They smelt it before they saw it.

Early winter noon hours threw light winds on their precipitating faces, cooling off their sweat to leave behind a likeness for the autumn weather.

The alleys they wounded through were leading them out the city, past the littered and crumpled suburbs, a void mourning for the life that once sustained it. They pressed against the boundaries, weapons clutched numbingly against whiten knuckles.

Under the genial, clear blue sky with the warm sun winking, the pair, one clad in black leather top to bottom and the company with a bright yellow sweater beneath a jade parka and jeans ripped from a few places, trudged between two premises on the calloused pavement with pebbles crunching underneath their well-worn boots.

"Shit," breathed out Jeongguk. They've walked right into a dead end. Humongous boulders and thick rods jutted out in every direction piled up high in front of them; a fallen structure that now barricades their way out.

Speculating, Taehyung opines reluctantly, "We should retrace our footsteps, maybe find another way through that'll get us north-east." Jeongguk passed him a small smile.

"We'll get lost," said Jeongguk gradually, as if the cogs in his brain were only just gaining velocity, he beseeched, "We need to get through, some... how..."

The property on their right was an ongoing futile, sixty-feet white-washed wall that stood erect against all odds. On their, however, was a margin of a cathedral, a window propped up at arms reach, a peak within with sunlight trickling into the dusty, oakwood indoors.

Jeongguk sucked on his inner cheek before ordering, "Run to me, I'll give you a boost." Taehyung did not forage for a reasonable jibe to liquidate the sheer flaunting Jeongguk deliberately put forth, for he knew why it was not the other way around.

Taehyung was shorter than him.

He tucked his wrench in his back pocket, pushed the gun back in the holster. Once he sped up to Jeongguk, he resonated his jump with the push Jeongguk gave by his inclined fingers, grunts from both, then Taehyung squeezed into the gap and fell right on a carpet with a cloud of dust raised around him in his disturbing presence.

He coughed. Then he gave his trademark mighty thunderous sneeze which always made Jeongguk jump.

On the other side, Jeongguk tremulously struggled to heave himself up to join Taehyung.

The latter perused his surroundings. The altar in the far corner was obliterated. Of what remained of the benches were broken pieces of furniture tossed messily around the thick and tattered carpet.

Three wooden crates about Taehyung's height sat out of place hither and thither with packaging agency stamps upon them. The exits were sealed off except the hallway leading to God-knows-what.

"Urgh." The smell hit him, his utter willpower managing to bear down the fried, decaying moose they had found in the streets. It was like wading across a swamp of dead bodies several days old.

Eyes filling the brim with tears of constraint, for the very first time he picked a growl that is coarsed out from behind one of the stacked boxes.

A tapered inhale, Taehyung submitted their doom. "Fuck," he says, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck!" He turned around to warn Jeongguk, perhaps howling at him to run. All he did was stand there rooted on the spot, goose pimples forming all over his body rapidly.

His vocal cords were, for reason unbeknownst, entangled and became dysfunctional.

The large figure rose.

Almost the size of a minivan, the bloater had a disfigured physique, skin of jiggly, yolk-coloured fibrous material incasing its frame. Where its mouth should have been is an opening, a misty, yellowish miniature hurricane materialising, swirling, in it.

Spellbound, Taehyung watched. He heard his name, and he was thrown aside, head hitting the floor with a dull thunk. Jeongguk had pulled him from... what was that?

Pretty golden flakes, cosmic, like dust but bulkier, settled in the circumambient where Taehyung was mere seconds ago. Did it come out of the bloater's mouth?

"OhmyLord," Jeongguk drew back, eyeing the giant with trepidation faltering his stride, summarising in a single gasp, "Whathefuck."

Finding his voice, Taehyung tugged at him. "Behind the crates. C'mon." He dragged the back of his palm on his lips to dry off the sweat, a bit taxing to pacify the mental state of terror churning his gut, tasting bile on his tongue.

If there was one thing that favoured the two, it was the speed at which the bloater advanced. However, the long-distance and accurate hurls of its mycotoxin bombs that would poison the pair to death made them skedaddle out of their hiding place.

In unison, Jeongguk and Taehyung initiate a shootout, bullets flying at the bloater that hollered with such vivacity that a tremendous shiver ran up and down Taehyung's spine, but more in annoyance than in agony did the outburst foretold, charging at them with newfound speed, and they dash away, running for dear life.

Something bumped against the younger, and he almost let out a yelp. A stalker, with its glimmering and miserable eyes, a lump of fungus sitting on its forehead in revulsion, screeched at Taehyung, running to him with maximum momentum.

Praying that the bloater was away from him, Taehyung swung his handy wrench upwards and aimed for his beast's chin, making it wobble on its feet. Grabbing the chance, he puts a shell in its brain before it can come any closer.

More of the undead emerged from the hallway; clickers, stalkers, and runners alike. Risking a glance near the altar, he glimpsed Jeongguk dealing with the bloater, his reflexes keeping him alive, but he must be getting tired, arduous attempts growing feeble with time.

Taehyung focused on the oncoming army of the infected, sworn to not let a single monster get to Jeongguk. He lashed, thrashed and fired shots, keeping track of the bloater from the corner of his eyes.

On the other hand, there was Jeongguk. His heart was beating against his chest resoundingly. His vision was going blurry, the mycotoxin, despite his swerving and ducking, must have been taken in somehow. Anxiety swelled up in his lungs.

Taehyung was a demon battling amongst the swarm of beasts. All Jeongguk needed to do was keep the bloater's attention to himself, and putting it down would be marvellous, really.

"HEY, MOTHERFUCKER!" Screamed Jeongguk, reminding the bloater it was the other puny, pesky being it had to gobble up. And, either the bloater was considering Jeongguk for an immediate threat, or it just didn't like being called a motherfucker, it trampled on forwards, nearer to Jeongguk, the mycotoxin catapult getting prepared.

"Fire!" Taehyung shouted from the edge of the vast room, "Use fire!" For that he received a blow from a clicker, failing to sidestep and tripping over the pile of crates, a sharp shard of the wood jabbing into his upper arm, a whimper escaping his dampen lips.

Blood boiled within Jeongguk. Taehyung still had his gun on him, and the crowd around him had thinned ten folds, but the rage took over the older.

Hands working, flying around, he fashioned that makeshift flamethrower with clinking beer bottles, cotton threads and gasoline, the exact one he modelled when he first figured about Taehyung's immunity.

The bloater was dangerously proximate, now. He darts past it, chucking the first glass bottle on-point at its feet. The flames engulfed it, and it staggered. Three seconds pass. Jeongguk was trembling. He missed the second hit by several meters.

He clocked Taehyung finishing off the last of the undead. With the third and last bottle quavering in his pale fist, Jeongguk thrusts it across the room, and, miraculously, the bottle shatters over the bloater's head.

When the fire dies down, there is a serene silence enveloping the enormous venue, as if the holy spirits were rejoicing at the cleansing of this sacred site.

"Damnit," Jeongguk cursed as he approached Taehyung and his heavily bleeding arm, his yellow cardigan smeared with blood, grime and bits of fungus. "Let's get you the hell outta here."

Taehyung, drained from blood loss and excessive labour, did not utter a word, accepting Jeongguk's support as he wraps an arm around the other's waist, trudging on towards the hallway in their deteriorated states and low stakes of surviving.