August 21 - Bad Moon Rising
Title: Bad Moon Rising (part ten of Watch the Fall of Humanity)
Author: 3am_moonlight aka mirrored_illusions.
Summary: A large group of walkers attack the Quarry Camp.
Crossover: The Walking Dead, Rimfrost.
Characters: Buffy Summers, Rime Kvitrev, Daryl Dixon, etc.
Rating: Gen
Word count: 2405
Challenge: The 2016 August Fic-a-Day. Day 21.
Timeline: Post-Chosen for BtVS, season one for TWD, post-Rimfrost.
Disclaimer: The Buffyverse, TWD and Rimfrost belong to someone with big, scary lawyers.
They were still far enough away from the camp that normal people would not have been able to hear either the screaming or the gunshots, but Buffy’s hearing had been extremely enhanced due to the power given to her when she became the Slayer and her senses had only become more potent over the years as she grew even more powerful. She had hoped to get more time to prepare the group for the walker ambush she had seen in her Slayer Dream a week before, but clearly that was not to be. She sighed and turned to Daryl who was walking behind her and to the left.
“There’s an attack on the camp, dump the rabbits and the squirrels, and start running,” And before he got the chance to do more than stare at her she had dropped the deer and took off at a speed no human could ever hope to match or even get near.
Buffy reached the campsite within ten minutes and ran into total chaos. There were walkers everywhere, the group were spread all over, and only a few had managed to get into the vehicles. She did a mental headcount; There had been 35 people in the camp when she and Daryl had gone hunting that morning, but it looked like that number would be seriously reduced tonight.
She called the Scythe to her and continued her run into the camp and sliced the head of four walkers on the way. Andrea and Amy were standing in front of the FedEx truck wielding the swords she had given them on her second day. There was no grace to their movements but there was a small pile of permanently dead corpses in front of them and to both sides, and that meant the two women had managed to learn something in the last few days. Sophia and Carl were between them and the truck in relative safety, but none of them had noticed the crawlers beneath the big vehicle. Lori was on the other side of the camp behind Rick and Shane who were all trying with increasing desperation to kill the walkers and to find Carl.
Miranda and her two children were inside their car while Morales and Glenn were outside shooting at anything that came towards them. T-Dog was shooting at anything that was moving and didn’t look alive as well. It was a disorganized mess. If nothing else this should work to her advantage so she could finally get them onboard with her ideas to protect and arm the group her way.
She took in everything in a second and went straight for the FedEx truck, slicing and dicing all the walkers who dared to cross her path. When she made it there she threw the scythe high into the air before she grabbed Sophia and then threw her onto the roof of the truck. Carl got the same treatment a few seconds later. Then she caught the Scythe on its downward arch and stabbed a walker in the eye. The children would probably have some bruises later but they were safer up there than down on the ground, at least as long as none of the walkers realized they could get to them by way of the hood of the car. As an afterthought she stabbed the two crawlers in the back of the head.
To her great approval the two sisters were still chopping heads off the walkers rather than gawking at her. All they’d done was turn enough to identify her and then they went straight back to what they’d been doing. She joined them to get some answers.
“What happened here?”
“We were eating dinner. I had to go to the bathroom, and when I came out of the RV I saw a walker right in front of me. Thankfully I brought the sword you gave me with me and managed to cut its arm off and then the head. I screamed to get everyone's attention.” The reply came from Amy, who was now in between Buffy and sister.
Andrea added, “We didn’t hear or see them before they were already on top of us, but they came from the forest.” That was odd as neither she nor Daryl had seen any herds while hunting. A few who shambled around on its own, or maybe two or three, but not a herd.
After severing another head Amy resumed her explanation, “Everyone began screaming and shouting, then shooting. Andrea got over to me and we got Carl and Sophia. And now you’re here.” She paused and looked behind Buffy. “Where’s Daryl?”
“We got a deer, some rabbits, and some squirrels. He had to put them somewhere so I ran ahead.” She gave the camp another overview, before she tacked on, “Good job with the swords, both of you. Keep it up.” Then she gave them an encouraging smile before she moved on. She left it unsaid that they were to maintain their protective stance over the two kids.
There was no need to explain that she ran too fast for Daryl to keep up. He would get there and hopefully not get killed by the stragglers. Daryl, unlike most of the adults in the group, had a skillset which was both beneficial and incredibly important for their survival. It was kinda horrifying to see that most of the group treated him like a worthless outcast, and completely ignoring that he was one of the few people who ensured they had fresh meat to eat.
She looked around the camp again. Where was Rime? Her snow white hair was always easily recognizable in any crowd, and it usually made it an effortless task to spot her, especially at night. Buffy’s Scythe was in continuous motion; separating the top of the walkers head from the rest of their body, and stabbing others in the eye with the stake in the other end. It was quick and effective; a process she had perfected over the last decade on an entirely different kind of undead.
Slicing and stabbing her way across the camp she reached Rick, Shane, and Lori. They had managed to get themselves surrounded by about a dozen of the damn things. Another bout of slicing and dicing and she was beside Rick who was looking frantically around, no doubt for his missing son.
“Carl and Sophia are on top of FedEx truck, and reasonably safe. For now.” The eyes of Rick, his wife, and his supposed best friend immediately flew to the top of the vehicle in question and the boy’s parents both let out a breath of relief.
Then she got to the real reason she was over by them, as per her experiences the parents of missing children were rarely able to properly answer questions while the fate of their children were unknown. Get the child, or at least point the child out to them, and they would calm down and most of the time be more willing to help as long as their own children were safe and unharmed. Well, as safe as anyone could be in the middle of a walker ambush.
“Have any of you seen Rime?” Rick and Shane had kept shooting at the walkers closest to them as soon as Carl’s safety had been clarified, while Lori was simply holding her machete in an awkward grip. The three of them refocused their attention and looked both left and right, trying to spot the ‘young’ woman. Meanwhile Buffy cut half the head of another three walkers and then stabbed another two.
“No, we’ve been too focused on finding Carl, and I can’t see her anywhere.” Lori replied, meeting Buffy’s eyes with a sympathetic before they slid back up to her son. The two men added their own negative replies in between taking shots.
Buffy nodded and moved on. Slice, chop, kick, stab, stab. Buffy danced around the camp at a speed no one else could’ve matched. Cut, kick, kick, slice, stab, and she jumped over a pile of no longer moving bodies. Then she heard Rime’s voice and she focused on the sound, pinpointing the direction it was coming from.
A few seconds later she was by Dale’s RV, with the older man sitting wide-eyed inside along with a woman she didn’t remember the name of. Then she was around the other side of the vehicle and finally saw her friend. She and Jacqui were trying to calm down a hysterical woman Buffy recognized as Carol only because she was Sophia’s mother. Years of having to figure out which child belonged to which parents had its uses.
She repeated her words from the short meeting with the Grimes parents, “Sophia and Carl are on the top of the FedEx truck, and safe from the walkers as long as they stay up there.” Then added, “Andrea and Amy are guarding them.”
Much like Lori and Rick she gave a breath of relief, but it didn’t explain the tears. The little girl was alive, and as far as Buffy had seen both mother and daughter were unharmed. Then Carol ran around the RV so she could see her daughter with her own eyes, and Buffy reflexively yanked her back just in time to stop her from getting munched on by yet another corpse. She stabbed it with Faith’s knife almost without thinking while maneuvering the elder woman so she was behind her.
“Be careful!” Buffy hissed in a low voice, trying not to attract any more of them to their little peaceful zombie-free zone. As far as she could see Carol was armed with nothing more than a small knife. It was better than nothing, but she was not a fighter, as proven by her staying with an abusive husband, and that left close-up kills out of the question. Buffy made eye-contact with Rime, and she answered the unasked question.
“Ed was killed by a walker inside their tent.” Right. He was one of the useless idiots in the camp who did nothing but thought they should get special treatment just for existing. He was no loss for the group.
She opened her mouth to comment but was interrupted by a loud “NO!” Buffy frowned, she was 99% certain that that was Daryl’s voice. Quickly moving back around to the front of the RV she got a full view of the middle of the campsite again, and what she saw made her heart clench a little. Daryl was kneeling by his brother who was clearly bleeding sluggishly from a bite in the upper part of his shoulder and, she was pretty certain, the lower part of his neck.
Buffy didn’t care about Merle, he was a major ass and an even bigger problem, but he was Daryl’s brother. And relatives were in short supply since the world as they knew it ended. Unbidden memories of losing Dawn came to the forefront of her mind, and she forcefully pushed them back into the box at the back of her mind where they belonged.
Instead of running over to her distraught hunting partner she grabbed Carol and Jacqui and dragged them around to the right side of the RV, momentarily let go of Jacqui to get the door open, and then quickly shepherded the two women into the back of it. Then she and Rime ran over to the two brothers, decapitating and stabbing a number of walkers on the way.
“Daryl?” She moved up beside him and quickly dispatched of the two walkers who had tried to sneak up behind him. Silently cursing herself for not bringing her own crossbow when they went hunting earlier. Something she had cursed herself for not doing several times even while they were out in the woods together, just the two of them.
Both she and Rime were politely not looking at the tears visible on his face. Merle was still breathing, but all three of them knew it was only a matter of time before whatever it was that caused dead people to reanimate would kill him. On Daryl’s other side Rime used a machete to stab yet another walker. Daryl hadn’t noticed any of it, all his focus was on his dying brother.
Behind them Morales, T-Dog, and Glenn were firing into a small newly arrived herd who had just broken through the treeline. Rick, Lori, and Shane had made it over to the FedEx truck and were moving around it to the other side so the three of them plus Andrea and Amy could surround it to ensure the safety of the children.
Then out of nowhere, Daryl took his own hunting knife out of its sheath and stabbed his own brother right between the eyes without hesitating. Afterwards he bowed his head while keeping his hand on the knife while it was still embedded into his brothers skull.
Rime and Buffy made eye contact over the two brothers before they went back to shielding Daryl. The Dixon brothers hadn’t always gotten along as far as they had been able to discern from their behaviour, but they had cared about each other in their own messed up way. And since the outbreak the last thing you could do for anyone was stab them in the head before they reanimated.
A few minutes later he got up, removed the knife, and straight off cleaned it on the piece of cloth from his back pocket before putting it back in its sheath. Buffy took her machete out of its sheath and handed it over to Daryl, handle first, without comment. She simply nodded and got one in return.
Daryl was a predator, a different kind than her but he was still a predator, and the pointless death of his only living relative demanded an act of violence to properly take the edge off of the anger so he could grieve properly later. Using his crossbow or a gun would not suffice, and his bare fists were a bad idea all on its own. That left knives and swords. The machete was a long bladed knife. Long enough that he wouldn’t put himself at too much risk and short enough that he could get a close kill to vent his anger and grief into.
It was going to be a long night, but Buffy and Rime silently agreed to watch over and aid the distressed hunter.
Author: 3am_moonlight aka mirrored_illusions.
Summary: A large group of walkers attack the Quarry Camp.
Crossover: The Walking Dead, Rimfrost.
Characters: Buffy Summers, Rime Kvitrev, Daryl Dixon, etc.
Rating: Gen
Word count: 2405
Challenge: The 2016 August Fic-a-Day. Day 21.
Timeline: Post-Chosen for BtVS, season one for TWD, post-Rimfrost.
Disclaimer: The Buffyverse, TWD and Rimfrost belong to someone with big, scary lawyers.
They were still far enough away from the camp that normal people would not have been able to hear either the screaming or the gunshots, but Buffy’s hearing had been extremely enhanced due to the power given to her when she became the Slayer and her senses had only become more potent over the years as she grew even more powerful. She had hoped to get more time to prepare the group for the walker ambush she had seen in her Slayer Dream a week before, but clearly that was not to be. She sighed and turned to Daryl who was walking behind her and to the left.
“There’s an attack on the camp, dump the rabbits and the squirrels, and start running,” And before he got the chance to do more than stare at her she had dropped the deer and took off at a speed no human could ever hope to match or even get near.
Buffy reached the campsite within ten minutes and ran into total chaos. There were walkers everywhere, the group were spread all over, and only a few had managed to get into the vehicles. She did a mental headcount; There had been 35 people in the camp when she and Daryl had gone hunting that morning, but it looked like that number would be seriously reduced tonight.
She called the Scythe to her and continued her run into the camp and sliced the head of four walkers on the way. Andrea and Amy were standing in front of the FedEx truck wielding the swords she had given them on her second day. There was no grace to their movements but there was a small pile of permanently dead corpses in front of them and to both sides, and that meant the two women had managed to learn something in the last few days. Sophia and Carl were between them and the truck in relative safety, but none of them had noticed the crawlers beneath the big vehicle. Lori was on the other side of the camp behind Rick and Shane who were all trying with increasing desperation to kill the walkers and to find Carl.
Miranda and her two children were inside their car while Morales and Glenn were outside shooting at anything that came towards them. T-Dog was shooting at anything that was moving and didn’t look alive as well. It was a disorganized mess. If nothing else this should work to her advantage so she could finally get them onboard with her ideas to protect and arm the group her way.
She took in everything in a second and went straight for the FedEx truck, slicing and dicing all the walkers who dared to cross her path. When she made it there she threw the scythe high into the air before she grabbed Sophia and then threw her onto the roof of the truck. Carl got the same treatment a few seconds later. Then she caught the Scythe on its downward arch and stabbed a walker in the eye. The children would probably have some bruises later but they were safer up there than down on the ground, at least as long as none of the walkers realized they could get to them by way of the hood of the car. As an afterthought she stabbed the two crawlers in the back of the head.
To her great approval the two sisters were still chopping heads off the walkers rather than gawking at her. All they’d done was turn enough to identify her and then they went straight back to what they’d been doing. She joined them to get some answers.
“What happened here?”
“We were eating dinner. I had to go to the bathroom, and when I came out of the RV I saw a walker right in front of me. Thankfully I brought the sword you gave me with me and managed to cut its arm off and then the head. I screamed to get everyone's attention.” The reply came from Amy, who was now in between Buffy and sister.
Andrea added, “We didn’t hear or see them before they were already on top of us, but they came from the forest.” That was odd as neither she nor Daryl had seen any herds while hunting. A few who shambled around on its own, or maybe two or three, but not a herd.
After severing another head Amy resumed her explanation, “Everyone began screaming and shouting, then shooting. Andrea got over to me and we got Carl and Sophia. And now you’re here.” She paused and looked behind Buffy. “Where’s Daryl?”
“We got a deer, some rabbits, and some squirrels. He had to put them somewhere so I ran ahead.” She gave the camp another overview, before she tacked on, “Good job with the swords, both of you. Keep it up.” Then she gave them an encouraging smile before she moved on. She left it unsaid that they were to maintain their protective stance over the two kids.
There was no need to explain that she ran too fast for Daryl to keep up. He would get there and hopefully not get killed by the stragglers. Daryl, unlike most of the adults in the group, had a skillset which was both beneficial and incredibly important for their survival. It was kinda horrifying to see that most of the group treated him like a worthless outcast, and completely ignoring that he was one of the few people who ensured they had fresh meat to eat.
She looked around the camp again. Where was Rime? Her snow white hair was always easily recognizable in any crowd, and it usually made it an effortless task to spot her, especially at night. Buffy’s Scythe was in continuous motion; separating the top of the walkers head from the rest of their body, and stabbing others in the eye with the stake in the other end. It was quick and effective; a process she had perfected over the last decade on an entirely different kind of undead.
Slicing and stabbing her way across the camp she reached Rick, Shane, and Lori. They had managed to get themselves surrounded by about a dozen of the damn things. Another bout of slicing and dicing and she was beside Rick who was looking frantically around, no doubt for his missing son.
“Carl and Sophia are on top of FedEx truck, and reasonably safe. For now.” The eyes of Rick, his wife, and his supposed best friend immediately flew to the top of the vehicle in question and the boy’s parents both let out a breath of relief.
Then she got to the real reason she was over by them, as per her experiences the parents of missing children were rarely able to properly answer questions while the fate of their children were unknown. Get the child, or at least point the child out to them, and they would calm down and most of the time be more willing to help as long as their own children were safe and unharmed. Well, as safe as anyone could be in the middle of a walker ambush.
“Have any of you seen Rime?” Rick and Shane had kept shooting at the walkers closest to them as soon as Carl’s safety had been clarified, while Lori was simply holding her machete in an awkward grip. The three of them refocused their attention and looked both left and right, trying to spot the ‘young’ woman. Meanwhile Buffy cut half the head of another three walkers and then stabbed another two.
“No, we’ve been too focused on finding Carl, and I can’t see her anywhere.” Lori replied, meeting Buffy’s eyes with a sympathetic before they slid back up to her son. The two men added their own negative replies in between taking shots.
Buffy nodded and moved on. Slice, chop, kick, stab, stab. Buffy danced around the camp at a speed no one else could’ve matched. Cut, kick, kick, slice, stab, and she jumped over a pile of no longer moving bodies. Then she heard Rime’s voice and she focused on the sound, pinpointing the direction it was coming from.
A few seconds later she was by Dale’s RV, with the older man sitting wide-eyed inside along with a woman she didn’t remember the name of. Then she was around the other side of the vehicle and finally saw her friend. She and Jacqui were trying to calm down a hysterical woman Buffy recognized as Carol only because she was Sophia’s mother. Years of having to figure out which child belonged to which parents had its uses.
She repeated her words from the short meeting with the Grimes parents, “Sophia and Carl are on the top of the FedEx truck, and safe from the walkers as long as they stay up there.” Then added, “Andrea and Amy are guarding them.”
Much like Lori and Rick she gave a breath of relief, but it didn’t explain the tears. The little girl was alive, and as far as Buffy had seen both mother and daughter were unharmed. Then Carol ran around the RV so she could see her daughter with her own eyes, and Buffy reflexively yanked her back just in time to stop her from getting munched on by yet another corpse. She stabbed it with Faith’s knife almost without thinking while maneuvering the elder woman so she was behind her.
“Be careful!” Buffy hissed in a low voice, trying not to attract any more of them to their little peaceful zombie-free zone. As far as she could see Carol was armed with nothing more than a small knife. It was better than nothing, but she was not a fighter, as proven by her staying with an abusive husband, and that left close-up kills out of the question. Buffy made eye-contact with Rime, and she answered the unasked question.
“Ed was killed by a walker inside their tent.” Right. He was one of the useless idiots in the camp who did nothing but thought they should get special treatment just for existing. He was no loss for the group.
She opened her mouth to comment but was interrupted by a loud “NO!” Buffy frowned, she was 99% certain that that was Daryl’s voice. Quickly moving back around to the front of the RV she got a full view of the middle of the campsite again, and what she saw made her heart clench a little. Daryl was kneeling by his brother who was clearly bleeding sluggishly from a bite in the upper part of his shoulder and, she was pretty certain, the lower part of his neck.
Buffy didn’t care about Merle, he was a major ass and an even bigger problem, but he was Daryl’s brother. And relatives were in short supply since the world as they knew it ended. Unbidden memories of losing Dawn came to the forefront of her mind, and she forcefully pushed them back into the box at the back of her mind where they belonged.
Instead of running over to her distraught hunting partner she grabbed Carol and Jacqui and dragged them around to the right side of the RV, momentarily let go of Jacqui to get the door open, and then quickly shepherded the two women into the back of it. Then she and Rime ran over to the two brothers, decapitating and stabbing a number of walkers on the way.
“Daryl?” She moved up beside him and quickly dispatched of the two walkers who had tried to sneak up behind him. Silently cursing herself for not bringing her own crossbow when they went hunting earlier. Something she had cursed herself for not doing several times even while they were out in the woods together, just the two of them.
Both she and Rime were politely not looking at the tears visible on his face. Merle was still breathing, but all three of them knew it was only a matter of time before whatever it was that caused dead people to reanimate would kill him. On Daryl’s other side Rime used a machete to stab yet another walker. Daryl hadn’t noticed any of it, all his focus was on his dying brother.
Behind them Morales, T-Dog, and Glenn were firing into a small newly arrived herd who had just broken through the treeline. Rick, Lori, and Shane had made it over to the FedEx truck and were moving around it to the other side so the three of them plus Andrea and Amy could surround it to ensure the safety of the children.
Then out of nowhere, Daryl took his own hunting knife out of its sheath and stabbed his own brother right between the eyes without hesitating. Afterwards he bowed his head while keeping his hand on the knife while it was still embedded into his brothers skull.
Rime and Buffy made eye contact over the two brothers before they went back to shielding Daryl. The Dixon brothers hadn’t always gotten along as far as they had been able to discern from their behaviour, but they had cared about each other in their own messed up way. And since the outbreak the last thing you could do for anyone was stab them in the head before they reanimated.
A few minutes later he got up, removed the knife, and straight off cleaned it on the piece of cloth from his back pocket before putting it back in its sheath. Buffy took her machete out of its sheath and handed it over to Daryl, handle first, without comment. She simply nodded and got one in return.
Daryl was a predator, a different kind than her but he was still a predator, and the pointless death of his only living relative demanded an act of violence to properly take the edge off of the anger so he could grieve properly later. Using his crossbow or a gun would not suffice, and his bare fists were a bad idea all on its own. That left knives and swords. The machete was a long bladed knife. Long enough that he wouldn’t put himself at too much risk and short enough that he could get a close kill to vent his anger and grief into.
It was going to be a long night, but Buffy and Rime silently agreed to watch over and aid the distressed hunter.