Prompt 2
Title: It’s About the Company
Author: meddow
Format & Word Count: Short fic ~1100 words
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Two - London Calling by The Clash
Warnings: Gore, alcohol, language, nudity, borderline crack!fic
Summary: Dealing with the end of the world is bad enough. It’s even worse when you’ve just woken up.
Author’s Notes: In the past few days I’ve read the criticism that there is not enough zombies in R/T fic, a critism that I completely agree with. And so I bring zombie!crack. Except I may have forgotten to bring the zombies. And also the crack. Make of it what you will.
For the life of him Remus could not understand where the sound of banging was coming from. He was quite happily running through a forest, but for the past ten minutes the banging had been going on and on and no matter how far he ran the volume was not changing.
In the end he realised that could only mean one thing. Remus woke up.
“Remus! Remus! Open the bloody door!” Tonks was screaming. It looked like she was going to break down the rickety tunnel entrance door into the Shrieking Shack, but the magic securing the room made the door deceiving. In reality it would hold off an elephant.
With aching muscles Remus pulled himself up to open the door. But before he could he realised he was stark naked.
“I’ve got no clothes on,” he replied, his mind still in a forest somewhere and not quite yet in a state capable of processing more than one issue at once.
“I’ve seen you naked you idiot! Now let me in!”
Knowing that she was only that rude when she was in some sort of trouble, Remus opened the door. Tonks must have been leaning against it because she fell into the room and the flaming cricket bat she had been holding onto dropped, skidded across the floor and extinguished.
“Shut the door!” she screamed.
Remus quickly obliged
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Tonks got up and picked up her cricket bat. She looked she had just been dragged through hell; covered in blood and grime and with her clothing torn and with a wild and furious look in her eyes.
“You know that fear you have that the world will end and you won’t notice because of the full moon. Well guess what.”
“Werewolves?” he asked, saying the first thing that sprung to mind and realising it was rather stupid.
“Yes, a flaming cricket bat is really effective against werewolves,” Tonks replied.
“Would you stop being sarcastic for one minute?” His head was still spinning from being woken up and he really wanted a straight answer, or a cup of tea.
“It’s the fucking apocalypse, Remus! Sarcasm’s one of the few things I have left and I’m bloody well going to use it.”
He took another look at her. There was only one creature a flaming cricket bat would be more effective against than magic.
“Inferi?”
“Lots of Inferi,” Tonks replied. “And they’re hungry.”
“Have they followed you?”
“I think I gave them the slip at the willow. Though if I hadn’t I’d be dead by now. I was banging on that bloody door for ten minutes! I could have been eaten out there!”
Tonks ranted for a while about Remus ability to sleep through anything and then moved onto the topic of how incredibly disgusting and smelly Inferi were and then onto the many benefits of cremation over burial, the first one being that she had yet to be attacked by an urn. Remus figured it all to be quite justified considering events and he used the time to collect himself.
“Are you quite done now?” he asked when she had finally finished yelling.
Tonks looked like she was going to do some more ranting for a second but instead she sat on the bed and Remus remembered once more that he was completely naked.
Searching the room he found his pants in the corner with a holes in them, apparently he had used them as a chew toy at some point in the night. Beginning another search he finally he found his trousers which were not too bad and settled for them.
Tonks was watching all of this with an amused expression while pulling what looked to be pieces of rotting bone and decomposing brain-matter out of her hair and clothes and flicking it into a pile across the room.
“See, this is why I love you. I tell you that there are masses of zombies outside and you’re worried about being decent.”
“This is not about propriety. It’s a safety precaution” he muttered as he pulled his trousers on. “I’m not going out there without something covering me. Hungry Inferi and unprotected genitals do not mix.”
“Ever the sensible one. Though we’re not going out there.”
“What?”
“There’s hundreds of them. They already had the front door covered and my presence tipped them off to the willow. There’s no chance we’ll make to the apparition barrier.”
“So what’s the plan then?” he asked.
“Bludgeon my way through a mass of reanimated rotting corpses determined to have me for lunch to get to you and then…” Tonks reached into her coat and pulled out a bottle of green liquid. “…Get sloshed.”
“Is that absinth?” Remus asked.
“Seventy-two percent. I nicked it from Dung’s ‘may as well enjoy the end’ stash.”
“That’s it then? That’s the plan?”
“All the dead all over the world have come back to life. There’s nowhere to go,” Tonks said. “Kingsley suggested that Antarctica might not be so bad. But I pointed out that if you manage to avoid getting eaten by Scott and Oates then you’re just going to starve to death. Don’t worry, they know we’re here. If they manage to figure a way out of this they’ll come and get us.”
Remus considered if for a moment and tried to think of a place on earth that was both hospitable and had no humans buried on it. He eventually conceded that Tonks was right; there really was no place to go. By this time Tonks had managed to get the top off the bottle and was taking a drink.
He sat down next to her. “You risked your life to die here with me.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘die’. More like get drunk while waiting for Harry to save the day,” she replied. “Anyway, a good apocalypse is all about the company and there’s no-one I’d rather spend the end of the world with than you.”
“Me neither,” Remus said, finding a spot on her cheek with no stains on it and kissing her and in the process realising that Tonks had been quite right when she had been ranting on about the smell of decomposition getting everywhere. “Merlin you stink.”
“Put up or shut up or conjure me a bathtub,” she muttered. “Or you’re not having any of my absinth.”
“So any other news?” he asked as he snatched the bottle off her.
“Lily Potter’s not looking so good these days.”
Author: meddow
Format & Word Count: Short fic ~1100 words
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Two - London Calling by The Clash
Warnings: Gore, alcohol, language, nudity, borderline crack!fic
Summary: Dealing with the end of the world is bad enough. It’s even worse when you’ve just woken up.
Author’s Notes: In the past few days I’ve read the criticism that there is not enough zombies in R/T fic, a critism that I completely agree with. And so I bring zombie!crack. Except I may have forgotten to bring the zombies. And also the crack. Make of it what you will.
For the life of him Remus could not understand where the sound of banging was coming from. He was quite happily running through a forest, but for the past ten minutes the banging had been going on and on and no matter how far he ran the volume was not changing.
In the end he realised that could only mean one thing. Remus woke up.
“Remus! Remus! Open the bloody door!” Tonks was screaming. It looked like she was going to break down the rickety tunnel entrance door into the Shrieking Shack, but the magic securing the room made the door deceiving. In reality it would hold off an elephant.
With aching muscles Remus pulled himself up to open the door. But before he could he realised he was stark naked.
“I’ve got no clothes on,” he replied, his mind still in a forest somewhere and not quite yet in a state capable of processing more than one issue at once.
“I’ve seen you naked you idiot! Now let me in!”
Knowing that she was only that rude when she was in some sort of trouble, Remus opened the door. Tonks must have been leaning against it because she fell into the room and the flaming cricket bat she had been holding onto dropped, skidded across the floor and extinguished.
“Shut the door!” she screamed.
Remus quickly obliged
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Tonks got up and picked up her cricket bat. She looked she had just been dragged through hell; covered in blood and grime and with her clothing torn and with a wild and furious look in her eyes.
“You know that fear you have that the world will end and you won’t notice because of the full moon. Well guess what.”
“Werewolves?” he asked, saying the first thing that sprung to mind and realising it was rather stupid.
“Yes, a flaming cricket bat is really effective against werewolves,” Tonks replied.
“Would you stop being sarcastic for one minute?” His head was still spinning from being woken up and he really wanted a straight answer, or a cup of tea.
“It’s the fucking apocalypse, Remus! Sarcasm’s one of the few things I have left and I’m bloody well going to use it.”
He took another look at her. There was only one creature a flaming cricket bat would be more effective against than magic.
“Inferi?”
“Lots of Inferi,” Tonks replied. “And they’re hungry.”
“Have they followed you?”
“I think I gave them the slip at the willow. Though if I hadn’t I’d be dead by now. I was banging on that bloody door for ten minutes! I could have been eaten out there!”
Tonks ranted for a while about Remus ability to sleep through anything and then moved onto the topic of how incredibly disgusting and smelly Inferi were and then onto the many benefits of cremation over burial, the first one being that she had yet to be attacked by an urn. Remus figured it all to be quite justified considering events and he used the time to collect himself.
“Are you quite done now?” he asked when she had finally finished yelling.
Tonks looked like she was going to do some more ranting for a second but instead she sat on the bed and Remus remembered once more that he was completely naked.
Searching the room he found his pants in the corner with a holes in them, apparently he had used them as a chew toy at some point in the night. Beginning another search he finally he found his trousers which were not too bad and settled for them.
Tonks was watching all of this with an amused expression while pulling what looked to be pieces of rotting bone and decomposing brain-matter out of her hair and clothes and flicking it into a pile across the room.
“See, this is why I love you. I tell you that there are masses of zombies outside and you’re worried about being decent.”
“This is not about propriety. It’s a safety precaution” he muttered as he pulled his trousers on. “I’m not going out there without something covering me. Hungry Inferi and unprotected genitals do not mix.”
“Ever the sensible one. Though we’re not going out there.”
“What?”
“There’s hundreds of them. They already had the front door covered and my presence tipped them off to the willow. There’s no chance we’ll make to the apparition barrier.”
“So what’s the plan then?” he asked.
“Bludgeon my way through a mass of reanimated rotting corpses determined to have me for lunch to get to you and then…” Tonks reached into her coat and pulled out a bottle of green liquid. “…Get sloshed.”
“Is that absinth?” Remus asked.
“Seventy-two percent. I nicked it from Dung’s ‘may as well enjoy the end’ stash.”
“That’s it then? That’s the plan?”
“All the dead all over the world have come back to life. There’s nowhere to go,” Tonks said. “Kingsley suggested that Antarctica might not be so bad. But I pointed out that if you manage to avoid getting eaten by Scott and Oates then you’re just going to starve to death. Don’t worry, they know we’re here. If they manage to figure a way out of this they’ll come and get us.”
Remus considered if for a moment and tried to think of a place on earth that was both hospitable and had no humans buried on it. He eventually conceded that Tonks was right; there really was no place to go. By this time Tonks had managed to get the top off the bottle and was taking a drink.
He sat down next to her. “You risked your life to die here with me.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘die’. More like get drunk while waiting for Harry to save the day,” she replied. “Anyway, a good apocalypse is all about the company and there’s no-one I’d rather spend the end of the world with than you.”
“Me neither,” Remus said, finding a spot on her cheek with no stains on it and kissing her and in the process realising that Tonks had been quite right when she had been ranting on about the smell of decomposition getting everywhere. “Merlin you stink.”
“Put up or shut up or conjure me a bathtub,” she muttered. “Or you’re not having any of my absinth.”
“So any other news?” he asked as he snatched the bottle off her.
“Lily Potter’s not looking so good these days.”