Look What Happened (4/?)
The TVXK virus was not originally created with the intention of infecting half a continent.
This is not to say that infecting half a continent wasn’t an idea from the beginning - as a matter of fact, it was an idea that was thrown around restlessly before the research team was even put together. Rather, it was not the main concept of the TVXK division until eleven or so years after the unit’s creation, only a sidelined possibility for the future.
As it happens, TVXK was created firstly with the intention of being a gift, later a disease. Again, it was designed with a specific use in war, but with the focus being on the user’s own troops rather than the enemy’s. To enhance a soldier’s abilities - make them faster, stronger, not as a general physical state of being, but rather to give them the ability to tap into an adrenaline high at will, instead of when the right conditions were met.
An adrenaline rush, for those unaware, is the fermentation of muscles at an increased rate due to the release of epinephrine from the adrenal gland (and this naturally happens due to anxiety; it’s a fight-or-flight response). Muscles are stronger - you can hit harder, run faster. Now, imagine squadrons of human beings, pre-trained and tactically efficient, able to call upon and totally control an adrenaline rush. Draw it out for as long as desired. Utilise it until the body simply couldn’t anymore.
Super soldiers, the government wanted.
This goal was quickly fulfilled - with drawbacks. Those affected by the virus - tested like lab rats - were, with the correct training, capable of drawing out a practical adrenaline rush on command, yes. But to control it? No, they weren’t at all able - not in the beginning. The rush was too much. The virus got into the system, overloaded it, and several died from the strain. Some were pushed too hard into exhaustion - reacting in the ways of perhaps falling asleep without reawakening, all the way through to simply being unable to move their own bodies for days at a time. Or, ever, in some cases, where the disease strained a body to a mostly permanent paralysis. The worst of reactions, of course, was the lack of control not of the elevated state, but of one’s own body while in that state - a practical berserker mode, where the body rebelled until the mind was just a passenger to death and destruction. Subjects found their eye colour changing to a sickly yellow, frothing at the mouth was not uncommon, and they were known to, on occasion, take a bite out of their victims, though at this time a bite did not cause the virus to spread. Subjects were unstoppable, short of a shot to the head. And ravenous, which was frankly disturbing.
They refined it, of course. Many years and many tests later, and the TVXK virus was more highly understood, more easily mutated to design. The younger the subject, the easier the control was to learn. The effects of the virus were lessened from the beginning - quite a shame - but so was the backlash, and it was an allowance made. The added strength was not as high as anticipated, though still heightened, but at least the subjects weren't dying and falling into comas and biting chunks out of their ward mates. The division continued refining, testing, making new models for eleven years - and their subjects were volunteers, of course. Youths told tales of serving their countries, or helping their families, or simply those with nothing and no one to tie them to another life. Fools, and idiots, and courageous souls, and people young and naive enough to sign on the dotted line without really understanding the contract.
And so, the division had what they wanted. And it was almost perfect. And the government could easily have stepped back and quit the reigns and taken their victory with open arms. But then, humanity always has a habit of wanting to take their cake and eat it too, and success is never good enough. So, naturally, they wanted more. And then somebody in a white coat looked at his computer through thick, horn-rimmed glasses, and looked back at the negative side effects of the genetic anomaly during the first three years of the projects, and remembered that sidelined notion of biological warfare, and he tapped his chin and cleaned his glasses and thought to himself “now, why not look into that?”.
What a freaking charmer.
/-\
Rachel purses her lip, staring out over the empty lot.
Seemingly empty. And she reminds herself to never assume, because that would just be a generally fucking stupid thing to do during the zombie apocalypse. And Rachel Berry is many things - amazing, stealthy, super talented, just all-around flawless - but ‘fucking stupid’ is not one of them.
And, well, yeah, the construction site looks empty, but she’s not taking chances on that. So she taps the bat in her hand against her boot and stretches out her arms slowly. Knocks out the crick in her neck before letting a crunch of boots on gravel lead her slowly into empty space, washed out by bright white lights, held high, shining down on dust and dirt and metal. Links her fingers and cracks them loudly when she’s standing in the middle of nowhere - doesn’t garner a response, but it doesn’t put her at ease. She knows better.
She looks over at the six-stories of scaffolding to one side of the lot, plastic coverings torn and fluttering silently in the breeze, washed in white light, shipping crates stacked up to the third floor beside it, and she holds back a shudder. This is like a freaking video game level. She’s waiting for the horde to fall upon her like a whiny little bitch, and fuck’s sake, where the fuck is that truck she’s looking for?
She spots it - kicks up a bit of dust when she traipses towards it, but not enough to really matter. It’s a hulking vehicle, stacked up on the back with bricks and bags of concrete mix and planks of wood, sitting idle to the side of the lot, lined up beside another few trucks - pick-ups and cabs for the night workers that seem to have mysteriously disappeared beneath the washed-out white lights. She crouches a little to look beneath the truck before she’s too close to it - movie-viewing experience and common sense has taught her well enough that certain evil doers and creatures-of-the-night have enough smarts left in them to hide in practical crawlspace, and Rachel Berry is not now (nor will she ever be) dumb enough to be tripped up by a hypothetical bogeyman. Also, the feeling of a hand wrapping around your ankle is a distinctly creepy one, if her eighth-grade Summer ‘theatre camp’ (suspicious cough and shifty eyes included) is anything to go by.
Which, really, it is.
But there’s nothing beneath this particular truck, so she counts herself lucky and moves towards the truck’s cab, reaching up for the driver’s side door and giving a yank on the handle. The plan’s simple, really - steal the truck, head for McKinley, bunker up for the apocalypse, plan out escape. Only, simplicity, much like truth, is relative in this post-modern environment Rachel Berry inhabits, and so, when she yanks on the handle, for two obvious reasons - the first unforseen, the second sincerely hoped against - the plan ceases to be simple.
Firstly, the door is locked. Trivial, really.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is gravel crunching beneath heavy boots some ways behind her - ergo, not her own.
Now, obviously, this hinders her plans, and unfortunately her first inclination is to freeze. Not because of the door - the locked truck, though unaccounted for in her planning, is not specifically the largest issue for one super-talented actress and self-appointed zombie-slayer Rachel Berry. No - she’ll just have to find the keys, her mind tells her, and then the lock won’t be a problem at all. It’s the crunching gravel that’s the problem. Because her feet haven’t moved in the last fifteen seconds, and that sound is not from the ground beneath her boots. Which means there’s someone else here - behind her, seemingly, back a few metres, and her inward paranoia informs her that the likelihood of them being healthy, lucid and clear-eyed isn’t all that high.
It worries her - she’ll admit it, now that no one else is around her. She doesn’t have to direct Puck through the steps and the shock, or bully Mister Fabray into action (or inaction, or anything at all), or hold Quinn together while the world falls apart. Right now she’s the only one around, and the only person she has to be strong for is herself. Pressure’s off about keeping up appearances, she thinks (all in a flash, of course), but then she slowly turns herself around and faces the source of the crunching gravel - hulking muscled man in dark jeans and a red shirt - which wasn’t red originally, but the blood soaking out from his neck wound has changed it, and she can’t tell what it was before. Steel-toed boots and a tool belt, ten metres from her and in the middle of empty space, and she doesn’t know where he’s come from.
He leers at her - mouth drops open with a touch of foam around his bloody teeth, dirt staining his chiselled jaw, eyes a sickly yellow beneath the misty white. Rachel tightens her grip on the bat in her hands - doesn’t move for a second, just stares at him and calculates her options. He’s too big to take down easy, with a bat, and she’s betting he could make the distance between them before she had her gun out and sufficiently aimed. There’s a truck straight behind her and a small portable building to her left - fifty metres, probably where the keys are. Too far to run, though. And there’s a flutter of plastic from the scaffolding - twenty metres to her left, almost beckoning with the breeze. Split decision before the dead worker jolts forward into action, and then she’s spinning on lithe legs and dashing on towards the scaffold.
Distraction. Escape. Pressure’s on about staying alive.
/-\
When Puck walks outside (duffel bag slung promptly over his shoulder, baseball bat in his hand, Kurt Hummel trudging along behind him in a designer leather jacket with his keys in his hands) Finn is running in circles around Puck’s pick-up and shrieking like a girl.
Traditionally - and, despite the morbidity of the zombie apocalypse - Puck is bemused before he is concerned. Mostly because, evidently, Finn has at some point dropped his bat, and like fuck Puck is going to hand the idiot any kind of live ammunition in any lifetime, least of all this one. Secondly, at some point the lumbering idiot has managed to pick up a very interested - but apparently not-too-active - drooling stalker. And, yeah, maybe Puck should be concerned that his pseudo-ex-best-friend is being chased by a hungry zombie, but Finn’s running around the truck and screaming like a broken record, or a girl or something, and, really, Puck’s just kind of pissed that the large boy couldn’t look after himself and hold onto a bat for three minutes alone.
So he drops the bag on the doorstep with Hummel and strides out towards his truck and hefts his bat up, and when Finn makes the next pass he swings just after him and the drooling fucker takes it straight to the face. There’s this sickening squelching thud, and a crack, and Puck feels a little sick - this is real, after all, a real person, and his mouth tingles with the thought of a baseball bat ever meeting his teeth in any capacity - but he bites back the hint of bile in his throat and swings his bat down on the grounded zombie twice more before relenting.
Head, he thinks, because Rachel told him. Double-tap, he remembers, because Zombieland was fucking legendary.
And then he’s sure the poor infected kid is dead - for real this time - and he doesn’t look at the body again. Just grabs Finn by the collar and shoves him forcefully towards the house with a grimace he covers with a scowl.
“Don’t drop your bat again, fucktard,” is all he says about it, barely paying attention to Kurt as he picks up the duffel bag and heaves it over to Puck’s truck. Even as the bag gets hauled into the bed of Puck’s pick-up a bunch of the Gleeks are trailing out of the house, carrying crates of food and whatever other shit they’ve stolen from the Hummel-Hudson household - lucky fucking thing that Finn was throwing a party, really, even if it was to spite Rachel. Trust the idiot to finally throw a rager right in time for the apocalypse. It was an all-gleek pre-party, apparently, because none of the jocks or cheerleaders have shown up yet, and some of them are probably stumbling around town with a hankering for human flesh but whatever, Puck doesn’t care so much about them, and the Gleeks are all here (except Rachel, and Quinn, and Sam, and Brittany and Santana, but he doesn’t worry about them so much because he trusts his Jewish princess a lot further than he could throw her, and B is probably with S, and like hell Santana would be brought down by something as insignificant as zombies).
They all pack up the back of Puck’s truck, and then he hands out a couple of baseball bats - mostly to the boys, and Lauren - and hands Tina a shotgun from Rachel’s ‘special’ bag, because she apparently knows how to use it - he’s not sure if he wants to know the story behind that, but this definitely wouldn’t be the time if he did. He gets Finn’s help in moving Artie from his wheelchair to the back seat of Kurt’s Escalade (parked promptly in the driveway, he notes), and then shoves his chair in the boot. Kurt and Blaine get in the front, and Mercedes jumps in the back, and Puck shoves Finn over too just because he doesn’t want to look at the guy anymore, and then, like clockwork, Santana pulls up at the curb with a scowl and Brittany smiling in the passenger seat.
“The fuck, Puckerman?” she calls out to him. “The midget sent me a message about zombies - wasn’t gonna believe her until I caught my neighbour chomping on his dog - and told me to ‘report’ here to you like you’re my fucking boss or something? What the fuck is going on?”
He gives her a one-finger salute, and strides over to the car to hand her a pistol and give her directions, and she scowls and grumbles at him, but he knows she’ll follow his lead. Santana talks a lot of shit, but she can be a team player. Particularly when deep shit is involved.
“We’re gonna bunker down in McKinley. You have a little less than an hour to get there - Rachel’s, you know, organised,” he says a little dryly, but not contesting it. “If there’s anyone you want to warn, now would be the time.”
“The parentals are out of town this weekend,” is her dull reply. “They went with Britt’s folks and the Hummels or Hudsons or whatever the flying fuck on some fucking vacation I didn’t care about because I’d get to party. So no fucking dice, Puckerman.”
“Take a road trip for Chang-squared and Zizes, then.”
“I’m not a fucking cab service!” Santana hisses back, earning a soothing hand on her shoulder from the blonde behind her. Puck isn’t fazed - she’s always been a bit quick to blow up, but especially when she’s under pressure. And she’s about to be under a lot of pressure. “You do it!”
“Look, we have forty minutes to get our shit together and get to the school, S, and I need to go pick up my sister and my mom, so either buck the fuck up and help out your teammates beforehand or go and wait in the school parking lot for an hour until the cavalry arrives. I don’t fucking care,” he tells her bluntly, and he’s being intentionally short with her. He knows she’ll do what he says. She just needs to be actually told. “But I’d prefer it if you’d be productive.”
She glares at him. “Fine. But I better get fucking paid for this or something.”
He retreats from the car, sends the three over there, then jumps into his own truck on the lawn and manages to kick it into gear almost as fast as Rachel did the first time. Thinks he’ll have to work on that. He leaves before the other two cars, doesn’t turn the stereo on, drives to nothing but silence. It’s dark out, now, and he kind of wishes he’d kept one of the gleeks to himself. As long as it wasn’t Finn he would have been cool. Because the anticipation now is kind of sickening - gut-wrenching and all that shit with the ‘what ifs’.
The streets are dead, and the closer he gets to his house the more he wants to barf.
/-\
She tries to quieten her steps on the metal, and the wooden planks beneath her, let herself fade off into the rustle of plastic and the whistle of the breeze. But as it seems, she’s not the only one capable of sinking into the background noise, and she can barely see past the semi-opaque plastic.
Every silent breath in reminds her that this was a fucking bad idea.
She should have just shot the fucker in the head. Then she wouldn’t be three stories up in fucking scaffolding trying to hide from an undead builder who, despite his massive size, was apparently super stealthy. Practical silence amidst flapping plastic, and the white wash from the lights around the lot, and fuck, this was practically a b-grade serial killer movie scene. Ethereal and all that shit. She is so going to die right here.
She hears a creak and stops moving. Waits another moment and hears it again. From her left, and... up? But up means the floor above her and - wait, how would he have gotten up there without going past her and - motherfucker, there’s another creak behind her that is definitely on this level and there are two zombies in this shithole death trap of a motherfucking horror game level that she decided was a brilliant idea to utilize and how freaking dumb was that?
Sucks in a breath and tightens her grip on the baseball bat while she takes a few steps forward, finds herself at the edge of the structure and looking down to the empty lot. Strains her ears for any sounds and strains her eyes for an escape. Which, admittedly, is when she remembers the shipping crates, and turns a nice ninety degrees to see them down at the edge of her level. They’re stacked, kind of, the top one coming up maybe forty centimetres above the level of her feet, and getting down from the top should be a bit like jumping down stairs, she thinks. Large stairs, admittedly, but not as large as a full three story drop. It’s a clear path, about ten metres. Straight jump across, maybe a little far, but she thinks she can swing it. Better than being caught between poles and construction gear with two burly zombies.
She hears another creak of wood, closer this time, and figures that taking the time to weigh the pros and cons of all of this would be a distinctly dumb idea. And so she bolts towards the edge, furrows her brow, and her footstep are loud and another set picks up behind her, blood rushing, pounding loud in her ears while her heart beats erratically, and she feels heat - in her cheeks, her head, her hands. Can’t feel her feet when they bound against planks, and her mouth is dry, and she swallows nothing, but it’s thick while her legs pump, and then she’s at the edge and leaping, flying.
Falling.
Flails out with an arm in the split second it takes for her to realise and grasps the edge of the crate. She doesn’t feel her body smack into the side of the metal, but she knows she will in the morning. There’s a rush of air and something jumps over her, thumps to the top of the crate she’s hanging on, and a quick glance down shows less than a metre between her feet and the top of the next crate beneath her. She lets go before the body somewhere above her can move.
She doesn’t stop to get her bearings, just yanks up her bat from ground beneath her where she’s apparently - shit - dropped it in the jump and rushes to the edge of the crate, hops down on shaky legs to the next one, and then throws herself off the side and to the gravel and - fuck - that Mirror’s Edge game made that whole ‘drops hurt less when you end them in forward rolls’ thing seem a lot more appealing, but at least she hasn’t jarred her knees or anything. Then she’s back on her feet and trying to cover the huge distance between herself and the portable across the lot without looking back or falling over, and cursing herself for screwing up so badly when she makes it twenty-four metres and hears two thuds onto the gravel some ways behind her.
She can salvage it, though. She’s smart enough for that.
The small portable building - site manager’s office, she guesses, has the door open and the lights on, and the lack of any movement through the barred window lets her think there’s no one in there. And that’s perfect, because if she can barricade herself in there for a second she can shoot her pursuers in the face through the window. Which, really, that’s just an absolutely excellent idea.
But for her excellent idea to work she needs to get herself in to that room and close the damned door before she gets leapt on and eaten, and at the moment her knee’s getting a little stiff, and come on, she thinks - forces her legs to move faster, boots hitting the ground harder, head keeps rushing until everything blurs and she wants to stop and fall and pass out. But then, next she knows, she’s beneath neons and slamming the door and clicking the lock and leaning her back against it, and there’s not even ten seconds before something thuds into the wood behind her.
She breathes heavily, pants it out while the wood jerks and rattles, and then she lets her gaze flit around until she finds the keys, rings hanging off nails on a board on the wall. Moves to look a little closer and finds the set she’s looking for, yanks it off the board and rejoices that she’s got her key and that the two bodies outside aren’t hungry enough to actually break down the door just yet before she looks around the room again. There’s a hand - arm connected, she notes - peeking out at her on the ground from around the heavy desk in the middle of the room, and she swallows thickly, breath still coming out heavy while the door thuds again and the bars on the window start to rattle. Moves around the desk to see everything else connected to that arm, and they’re face down but there’s a bite on their shoulder and four down their arm, and she doesn’t know this person and she doesn’t want to. She pulls out her gun, eyes locked on the bloodied, still body on the ground as she lifts the weapon. Remembers that this isn’t a game - it’s real life, and it’s gritty and gross, and she can try and be disconnected for the sake of her teammates but when she’s alone she’ll feel it just as much as anybody else. Grimaces when she aims and pulls the trigger.
It’s not pretty, but the dead don’t always stay dead and she’s better safe than sorry.
/-\
They drop by Sam’s house, but the lights are all out, and that’s not a good sign.
The door’s not locked, either, so when Sam pushes the door open and immediately grasps at the baseball bat just inside she isn’t surprised. Or at all disapproving. He calls out for a second and doesn’t get a reply. But then there’s a scuffle at the top of the stairs and two short figures peer down at them.
“Sammy?” Quinn hears, and it’s a boy’s voice, so she guesses it’s Stevie. Sam’s little brother.
“You okay little bro? Stacy?” the taller blonde boy calls back, and the two smaller kids traipse quickly down the stairs to jump on their brother. Cling to his legs happily. “Where’s dad?”
“He got weird,” the little girl says simply.
“Really weird,” agrees the boy. “Got home from work and sat down on the couch for a while, and then he shook a little all weird-like.”
“Yeah, like that thing on the Simpsons, in that Japanese episode where they watch the cartoon with all the lights and go funny. Sea-sure. Or something,” Stacy explains, clinging tightly to her brother. Seizure. Maybe, but Rachel didn’t tell them the symptoms. Quinn swallows thickly, meeting her boyfriend’s uncertain gaze quickly.
“Is... is he still in the house?” she asks quietly, and the girl blinks up at her.
“Uhm, we played chase with him when he got up. But he was acting weird and angry, and I don’t think he knew we were playing. He looked kind of like, uhm, a rabid dog or something. And Stacy got kind of scared. And he didn’t say anything when we asked him to stop so we locked him in the basement.”
Which is about the time they hear a feral growl from somewhere in the house and the presumably resumed thudding of a body again a wooden door. Sam clenches his jaw and gestures to the stairs.
“Go upstairs, midgets,” he tells his siblings affectionately, but Quinn can see the stiffness in the set of his shoulders and the way his muscles tense and his eyes flash. It’s hard for him - would be for anyone - apparently his dad’s infected. “Quinn, can you help them pack, please? And, uhm... check them?”
She doesn’t need elaboration. She knows what he means. Wants her to make sure his brother and sister aren’t, well, haven’t been bitten. Or cut, or scratched, or left with any kind of way for transmission of the disease, and Quinn just nods and tries not to think about Sam’s dad or Rachel out in the construction lot on her own, or the way the world is crashing down outside. And she forces herself not to look when Sam hefts his bat and sets his shoulders behind them and starts towards the basement. Closes the door in the kids’ room when the thudding starts downstairs and tells them it’s nothing. For some reason, they seem to believe her - the years of sweeping things effortlessly under the rug and acting like everything’s fine, she guesses. But whatever it is, the kids ignore the muffled thudding and smile while she helps them pack some stuff, and they’re nice, and normal, and if only this was for a vacation instead of an escape. She paints on a smile to keep them happy. Practiced. Perfected.
She’s never been so glad for her family’s bad habits.
--
But I could only guess that you would think the worst of me
But I'm of another world where day is night and all the heat
Is dripping from my skin, dripping from my soul
And I am hollow in this space like a black hole
And oh you know there's something that I can never say
I live in my own darkness with giant birds of prey
And oh you know from up here we watch and burn and reign
We'll swoop down on your faces and satiate
Byrds of Prey, Bertie Blackman
This is not to say that infecting half a continent wasn’t an idea from the beginning - as a matter of fact, it was an idea that was thrown around restlessly before the research team was even put together. Rather, it was not the main concept of the TVXK division until eleven or so years after the unit’s creation, only a sidelined possibility for the future.
As it happens, TVXK was created firstly with the intention of being a gift, later a disease. Again, it was designed with a specific use in war, but with the focus being on the user’s own troops rather than the enemy’s. To enhance a soldier’s abilities - make them faster, stronger, not as a general physical state of being, but rather to give them the ability to tap into an adrenaline high at will, instead of when the right conditions were met.
An adrenaline rush, for those unaware, is the fermentation of muscles at an increased rate due to the release of epinephrine from the adrenal gland (and this naturally happens due to anxiety; it’s a fight-or-flight response). Muscles are stronger - you can hit harder, run faster. Now, imagine squadrons of human beings, pre-trained and tactically efficient, able to call upon and totally control an adrenaline rush. Draw it out for as long as desired. Utilise it until the body simply couldn’t anymore.
Super soldiers, the government wanted.
This goal was quickly fulfilled - with drawbacks. Those affected by the virus - tested like lab rats - were, with the correct training, capable of drawing out a practical adrenaline rush on command, yes. But to control it? No, they weren’t at all able - not in the beginning. The rush was too much. The virus got into the system, overloaded it, and several died from the strain. Some were pushed too hard into exhaustion - reacting in the ways of perhaps falling asleep without reawakening, all the way through to simply being unable to move their own bodies for days at a time. Or, ever, in some cases, where the disease strained a body to a mostly permanent paralysis. The worst of reactions, of course, was the lack of control not of the elevated state, but of one’s own body while in that state - a practical berserker mode, where the body rebelled until the mind was just a passenger to death and destruction. Subjects found their eye colour changing to a sickly yellow, frothing at the mouth was not uncommon, and they were known to, on occasion, take a bite out of their victims, though at this time a bite did not cause the virus to spread. Subjects were unstoppable, short of a shot to the head. And ravenous, which was frankly disturbing.
They refined it, of course. Many years and many tests later, and the TVXK virus was more highly understood, more easily mutated to design. The younger the subject, the easier the control was to learn. The effects of the virus were lessened from the beginning - quite a shame - but so was the backlash, and it was an allowance made. The added strength was not as high as anticipated, though still heightened, but at least the subjects weren't dying and falling into comas and biting chunks out of their ward mates. The division continued refining, testing, making new models for eleven years - and their subjects were volunteers, of course. Youths told tales of serving their countries, or helping their families, or simply those with nothing and no one to tie them to another life. Fools, and idiots, and courageous souls, and people young and naive enough to sign on the dotted line without really understanding the contract.
And so, the division had what they wanted. And it was almost perfect. And the government could easily have stepped back and quit the reigns and taken their victory with open arms. But then, humanity always has a habit of wanting to take their cake and eat it too, and success is never good enough. So, naturally, they wanted more. And then somebody in a white coat looked at his computer through thick, horn-rimmed glasses, and looked back at the negative side effects of the genetic anomaly during the first three years of the projects, and remembered that sidelined notion of biological warfare, and he tapped his chin and cleaned his glasses and thought to himself “now, why not look into that?”.
What a freaking charmer.
/-\
Rachel purses her lip, staring out over the empty lot.
Seemingly empty. And she reminds herself to never assume, because that would just be a generally fucking stupid thing to do during the zombie apocalypse. And Rachel Berry is many things - amazing, stealthy, super talented, just all-around flawless - but ‘fucking stupid’ is not one of them.
And, well, yeah, the construction site looks empty, but she’s not taking chances on that. So she taps the bat in her hand against her boot and stretches out her arms slowly. Knocks out the crick in her neck before letting a crunch of boots on gravel lead her slowly into empty space, washed out by bright white lights, held high, shining down on dust and dirt and metal. Links her fingers and cracks them loudly when she’s standing in the middle of nowhere - doesn’t garner a response, but it doesn’t put her at ease. She knows better.
She looks over at the six-stories of scaffolding to one side of the lot, plastic coverings torn and fluttering silently in the breeze, washed in white light, shipping crates stacked up to the third floor beside it, and she holds back a shudder. This is like a freaking video game level. She’s waiting for the horde to fall upon her like a whiny little bitch, and fuck’s sake, where the fuck is that truck she’s looking for?
She spots it - kicks up a bit of dust when she traipses towards it, but not enough to really matter. It’s a hulking vehicle, stacked up on the back with bricks and bags of concrete mix and planks of wood, sitting idle to the side of the lot, lined up beside another few trucks - pick-ups and cabs for the night workers that seem to have mysteriously disappeared beneath the washed-out white lights. She crouches a little to look beneath the truck before she’s too close to it - movie-viewing experience and common sense has taught her well enough that certain evil doers and creatures-of-the-night have enough smarts left in them to hide in practical crawlspace, and Rachel Berry is not now (nor will she ever be) dumb enough to be tripped up by a hypothetical bogeyman. Also, the feeling of a hand wrapping around your ankle is a distinctly creepy one, if her eighth-grade Summer ‘theatre camp’ (suspicious cough and shifty eyes included) is anything to go by.
Which, really, it is.
But there’s nothing beneath this particular truck, so she counts herself lucky and moves towards the truck’s cab, reaching up for the driver’s side door and giving a yank on the handle. The plan’s simple, really - steal the truck, head for McKinley, bunker up for the apocalypse, plan out escape. Only, simplicity, much like truth, is relative in this post-modern environment Rachel Berry inhabits, and so, when she yanks on the handle, for two obvious reasons - the first unforseen, the second sincerely hoped against - the plan ceases to be simple.
Firstly, the door is locked. Trivial, really.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is gravel crunching beneath heavy boots some ways behind her - ergo, not her own.
Now, obviously, this hinders her plans, and unfortunately her first inclination is to freeze. Not because of the door - the locked truck, though unaccounted for in her planning, is not specifically the largest issue for one super-talented actress and self-appointed zombie-slayer Rachel Berry. No - she’ll just have to find the keys, her mind tells her, and then the lock won’t be a problem at all. It’s the crunching gravel that’s the problem. Because her feet haven’t moved in the last fifteen seconds, and that sound is not from the ground beneath her boots. Which means there’s someone else here - behind her, seemingly, back a few metres, and her inward paranoia informs her that the likelihood of them being healthy, lucid and clear-eyed isn’t all that high.
It worries her - she’ll admit it, now that no one else is around her. She doesn’t have to direct Puck through the steps and the shock, or bully Mister Fabray into action (or inaction, or anything at all), or hold Quinn together while the world falls apart. Right now she’s the only one around, and the only person she has to be strong for is herself. Pressure’s off about keeping up appearances, she thinks (all in a flash, of course), but then she slowly turns herself around and faces the source of the crunching gravel - hulking muscled man in dark jeans and a red shirt - which wasn’t red originally, but the blood soaking out from his neck wound has changed it, and she can’t tell what it was before. Steel-toed boots and a tool belt, ten metres from her and in the middle of empty space, and she doesn’t know where he’s come from.
He leers at her - mouth drops open with a touch of foam around his bloody teeth, dirt staining his chiselled jaw, eyes a sickly yellow beneath the misty white. Rachel tightens her grip on the bat in her hands - doesn’t move for a second, just stares at him and calculates her options. He’s too big to take down easy, with a bat, and she’s betting he could make the distance between them before she had her gun out and sufficiently aimed. There’s a truck straight behind her and a small portable building to her left - fifty metres, probably where the keys are. Too far to run, though. And there’s a flutter of plastic from the scaffolding - twenty metres to her left, almost beckoning with the breeze. Split decision before the dead worker jolts forward into action, and then she’s spinning on lithe legs and dashing on towards the scaffold.
Distraction. Escape. Pressure’s on about staying alive.
/-\
When Puck walks outside (duffel bag slung promptly over his shoulder, baseball bat in his hand, Kurt Hummel trudging along behind him in a designer leather jacket with his keys in his hands) Finn is running in circles around Puck’s pick-up and shrieking like a girl.
Traditionally - and, despite the morbidity of the zombie apocalypse - Puck is bemused before he is concerned. Mostly because, evidently, Finn has at some point dropped his bat, and like fuck Puck is going to hand the idiot any kind of live ammunition in any lifetime, least of all this one. Secondly, at some point the lumbering idiot has managed to pick up a very interested - but apparently not-too-active - drooling stalker. And, yeah, maybe Puck should be concerned that his pseudo-ex-best-friend is being chased by a hungry zombie, but Finn’s running around the truck and screaming like a broken record, or a girl or something, and, really, Puck’s just kind of pissed that the large boy couldn’t look after himself and hold onto a bat for three minutes alone.
So he drops the bag on the doorstep with Hummel and strides out towards his truck and hefts his bat up, and when Finn makes the next pass he swings just after him and the drooling fucker takes it straight to the face. There’s this sickening squelching thud, and a crack, and Puck feels a little sick - this is real, after all, a real person, and his mouth tingles with the thought of a baseball bat ever meeting his teeth in any capacity - but he bites back the hint of bile in his throat and swings his bat down on the grounded zombie twice more before relenting.
Head, he thinks, because Rachel told him. Double-tap, he remembers, because Zombieland was fucking legendary.
And then he’s sure the poor infected kid is dead - for real this time - and he doesn’t look at the body again. Just grabs Finn by the collar and shoves him forcefully towards the house with a grimace he covers with a scowl.
“Don’t drop your bat again, fucktard,” is all he says about it, barely paying attention to Kurt as he picks up the duffel bag and heaves it over to Puck’s truck. Even as the bag gets hauled into the bed of Puck’s pick-up a bunch of the Gleeks are trailing out of the house, carrying crates of food and whatever other shit they’ve stolen from the Hummel-Hudson household - lucky fucking thing that Finn was throwing a party, really, even if it was to spite Rachel. Trust the idiot to finally throw a rager right in time for the apocalypse. It was an all-gleek pre-party, apparently, because none of the jocks or cheerleaders have shown up yet, and some of them are probably stumbling around town with a hankering for human flesh but whatever, Puck doesn’t care so much about them, and the Gleeks are all here (except Rachel, and Quinn, and Sam, and Brittany and Santana, but he doesn’t worry about them so much because he trusts his Jewish princess a lot further than he could throw her, and B is probably with S, and like hell Santana would be brought down by something as insignificant as zombies).
They all pack up the back of Puck’s truck, and then he hands out a couple of baseball bats - mostly to the boys, and Lauren - and hands Tina a shotgun from Rachel’s ‘special’ bag, because she apparently knows how to use it - he’s not sure if he wants to know the story behind that, but this definitely wouldn’t be the time if he did. He gets Finn’s help in moving Artie from his wheelchair to the back seat of Kurt’s Escalade (parked promptly in the driveway, he notes), and then shoves his chair in the boot. Kurt and Blaine get in the front, and Mercedes jumps in the back, and Puck shoves Finn over too just because he doesn’t want to look at the guy anymore, and then, like clockwork, Santana pulls up at the curb with a scowl and Brittany smiling in the passenger seat.
“The fuck, Puckerman?” she calls out to him. “The midget sent me a message about zombies - wasn’t gonna believe her until I caught my neighbour chomping on his dog - and told me to ‘report’ here to you like you’re my fucking boss or something? What the fuck is going on?”
He gives her a one-finger salute, and strides over to the car to hand her a pistol and give her directions, and she scowls and grumbles at him, but he knows she’ll follow his lead. Santana talks a lot of shit, but she can be a team player. Particularly when deep shit is involved.
“We’re gonna bunker down in McKinley. You have a little less than an hour to get there - Rachel’s, you know, organised,” he says a little dryly, but not contesting it. “If there’s anyone you want to warn, now would be the time.”
“The parentals are out of town this weekend,” is her dull reply. “They went with Britt’s folks and the Hummels or Hudsons or whatever the flying fuck on some fucking vacation I didn’t care about because I’d get to party. So no fucking dice, Puckerman.”
“Take a road trip for Chang-squared and Zizes, then.”
“I’m not a fucking cab service!” Santana hisses back, earning a soothing hand on her shoulder from the blonde behind her. Puck isn’t fazed - she’s always been a bit quick to blow up, but especially when she’s under pressure. And she’s about to be under a lot of pressure. “You do it!”
“Look, we have forty minutes to get our shit together and get to the school, S, and I need to go pick up my sister and my mom, so either buck the fuck up and help out your teammates beforehand or go and wait in the school parking lot for an hour until the cavalry arrives. I don’t fucking care,” he tells her bluntly, and he’s being intentionally short with her. He knows she’ll do what he says. She just needs to be actually told. “But I’d prefer it if you’d be productive.”
She glares at him. “Fine. But I better get fucking paid for this or something.”
He retreats from the car, sends the three over there, then jumps into his own truck on the lawn and manages to kick it into gear almost as fast as Rachel did the first time. Thinks he’ll have to work on that. He leaves before the other two cars, doesn’t turn the stereo on, drives to nothing but silence. It’s dark out, now, and he kind of wishes he’d kept one of the gleeks to himself. As long as it wasn’t Finn he would have been cool. Because the anticipation now is kind of sickening - gut-wrenching and all that shit with the ‘what ifs’.
The streets are dead, and the closer he gets to his house the more he wants to barf.
/-\
She tries to quieten her steps on the metal, and the wooden planks beneath her, let herself fade off into the rustle of plastic and the whistle of the breeze. But as it seems, she’s not the only one capable of sinking into the background noise, and she can barely see past the semi-opaque plastic.
Every silent breath in reminds her that this was a fucking bad idea.
She should have just shot the fucker in the head. Then she wouldn’t be three stories up in fucking scaffolding trying to hide from an undead builder who, despite his massive size, was apparently super stealthy. Practical silence amidst flapping plastic, and the white wash from the lights around the lot, and fuck, this was practically a b-grade serial killer movie scene. Ethereal and all that shit. She is so going to die right here.
She hears a creak and stops moving. Waits another moment and hears it again. From her left, and... up? But up means the floor above her and - wait, how would he have gotten up there without going past her and - motherfucker, there’s another creak behind her that is definitely on this level and there are two zombies in this shithole death trap of a motherfucking horror game level that she decided was a brilliant idea to utilize and how freaking dumb was that?
Sucks in a breath and tightens her grip on the baseball bat while she takes a few steps forward, finds herself at the edge of the structure and looking down to the empty lot. Strains her ears for any sounds and strains her eyes for an escape. Which, admittedly, is when she remembers the shipping crates, and turns a nice ninety degrees to see them down at the edge of her level. They’re stacked, kind of, the top one coming up maybe forty centimetres above the level of her feet, and getting down from the top should be a bit like jumping down stairs, she thinks. Large stairs, admittedly, but not as large as a full three story drop. It’s a clear path, about ten metres. Straight jump across, maybe a little far, but she thinks she can swing it. Better than being caught between poles and construction gear with two burly zombies.
She hears another creak of wood, closer this time, and figures that taking the time to weigh the pros and cons of all of this would be a distinctly dumb idea. And so she bolts towards the edge, furrows her brow, and her footstep are loud and another set picks up behind her, blood rushing, pounding loud in her ears while her heart beats erratically, and she feels heat - in her cheeks, her head, her hands. Can’t feel her feet when they bound against planks, and her mouth is dry, and she swallows nothing, but it’s thick while her legs pump, and then she’s at the edge and leaping, flying.
Falling.
Flails out with an arm in the split second it takes for her to realise and grasps the edge of the crate. She doesn’t feel her body smack into the side of the metal, but she knows she will in the morning. There’s a rush of air and something jumps over her, thumps to the top of the crate she’s hanging on, and a quick glance down shows less than a metre between her feet and the top of the next crate beneath her. She lets go before the body somewhere above her can move.
She doesn’t stop to get her bearings, just yanks up her bat from ground beneath her where she’s apparently - shit - dropped it in the jump and rushes to the edge of the crate, hops down on shaky legs to the next one, and then throws herself off the side and to the gravel and - fuck - that Mirror’s Edge game made that whole ‘drops hurt less when you end them in forward rolls’ thing seem a lot more appealing, but at least she hasn’t jarred her knees or anything. Then she’s back on her feet and trying to cover the huge distance between herself and the portable across the lot without looking back or falling over, and cursing herself for screwing up so badly when she makes it twenty-four metres and hears two thuds onto the gravel some ways behind her.
She can salvage it, though. She’s smart enough for that.
The small portable building - site manager’s office, she guesses, has the door open and the lights on, and the lack of any movement through the barred window lets her think there’s no one in there. And that’s perfect, because if she can barricade herself in there for a second she can shoot her pursuers in the face through the window. Which, really, that’s just an absolutely excellent idea.
But for her excellent idea to work she needs to get herself in to that room and close the damned door before she gets leapt on and eaten, and at the moment her knee’s getting a little stiff, and come on, she thinks - forces her legs to move faster, boots hitting the ground harder, head keeps rushing until everything blurs and she wants to stop and fall and pass out. But then, next she knows, she’s beneath neons and slamming the door and clicking the lock and leaning her back against it, and there’s not even ten seconds before something thuds into the wood behind her.
She breathes heavily, pants it out while the wood jerks and rattles, and then she lets her gaze flit around until she finds the keys, rings hanging off nails on a board on the wall. Moves to look a little closer and finds the set she’s looking for, yanks it off the board and rejoices that she’s got her key and that the two bodies outside aren’t hungry enough to actually break down the door just yet before she looks around the room again. There’s a hand - arm connected, she notes - peeking out at her on the ground from around the heavy desk in the middle of the room, and she swallows thickly, breath still coming out heavy while the door thuds again and the bars on the window start to rattle. Moves around the desk to see everything else connected to that arm, and they’re face down but there’s a bite on their shoulder and four down their arm, and she doesn’t know this person and she doesn’t want to. She pulls out her gun, eyes locked on the bloodied, still body on the ground as she lifts the weapon. Remembers that this isn’t a game - it’s real life, and it’s gritty and gross, and she can try and be disconnected for the sake of her teammates but when she’s alone she’ll feel it just as much as anybody else. Grimaces when she aims and pulls the trigger.
It’s not pretty, but the dead don’t always stay dead and she’s better safe than sorry.
/-\
They drop by Sam’s house, but the lights are all out, and that’s not a good sign.
The door’s not locked, either, so when Sam pushes the door open and immediately grasps at the baseball bat just inside she isn’t surprised. Or at all disapproving. He calls out for a second and doesn’t get a reply. But then there’s a scuffle at the top of the stairs and two short figures peer down at them.
“Sammy?” Quinn hears, and it’s a boy’s voice, so she guesses it’s Stevie. Sam’s little brother.
“You okay little bro? Stacy?” the taller blonde boy calls back, and the two smaller kids traipse quickly down the stairs to jump on their brother. Cling to his legs happily. “Where’s dad?”
“He got weird,” the little girl says simply.
“Really weird,” agrees the boy. “Got home from work and sat down on the couch for a while, and then he shook a little all weird-like.”
“Yeah, like that thing on the Simpsons, in that Japanese episode where they watch the cartoon with all the lights and go funny. Sea-sure. Or something,” Stacy explains, clinging tightly to her brother. Seizure. Maybe, but Rachel didn’t tell them the symptoms. Quinn swallows thickly, meeting her boyfriend’s uncertain gaze quickly.
“Is... is he still in the house?” she asks quietly, and the girl blinks up at her.
“Uhm, we played chase with him when he got up. But he was acting weird and angry, and I don’t think he knew we were playing. He looked kind of like, uhm, a rabid dog or something. And Stacy got kind of scared. And he didn’t say anything when we asked him to stop so we locked him in the basement.”
Which is about the time they hear a feral growl from somewhere in the house and the presumably resumed thudding of a body again a wooden door. Sam clenches his jaw and gestures to the stairs.
“Go upstairs, midgets,” he tells his siblings affectionately, but Quinn can see the stiffness in the set of his shoulders and the way his muscles tense and his eyes flash. It’s hard for him - would be for anyone - apparently his dad’s infected. “Quinn, can you help them pack, please? And, uhm... check them?”
She doesn’t need elaboration. She knows what he means. Wants her to make sure his brother and sister aren’t, well, haven’t been bitten. Or cut, or scratched, or left with any kind of way for transmission of the disease, and Quinn just nods and tries not to think about Sam’s dad or Rachel out in the construction lot on her own, or the way the world is crashing down outside. And she forces herself not to look when Sam hefts his bat and sets his shoulders behind them and starts towards the basement. Closes the door in the kids’ room when the thudding starts downstairs and tells them it’s nothing. For some reason, they seem to believe her - the years of sweeping things effortlessly under the rug and acting like everything’s fine, she guesses. But whatever it is, the kids ignore the muffled thudding and smile while she helps them pack some stuff, and they’re nice, and normal, and if only this was for a vacation instead of an escape. She paints on a smile to keep them happy. Practiced. Perfected.
She’s never been so glad for her family’s bad habits.
--
But I could only guess that you would think the worst of me
But I'm of another world where day is night and all the heat
Is dripping from my skin, dripping from my soul
And I am hollow in this space like a black hole
And oh you know there's something that I can never say
I live in my own darkness with giant birds of prey
And oh you know from up here we watch and burn and reign
We'll swoop down on your faces and satiate
Byrds of Prey, Bertie Blackman