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Title- Taylor Hanson Nearly Started the Apocalypse (and Isaac Kinda Helped)
Pairings- n/a
Ratings- PG-13ish
Warnings- Character death, strong language.
Word Count- 764
Rain drizzled down from the black sky as Taylor led the way across the muddy cemetery, weaving between headstones, waving his flashlight back and forth before him to widen the beam. Isaac was a few feet behind, grumbling under his breath at Taylor. He couldn’t believe he’d been dragged out of bed at god-awful hours of the night to wander through a cemetery of all places.
“Tay, what the fuck are we doing?” he asked for the twentieth time since Taylor had pounded on his door at eleven thirty.
“You’ll see,” was Taylor’s reply, as it had been every other time Isaac had asked. Isaac groaned as his foot sank into the mud, he pulled it out with a sickening squelch and squinted through the darkness at it, trying to see how much damage had been done.
Whatever Taylor was up to, Isaac vowed to kill him after.
Isaac set his foot back down with a sigh and continued after Taylor, only to find that he had stopped. Isaac halted beside him and looked down at the headstone illuminated by Taylor’s flashlight and he felt a confusion of anger and sadness rise up and clench at his stomach as he read the words engraved there:
“What the fuck, Taylor?” he asked. He went to turn away, but Taylor grabbed his arm, his fingers digging into Isaac’s forearm, and pulled him back. He didn’t say anything, just stared Ike in the eye until his older brother nodded, then he knelt down and started digging through his backpack. Isaac looked up at the moonless sky, groaning inwardly at the cold and the wet and the fact that Taylor was being a cryptic ass-hole, but then Taylor was standing again, an ancient book clutched in his fingers.
“Hold this,” Taylor said, handing Isaac the flashlight before opening the book to a page he’d marked out. He started muttering to himself, probably reading whatever was in the book, but Isaac could barely hear it and even if he could he was pretty sure it was in Latin and he didn’t remember much of that anyway, so he just stared past Taylor and waited.
Suddenly, Taylor slammed the book closed triumphantly and looked down at Zac’s grave, grinning wildly. “Did it work?” he asked.
“Did what work?” Isaac asked, shining the flashlight at Taylor’s face as his brother’s smile fell.
“It didn’t,” Tay mumbled, kneeling down and shoving the book back in his bag. “Fuck.”
Something snapped behind them and Isaac spun around, shining the flashlight around wildly until it fell on a…dead body. The body caught Isaac’s gaze as best it could with it’s hollow eyes and Ike dropped the flashlight. It spluttered out, but Ike just began to run, nearly tripping over Taylor on the way.
“Ike, what the hell?” Taylor shouted, but Isaac didn’t stop or look around. He kept going, heading straight for where he thought the exit was, running at top speed, but his foot caught on something and he tumbled forward, landing hard on his back. Light fell on him and he silently prayed it was Taylor and the flashlight and not some zombie with a torch, and a few seconds later Tay was standing staring down at him, flashlight in hand, and Isaac breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ike,” Tay whispered, his expression cutting into Isaac’s brief moment of happiness. “Don’t look next to you.”
Isaac looked next to him and screamed, and the body next to him screamed, too. It was a grating and unearthly sound, nails on a chalkboard mixed with the splutter of a dying engine, and Ike was up in a shot and he and Taylor sprinted through the cemetery towards the fence. Taylor threw his bag over, then Isaac hosted him up and followed as quickly as possible.
On the other side, Taylor shined the flashlight through the fence and the two brothers watched the zombies wander confused around the graveyard, some heading back to their graves while others turned towards the gates in hopes of getting out.
“What the fuck were you trying to do?” Isaac whispered.
“Raise Zac,” Tay said. “But I think I read the wrong spell.”
“No, really?”
“Fuck you,” Taylor snapped. He shoved the flashlight into Isaac’s hand and pulled the book out again.
“Now what are you doing?” Isaac asked.
“Trying to figure out how to send them back,” Tay said. “Or did you want to be the start of the Zombie Apocalypse?”
Isaac held the flashlight.