Inferno

twenty one.

"Turn it off?" Nathan repeated. "How ironic. How monstrous."

"We aren't monsters, man," Shane assured. "We're survivors. Carl wouldn't be alive right now if it weren't for us."

Right, for us.

They were both silent.

If somebody told Nathan that him and Shane would've been on friendly terms a few weeks back, he would laugh in their face. Yet here they were, talking as if they were old friends and not at each other's throats. Was it the virus that brought them together, or what they committed? Whatever it was, Nate wasn't any better than Shane. He was maybe even worse.

They were both antagonists in their wretched story, the goodness in them wilting like petals.

"My father was in the military and fought in Vietnam," Nathan spoke, his voice silent - but Shane heard everything. "After what happened on September 11th, it destroyed every fight inside of him and he let himself become sick and fade."

The cop looked at him with a hint of a frown. "I'm sorry." He said.

"My mom hated me, pretended I didn't exist - so I did things to hurt her, to hurt myself in order to get her attention, but she still left me," Nathan continued, his voice wavering. "I bottled it all up, and joined the Army. The nights still got worse,"

Shane was quiet, but he was gazing at the soldier, digesting every word as the moon shone above them.

"I killed my baby brother," Nathan revealed, his gray eyes like the dark clouds that are filled with rain - and the rain fell. "He was only eighteen and so full of life, and when the dead cornered us in an alleyway and he fell on his bad leg - I left him there. He was screaming for me even as I ran," His throat was becoming clogged up, the horrors drowning him and making it hard to breathe. He can see all the details even with his eyes open, reality slowly slipping. "Jason wanted to be just like me, make me proud - I was the older brother, his hero, but in the end I was nothing more than a wretched villain," Nathan stood up, feeling absolutely sick to his stomach. "There was time, I could've helped him."

With his movements being frantic and his voice raising, Shane stood up with alert. "Nate-"

"I-I tried to convince myself that if I helped him I would've gone down too," Tears blurred his vision and his hands gripped his dark locks. He was trying to contain himself, trying to contain every emotion, but every emotion he bottled away it became the ingredients to a sleeping bomb. "There was blood everywhere, his screams were everywhere!"

Shane grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and slammed him up against the wall by the front door, clenching his teeth at the loud noise. "Look at you, you're burning yourself," He hissed, and Nathan finally felt the burning pain as he released his curled fists, a cigarette dropping to the ground. "You need to keep it down, you did everything you could do. You ain't making it any better for yourself."

"But that's where you're wrong," Nathan whispered. "I knew I could've still helped him but I still did it - just like you knew Otis had a chance to live, but you still shot him."

Shane's grip loosened, his face hard. "You know you're wrong, man."

"I'm not," Nathan retorted. "We both know that I could've carried an extra bag, I was perfectly fine," The soldier shoved Shane's hands away as his eyes turned sharper than a blade. "Does it take being a monster to survive, or does it take survival to be a monster?"

"You're acting crazy." Shane snapped harshly, his eyes almost black in the twilight of the night.

"At least I'm not like you," Nathan fires back, shoving the other man's fists away, stepping away from him but the cop's voice carried to his ears and caused him to pause. "We're more alike than you think."