bodycount ⋆ luke hemmings

the first conversation

When we finally haul Chloe onto the bus, clad in a red stained parka and sticky snow boots to match, she's crying. And not just in a one-tear, shoulder's slightly shaking sort of way, either; the girl is a mess, her nerve wracking sobs filling the otherwise silent vehicle around us.

Luke raises an eyebrow at me and I try not to shrug. I get that he's confused- I would be too, if I'd just woken up to a fellow classmate of mine having a breakdown in the middle of the bus aisle- but he could at least have some compassion. Ask her what's wrong, maybe. Because if he doesn't, then I'll have to, and I'm not very good at situations like this.

"Chloe?" I start silently, unsure of where to put my hand. When I settle on her shoulder, she shudders, her entire body flinching away from me like my palms are red hot and she's ice.

Which, she might as well be. She's as cold as ever and trudging through that blizzard outside did her absolutely no favours. "Chloe, hey, it's alright. It's just me—"

"Don't go out there!" she screams, and it's only just now that I see where Luke's gone off to. He's at the doors again, a hand on the button that opens them. "I mean it, Luke! Don't!"

"Okay, okay, relax," he frowns, walking away from the button. I watch as he shoves his hands in his back pockets, "What's wrong with you, Marshall?"

"And is that-" I gesture to her parka, to the matted fur of her ruined boots.

I've seen it like this before. Sticky and drying and consistently darkening, a maroon colour that eventually settles into a sickly black. When my older sister would hole herself up in her room for days at a time, she used to hang up pictures of medical patients who'd been cut up and investigated; morbid notes for her Criminal Psychology course back when she was at Uni. I don't know how she went to bed every night facing those images. I can barely look at it now.

Chloe's head hangs low.

I give her a moment before speaking. I try to sound as confident as I can, but I don't think it's working, "Chloe, what's going on? What happened?"

"Y-You tell me," she stutters, desperately trying to wipe at the smeared mascara on her face. Even while crying, she looks good; in a totally offset, dishevelled way. "I was just in there, g-getting coffee, when out of nowhere there was screaming and people running and-"

"Did somebody rob the place?" my blood runs cold, thinking of my classmates and how many out of the thirty that went in there survived. It's livid, a dark thought, but the amount of blood splattered all over the sobbing blonde in front of me hints that it's not a light bodycount.

"N-No," she sniffles, her eyes darting between me, Luke, and the door. Luke himself stays silent, but he shifts his weight from the foot facing the door to the other; reassuring both of us that he won't make the move to open it anytime soon. "No, it wasn't like that at all. There were no guns or knives, it just happened,"

"What happened?"

She turns to me, and I see the seriousness plastered all over her face. She's only ever given me this look once; several months ago, when I was crying over my mother and she told me that it would be okay, that she would have my back no matter what. And she stuck to that promise; meaning, she wasn't lying then. But I find myself wishing she was lying now.

"Everybody's dead, Sophie," she croaks out, "And they're not staying that way."

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

I've been watching Luke pace the floors for the past ten minutes now and a part of me wonders if he believes her. I don't, obviously- things like that don't happen in real life. Your classmates pulling up to some creepy old diner and getting hit with a Walking Dead virus doesn't happen in real life. The fact that Luke Hemmings- the boy I least expect to take Chloe seriously- believes her, that just doesn't happen in real life. Yet he's here, and he's real, and he hasn't said anything since.