Just Johnlock- The Big Book of One Shots

It Will Be Alright In The End

A/N: This is a continuation of Our Dearly Departed, so I will warn you there are some major spoilers at play here, read at your own risk :)

           

John stood on the mountain and watched the smoke rise up from the ground, watching as the individual ashes flew weightlessly through the air and landed on the rocks around him. He assumed that the humans thought burning the town would save them in some way. Maybe it wasn't an intentional fire, maybe someone had accidentally knocked over a candle, or a spark had ignited in some wiring. Either way, there was no fire brigade to put it out; there was no normal human reaction simply because everyone had much more important things to worry about. Instead of putting out flames they were putting down their neighbors, their friends, their family...heck they were putting down any person that came near them that walked with so much as a limp. Why? Well, because it was the zombie apocalypse, of course. John had seen plenty of movies that described the apocalypse and yet for some reason he always thought it a ridiculous idea. He could never understand why zombies were scary; with them being so slow surely anyone who could walk swiftly would be able to survive? Well of course he was right, at the present moment he wasn't afraid, he didn't look down on the crumbling ruins of his old town and shutter, in fact he suspected they all deserved what they had gotten. No one down there liked him anyway. No it was more the psychological trauma that John could never have predicted from the movies he had watched, no Claymation graveyard rising would ever have phased him because he never knew the zombies who were rising, he never knew their past, their names, or the possibility of their future. The one thing that scared him now is what that future was going to look like now that anarchy was beginning to erupt, now that ordinary humans were starting to decide that own life was somehow more important than the lives of someone else's, including the lives that had been recreated not a couple of months previous. This whole endemic started with a miracle, it had started with life and now it was ending with death. John, along with the rest of the world, saw the dead rising as the most wonderful event that could have happened. He had lost so much in his young life, and when the dead had risen he had the most important person returned to him. He had another chance, or so he thought, so everyone thought! No one would ever consider the return of their loved ones to be a bad thing, and yet now look at the town, look at the people! Half were bitten, half were running around trying to eat human flesh, and the other half were wielding pick axes, shot guns, shovels, bedposts, anything that they could use as a weapon! They were slaughtering each other purely because they were beginning to feel hopeless, and it was absolutely barbaric. Of course this zombie outbreak wouldn't last long, in this day in age how could it? There were doctors, scientists, government officials, policemen, there were so many people working on the cure right now, weren't there? Soon they would make a cure, soon they would be able to restore the humanity to all of the zombies, whether they had started off dead or alive, and everything would go back to normal. And then all of the people who had reverted to sawing off their neighbor's heads were going to feel very bad about themselves. John was sure that this was all going to happen soon, he was sure that there would be large black military trucks arriving to pass out the vaccine, that or it would be a sort of vapor that they released into the air, just so that everyone would be cured and not just the ones that waited patiently in line. This was going to happen because it had to happen, their country was too advanced to just sit back and watch the world burn, and despite the fires that now ravaged the buildings he knew that it would be rebuilt once the chaos settles. However in the midst of his optimism John couldn't help but worry about his family, he couldn't help but wonder what had become of them as the smoke filled the sky. Had they been bitten, had they barricaded themselves in their house? If they had they would prove to be the smarter of the human race, all the rest have tried to fight their way through, deeming themselves some sort of action hero and thinking that by killing more slow, stupid creatures they were somehow superior to all the rest. It was disgusting to say the least, simply because they couldn't see the humanity that was still hidden away inside of these creatures, whether they be zombies or not. They were the living dead of course, which despite the oxymoron still meant something, it still signified that they were living creatures; they were humans in the end. How could other humans slaughter them as if they were animals, why wouldn't they attempt to save them, after all of these years living alongside them as humans? They were simply sick, all of the supposed zombies, it was a disease was it not? If people started slaughtering each other like this because of the common cold then there would certainly be issues, but no, now that the infected growled a lot it was suddenly the end of the world, and it was suddenly every man for himself. John was quite sure that this was the modern day equivalent to the plague, and even then they didn't kill the victims! They tried to help, they tried to save them, and some recovered, didn't they? What's to say that the people now will recover as well? In the end there was a cure for the plague, so why should there be any reason that there wouldn't be a cure now, for whatever type of disease this was? They should be rounding up the zombies and keeping them close for when the cure came, all the others that killed them were just stupid, and setting themselves up for weeks of therapy. John sighed heavily, shaking his head in shame at the ruins of the town and finally turned back around to the forest in which he had set up camp. So far they hadn't been interrupted much, except by a rather ambitious man who had insisted that murder was the best policy. Well he turned out wrong, didn't he? It wasn't like John was lonely up here of course; no he had a friend, as he always did. He was constantly reminded of Sherlock's presence by the low growls he heard constantly, however those growls always intensified when he got near. John suspected that Sherlock was trying to talk to him in some way; however he couldn't seem to make out any clear meaning or pattern in the words. Sometimes he tried to imitate Sherlock and growl back, however it seemed as though Sherlock never stopped to listen. John went over to his stock pile of canned food, a pile that he kept growing with every trip to the supermarket just down the mountain. There was plenty of food just sitting around on the shelves down there, for some reason the store owner had left in a hurry and in the meantime he had forgotten to lock the door. John always left money for him on the table, however every time he returned it seemed as though the money wasn't disturbed, as if no one had been in or out since John had made his trip. He decided that Sherlock was probably getting hungry, and so he smashed open one of the cans with his handy can opener rock and poured some peaches into a little plastic bowl that he had found down at the supermarket as well. He had gotten stacks upon stacks of them, and they had seemed to come in handy since Sherlock wasn't very good at finishing his food. John then walked over to the source of the growling, pushing past the shrubs and the foliage and following the slightly worn path he had left there from his constant trips to visit Sherlock.
"Hello Sherlock." John said cheerfully as he emerged in the small clearing, smiling at his beautiful boyfriend from where he stood at the minimum safe distance away. Sherlock's growling intensified, turning into inhuman howls, his now chipped teeth gnashing against each other ferociously. He couldn't go anywhere of course, and no matter how much he struggled to move his arms and legs it was futile. John had managed to tie him up with long ropes that he had found in the huntsman's back shed, and each one of his limps were tied tightly to two trees, making him look almost like a starfish with his limps stretched uncomfortably out on either side. Sherlock didn't seem to mind, however, he never complained.
"You look pretty hungry, and yet you didn't even try to eat your pinto beans. I left them there for a reason." John muttered in a rather disappointed tone, as if he was talking to a pet instead of a zombie. Sherlock growled even louder, his bloodshot eyes straining intensely, his fingers scratching against the rough ropes that left his wrists and ankles bleeding. His skin was so pale it was almost becoming transparent, and his usually shining black curls were matted and mangy, with tufts of hair falling off of his skull every time John attempted to brush it out.
"I brought you some peaches, I hope you like them." John said kindly, walking closer to Sherlock so that he could hold out the bowl and try to tip some of the syrup down his struggling friends' throat. Sherlock merely sputtered and growled, attempting to lurch his neck out far enough so that he could bite at John's fingers instead of the yummy looking peaches that swam around in the plastic bowl.
"Now stop that Sherlock, stop that." John muttered, swatting Sherlock away before taking a protective step back. "I'll leave them here, alright? You growl if you want them." He set the peaches down in Sherlock's eye level and yet the poor boy kept growling, staring at John while struggling against his bonds hopelessly. John sighed heavily, going over to where he had rolled a nice rock to sit on and taking a seat with his legs crossed, watching his poor boyfriend growl and howl and struggle. It was a sad sight, it really was, and sometimes John was struck with the tragedy of it all. But there was a cure coming, and so there was hope. No matter how inhuman Sherlock was now he would return to his perfectly human self shortly, all they had to do was wait for the vaccine that would come and save Sherlock's life. And then they could be together again, then just like they were meant to be. John could only smile, shaking his head sadly and letting his gaze drop to the ground of old scattered leaves the pine needles. He told himself that he was doing the right thing. What else could he do, after all? It was his fault that Sherlock had died in the first place, it was only right that he try to save his life in the end.