Day 19 [2015] . A Place to Make a Stand . Fear the Walking Dead x Grimm; T
Title: A Place to Make a Stand
Author: jedibuttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not
Rating: T
Prompt/Prompter: dharkapparition, who asked for: "Tobias heads north, makes it as far as Portland before the country is over run. He has valuable skills for survival, will the Grimm crew take him seriously?"
Spoilers: Fear the Walking Dead Season 1, early Season 5 for Grimm
Notes: Once again, sorry for the long delay! The timelines for the shows don't exactly line up in-universe, but they were airing at the same time, so *handwaves*. The more I tried to figure out how Tobias would get there, the more I wanted to hug him - I hope he ended up somewhere safe in canon!
Summary: All Tobias cared about now was the sound of shuffling feet scraping across the gravel after him-- and the sound of an aging car's brakes somewhere up ahead. Possibly another threat; but possibly a source of help? Either way, at least whoever-it-was was alive. 4400 words.
Tobias couldn't tell from his seat near the back of the bus why exactly traffic had stopped. The highway was jammed so far ahead that all he could see was a trail of red lights three lanes wide stretching until the road curved out of view. He was pretty sure he could guess, though; it was lucky they'd even made it as far as they had before getting stuck. Just his bad luck that it had happened in the middle of yet another city.
And not even in the direction he'd originally meant to go. After Ms. C had left him at his house, he'd tried to call his uncle, ready to get out of Los Angeles and start heading east to the desert. Somewhere where there weren't almost four million people stacked on top of each other. Even if the whatever-it-was didn't infect them all... he'd seen the reports online, and he knew better than to take refuge in denial. Civilization was a lot more fragile than most people wanted to believe.
His uncle hadn't picked up, though. It wasn't 'til after he'd put the phone down that he'd found the note on the kitchen counter: a quick message written on the grocery list notepad in barely-readable dark ink, saying his girlfriend was in the hospital and he was sorry, but he had to go stay with her while she was sick. Someone had attacked her; she had a bad fever. So he'd stopped by again to make sure there was enough food in the house for a couple of days, and in the meanwhile, Tobias should sit tight.
Tobias' hand had shook as he'd traced his fingers over the scribbled words. Thinking of Mr. Costa. Of the videos he'd seen online. It had been weeks since the first rumors had appeared, days since they'd snowballed into something bigger and started trending on social media. His uncle knew what it meant that his girlfriend had been attacked; he had to have known when he'd left the note. The ornate letter G drawn in the corner, the wad of cash under the notepad... yeah, there was no way he hadn't. Idiot. What did he think he was going to do, make sure she didn't hurt anyone, and then come back for Tobias? By the time that happened, if he made it, who knew how bad things would be?
He'd swallowed around the lump in his throat and tried to call again, but hadn't been surprised when no one had answered. And it had been weeks since he'd last heard from his mother. She went quiet like that sometimes on a hunt; Tobias got it, really, he'd known how important her job was since he was little, and there was no way this was going to stop her when nothing else had. But he also knew that by the time she got back or found a phone, there'd probably be no making it out of the city at all. It might even be too late now; even waiting another day for his uncle might be too much.
So he'd packed his backpack and his duffel with extra underwear, bottled water, energy bars, and some of his mother's spare gear, then scribbled a quick note of his own. Then he'd headed for the nearest long-ride bus station while there was still a chance of escaping before it all went to hell. He'd just have to trust in their old back-up plans, and hope they managed to find each other again eventually.
There'd only been one bus with seats available when he got there, though, and from the conversations he'd overheard at the counters... well, better to head north than go nowhere at all, right? As long as they still headed east eventually. They'd made it through northern California just fine and cut through Oregon's smaller cities in the Willamette Valley without running into trouble; he'd almost started to hope they'd actually get past the turn onto I-84 along the Columbia River and make it into high desert country east of the Cascades before the inevitable happened. But no such luck; first they'd had to detour onto the 405 loop to get around the mass of other cars jamming the interstate trying to get out of Portland, and then just a few blocks shy of crossing back over the Willamette, a thick pall of smoke had started to rise in front of them, and the slow flow of traffic had ground entirely to a halt.
Somewhere in the mass up ahead, between the bus and the smoke, there were lots of whirling lights. One of the signs they'd passed a little ways back had had the symbol for a hospital; he'd also seen exit notices for a convention center-- and across the water, against the deepening dusk of the sky, the last rays of the sun were turning the rising dark cloud the color of drying blood.
Tobias squashed down the panic rising in his veins and turned around to look through the back windows of the bus. There were as many white lights behind them as red lights ahead of them; even the turn-offs he could see were all jammed with cars. Portland might have like a sixth of the population of Los Angeles, but even that much was still nightmare fuel during an apocalypse.
"I have got to get out of here," he muttered under his breath. If he couldn’t get out of the city... out there might actually be a lot safer than right here. The population density would be a lot lower down in the industrial zone they'd been passing than packed on the highway like sardines in cans, waiting for the Grim Reaper to catch up to them. It would only take a few infected people swarming among the vehicles to trap them inside, and once they were cornered, there'd be no going anywhere at all.
He fidgeted with the strap of his backpack, then screwed his courage to the sticking point and stood, edging out of his seat into the aisle. The driver hadn't let anyone on the bus without a ticket matching a seat, which he'd thought stupid and short-sighted at the time-- who cared about tickets or seatbelt laws in the face of a zombie apocalypse?-- but it was good luck for him now, leaving the thin strip of rubber between the rows of seats mostly uncluttered as he edged his way to the front, duffel banging against the backs of his knees as he tried to hold it out of the way.
Tobias could feel the eyes of the other passengers on him as he moved past; a couple of people snagged at his sleeve or tried to tell him to go sit back down, but he ignored them all. If there was ever a time to be grateful he wasn't a petite kid, it was now; everyone seemed more scared and worried than angry, and no one was willing to confront him as long as he didn't seem to pose a direct threat. Early days; he had a feeling there'd be a lot more of man's inhumanity to man as things kept getting worse.
"Hey kid," the driver spoke up, finally noticing Tobias' presence as he approached the yellow line painted across the aisle. "What are you doing? Go sit back down."
She looked at least as anxious as Tobias felt, eyeing him up and down with a slight tremor in her hand where it rested on the wheel. He did his best to look nonthreatening and totally not infected, no ma'am, as he replied. "I... I want to get off the bus," he said.
"What?" Her frown deepened as she gestured toward the windshield. "We're in the middle of the highway, kid; I know it looks gridlocked now, but it could start moving again anytime."
He laughed a little, nervously. "I hope you're right. But I don't think...." He looked back over his shoulder at the rows of other passengers, some of whom looked a little too interested in the conversation, and shrugged. "Look, I just grabbed the first bus I could, but I don't actually know anyone in Boise, and I do know people who live here. In Portland. So just let me off, okay?" It wasn't exactly a lie; some of the people on the sites he frequented had been reporting on conditions in their own locations, including Oregon's biggest metro area.
She looked at him for a long moment, then up at the camera... then turned toward the view out the windshield again, fear pinching at the lines around her mouth. "Fair enough, kid," she said, then looked back at the other passengers. "Anyone else want off here?" she asked as she threw open the door.
He didn't wait to see if anyone else took her up on it; he gave her a grateful nod, then stumbled down the steps to the pavement as voices rose behind him. He thought he heard a faint "good luck" as he darted between cars toward the nearest exit, heart thundering in his ears as he caught glimpses of other panicked, worried people behind tinted windows and heard sirens-- and screaming, and gunshots-- rising in the distance. He felt really stupid for a second-- had he really thought he was ready for this?-- then swallowed hard and kept running, feeling a lot less exposed as he hurried down the exit ramp and started leaving the jam-up behind him.
The first thing he did once he was down on level ground was to get away from the road that fed onto the freeway, taking the first turn toward the water; after a few blocks of that, the traffic fell off and the few pedestrians Tobias saw all looked as furtive as he did, hurrying down sidewalks and keeping their distance. Down among the buildings, the shadows were lengthening, turning every doorway and decorative bush framed by concrete into a potential hazard, but he hadn't actually seen any infected yet; so far, so good. After a few minutes, he came across a rail line and turned to follow it, slowing his pace to trudge along the tracks to put a little more distance between him and the nearest structures-- mostly the back walls of what looked like warehouses and other industrial buildings.
He didn't actually have much of a plan, but catching his breath while he scoped out a place to maybe hole up seemed like a start in the right direction. He did have a pretty good idea what to look for, and within a few blocks of the river seemed best in case the folks on that one conspiracy board were right and the government gave up on containment and started firebombing infected cities.
He'd passed maybe a few more blocks, heart rate jumping again at every slight noise, when reality intruded on his plans again. Just like when he'd gone to the school for a cartful of canned food and been lucky to leave with just what fit in his backpack. From somewhere up ahead, a blaring noise started sounding, like a fire alarm... and one of the back doors in a building next to the tracks, probably an emergency exit, popped open. The guy that stumbled through it was definitely infected... and had a couple of friends right behind him.
"Oh shit, oh shit," he whispered under his breath, panicked, and glanced quickly to either side. On one side, in the direction of the river, he could see a narrow alley between the building currently issuing the threat and another equally huge industrial building, but no way of knowing what was on the other end of it. On the other, away from the river? A section of chain link fencing marked off a parking lot wedged between several other big buildings, currently mostly empty of cars. Or anything else. On the far side of the lot, a tall brick structure loomed, and beyond that the rising, distant shape of one of Portland's many street-covered hills.
"I'm so screwed," he said. But there was no way he was going closer to the threat just to run down a blind alley. He took a gulping breath, then turned and ran toward the fence. Gravel scraped under his shoes as he left the tracks behind, and he was shaking so much his first leap at the fence only bounced him back on his ass in the grassy verge. He could hear growling sounds getting louder behind him as he staggered back to his feet and hooked his free hand through the chain link, but he didn't dare turn back. Just Mr. Costa had been a huge threat, and he hadn't faced his former principal alone. What could one kid do, without any preparation time, against a group of milky-eyed horrors?
He put a little more thought into the second leap, first hooking both hands through the strap of his duffel and hurling it over the fence. It nearly caught on the wire at the top, but tumbled over the other side okay. Then he scrambled after it, backpack thumping against his shoulders. His arms and legs got pretty scratched before he finally got up high enough to throw a foot over, but his pulse was racing too fast for him to care. He jumped down to the asphalt, tripping and bruising his knees, and snatched the duffel back up. All he cared about now was the sound of shuffling feet scraping across the gravel after him-- and the sound of an aging car's brakes somewhere up ahead, on the other side of the parking lot. Possibly another threat; but possibly a source of help? Either way, at least whoever-it-was was alive.
Tobias heard a car door open, then what sounded like a garage door going up-- and words being exchanged, low voiced and urgent. They got clearer as he got farther away from the infected piling up behind him at the fence, and it didn't seem like whoever was speaking had heard him yet either.
"...sure about that?" one male voice was saying, thick with worry.
"Very sure. Guy nearly bit Rosalee when he turned," another guy replied, grimly.
"Is she all right?"
"Yeah, yeah; she's fine. But this definitely ain't no Cracher-Mortel toxin, or anything else a potion can cure. And if it's affecting wesen as well as Kehrseite, and they're already shutting down neighborhoods... we can't go back to the house. We're damn lucky as it is that the spice shop's on this side of the river, with the phones down and the bridges so jammed. I hate to impose on you, Nick, but..."
"Are you kidding? Of course, but... Wait. I hear something."
Tobias had had to clap a hand over his mouth and freeze in his tracks to keep from gasping at the word 'wesen'; what were the odds he'd run across someone who knew about his mother's world while he was literally running for his life? But apparently he hadn't been quiet enough.
"Of course you hear something, dude. I'd be surprised if you...." the second guy began to reply, then cut himself off abruptly.
Tobias would have loved to believe that the distant sounds of moaning-- something else must have distracted them, because the chain-link fence wasn't clinking anymore-- and the sirens carrying distantly throughout the city, really had drowned him out. But he'd listened to his mom enough, and read enough of her books, to know that that was wishful thinking. Whatever had alerted the first guy? The fact that he hadn't spoken up again was enough to tell him he was already screwed. He'd just have to hope neither one was the kind of wesen who found teenagers tasty. He swallowed past a dry mouth, then dropped his hand and took a shaky breath.
"Uh... hello?" he called, in a wavery voice.
"Shit," someone replied really uncomfortably close to him, and Tobias flailed wildly as he realized the owner of the first voice was suddenly staring out of the shadows between him and the brick building. 'Nick' was a youngish guy, with dark hair, pale skin, intense cheekbones, and eyes that looked almost navy blue in the dimness-- like some kind of knockoff Clark Kent, actually. He was dressed casual, though probably pricier than anybody in Tobias' neighborhood could have afforded, with a strap of some kind buckled lengthwise over his chest.
"It's just a teenager, Monroe!" he called more loudly.
"Don't let him near you! Nobody's just anything right now, you know that, Nick!" the second guy called back, a panicky note in his voice, and then a taller, bulkier dude in flannel with a closely trimmed beard came rushing to join the party, nostrils visibly flaring as he closed the distance.
Tobias didn't know about the first guy-- he was years away from inheriting his mom's gifts, if he was ever going to, so it wasn't like he could see anyone woge-- but the second guy was definitely acting wesen. And if the first guy's strap wasn't weapon-related, he'd never seen the contents of his mother's trunks. He froze, holding his hands up while Monroe sniffed around him, and didn't relax until some of the tension went out of the guy's posture.
"Well?" Nick said impatiently, watching Monroe's expression.
"He doesn't smell infected, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything," Monroe replied, not taking his eyes off Tobias. "Kid, you run into any, uh, biters out there?"
"Zombies, you mean?" Tobias replied with a nervous snort. "Only to run away from-- I was trying to follow the tracks away from the freeway, and a few came out of one of those big buildings." He gestured back over his shoulder.
A furrow deepened between Nick's brows, but his stance softened, too. "You were on the freeway? Are you all right?"
Tobias had learned through long experience how to tell the difference between adults who feigned concern, but would never do anything useful to help, and those who actually meant it, like Ms. C. He hadn't really seen much of this guy yet, and the maybe-wesen thing was like an extra red flag, but weirdly enough, he did seem to honestly care. "Uh, yeah, except for the traffic jam. I just didn't want to still be stuck on the bus when things got worse."
The guys exchanged a look; then the definitely-wesen one spoke up again. "Do you have people here in town you were trying to get to? I've gotta get back to Old Town; I can take you that far, at least."
"No, nothing like that," he shook his head. "And I wouldn't want to go there, anyway. I was in LA before I got on the bus-- you have no idea how bad things are going to get. If you get stopped, there's no getting started again, and then you're a sitting duck. I just wanted to get somewhere safer."
The men exchanged another look; the worried, this-kid-has-an-issue type adults always seemed to think went over teenagers' heads. "Look," Nick began, placatingly. "I know it looks bad, and people are panicking, but it's early days yet. Once they get these outbreaks under control and find a treatment...."
Tobias snorted. "You know they're not going to. I heard you when I was coming up; it crosses species lines, and potions can't cure it. You really think scientists are going to figure it out before it kills them, too? We'll be lucky if the power's still on tomorrow."
Somewhere behind him, he heard the faint clink of the chain-link fence again; Nick's eyes instantly strayed that direction while Monroe made flustered noises. "Uh, species? Potions? Kid, I don't know what you think you heard, but...."
He sighed, unimpressed. "You really think there's time for that? I know what I heard. And there's no cure for dead. Can you let me go now? Or at least go inside? My bag's getting heavy, and I'm kind of getting the creeps here."
Monroe's eyebrows were reaching for his hairline, and Nick's gaze had snapped back to his face-- but then both men stiffened and turned back toward the brick building behind them as another voice carried through the evening air. "Guys? Is everything okay out here?"
It was a woman's voice; she sounded nervous, not that Tobias blamed her.
Nick said something Tobias would have got his mouth washed out with soap for repeating if his mom had heard it, then squared his shoulders and turned toward Monroe. "Take the kid inside; I'm going to deal with that--" he gestured toward the fence, "--then I'll have a chat with him while you go back for Rosalee."
"You sure about that, dude?" Monroe's brow furrowed.
"I'm sure I don't want to leave him out here while we have a perfectly good bunker over there," Nick replied, his mouth a grim line, "and I think Adalind's perfectly capable of defending herself and Kelly from a teenager."
Then he drew an honest-to-Conan sword from a sheath on his back, and headed off toward the back end of the parking lot, body language all stalking predator. But not the kind that had grown up with teeth and claws; the kind who'd learned the skills to hunt them.
"Dude," Tobias whispered. "He's a Grimm." He'd been thinking he'd stumbled across some kind of wesen pack; this made less sense, but at the same time made him a lot more hopeful that he was going to make it through the night without something taking a bite out of him.
"Yes," Monroe said slowly, his gaze sharp and suspicious, "And he's going to be very interested to know how you know that. But if you're going inside anyway, come make yourself useful; I have some boxes of books to get out of the car before I go back for my wife."
Feeling a little like he was having an out-of-body experience, Tobias followed him, and was comforted further by the sight of the boxes themselves: the flaps of one were partially open, and he could see very familiar looking leather-bound books inside. Journals, like his mom's. A little sooty smelling, but like a piece of home turning up where he had least been expecting it.
The woman who'd been calling to Nick, Adalind, had a suspicious look to her; defensive, and a little wary, and given the baby in her arms, Tobias didn't blame her. She greeted Monroe with a whispered series of sharply hissed questions, then threw a hand up and went deeper into the building. It had 'Imperial Paints Paint Factory' on the side in big block letters, but had clearly been converted into something else inside.
"This is a bunker?" he said doubtfully, carrying one of the boxes with his duffel set atop it into a garage-like space. It was a big thick-walled structure, but he'd seen the glint of a lot of glass windows as they'd approached, and aside from the stretch of asphalt around it there wasn't much separating it from all the other buildings nearby.
"Steel shutters, tunnel out under the place, and everything," Monroe informed him. "And lots of security, so don't go getting any ideas."
"A tunnel?" That was more like it. "Good. If they do start fire-bombing, that'll probably still be safe."
"Fire-bombing?" Monroe froze in his tracks again. "That seems a little pessimistic, don't you think?"
Tobias set his box down in the lift that opened at the back of the room, then turned back to the others. "It's Tobias, not kid. My Mom's a Grimm, too; I know how to read between the official lines."
"Really?" Nick's voice was very dry as he reappeared in the open garage door. He'd re-sheathed the sword, but there were dark splatters Tobias didn't care to look too closely at smeared up the sleeve of his shirt. "I wish I had been that well-informed when I was your age. You brought the books, Monroe?"
"Most of them," his friend nodded. "Rosalee's packing the rest, and some essentials out of her inventory. She said Bud might show up, and Wu and Hank had radioed to say they were trying to get to the shop, so there might be a few more of us when I come back."
"You're sure it's that serious?" the woman, Adalind, said. "I thought we thought this might just be those wesen-first gangs causing more trouble."
"If it ever was, then it's gone beyond whatever they intended, now," the Grimm replied, shaking his head. "I don't think we can afford to make any assumptions. Let's get those last boxes-- then Tobias, we'll have that talk, all right? And Monroe-- if you could also bring some of the shop furniture? We've got floor space, but not much in the way of beds...."
The guys' attention moved off him for a few minutes while they bustled, and Tobias pulled back out of the way as they worked, wrapping his arms around himself as the let-down of tension started to sink in. He'd been running since he left Los Angeles-- but against all odds, he might actually have found a place to be safe now; a place where people might actually listen to him, too. A place his mom actually might find him, if people ever managed to reconnect after the big crash that was coming....
"Hey-- Tobias, right?" Adalind said suddenly, setting a careful hand on his shoulder. "Whatever it is, it's all right, now. It's going to be okay."
He swiped at his cheek in embarrassment, abruptly aware that he'd started crying. "You don't know that," he replied.
"Yes, I do. Because you came to the right place. That's what Nick does; protect people."
He looked up at her, and saw it in her too: the conviction in her words that he'd seen in Nick. She meant it; she wasn't just saying it.
"Even if the world is ending?" he had to ask.
"Even then." She patted gently at the baby dozing against her shoulder as it made a sleepy smacking noise, glancing at him, then up at Tobias again. "He-- we-- always find a way."
Tobias took a deep breath and tried to let himself believe it, too. Maybe this wasn't actually the end.
"Okay," he said. He'd got this far; he could do this. "Okay."
-x-
Author: jedibuttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not
Rating: T
Prompt/Prompter: dharkapparition, who asked for: "Tobias heads north, makes it as far as Portland before the country is over run. He has valuable skills for survival, will the Grimm crew take him seriously?"
Spoilers: Fear the Walking Dead Season 1, early Season 5 for Grimm
Notes: Once again, sorry for the long delay! The timelines for the shows don't exactly line up in-universe, but they were airing at the same time, so *handwaves*. The more I tried to figure out how Tobias would get there, the more I wanted to hug him - I hope he ended up somewhere safe in canon!
Summary: All Tobias cared about now was the sound of shuffling feet scraping across the gravel after him-- and the sound of an aging car's brakes somewhere up ahead. Possibly another threat; but possibly a source of help? Either way, at least whoever-it-was was alive. 4400 words.
Tobias couldn't tell from his seat near the back of the bus why exactly traffic had stopped. The highway was jammed so far ahead that all he could see was a trail of red lights three lanes wide stretching until the road curved out of view. He was pretty sure he could guess, though; it was lucky they'd even made it as far as they had before getting stuck. Just his bad luck that it had happened in the middle of yet another city.
And not even in the direction he'd originally meant to go. After Ms. C had left him at his house, he'd tried to call his uncle, ready to get out of Los Angeles and start heading east to the desert. Somewhere where there weren't almost four million people stacked on top of each other. Even if the whatever-it-was didn't infect them all... he'd seen the reports online, and he knew better than to take refuge in denial. Civilization was a lot more fragile than most people wanted to believe.
His uncle hadn't picked up, though. It wasn't 'til after he'd put the phone down that he'd found the note on the kitchen counter: a quick message written on the grocery list notepad in barely-readable dark ink, saying his girlfriend was in the hospital and he was sorry, but he had to go stay with her while she was sick. Someone had attacked her; she had a bad fever. So he'd stopped by again to make sure there was enough food in the house for a couple of days, and in the meanwhile, Tobias should sit tight.
Tobias' hand had shook as he'd traced his fingers over the scribbled words. Thinking of Mr. Costa. Of the videos he'd seen online. It had been weeks since the first rumors had appeared, days since they'd snowballed into something bigger and started trending on social media. His uncle knew what it meant that his girlfriend had been attacked; he had to have known when he'd left the note. The ornate letter G drawn in the corner, the wad of cash under the notepad... yeah, there was no way he hadn't. Idiot. What did he think he was going to do, make sure she didn't hurt anyone, and then come back for Tobias? By the time that happened, if he made it, who knew how bad things would be?
He'd swallowed around the lump in his throat and tried to call again, but hadn't been surprised when no one had answered. And it had been weeks since he'd last heard from his mother. She went quiet like that sometimes on a hunt; Tobias got it, really, he'd known how important her job was since he was little, and there was no way this was going to stop her when nothing else had. But he also knew that by the time she got back or found a phone, there'd probably be no making it out of the city at all. It might even be too late now; even waiting another day for his uncle might be too much.
So he'd packed his backpack and his duffel with extra underwear, bottled water, energy bars, and some of his mother's spare gear, then scribbled a quick note of his own. Then he'd headed for the nearest long-ride bus station while there was still a chance of escaping before it all went to hell. He'd just have to trust in their old back-up plans, and hope they managed to find each other again eventually.
There'd only been one bus with seats available when he got there, though, and from the conversations he'd overheard at the counters... well, better to head north than go nowhere at all, right? As long as they still headed east eventually. They'd made it through northern California just fine and cut through Oregon's smaller cities in the Willamette Valley without running into trouble; he'd almost started to hope they'd actually get past the turn onto I-84 along the Columbia River and make it into high desert country east of the Cascades before the inevitable happened. But no such luck; first they'd had to detour onto the 405 loop to get around the mass of other cars jamming the interstate trying to get out of Portland, and then just a few blocks shy of crossing back over the Willamette, a thick pall of smoke had started to rise in front of them, and the slow flow of traffic had ground entirely to a halt.
Somewhere in the mass up ahead, between the bus and the smoke, there were lots of whirling lights. One of the signs they'd passed a little ways back had had the symbol for a hospital; he'd also seen exit notices for a convention center-- and across the water, against the deepening dusk of the sky, the last rays of the sun were turning the rising dark cloud the color of drying blood.
Tobias squashed down the panic rising in his veins and turned around to look through the back windows of the bus. There were as many white lights behind them as red lights ahead of them; even the turn-offs he could see were all jammed with cars. Portland might have like a sixth of the population of Los Angeles, but even that much was still nightmare fuel during an apocalypse.
"I have got to get out of here," he muttered under his breath. If he couldn’t get out of the city... out there might actually be a lot safer than right here. The population density would be a lot lower down in the industrial zone they'd been passing than packed on the highway like sardines in cans, waiting for the Grim Reaper to catch up to them. It would only take a few infected people swarming among the vehicles to trap them inside, and once they were cornered, there'd be no going anywhere at all.
He fidgeted with the strap of his backpack, then screwed his courage to the sticking point and stood, edging out of his seat into the aisle. The driver hadn't let anyone on the bus without a ticket matching a seat, which he'd thought stupid and short-sighted at the time-- who cared about tickets or seatbelt laws in the face of a zombie apocalypse?-- but it was good luck for him now, leaving the thin strip of rubber between the rows of seats mostly uncluttered as he edged his way to the front, duffel banging against the backs of his knees as he tried to hold it out of the way.
Tobias could feel the eyes of the other passengers on him as he moved past; a couple of people snagged at his sleeve or tried to tell him to go sit back down, but he ignored them all. If there was ever a time to be grateful he wasn't a petite kid, it was now; everyone seemed more scared and worried than angry, and no one was willing to confront him as long as he didn't seem to pose a direct threat. Early days; he had a feeling there'd be a lot more of man's inhumanity to man as things kept getting worse.
"Hey kid," the driver spoke up, finally noticing Tobias' presence as he approached the yellow line painted across the aisle. "What are you doing? Go sit back down."
She looked at least as anxious as Tobias felt, eyeing him up and down with a slight tremor in her hand where it rested on the wheel. He did his best to look nonthreatening and totally not infected, no ma'am, as he replied. "I... I want to get off the bus," he said.
"What?" Her frown deepened as she gestured toward the windshield. "We're in the middle of the highway, kid; I know it looks gridlocked now, but it could start moving again anytime."
He laughed a little, nervously. "I hope you're right. But I don't think...." He looked back over his shoulder at the rows of other passengers, some of whom looked a little too interested in the conversation, and shrugged. "Look, I just grabbed the first bus I could, but I don't actually know anyone in Boise, and I do know people who live here. In Portland. So just let me off, okay?" It wasn't exactly a lie; some of the people on the sites he frequented had been reporting on conditions in their own locations, including Oregon's biggest metro area.
She looked at him for a long moment, then up at the camera... then turned toward the view out the windshield again, fear pinching at the lines around her mouth. "Fair enough, kid," she said, then looked back at the other passengers. "Anyone else want off here?" she asked as she threw open the door.
He didn't wait to see if anyone else took her up on it; he gave her a grateful nod, then stumbled down the steps to the pavement as voices rose behind him. He thought he heard a faint "good luck" as he darted between cars toward the nearest exit, heart thundering in his ears as he caught glimpses of other panicked, worried people behind tinted windows and heard sirens-- and screaming, and gunshots-- rising in the distance. He felt really stupid for a second-- had he really thought he was ready for this?-- then swallowed hard and kept running, feeling a lot less exposed as he hurried down the exit ramp and started leaving the jam-up behind him.
The first thing he did once he was down on level ground was to get away from the road that fed onto the freeway, taking the first turn toward the water; after a few blocks of that, the traffic fell off and the few pedestrians Tobias saw all looked as furtive as he did, hurrying down sidewalks and keeping their distance. Down among the buildings, the shadows were lengthening, turning every doorway and decorative bush framed by concrete into a potential hazard, but he hadn't actually seen any infected yet; so far, so good. After a few minutes, he came across a rail line and turned to follow it, slowing his pace to trudge along the tracks to put a little more distance between him and the nearest structures-- mostly the back walls of what looked like warehouses and other industrial buildings.
He didn't actually have much of a plan, but catching his breath while he scoped out a place to maybe hole up seemed like a start in the right direction. He did have a pretty good idea what to look for, and within a few blocks of the river seemed best in case the folks on that one conspiracy board were right and the government gave up on containment and started firebombing infected cities.
He'd passed maybe a few more blocks, heart rate jumping again at every slight noise, when reality intruded on his plans again. Just like when he'd gone to the school for a cartful of canned food and been lucky to leave with just what fit in his backpack. From somewhere up ahead, a blaring noise started sounding, like a fire alarm... and one of the back doors in a building next to the tracks, probably an emergency exit, popped open. The guy that stumbled through it was definitely infected... and had a couple of friends right behind him.
"Oh shit, oh shit," he whispered under his breath, panicked, and glanced quickly to either side. On one side, in the direction of the river, he could see a narrow alley between the building currently issuing the threat and another equally huge industrial building, but no way of knowing what was on the other end of it. On the other, away from the river? A section of chain link fencing marked off a parking lot wedged between several other big buildings, currently mostly empty of cars. Or anything else. On the far side of the lot, a tall brick structure loomed, and beyond that the rising, distant shape of one of Portland's many street-covered hills.
"I'm so screwed," he said. But there was no way he was going closer to the threat just to run down a blind alley. He took a gulping breath, then turned and ran toward the fence. Gravel scraped under his shoes as he left the tracks behind, and he was shaking so much his first leap at the fence only bounced him back on his ass in the grassy verge. He could hear growling sounds getting louder behind him as he staggered back to his feet and hooked his free hand through the chain link, but he didn't dare turn back. Just Mr. Costa had been a huge threat, and he hadn't faced his former principal alone. What could one kid do, without any preparation time, against a group of milky-eyed horrors?
He put a little more thought into the second leap, first hooking both hands through the strap of his duffel and hurling it over the fence. It nearly caught on the wire at the top, but tumbled over the other side okay. Then he scrambled after it, backpack thumping against his shoulders. His arms and legs got pretty scratched before he finally got up high enough to throw a foot over, but his pulse was racing too fast for him to care. He jumped down to the asphalt, tripping and bruising his knees, and snatched the duffel back up. All he cared about now was the sound of shuffling feet scraping across the gravel after him-- and the sound of an aging car's brakes somewhere up ahead, on the other side of the parking lot. Possibly another threat; but possibly a source of help? Either way, at least whoever-it-was was alive.
Tobias heard a car door open, then what sounded like a garage door going up-- and words being exchanged, low voiced and urgent. They got clearer as he got farther away from the infected piling up behind him at the fence, and it didn't seem like whoever was speaking had heard him yet either.
"...sure about that?" one male voice was saying, thick with worry.
"Very sure. Guy nearly bit Rosalee when he turned," another guy replied, grimly.
"Is she all right?"
"Yeah, yeah; she's fine. But this definitely ain't no Cracher-Mortel toxin, or anything else a potion can cure. And if it's affecting wesen as well as Kehrseite, and they're already shutting down neighborhoods... we can't go back to the house. We're damn lucky as it is that the spice shop's on this side of the river, with the phones down and the bridges so jammed. I hate to impose on you, Nick, but..."
"Are you kidding? Of course, but... Wait. I hear something."
Tobias had had to clap a hand over his mouth and freeze in his tracks to keep from gasping at the word 'wesen'; what were the odds he'd run across someone who knew about his mother's world while he was literally running for his life? But apparently he hadn't been quiet enough.
"Of course you hear something, dude. I'd be surprised if you...." the second guy began to reply, then cut himself off abruptly.
Tobias would have loved to believe that the distant sounds of moaning-- something else must have distracted them, because the chain-link fence wasn't clinking anymore-- and the sirens carrying distantly throughout the city, really had drowned him out. But he'd listened to his mom enough, and read enough of her books, to know that that was wishful thinking. Whatever had alerted the first guy? The fact that he hadn't spoken up again was enough to tell him he was already screwed. He'd just have to hope neither one was the kind of wesen who found teenagers tasty. He swallowed past a dry mouth, then dropped his hand and took a shaky breath.
"Uh... hello?" he called, in a wavery voice.
"Shit," someone replied really uncomfortably close to him, and Tobias flailed wildly as he realized the owner of the first voice was suddenly staring out of the shadows between him and the brick building. 'Nick' was a youngish guy, with dark hair, pale skin, intense cheekbones, and eyes that looked almost navy blue in the dimness-- like some kind of knockoff Clark Kent, actually. He was dressed casual, though probably pricier than anybody in Tobias' neighborhood could have afforded, with a strap of some kind buckled lengthwise over his chest.
"It's just a teenager, Monroe!" he called more loudly.
"Don't let him near you! Nobody's just anything right now, you know that, Nick!" the second guy called back, a panicky note in his voice, and then a taller, bulkier dude in flannel with a closely trimmed beard came rushing to join the party, nostrils visibly flaring as he closed the distance.
Tobias didn't know about the first guy-- he was years away from inheriting his mom's gifts, if he was ever going to, so it wasn't like he could see anyone woge-- but the second guy was definitely acting wesen. And if the first guy's strap wasn't weapon-related, he'd never seen the contents of his mother's trunks. He froze, holding his hands up while Monroe sniffed around him, and didn't relax until some of the tension went out of the guy's posture.
"Well?" Nick said impatiently, watching Monroe's expression.
"He doesn't smell infected, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything," Monroe replied, not taking his eyes off Tobias. "Kid, you run into any, uh, biters out there?"
"Zombies, you mean?" Tobias replied with a nervous snort. "Only to run away from-- I was trying to follow the tracks away from the freeway, and a few came out of one of those big buildings." He gestured back over his shoulder.
A furrow deepened between Nick's brows, but his stance softened, too. "You were on the freeway? Are you all right?"
Tobias had learned through long experience how to tell the difference between adults who feigned concern, but would never do anything useful to help, and those who actually meant it, like Ms. C. He hadn't really seen much of this guy yet, and the maybe-wesen thing was like an extra red flag, but weirdly enough, he did seem to honestly care. "Uh, yeah, except for the traffic jam. I just didn't want to still be stuck on the bus when things got worse."
The guys exchanged a look; then the definitely-wesen one spoke up again. "Do you have people here in town you were trying to get to? I've gotta get back to Old Town; I can take you that far, at least."
"No, nothing like that," he shook his head. "And I wouldn't want to go there, anyway. I was in LA before I got on the bus-- you have no idea how bad things are going to get. If you get stopped, there's no getting started again, and then you're a sitting duck. I just wanted to get somewhere safer."
The men exchanged another look; the worried, this-kid-has-an-issue type adults always seemed to think went over teenagers' heads. "Look," Nick began, placatingly. "I know it looks bad, and people are panicking, but it's early days yet. Once they get these outbreaks under control and find a treatment...."
Tobias snorted. "You know they're not going to. I heard you when I was coming up; it crosses species lines, and potions can't cure it. You really think scientists are going to figure it out before it kills them, too? We'll be lucky if the power's still on tomorrow."
Somewhere behind him, he heard the faint clink of the chain-link fence again; Nick's eyes instantly strayed that direction while Monroe made flustered noises. "Uh, species? Potions? Kid, I don't know what you think you heard, but...."
He sighed, unimpressed. "You really think there's time for that? I know what I heard. And there's no cure for dead. Can you let me go now? Or at least go inside? My bag's getting heavy, and I'm kind of getting the creeps here."
Monroe's eyebrows were reaching for his hairline, and Nick's gaze had snapped back to his face-- but then both men stiffened and turned back toward the brick building behind them as another voice carried through the evening air. "Guys? Is everything okay out here?"
It was a woman's voice; she sounded nervous, not that Tobias blamed her.
Nick said something Tobias would have got his mouth washed out with soap for repeating if his mom had heard it, then squared his shoulders and turned toward Monroe. "Take the kid inside; I'm going to deal with that--" he gestured toward the fence, "--then I'll have a chat with him while you go back for Rosalee."
"You sure about that, dude?" Monroe's brow furrowed.
"I'm sure I don't want to leave him out here while we have a perfectly good bunker over there," Nick replied, his mouth a grim line, "and I think Adalind's perfectly capable of defending herself and Kelly from a teenager."
Then he drew an honest-to-Conan sword from a sheath on his back, and headed off toward the back end of the parking lot, body language all stalking predator. But not the kind that had grown up with teeth and claws; the kind who'd learned the skills to hunt them.
"Dude," Tobias whispered. "He's a Grimm." He'd been thinking he'd stumbled across some kind of wesen pack; this made less sense, but at the same time made him a lot more hopeful that he was going to make it through the night without something taking a bite out of him.
"Yes," Monroe said slowly, his gaze sharp and suspicious, "And he's going to be very interested to know how you know that. But if you're going inside anyway, come make yourself useful; I have some boxes of books to get out of the car before I go back for my wife."
Feeling a little like he was having an out-of-body experience, Tobias followed him, and was comforted further by the sight of the boxes themselves: the flaps of one were partially open, and he could see very familiar looking leather-bound books inside. Journals, like his mom's. A little sooty smelling, but like a piece of home turning up where he had least been expecting it.
The woman who'd been calling to Nick, Adalind, had a suspicious look to her; defensive, and a little wary, and given the baby in her arms, Tobias didn't blame her. She greeted Monroe with a whispered series of sharply hissed questions, then threw a hand up and went deeper into the building. It had 'Imperial Paints Paint Factory' on the side in big block letters, but had clearly been converted into something else inside.
"This is a bunker?" he said doubtfully, carrying one of the boxes with his duffel set atop it into a garage-like space. It was a big thick-walled structure, but he'd seen the glint of a lot of glass windows as they'd approached, and aside from the stretch of asphalt around it there wasn't much separating it from all the other buildings nearby.
"Steel shutters, tunnel out under the place, and everything," Monroe informed him. "And lots of security, so don't go getting any ideas."
"A tunnel?" That was more like it. "Good. If they do start fire-bombing, that'll probably still be safe."
"Fire-bombing?" Monroe froze in his tracks again. "That seems a little pessimistic, don't you think?"
Tobias set his box down in the lift that opened at the back of the room, then turned back to the others. "It's Tobias, not kid. My Mom's a Grimm, too; I know how to read between the official lines."
"Really?" Nick's voice was very dry as he reappeared in the open garage door. He'd re-sheathed the sword, but there were dark splatters Tobias didn't care to look too closely at smeared up the sleeve of his shirt. "I wish I had been that well-informed when I was your age. You brought the books, Monroe?"
"Most of them," his friend nodded. "Rosalee's packing the rest, and some essentials out of her inventory. She said Bud might show up, and Wu and Hank had radioed to say they were trying to get to the shop, so there might be a few more of us when I come back."
"You're sure it's that serious?" the woman, Adalind, said. "I thought we thought this might just be those wesen-first gangs causing more trouble."
"If it ever was, then it's gone beyond whatever they intended, now," the Grimm replied, shaking his head. "I don't think we can afford to make any assumptions. Let's get those last boxes-- then Tobias, we'll have that talk, all right? And Monroe-- if you could also bring some of the shop furniture? We've got floor space, but not much in the way of beds...."
The guys' attention moved off him for a few minutes while they bustled, and Tobias pulled back out of the way as they worked, wrapping his arms around himself as the let-down of tension started to sink in. He'd been running since he left Los Angeles-- but against all odds, he might actually have found a place to be safe now; a place where people might actually listen to him, too. A place his mom actually might find him, if people ever managed to reconnect after the big crash that was coming....
"Hey-- Tobias, right?" Adalind said suddenly, setting a careful hand on his shoulder. "Whatever it is, it's all right, now. It's going to be okay."
He swiped at his cheek in embarrassment, abruptly aware that he'd started crying. "You don't know that," he replied.
"Yes, I do. Because you came to the right place. That's what Nick does; protect people."
He looked up at her, and saw it in her too: the conviction in her words that he'd seen in Nick. She meant it; she wasn't just saying it.
"Even if the world is ending?" he had to ask.
"Even then." She patted gently at the baby dozing against her shoulder as it made a sleepy smacking noise, glancing at him, then up at Tobias again. "He-- we-- always find a way."
Tobias took a deep breath and tried to let himself believe it, too. Maybe this wasn't actually the end.
"Okay," he said. He'd got this far; he could do this. "Okay."
-x-