bleeding blue | apocalypse au
part forty —other parts
pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x fem!reader words: 3.4k tags: death. blood and gore. zombies of course. AFAB reader. single dad ghost. enemies to lovers. menstruation. smut summary: After losing your companions, you run into a skull-masked man and his daughter. They are your last hope for survival.
Blue barely makes it to the stream before she's jerking onto her knees, black vomit clouding the water.
"Shit."
You gather her hair as her stomach expels more of the water she inhaled. When her gags cease, you grapple for the canteen of water and press it to her puffy lip.
"Swish, don't swallow."
She does as instructed, until her mouth is clear of mud, then she spits it out. You grab her by the elbow and guide her upstream a few paces to avoid the darkened water, then sit her at the edge and splash some on her face, neck, and arms, ridding it of grime to check for signs of bites. She was under the water for half a minute, more than enough time for one to graze its teeth. It doesn't matter how deep the bite is. As long as it skin is broken, the infection spreads.
"Lift your shirt. I'll be quick."
There is a delay in her hands' movement, as though she hears your words but doesn't process them, but then she finally peels up the sticky fabric to her collarbones. You keep your touch clinical despite the fear pooling in the tips of your fingers, cold and heavy, but nothing of concerns mars her fair skin except the bloom of gooseflesh as she shivers, wet.
"Good," you breathe out. She yanks the shirt back down. "Just your legs now."
You don't bother taking her jeans off when the fabric is thick enough to protect her, but you roll up the hem and scan her ankles, then brush your touch over her thighs and calves in search for any holes their teeth might've snagged. Nothing. Relief is palpable, and a fractured exhale spills from your mouth, only for the next breath to hitch at the dark stain you catch between the apex of her thighs, darker even than the soaked denim.
"Twix." She stiffens. "What is it?"
"It's not..." The timing feels sick. Wrong. She's dirty, with you. Not in a clean bathroom with Sara. But fairness is never on your side. Words fail you. You try to grab for them in the cloud of heady adrenaline in your brain, glancing up at her. "You have your period."
"My—what?" She looks down herself, panic twitching in her hands as she grabs at her jeans. "I'm bleeding!"
"It's not a wound," you cut off her thoughts before they can fester. Focus. Rag. You swing of your backpack and dig around for one, ignoring the fact that half of your things got wet when you rushed to her through the water. "This is something your body does... it's natural. You're alright, okay?"
You place the rag in her palm and close her fingers over it, trying to think of what needs to be said. Does she even know what this is?
"Did Ghost ever tell you?" The words slip out under your breath.
Her grip tightens on the rag. "I... I remember once. He said to tell him. If I ever..." Her thighs clamp shut, "Bled down there." Her molars grind together. "That's all he said."
"It happens to me, too," is all you can think to say.
The panic in her expression drains, leaving her cheeks white as you explain what to do in fragments.
"They smelled me, didn't they?"
"Nereida has herbs. They help." You retrieve the second pair of clothes from her backpack. "Change and we can ask her for it. Do you want me to, or you can—"
"I got it."
The only thing that offers some comfort is that when you turn to let her change, this truly seems to be the end of the marsh. Through the trees, you make out distant telephone wires. Once you find shelter, you can properly assess what the marsh ruined in your backpack. The deer meat is on top, so it should be fine. You can't remember what you had stuffed into the bottom. Whatever food Ghost and Blue had in theirs will be soiled.
When she's done changing, you ask if she's alright, and she nods once. Returning to the others a step behind her, you announce that she's clear. Kyle is out of sight, only to reappear through the brush a minute later.
"Intact houses not far off. No smell of Greys."
The shelter Prices decides on for the night is close enough to Hirson for you to see all the abandoned cars pointing out of the city in attempt to flee, but deep enough in the outskirts to feel isolated. It's a small house with a greenhouse beside it, though all that remains inside are flies and maggots and unkempt weeds. There is only one bathroom for everyone to take turns changing into clean clothes, but Blue first uses it to add the rosemary Nereida tucks into her palm.
In the last bit of light, you and Kyle collect water from the stream to wash out the clothes. Ghost digs two shallow holes with a tunnel to manage the smoke of a fire, and when Nereida is done scrubbing the clothes you help her drape them over the embers for the night to dry.
It was the seeds.
The small pouch of seeds that got the wettest in the bottom of your backpack.
Your hand closes around them, then releases, dumping what was left discreetly outside.
It's your turn to take watch.
"Wake Simon up in a few hours," Price says.
There are no beds, only blankets on the floor. It’s no summer home, but it beats the windmill. You take post by the greenhouse with a handgun from Price. Half your arrows are lost to the marsh, so you cut a handful of shoots from an ash tree by the greenhouse, and lean against the glass as you whittle them down.
His appearance, cross-armed at the corner of the green house, is far from a surprise. Your knife pauses, and you meet his stare. A minute of silence before he closes the gap and grabs your wrist to lower the knife.
"Talk to me."
You keep your voice low. "She started her period."
Surprise flickers across his face, shortly muted by understanding.
"Her scent."
"Herbs. Covers it some." You press your wrist free from his hold. "We shouldn't go straight through Hirson with her. It'll draw out any Greys."
"Going around eats time."
"You heard Price. We can afford it."
His jaw flexes, thinking.
"I'll talk to him." You feel the raw worry in the warm exhalation that brushes your face. "What does she need?"
"She almost lost you... twice, really. She needs space to breathe."
"I'm trying to give it."
"You're trying to take away the one thing that makes her feel normal."
"I'm not taking it away. She's starting to think she's older than she is."
"Well, isn't she now?"
He stiffens.
Silence. You inch back, placing a hand on his chest. He looks down, then watches you return the blade to your half-formed arrow. This time it's a rough palm to your jaw that stops you, pulling your gaze back to his.
"There's something else you're not telling me."
"Nothing."
"I can't fix it if you don't tell me."
"I don't need you to fix anything."
"Twix."
"Ghost." Your stubbornness wanes beneath his gaze. "Nereida gave me seeds that help with... keeping us safe. But they got wet. I mean, I was running out anyway."
"Seeds," he repeats, slow, and you look down. "You're worried, still."
"Of course I am."
"I've been careful."
"It's not certain."
"It's unlikely."
Your eyes flit back to his. "Is that what you thought the first time around?"
Christ.
You're not sure what you expect, maybe him to get angry. But instead, his lips twitch. "Mouthy." A long, tired inhale through his chest. "No more sex, then."
Your palm drags over your eyelids. "Well, I mean, for now, at least."
"For now."
He doesn’t press further, but he keeps you there, irises sweeping over your face. When he looks at you like this, it itches. Like he can see every grain of dirt caught in your creases, each one you still feel grinding into your skin. Does he know what you looked at? Did you not put it back exactly how it was before? You can't bring it up. You won't.
Then his hand lowers and wraps around the handle of your knife, easily taking it.
"Go sleep."
"It's my turn. I haven't—"
"I'll go first. Wake you before dawn to take over." When you reach for the knife, he lifts it out of reach, adding, "She'll sleep better tonight if you're next to her."
You tuck the rest of the sticks in his hand. "Fine. Finish these."
Deciphering which sleeping lump is Blue is difficult at first, until you find the one that is curled alone by the entrance to an empty bedroom. She might've appeared asleep if not for the finger poking under her blanket, picking at grains in the wood floor. You lower beside her, not bothering to take out your blanket. You don't want to wake everyone. Instead you shrug off the jacket and drape it over yourself.
"What did you two talk about?"
She shifts to face you.
"The plan for tomorrow," you quietly answer, laying on your side toward her. She's so close her breath hits your chin, much colder than her dad's.
"You told him about my... my period. Didn't you?"
You tuck clumped hair behind her ear, whispering, "I had to."
"Guys don't get it, do they?"
"No. They don't."
"Seems unfair."
"Very." Your chin tucks to look down at her. "Is it hurting at all?"
She shakes her head. "Is it supposed to?"
"Sometimes."
"Is this how you have a baby?" she thinks aloud.
"That part comes when you're an adult."
She moves under the blanket, reaching for something: her wrist. The faded scab there. Tracing it. She still never fully explained what those had been for, but you connected enough of the pieces, and haven't pushed her to tell more.
She suddenly whispers, "Do you trust him?"
You can't see much of her expression, but the question lands wrong between your ribs.
"Yes," you reply anyway, "I trust him with our lives."
"I think he lies, Twix."
"You're mad at him—"
"No, it's not that. He just—he says things."
Your breath stills. "What things?"
"Things that don't make sense." Her hand rests back on the floor, knuckles slack. "Nevermind."
She rolls flat on her back, and goes quiet.
Ghost never makes you switch with him.
You know this because you're still awake by dawn, and only manage a thin sleep just before everyone rustles awake. His heroic attempt at giving you a night of rest was in vain. Now both of you are tired.
Trying to keep your eyes closed a moment longer as light burns the backs of them red fails quickly, and you peel yourself up to find Price outside, speaking with Ghost. You start toward them before even shaking the fatigue off, but stall when you see Blue lingering by the bathroom door.
"I think I—I need another rag," she whispers, fingers clutching your sleeve.
You don't have another clean one, but you get one from Nereida along with a fresh clump of rosemary.
"We'll need to find more," she murmurs. "That's the last I have on me."
You wash the soiled rag as she changes, and overhear Price speaking to Kyle.
“We’re going around Hirson."
“What? I thought we were taking the short way through—reach the A26 again.”
“We will,” Price says. “Just not straight on. There are train tracks running west."
It turns out less than a quarter of the deer meat got soiled. You have a light breakfast of jerky and burdock then leave.
The rail tracks are elevated on a manmade embankment covered in ballast. The crushed rock pokes at a thin, worn patch on the sole of your boot, giving you a blister within an hour. Hirson is sprawled to the left of you, just close enough to detect the tops of buildings still intact. No doubt ridden with Greys. The ones stuck in the marsh probably wandered out of there.
The morning air is thick, heavy in a way heat alone doesn’t explain. You sip at your canteen methodically, swishing it by your ear each time to hear for empty space. Sweat cools quick on your neck. Oddly, the mosquitos are quiet. You would've had three new bites already any other day.
A squinted scan of the sky confirms what the insects knew first. Swollen clouds gather to the east. You wouldn’t think much of them at this distance, but the last summer storm came fast enough to teach you better.
“It’s going to rain. We need cover,” you call, pitching your voice forward to Price.
Nereida catches his arm. “The food, John.”
Everyone pauses on the tracks. Quiet, empty land surrounds you. Hirson is out—not with her—and backtracking to the house would take too long.
Price tips his chin toward another set of rails cutting through the grass, a rusted switchbox hunched beside them.
“Station close,” he says. “Should have cover.”
His prediction rises soon in the distance: a mid-sized rural station, the tracks running parallel now between empty platforms. Thick ivy swallows the bricks archways. Blue-and-white cars still sit abandoned on the tracks, marred with black graffiti. A large sign reads TER, but the city names are scratched out below. The place is quiet, but you draw an arrow on habit just before the first stroke of thunder. It reverberates in the iron bars beneath your feet, then the drizzle begins.
"Move," Ghost calls, and you start running when the heavier rain starts not a minute later, swinging your backpacks to your chests in attempt to cover where the food is. Wet hair clings to your forehead by the time you reach the platform. Ghost grabs Blue by the arm to help her up, but she shakes him off and lifts onto the concrete. You have no choice but to stow the arrow and bow as you leverage yourself up.
The place smells like wet iron and old oil. Heady rust. A flat sheet of steel canopies overhead, but trickles of water leak through. Ghost motions his rifle to a door, a ticket office that should keep you dryer, but you make not even a step towards it before hearing the faint scrap of metal.
Ghost hears it too, pulling Blue behind him. You turn toward the sound. The train. Boarded-up passenger windows and chained sliding doors stare back at you. Then it comes again from inside, a distinctive rattle with the note of rot bleeding through the rain.
"Greys in there," your realization forms aloud.
Price poises his rifle. "They're trapped."
The chains are thick and locked despite being heavily corroded. Secure. Then they can't reach her. You lower your bow a fraction and turn back toward the ticket office, where Ghost begins ramming his shoulder against the door.
The hinges start to give, groaning, when there is another sound you barely catch beneath it all—a sharp clatter skirting across concrete. The platform jolts. Then the world turns white. A distinct, shouted, "Down!" But the strong arm that reaches for you does little against the concussive blast.
You're thrown back, cheek scraping concrete, and a heavy weight crashing on top of your arm. For a moment, there’s nothing but ringing—no sight, no feeling, no sound beyond it. Then you're being hauled up, forced onto legs you can't control, and pressed down. A hand patting your face and chest. Ghost crouched before you, Blue at your side. Your vision returns in specks of color. His face, lips moving, shelves and a register snapping into place behind him. You're in the ticket office. A cloud of dust fogging the window.
Only when the shock wears off do you notice it, the deep pain in your skull—no blood on your fingers when you touch there, but enough throbbing to make your vision double unless you blink hard.
Blue.
She’s clutching her arm where shrapnel has buried itself in the flesh.
It’s just the three of you in there until Kyle shoves Ari inside.
“Price,” he says, breathless. “I couldn’t see—”
Price appears in the doorway with Nereida in his arms. She’s limp, head lolled against his shoulder. Blood curtains from her ear, dark against her neck.
"They know we're in here. Kyle—smoke."
The smoke bomb ignites with a hiss and is tossed through the doorway. Black floods the platform, thicker than the dust still drifting from the pipe bomb. It steals your vision. One hand grips Blue’s shirt, the other Ghost’s, as you force your legs to follow. A misfired round clangs off metal. Another door. Hands pulling you through.
It's a maintenance closet, cramped with seven bodies and electrical panels. Price kicks a mop and bucket over to lay Nereida down, cradling the back of her neck. Two bloody fingers press beneath her jaw and you kneel without thinking, ripping the backpack from her shoulders.
"Alive," he says, gritted.
Somehow you manage coherence. "Keep her head up. Turn it to the side."
You tear gauze and hold it against her ear, not packing it.
“Price. Stay with them.” Ghost drops his pack, shoving cartridges into his pockets. Kyle mirrors him. “Three smokes left.”
Your brain catches up, blood-slick fingers snatching up a gun. "You can't go just the two of you."
"Stay."
His voice, rough and final, and he's already slipping out the door.
Then it's the five of you left behind.
You stash the gun at your waist and act on what you can. Blue. Her arm. You peel her fingers up. Blood, but not much. Ari. He leans on one leg. There's a shard of glass sticking out of his right calf. It's impossible to tell how large or deep, only that blood stains his jeans around it. You have him sit down with his leg up on a shelf the best you can in the small space, and tuck a wad of gauze in Blue's hand.
"Keep pressure on it."
She does. Back to Nereida. Price is speaking to her low, keeping her head off the floor. The blood from her ear has stalled some, but not enough to rule out the worst. At best, it's just her eardrum. When her eyelids flutter, he chokes on a breath and strokes her cheek, but then she's jerking, coughing, and vomiting onto his thigh.
He turns her head to the side and keeps it there while she retches.
“Duchess. Stay with me.” The faintest tremor in his jaw. “Look at me. Can you hear me?”
Her body goes slack. Her eyes slide, searching air that is not there.
“It’s quiet,” she whispers.
The gunfire outside comes sporadically. Single shots. Isolated. They found whoever it is. How many? Bombs—do they still have bombs? Your mind swims, struggling to latch onto anything solid. It’s hard to tell how long it’s been since they left, harder still to know if anyone has realized you’re hidden in here.
You slide, silent on your knees, to the door. It’s slightly warped around the hinges, just enough to give a crack to look through. You catch a sliver of the clearing smoke, rain cutting through it, debris scattered across the platform, and the train car sitting beyond it. No visible movement, except the deepened rattle inside the train's windows.
A crack of thunder. Then a faint, distant grunt snaps your vision up to the steel pedestrian overpass spanning above the train.
Boots.
Sliding in a struggle.
You can’t see much, but you know those are Kyle’s. Brown. Ghost’s are black.
There’s someone else.
A rifle flips over the rail. A shadow lurches. For a split second, there’s nothing but air where Kyle was. Then he's falling.