his chest.

At the top of the stairs, the door to the second floor was open as well. And down the hall there was light coming from one of the rooms.

Matt couldn't help the relieved smile that sprung onto his face at the sight. He strode down the hall, shoulders slumped and relaxed. Suddenly, the shadowy doors of the rooms he passed didn't seem so intimidating.

Everything's going to be alright, he told himself, wishing he could have been saying it to Mello instead. The determination to get back to him burned a little stronger now.

"Thank God, I've-" he began as he stopped in the lighted doorway, and then found his voice quite abruptly stolen away.

Two people, one man and one woman, both in military uniform, lay motionless and pale on the floor. The woman lay face down in a large, dried puddle of blood. The man was sprawled a few feet away, glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling, a bullet wound to the temple and a handgun resting in the palm of his hand.

Matt inched into the room, gun aimed at the woman's back. He toed her body lightly, exhaling in relief when she remained motionless. He turned her over with his foot and saw that she had been shot right between the eyes.

The room was turned into an impromptu communications center. The hospital beds had been shoved against the wall to make room for a radio transceiver system by the window, which was sealed with metal shutters.

Matt strode forward to see if the system was still working and, fingers just on the frequency knob, he suddenly realized that there was something moving out of the corner of his eye.

Slowly, he turned his head, breath caught in his throat, pulse throbbing in his neck. Past the removable wall that partially separated the two rooms, a figure was hunched over another dead soldier, his back to the only living being in the room. It wore nothing but a pair of tattered denim jeans. It's hair hung, stringy and sparse, from a sallow scalp. The skin of it's back was nearly transluscent. Matt could see the web of pale blue veins branching from shoulder blades to hips, muscles flexing and rippling over prominent vertebrae. The head of the man currently being devoured was nearly separated from the body by a few large bites to the neck. One of the windows had been left open. It was on the verge of dawn outside.

Matt's first reaction was to stop breathing entirely. The next was to try to remember to breath, quiet and slow. He took one cautious step backwards, then another...

...then the sole of his shoe squeaked against the linoleum.

The figure paused, the sudden cessation of chewing and grunting giving way to the sound of blood dripping from it's jaws.

And then it turned, yellowing eyes widening in that split-second of realization.

It lunged, Matt shot.

It hit him, jaws snapping, fetid breath hitting his face in heavy bursts. He heard the handgun slide across the floor and hit the wall.

He had missed, he realized with mounting terror.

He yelled now, yelled in panic and fear and desperation, kicking his legs out as hard as he could and somehow managing to catch the man in the side, throwing him violently off.

"Shitshitshit!" Matt said, voice high and terrified. He flipped over and crawled as fast as he could across the floor, throwing himself at the male soldier as the infected man came down heavily on his legs, teeth latched onto his calf and yanking hard. Matt nearly slammed his jaw into the floor as he was dragged back, but his hand still stretched as far as it could reach, until his fingers closed around that cold, dead hand and that cold, unforgiving metal.

The muscles in his back burned like the muscles in his calf as he twisted himself around as much as he could and aimed at the ravenous monster at his feet.

BANG!

Thank you, dear God, the gun had actually been loaded!

Unused to the weapon, Matt was unprepared for the sharp recoil, his elbow locking and jarring for a few painful seconds. A spatter of blood spread over the floor as the shot caught the man along his back, the bullet leaving a deep, open wound down the side of his spine. Howling in pain, he scurried back, leaving Matt stumbling and lurching toward it for his gun.

The man perched himself on the window, screaming out into the night, calling others to him. It was ear-piercing and pained and angry. Blood poured in thick, lapping waves down his back.

His cries cut out abruptly when Matt threw himself at the window, slamming the metal shutter closed. From there, a new sort of shrieks began, along with banging and scuffling and thrashing. Matt had caught the creatures fingers in the window, twitching digits swelling and reddening under the excruciating pressure.

Gritting his teeth with vicious determination, Matt gave the shutter one last hard shove and there was a sickening snap as those fingers stopped moving and a loud thud as a body hit the ground outside.

For a few minutes, Matt stayed slumped heavily against the shutter, breathing raggedly and desperately. His eyes, wide and unblinking, remained fixed on the digits still stuck in the seam of the shutter, rapidly growing pale and cold.

Now separated from their original owner, they looked like very human fingers. They reminded him of the woman's fingers, hands that reached out to him, as if they were asking him for help.

Matt moaned weakly at the memory and got unsteadily to his feet. He turned, stepping clumsily over the man's half-eaten corpse to reach one of the hospital beds and pull the side railings off it. He slid these through the handle of the doors into the room to close it off as best as he could. A thorough search of the rest of the room produced only a handful of supplies. There was only one roll of gauze left, a few iodine swabs, and an unopened box of rubber gloves.

After he had finished securing the room, he turned his attention to the newly acquired firearm in his hand. It had three bullets left in the magazine. He would need more ammunition and his only source was...

Matt swallowed thickly as his eyes landed on the two men and the woman sprawled out on the floor.

"Sorry about this," he whispered before he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and set about rummaging the pockets of the corpses' military uniforms. As his latex covered hands closed on knifes and handguns and extra mags, he could feel his lungs drawing in shorter and shorter breaths until he was pretty much just holding his breath, waiting for it all to be over.

Three magazines, two knifes, and two grenades. Not too bad.

Matt loathed himself for that thought.

The radio transceiver was, indeed, still working. Matt held one of the headphones to his ear as he slowly twisted the frequency knob, listening closely for any sign of a human voice coming through across the radio waves.

Nothing but silence and static.

Matt turned the knob to the frequency the city had been using for emergency broadcasts and leaned in towards the microphone of the transmitter, finger pressing down on the talk button. "Er...hello?" he began awkwardly. The emptiness of the airwaves replied back, nothing but a hollow echo and a vague crackling noise. "T-this is Matt...just Matt. I'm located at the LA Red Cross on Ohio Avenue." He stopped for a moment and felt a twinge of frustration at the continuing silence that followed his every word, as if the entire work was just staring blankly at him. He took a deep breath and pressed onward. "I've been separated from my friend. He's hurt and we're running low on food and supplies. Rations have stopped coming and...and the city looks like it's been completely abandoned. Everyone at the shelter is-" He faltered for a split second, finger threatening to slip off the transmit button. "Is dead. We need help. Is anyone out there?" His finger let up and he listened closely. He thought he heard a vague titter of noise, but it was nothing more than a hum of feedback. Not a definite sign of life, but a little bit encouraging. "Please, if someone out there is still alive, is still safe, please, say something." The feedback grew louder and louder, peaked in volume, then slowly began to fade away again. Matt frantically tried to grasp at it. "Please, just...just say something! Anything! Please! There's got to be someone out there!" The hum was gone entirely now, nothing but a passing light in the dark, there and gone and not a trace of it left behind.

Matt threw the headphones down with a shout of aggravation and sank to the floor, doubled over with his head clenched firmly between his forearms and his fingers sunk deeply in his hair, sobbing into his thighs.

A few minutes later, Matt pulled the microphone down to hold it tightly against his chest.

He let out a sharp sniffle and a shaky breath as he pushed the talk button. "Please..." he whispered. "Please, God. Just...please, there has to be someone. Just say something. Please, God, don't do this. Someone. Anyone. Don't leave us alone..."

Not a single human voice emerged from the silence and even God's mercy seemed to have abandoned them as his prayer lost itself somewhere in the endless ether.

"Don't smile like that. You're making me begin to regret this."

Matt stood just outside the apartment, a wide grin on his face, a full duffel slung over his shoulder, hands full with three laptop bags, and a bundle of wires and controllers under his arm. "Can I come in?"

Mello tapped his foot, looking the redhead up and down. "Only if you stop grinning like that," he repeated.

Matt tried his best to feign a serious, stern expression. Mello felt his lips turning up into a smile against his will, laughter threatening to spill over at the ridiculous face. "That better?" Matt deadpanned.

"Alright, fine, come in." Mello stepped away to let his friend in, striding off into the kitchen. "We've only got the one bedroom, so you'll have to sleep on the couch until we can get another mattress."

"Ah, geez, and here I thought you'd be ready for me."

Mello rolled his eyes and went back to cutting up the onion he had sitting out on the cutting board. "Hasn't exactly been convenient for me to go shopping, you know."

There had been a rustling of bags as Matt had gotten out of his boots and jacket and unloaded his luggage on the floor of the front hall, but it suddenly went quiet at Mello's words. "I...thought you were done with that stuff," Matt hazarded.

The blond swallowed back his cutting remark and settled instead for slicing rather forcefully through another chunk of onion. "I'm getting out of it. Just a few more weeks, barring any set backs, and I should be free."

Matt was in the doorway of the small kitchen when Mello turned around to grab a can of tomato paste from the cupboard. He smiled weakly, twisting his wallet chain loosely around his fingers as he spoke. "But...you'll never really be free, right?"

Mello's shoulders stiffened as he brought the tomato paste back over towards the stove where a pan with oil was warming on the burner. "No, I suppose not," he said tersely. "Do me a favor and get the cream out of the fridge."

It was a few seconds before Matt moved to comply, but he did so without speaking as Mello scooped up the onions and dropped them into the pan where they sizzled loudly in the hot oil.

"I don't even know why you got yourself involved with this stuff."

"You know damn well why, now leave it."

"Mello-"

With a jerk of the blond's arm, chunk of onion was flipped out of the pan and onto the stovetop. "I've never told you how to do things, Matt. If you don't like it, you don't have to be here." He took a slow, steadying breath. "I'm trying, Matt. I really am."

Matt watched wordlessly as Mello cooked the onions, then dumped in a generous amount of garam masala, followed closely by the tomato paste and cream.

"What are you making?"

Just like that, they had moved on. It was so easy with them.

"Tikka masala. Thought you might appreciate it."

Matt let out a hungry noise and hugged his best friend around the shoulders. "You have no idea," he insisted with a silly grin. "Can't find a decent plate of it anywhere in this bloody country."

The blond roughly jerked his shoulders. "You're going to get me burned, idiot!" He rolled his eyes as Matt sank back against the counter and did his best to look apologetic, which wasn't very good at all. "You can find it if you look hard enough."

The gamer gave him a lopsided grin as he plucked a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and placed it between his lips. "Guess I haven't been looking hard enough then." There was a click from his lighter and then the smell of smoke began to float around Mello's head. "Mind if I take a quick shower?"

"Sure. We don't get much hot water, though."

Matt waved a hand. "No problem. I won't be long." He leaned over the pan as Mello slid the marinade and chicken in. "Dammit, that smells good, Mels."

The blond couldn't resist smiling a bit, the slightest tinge of pink blossoming on his cheeks.

"I'm really glad to be here, Mello."

"Me too, Matt."

Mello couldn't be entirely sure how much sleep he had gotten. When he awoke, the entire store was still cast in the same fluorescent glow, the clock still stuck at 7:30. It may have still been the dead of night, or it may have been high noon. He wasn't sure.

Either way, when he woke up to Neville rubbing his face against his hand and nipping at his fingers, all the while mewling impatiently for more food, he realized that it would probably be impossible to fall back asleep, no matter how tired he felt.

He refilled the cat's food and water bowl and allowed himself a few delusional moments of what he could only deduce was happiness as he sat and scratched the animal behind the ears and listened to him purr as he ate.

Afterwards, he decided to scout out the store for possible barricades, a sort of "last gasp" exit strategy should his location be made known to anything...not of the human variety.

He hadn't noticed it before, but near the back entrance, behind an empty, unplugged soda cooler, there was a door that led to a staircase which went up to what Mello could only assume was an attic. There was just a sliver of dim light peeking out from beneath the door at the very top of the staircase.

He paused in the doorway for a few minutes, debating his next course of action. Common sense told him to simply close the door and bar it up to be safe, but the possibility that there might be life, or even food, up there was too tempting. He tucked two handguns into the waist of his pants and snatched up a flashlight from their emergency supplies, turning it on and off a few times to test the batteries.

When he was sure he had everything in order, he took his first step into the staircase.

It was distinctly colder in the narrow passage and the dust that rose with each step threatened to draw a sneeze out of him. He turned the flashlight on and moved it up and down the stairway. Nothing but cobwebs and dust. From what he could see, the stairs looked safe to walk on.

The first step creaked under the weight of his foot and he froze in his tracks.

There was nothing but silence. He dared to step onto the second stair. That one creaked too.

And then something bolted past him, brushing against his leg. He drew in a sharp breath and nearly fired his gun when he realized that it had just been that goddamn cat bounding up the stairs. It stopped at the top step, turned in the beam of light from the flashlight, and meowed impatiently.

"Shit, shut up!" Mello breathed at the cat as he made his way up the staircase a little faster than he would have liked. He only stopped when he heard a sickening crunch beneath his foot, but it had turned out to be nothing more than a cockroach.

Neville had apparently been in this room too, judging by his desperation to get inside. But Mello managed to ignore the cat and took his time opening the door, trying to juggle both the flashlight and a handgun at the same time.

Mello jiggled the knob. It turned, but the door refused to open. Mello gave it a little push and the door shifted a bit in response. He gave another push and it finally popped open.

If there was something in there, it would have attacked him by now. He felt a little bit of the tension in his limbs leave him as he slowly opened the door on creaking hinges.

Mello took a few moments to look around the room. Neville had already leapt on top of a stack of boxes and curled himself protectively on top of it. Mello suspected it was full of cat food.

And there was food! Boxes and boxes of it! And rubbing alcohol! And vinegar and batteries and...

Mello was surprised to find himself on the verge of tears. He leaned back against the door, holding a hand to his mouth in stunned surprise. The bastard who had owned this store had been hoarding supplies. Even better, he had left them behind!

"Thank you, God," the blond heard himself saying.

Neville meowed in agreement.

There was only one window in the entire room, and it had been boarded up with individual planks rather than whole sheets of plywood. Mello peeked through the cracks and saw, to his immense relief, that it was morning. The sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky over the city.

The sound of the back entrance of the store being forced open suddenly shattered Mello's rosy view. He leapt for the door to the attic and closed it as quietly as he could. He shuffled back, making sure not to make a single noise. He picked up Neville in his arms and huddled himself behind a pile of boxes, out of sight of the door.

There were heavy footfalls on the lower floor. They went back and forth around the store, searching, seeking, probably sniffing him out.

That's when he realized that he had left the duffel behind.

He cursed soundlessly, gripping his handguns tightly. Neville perched himself on his thighs, as if ready to fight at the blond's side.

Maybe they would go away, maybe they wouldn't even think to come up to the attic.

Please go away, please go away, please go away!

He had come this far. He'd made it through the night. He wasn't about to go down now.

But then the footsteps were coming up the stairs. They were slowly getting closer and closer and closer.

If there was only one of them, he could probably take it out. But the noise would undoubtedly draw more, and with the back entrance open, they would flood in one by one.

Mello leaned his head back against one of the boxes and felt his eyes start to water. I'm sorry, Matt, he thought to himself. I tried. I did my best.

The footfalls stopped and the door slowly creaked open.

Neville yowled and hissed and launched himself forward. Mello tried to grab him, but it was too late, he had already sprung over the boxes at the creature.

The blond jumped to his feet, guns raised just as Neville let out a string of hissing and spitting, only to have shock and disbelief hit him like a sack of bricks to the head.

"Matt?"

Matt grinned shyly back at him, looking paler and dirtier than he had when he'd left, but still very much alive and well although a little flustered at having been assaulted by a cat. He was missing one of his shirt sleeves and his jeans were torn up along his right calf, but everything else seemed intact. "Morning, sunshine. Did ya miss me?"

The cat had bounded back to Mello's side, leaping on top of a box to hiss threateningly at the redhead.

Mello lowered his gun and gaped at the younger man. The world suddenly seemed to flow back to him in one giant wave. The tide rushed inwards, until it flooded over him and overwhelmed him. There was life outside these walls. He was looking at it.

He was looking at his world right now.

Mello opened his mouth and let it hang open stupidly, unsure of what to say.

I thought you were dead.

I could have killed you, you moron.

Why the fuck didn't you say something?

He took one shaky step, then another, and Matt watched him carefully, a little afraid, arms stiff at his side.

Then Mello moved forward and wrapped his arms tight around the redhead. "Shit, I'm so happy you're here, Matt," he breathed sharply.

Matt was stock still in his arms for a moment before he wound an arm around Mello's shoulders and hugged him back. "Me too, Mels. Me too."

They stood together like that for a moment, enjoying the smell and feel and warmth of another human being and Neville realized that maybe Matt wasn't all that bad and began to rub himself against the redhead's leg.

"Damn cat, get off," he muttered, giving his leg a shake.

"He's alright, don't mind him," Mello said, scooping the cat up in his arms. He smiled down at the cat and began to scratch it's belly. "Maybe we should find ways to reinforce the entrances to this place. We can use it as a shelter. There's enough food in these boxes to last us months. Maybe we can search for other survivors-"

"Mello."

The blond stopped at the solemn tone in Matt's voice, looking up to see brown eyes staring sadly back at him.

Matt stepped forward, grasping Mello by the shoulders. "Mello, we can't stay here," he said slowly. "Everyone's gone."

A sudden silence crashed down over them.

A whining noise gradually rose in pitch as the world went muffled and quiet in Mello's ears. He felt numb and cold and weightless. Matt was still speaking to him, but the words were very far away.

"Mello? Mello."

"What?" The blond blinked a few times as the whining abruptly cut out.

"They're dead. Everyone at the shelter. It's been abandoned. The whole city is empty."

Mello said nothing. Part of him fully understood what he'd just been told, but another part was still trying to digest it. He was panicking, quietly. His survival instincts had taken hold though and a Whammy child's instincts were far more useful than those of the average person. His instincts were already formulating escape plans for him.

"We can't stay," he agreed, without fully understanding why. "How are we going to get out?"

Matt gave the blond a cocky grin. "You're gonna love this. I stole a fucking Humvee."

They loaded as much of the food and supplies as they could into the military vehicle. Matt stood in the front entrance with the shot gun while Mello brought down box after box.

"They won't come out during the day," Matt explained as another box of canned fruit went into the Humvee. "The hospital had shutters on all the windows, but that was only making it easier for them to hide there. I destroyed as many of them as I could-"

He suddenly cut off, and Mello could hear the unspoken but it isn't going to help anyone, anyway in the new silence.

"No driving once the sun begins to set, then," he said, going back in to get the next box, patting the redhead on the shoulder as he passed.

An hour later, they had squeezed everything they could and Mello came out with Neville in his arms. "Alright, let's go then."

Matt stopped and stared at the cat. "What are you doing?"

Mello blinked. "What?"

"We're not taking that thing."

Neville gave a low, threatening growl. "This thing is Neville, and I'm bringing him with me." Matt was about to protest but the blond quickly cut him off. "Fine, you go take him back in there and lock him up in the supply closet for him to starve."

Fifteen minutes later and they were nearing the city limits, with Neville curled up in a blanket-lined crate on the floor of the Humvee by Mello's feet, sleeping happily.

"That was a low blow, Mello," the redhead remarked as they passed through the eerily quiet suburbs. Mello knew what he was seeing in those seemingly empty windows, those barely there shadows that flitted away as they passed.

There were people in those houses, and they were watching them.

Matt made to turn down a street thickly lined with trees.

"Don't turn that way," Mello cut in. "Keep going."

"Why?"

"Too much cover. Keep going."

They kept driving straight until a less shady drive popped up.

Matt was quickly learning how to handle the truck, maneuvering it a little clumsily around orange barrels marking off the road blocks barring the route out of the city, but obviously he wasn't learning quickly enough for Mello.

"Matt..." he began lowly.

"Fine, fuck this," he muttered and simply plowed through the rest of the road signs telling them to turn back. He turned on the CB radio, telling Mello to change the frequency every few minutes, just in case.

Mello put a hand to the window as he gazed at the world passing by outside. With the daylight around them, the world seemed less dangerous, and yet he had to remind himself that he was watching it through bullet proof glass. Empty cars littered the highway and once or twice, something dashed across the road and into the trees past the curb.

Mello noticed that Matt never even dared to slow down. If anything, he sped up when he saw them. And each time, his hand would tighten on the steering wheel until it disappeared again. Then it would loosen and wring itself anxiously as Matt let out a long, deliberate breath.

"Matt?"

"Hmm?"

Mello touched his hip lightly. "You alright?"

"Fine," the redhead said tensely. "Just...just a little tired."

"What happened, Matt?"

The radio crackled and brown eyes focused intensely on the dash. For a few long minutes, there was nothing else and Mello reached out and changed the frequency again.

"What happened to your leg?"

"One of them got me." Mello went rigid beside him. "Don't worry. Didn't go through my boot."

Green eyes narrowed in suspicion as the older man slowly slid back towards the door. "You're sure."

"Yes, I'm sure." He scoffed lightly. "Shit, Mello, do you honestly think I'd be that cruel? I wouldn't have come back if I thought I was already done for."

"I don't know what to think about you right now." The blond kept his hand on his gun. "You're jumpy. You act as if you've seen a ghost."

"You don't know what the fuck I've seen," the gamer spat viciously. "You were locked up safe and sound with a goddamn fucking cat while those bastards had their filthy hands all over me."

Mello's lips pressed together in a tight line of fury. For the next several miles, the only sound was the static of the CB and the hum of the engine. Mello felt as if he were alone in the car, just drifting along as if he'd never stop, as if this dream could just go on forever and ever and the sun would sit there, hanging so pretty in the sky, bathing the world in it's stark, lonely whiteness.

Then, very quietly,

"Not now, Mello." Matt's voice was nothing more than a shuddering whisper. "Later, okay? Right now, I just...I-"

"Alright." Mello's hand reached over and clasped Matt's knee tightly. They passed by a road sign thanking them for visiting Los Angeles."It's alright. It's over now."

Matt took one cold, calloused hand from the steering wheel and closed it tightly over Mello's, shaking his head. "No, no, it's not."

LA may have met it's end, but their nightmare had only just begun.