Chapter Text
F doesn’t remember all that much from before he was Infected.
What he does remember is clear and crisp, like a scene from one of those DVDs he hoarded away in the back room of his convenience store hideaway that feels both familiar and unknown all at the same time.
As for how long this apocalypse has been happening, he’s got a pretty good fuckin’ idea.
Sorta.
F was eighteen when the first wave of Infections happened, when the US Government was pretending they knew what the fuck they was doing. The word zombie wasn’t even being used yet outside the dark web, a fact that F isn’t even sure how he knows. It’s hazy at best, but he knows he was on the run with… someone for quite fuckin’ a while until they get caught unawares by a traveling hoard somewhere.
He hopes that someone made it out alive, got to wherever the fuck they was tryna go.
As for a lotta of the other important information about his life—where he came from, what he was called, did he have a family?
All lost in the transition from alive to undead.
Like, he knows his name starts with an F, but what that letter is for? Ain’t gotta fuckin’ clue.
Being dead fuckin’ sucked.
But being undead was worse.
The passage of time is a weird thing post Infection. Has it been days, months or years since the bite? Since his human life was taken from him?
All F knows for sure is one day he was walking mindlessly around the city with the hoard and this convenience store caught his eye for some reason, drawing him away from his zombie brethren. It has been his secret spot ever since. He thinks maybe he worked here, like an after school job or something, but he can’t be quite certain. The place has just always felt cozy and comfortable, and no one else seems to wanna bother him here, so he’s been able to keep it all to himself. Even R has never been here, and she’s the closest thing to a friend he’s got in the hoard.
Don’t get him wrong ‘aight? F enjoys his time with the hoard as much as the next undead guy, but there’s only so many times a man can amble through deserted city streets, grunting and moaning in an effort to communicate, until shit gets old.
He misses conversation.
He longs for connection.
And if that makes F bad at being a zombie, then that’s cool with him.
“This is a load of bullshit. Cal knows it's not safe out there,” Lexi grumbles as she shoves a handful of ration packs into the supply bag she’ll be carrying out into the Z-Zone.
Cassie, ever defending her idiot husband's father, throws a water filtration pack at her head. “We need medical supplies. You, Tucker, Ethan and Gia know that area best. You’re going to be fine.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re not the one being sent intoan area with known zombie activity. How often does Cal send you more than a mile from The Wall?”
The Wall, egregiously stolen from that old HBO show that aired when she was a kid, is what they call the steel-and-concrete structure that surrounds Free Zone 6 - one of the 12 fortified Zombie Free areas in what used to be the United States. Formerly part of Los Angeles and some surrounding areas, it’s west of where Lexi and Cassie grew up in East Highland. Back when this whole thing started, back when Lexi was sixteen and carefree in her suburban home.
Okay, maybe not carefree.
Her dad was an addict who had been MIA even before the Infections started, while her mom had been a functioning alcoholic and her best friend struggled with addiction issues of their own. But then the world as she knew it abruptly and wildly came to an end, and her mom pulled herself out of her drunken stupor enough to throw everything of importance into their SUV and move herself and her girls into one of the first the declared Safe Zones before the military moved in to stem the flow of traffic into the city.
Lexi remembers all too well when The Wall started to go up. She remembers the screams of the Survivors on the outside, begging to be allowed to cross into safety, swearing they weren’t Infected.
She also remembers the way Cal Jacobs turned them all away without a second thought. Even the mothers and children. Even the people who passed the medical exams to prove they weren’t Infected. “Free Zone 6 is full,” he’d said, even though everyone on their side knew that wasn’t true, no one was willing to argue with the man tasked by the failing government to keep them all safe.
“It’s not like that, Lex. He knows Nate and I are trying to have children. Something we need around here,” Cassie mutters in her own poor defense. They wouldn’t have this problem if Cal hadn’t closed off their border before the Government issued date, had allowed the rest of the Survivors through the gate and into the quarantine zone instead of throwing them to the wolves.
Lexi just shoves the water purification pack into the top of her pack. There aren’t any words to say she hasn’t said before, anyway.
His days go like this:
1) Follow the hoard as it roams for a few hours. Kills plenty of time.
2) Hang out with his best friend R. She’s a cool chick, for a zombie anyway.
3) Try not to turn into a mindless flesh eating machine when a human seemingly falls into their midsts.
That last point isn’t nearly as easy as he wishes it would be. On God, the fleshy parts of their victims ain’t even taste all that good most of the time - folks be out here too skinny these days - but if we're talking brains? That’s the real delicacy.
F doesn’t know if it’s like this for all the rest of his kind, zombies ain’t really known for being conversationalists you know? But for him, getting a taste of the brain is almost like being alive again. Even for just a moment as he chews up that spongy mess, it’s like he’s given a glimpse of the life he’s taking. The good and the bad, love gained and lost, and all the components that separate the Infected from humans.
There’s always an iota of guilt that accompanies the memories, knowing he’s taking a brother, a sister, a mother or a father from a family as he kills them with the ruthless precision of the monster he’s become. But if the alternative is them becoming like him, he don’t really know if he’d wish this life on anyone.
Maybe it’s a mercy.
Lexi hates coming back to East Highland. At twenty-four you’d think she’d be over the loss of her childhood, but it’s not that easy to get past when it’s because of something like a zombie apocalypse.
At least she has Tucker with her.
Tucker Blake has been her boyfriend since they were like seventeen years old and shoved in a makeshift classroom to continue their education as the world around them became more and more chaotic.
(Like they were even going to need or use a high school diploma someday.)
They bonded over coming from the same suburb, and while they weren’t in each other's social circles in East Highland, it was something they had in common to build a foundation on.
She knows he has the same sort of longing for the town they grew up in, even when it’s not good between them, like right now. Lexi gets the feeling Tucker wants to propose, but she can’t shake the feeling it's more about Cal Jacobs’ efforts to regrow their population and less about him wanting to spend forever with her. And honestly, she’s not totally sure Tucker would be the one she picked under different circumstances. Lexi loves him, but there’s times she questions if she’d be willing to put her life on the line for him, which seems like something you should be willing to do for your partner, zombies or no zombies.
In the backseat with her is her long-lost best friend's younger sister, Gia, who thankfully was only a pre-teen when they evacuated for Los Angeles. Lexi knows that she’s going to do the same thing she does every time they get sent on a raid this way - keep her eyes peeled for Rue.
Personally, Lexi would rather her best friend be dead somewhere than one of the mindless creatures she’s had to kill to survive. God forbid her or Gia come face to face with Rue out here. Kill or be eaten is the only method they have to deal with the Infected, the disease coursing through their bloodstream making it near-on impossible to reason with them.
Reaching across the back seat, she grabs Gia’s hand in her own to give it a squeeze as Tucker and Ethan sit in the front, slowly navigating the streets they grew up on in order to make it to one of the abandoned hospitals that hasn’t been fully ransacked in the last eight years.
The zombie activity in this part of East Highland has always been rampant, so it’s never been deemed safe enough to send anyone this far out, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The military can only allocate so many resources to each of the Free Zones, and medical supplies are becoming harder and harder to bargain for if Cassie is to be believed.
“She’s not going to be here,” Lexi whispers quietly to Gia, who just looks over her shoulder and gives her a weak smile.
“Rue’s too wily to have gotten Infected. Probably made it to a Free Zone somewhere and is as worried about us as we are her.”
Lexi nods, knowing deep in her heart that is unlikely.
One of the reasons she’s even been put on this mission is because in her deep boredom after a few years in the encampment, she taught herself how to hack into the mainframe of the Government's computer system after sneaking into Cal's office.
Okay, so she taught herself how to pick locks first, but that’s neither here nor there.
The point is, she’s seen the survivor rolls from all the Free Zones, and Rue’s not on a single one.
Of course, she eventually got caught in the act, obsessively checking the database to find her best friend's name. Cal could have done anything as punishment, but the man didn’t even turn her into the national security board. Instead, he put her on raids where her skills would be an asset - meaning the more dangerous ones.
“Are you ready for this, babe?” Tucker asks from the front seat as they continue to roll through the city streets.
With all the false confidence she can manage, Lexi smiles at her boyfriend through the rearview seat. “It’ll be a piece of cake.”
F suspects there's something going on almost immediately. He’s doing his daily roam before joining up with R and the rest of the local hoard when he notes the uptick in the Skellies.
Skellies are zombies like him, just worse. F likes to think he and his friends have a bit of humanity left to them, but the Skellies are lacking that. They’ve completely given themselves over to the disease they all carry, ripping their flesh from their bones to walk around as skeletons, their decaying skin and muscle no longer hindering their movement the way it does F. If provoked, they’ve been known to attack other Infected as well. F and the rest of the hoard tend to keep a wide berth between themselves and the Skellies.
In fact, F has watched Skellies tear their victims limb from limb in order to kill them, and it turns his stomach every time.
Yeah, he’s eating people, but like, it’s different aight?
His victims are already dead before he goes for the brain.
Things are always going to shit when the Skellies come out of whatever deep, dark hole they hide away in the majority of the time. It sets off a warning signal in F’s mind, keeping his distance from the group but still following out of instinct.
If the Skellies are active at this time of day, it can only mean one thing:
Multiple humans have been spotted in the area.
Breaking into the hospital goes smoothly—too smoothly if you were to ask Lexi. Not a single corpse could be seen walking around, and it’s a little unnerving. She expected to see at least one.
Tucker and Ethan had managed to get the doors of the hospital open with minimal effort, the heavy duty bolt cutter that’s strapped across Ethan’s back was more than enough to break the rusting chains hastily thrown on by some military grunt several years ago. Lexi’s job was to pick the locks of various medical supply closets as Gia and Tucker shoved everything in sight in the huge duffle bags Cal’s cronies had supplied them with while Ethan acted as a look out.
“More gauze and bandages,” she announces after throwing another door open and giving it a quick scan.
These items were helpful, no doubt, but Lexi knows they were on the outlook for more than just Baby Shark bandaids. The medbay in Free Zone 6 was always running dangerously low on things like gloves, antiseptic, pain relievers and anesthesia - just to name a few. What Cal had really hoped was that they would find was an untouched Pharmacy closet.
Ethan peers over at her, gun held aloft as he watches and listens for any unexpected sounds. “All helpful.”
Gia sighs as she shoves another roll of gauze into the pack. “And not what we were told was going to be here.”
“Just gotta keep looking. How’s the next lock coming, Lexi?” Tucker asks, grinning up at her despite the situation they find themselves in.
She softens, just a little, at the helpless puppydog look her boyfriend gives her.
They’d fought last night about this raid, like a full out screaming match that her mom definitely overheard in the living room of their apartment. It was embarrassing. Lexi loathed the idea of coming this far into the Z-Zone with only four people, but Tucker has always been a little too much of a brownnoser when it came to Cal (or even Nate for that matter) to stand up against a stupid decision. They’d left the meeting where they were informed of the limited crew they were being given for this, Lexi’s pleas for more help had falle on deaf ears, and the one person who should have backed her up stayed silent the whole time.
“Almost there,” she comments as she twists her lockpicking kit another fraction of a circle, the telltale click signaling the popping of the lock as it opens.
She closes her eyes and holds her breath before she goes to open the door, hoping this is what they came here for. The longer it takes them to find what Cal wants, the longer they will be sitting in this hospital, just waiting for the hoard to descend upon them. Lexi twists the handle and pulls, afraid of what she’ll see when she opens her eyes.
Deep rows of shelves line what can’t be anything other than a Pharmacy Closet, and Lexi blows out the breath she was holding when she realizes what it is.
Thank fuck they found it.
“Bingo,” she whispers as she steps aside from the entrance with a flourish towards Tucker and Gia.
“Hell yeah,” Ethan replies as he tosses Lexi the extra gun he’s been keeping at his feet. “Let’s fucking go.”
The further he ambles along behind the Skellies, the more of his zombie cohorts start appearing to join the hoard.
F knows they can all sense the same thing - four human hearts beating, blood rushing through veins calling to them like a siren's song.
Honestly, he wishes he were stronger; could ignore the call to kill, to eat, that comes so naturally thanks to the sickness that has a hold over him. But there’s no fighting it. He’s a zombie.s He can’t fight biology any more than he can fight fate.
F follows alongaimlessly, never in a rush to get anywhere these days, as R pulls up beside him.
Wild brown curls and a more pronounced limp than he has, R is still an ideal companion for him. She’s chill, cool with wandering around just the two of them, always happy to share a kill with him when they happen upon a living human unlike some of their other zombie counterparts.
“Wahhhh rrrrrr wheee gahh?” his friend grunts and groans out as they follow closely behind.
He shrugs, or well, he tries to shrug. “Iiiionnnnnn nuhhhhhh.”
After stuffing every single bottle and vial they can get their hands on in the thick military bags Cal provided, Lexi urges her company to make their way back towards the entrance and get the fuck out of here.
She knows she shouldn't be complaining about the lack of zombie intruders, but things are moving too smoothly for her liking. Especially with so few of them here to defend themselves in case they happen upon a hoard. Last night when she fought with Tucker, she’d insisted it felt like a suicide mission, but he swore up and down that Cal and Nate would never do that to them.
God, she hopes he’s right.
“Hey, can we talk for a moment?” Tucker asks quietly as he grabs lightly around her bicep, stopping her in her tracks. She’s hesitant to agree, not because she doesn’t want to talk but because there's a creeping feeling crawling up the back of her neck and she doesn’t like it.
“Can it wait until we get back?”
Tucker exchanges a look with Ethan and Gia, who grab the bags and place them in the back of the fortified convoy truck, guns at the ready incase of an attack.
She rolls her eyes, kicking the toe of her boot against the cracked asphalt beneath her feet. “Or we can do this now.”
“I’ll be quick, promise,” Tucker says with a coy grin, tugging Lexi by her hand and dragging her around the front of the truck before pulling her into a kiss.
Reluctantly she smiles into it, unable not to do so simply because it’s Tucker. She does love him, really, she does, but that shouldn’t mean she can’t question their relationship.
“Are we okay?” he asks as he pulls away, hand firmly in place on her hips.
Hands on his shoulders, Lexi sighs under her breath. “I’d rather talk about this when we get back home.”
Tucker's brows furrow in the middle of his forehead. “You’re still mad about last night.” It should be a question, but it comes out like a full statement.
Lexi shrugs out from her boyfriend's grip. “Can we please not do this here? We need to get these supplies back, and while we’ve gotten very lucky with not running into any of the Infected out here, I don’t see that happening the closer it gets to sundown. So let’s get a move on.”
Tucker agrees, even though Lexi can feel his need to argue with her simmering just under the surface. They walk around the front of the truck to see Gia and Ethan waiting on guard, weapons drawn as both their eyes dart around the empty parking lot.
“Are we all good here?” Tucker asks, pulling his handgun out of its holster. He’d tossed his rifle into the front seat when they got back to the truck.
Gia locks eyes with Lexi, dark brown skin gone ashy as her eyes are blown wide. “We heard something.”
The solar-powered streetlights are starting to flicker to life as they push further into the slow moving crowd in an attempt to make it to the front of the pack. By their best guesses, F and R have been in this state for a shorter amount of time than a lot of the Infected that are in their area, since they have better use of their bodies than most. That, or it’s because they were younger when they got bitten. Either way, they’re able to get towards the front of the hoard and once they’ve cleared the masses, that’s when F realizes that he’s lost track of the Skellies.
The fuck?
All four of them jump into the convoy as quickly as they can, Tucker not even bothering with his seatbelt as he pulls them out of the hospital's parking lot at a speed they wouldn’t have been willing to use a few short hours ago. It’s clear their location has been compromised at this point, something about their presence tipping off to the hoard that calls this area home and drawing them towards them.
Lexi’s yet to see a zombie, but they could all hear the familiar noises of a group moving towards them as they loaded up and into the truck.
“We’re gonna be fine,” Gia assures them out loud, but for whose benefit Lexi isn’t quite sure.
This was exactly what she was worried about last night when she got into it with Cal in their raid meeting. If the whole hoard in moving in on them, they are royally Fucked, with a capital F. The convoy will be helpful, it’s fortified with military grade steel, but Lexi doesn’t know if it can take on a whole pack of monsters trying to get to them, thirsting for their brains.
Lexi shares a look with Ethan from in the rearview and knows he’s thinking much the same.
“Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to be fine.”
F and R are right on the edge of the hoard when they hear the rumbling of a motor coming down the road at them, the vibrations of something moving fast shooting up his legs as bright, white lights temporarily blind him.
Even in this life, he’s never been reactionary, so when the crowd behind him surges forward, F allows it. He’s pushed enough to the side to manage to miss the large truck that speeds into the crowd, the crack of breaking bones something like a symphony as bodies are tossed in the air. As quickly as he can manage, he looks to his side to see R being dragged back into the crowd, but clearly unharmed by the human that just took out a chunk of their hoard like some bowling pins.
F allows himself to be swept up into the crowd as the large truck is forced to slow down by the sheer number of his kind suddenly converging on the machine.
It’s nearly at a stand still when he’s at the front of the crowd.
The driver, going against prolly any sort of better judgment or zombie fighting training he would have received, rolls the window down and leans out the front window, gun shooting into the crowd.
It’s a dumbass move, because F is right fuckin’ there, ready to haul this motherfucker right out the window. It’s just instinct right now, the disease in his bloodstream causing him to act this way, even if he don’t really want to. But the monster inside him is clawing at his throat to get to this guys brains, and what can he really do about it? F’s reaching up to grab the idiot by the arm when he hears a voice like something from a dream yell inside the vehicle.
“Tucker! No!”
Quicker than he’s moved in who the fuck knows how long, F snaps his head up towards the voice, making eye contact with a pair of chocolate brown eyes full of fear, surrounded by a riot of brown curls and plump, pink lips. He stumbles back, momentarily, as a shock runs through his system, something that feels like his heart trying to kickstart itself back to life in slow motion running through his chest.
What the fuck is this?
It’s a mistake, because the guy he was reaching for has a better reaction time than he does, and turns to shoot a round at him. Lucky for F, the kid’s a bad shot at this angle, and unfortunately for him all it does is serve to piss F off.
How could Tucker be so stupid?
They had all seen the size of the hoard they were driving into, and they were sitting in a fortified convoy with enough rations to last them several days. If they hadn’t been able to move through the crowd, they should have stayed right where they were as they radioed Free Zone 6 for backup. Which is exactly what Ethan is doing as they slow to a stop.
“9-1-1. We’re calling in a 9-1-1,” her friend repeats over and over from the front seat. “We came upon an active hoard on our way out of East Highland, we’re requesting backup.”
Of course it’s her brother-in-law that responds back. “No can do, raid unit.”
Lexi lunges for the radio, grabbing it from Ethan’s hand. “What the fuck does that mean, Jacobs?”
She goes near feral at the smarmy chuckle that comes across their radio. “We don’t have backup ready. You’re just going to have to sit tight, Howard.”
Lexi tosses the handheld back at the blonde when she notices Tucker going for the window crank.
“Shut the window right the fuck now!” she hears herself screaming from the back seat, as though her body isn’t fully there.
But it’s too late, Tucker leaning full bodied out the window, shooting into the crowd.
“Tucker! No!” Lexi screams as she notes a pair of hands covered in gray flesh reaching up to wrap around her boyfriend's bicep.
She lunges forward to pull him back, and is struck by the prettiest pair of crystal blue eyes she’s ever seen. There’s an intelligence behind them that is fully unfamiliar in all the zombies she’s ever encountered over the years. Tucker turns to shoot at the hands that grab him, and Lexi loses track of the eyes in question as utter chaos erupts around them.
Fuckin’ Skellies.
F should have known they would rear their ugly ass heads at some point, but he didn’t expect them to dive bomb the convoy from above. Nails scratch deep rivets into the steel and he can hear the screams of the occupants of the truck as the driver falls out the window.
A bullet grazes his shoulder, but lucky for him he hardly feels a thing. Hell, he don’t even bleed anymore.
The kid suddenly looks terrified, screaming for help as he’s being pushed by the crowd into F’s waiting arms.
“Please don’t eat me,” the guy repeats over and over, but it’s a little too late for that.
He has the forethought to snap the dude's neck before biting into the flesh of his shoulder, warm blood spilling down his mouth as he chews on tendon, ripping chunks of meat away from the guy's body. Using more force than is probably necessary, given that he’s already dead and all that, F smashes the kids head against the cement below him until he hears the skull crack. One of the benefits of being Infected is the superhuman strength he gets during a feeding frenzy, so he sinks his teeth into the dude’s back to pull away another mouthful of flesh, chewing and swallowing before he grips his fingers under the loosened plate of the guys skull and yanking.
Blood and flesh greet him as he gets the first glimpse of the thing he most desires.
Brains.
“What the fuck are those?” Ethan shouts as Tucker falls out of his opened window and into the crowd below.
Lexi fights against her seatbelt, the metal getting stuck as she screams her throat raw for her boyfriend.
She doesn’t think twice about grabbing her pack and throwing it over her shoulders as she scrambles to the front seat.
“Lexi, no!” Gia yells from behind her, grabbing her wrist in an attempt to keep her in the truck.
She turns back towards the girl who has become her younger sister. “I’m not going out there! I’m getting us out of here!”
With a press of the excelerator, a group of animated skeletons come tumbling off the roof, leading Lexi to pause enough to roll up the still open window.
“I’ve never seen ones like that,” Gia whispers in awe as Ethan shakes his head in agreement.
“They're evolving.”
Lexi presses her foot down hard again, careless of how many bodies they need to run over to get past this hoard. Honestly, they all seem distracted anyways, either by those skeleton creatures or by… someone they can eat. Driving aimlessly, Lexi takes multiple turns and long shots of zombie-free road past them as she puts distance between them and the hoard. She gets them to safety before she feels both Gia and Ethan’s hands on her shoulder, rubbing soothing circles.
That’s when she realizes she’s been sobbing hysterically.
It feels wrong to be witness to these memories.
A kid in this same neighborhood, riding a bike down these once tree lined streets.
Parents cheering from the sidelines of a Little League game.
A first dance, sweaty palms on the barely there flare of hips of some nameless date.
Fleeing home, trying to outrun the thing that’s finally killed him.
And then there’s her.
The girl from the convoy paints herself across this guy's memories in full color. A bright spot in the dimness that was life in the encampment. Stolen kisses and holding hands, whispered declarations of love, the press of himself into her warmth. It’s too much for F, he’s suddenly compelled to drop the body he’s been feeding on due to the intense flood of emotions taking over.
Sunshine bright smiles and a lower register voice, colored with bright, tinkling laughs.
Fighting. So much fighting. Insults hurled at each other in their rage, tears streaming down the most beautiful face F has ever seen because of this man's words.
He’d hate to be at the other end of her tears, to be the one that caused her any pain.
The feeling in his chest that started the moment he made eye contact increases. Faint but strong, he feels one beat and then another as he catches more and more glimpses of this girl. It’s intoxicating, better than any brain, any memory he’s tasted since he’d fallen into this state; the muscle memory of his own life struggling to free itself from the prison of his dead flesh.
It’s euphoric.
F doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, why this is happening to him right here, right now.
But he knows that the girl’s name is Lexi.
And he knows he’s gotta find her if he’s going to figure this shit out.
Because this feeling— this is worth holding on to.
It takes Lexi several long minutes to calm down.
“I’m so sorry Lex,” Ethan tells her as he rubs his thumb over her shoulder blade. “Tucker didn’t deserve that.”
He did, she thinks bitterly, he opened his fucking window and shot at them. He agreed with Cal’s idiotic plan of sending four of them out for this mission. She had told him last night one of them was going to end up dead, and now here they were.
Angrily she rubs at the drying tears under her eyes.
“He should have never done that.”
Gia leans up and presses her forehead against Lexi’s bicep. “No, he shouldn’t have. But it’s still okay if you’re—”
Sad? Heartbroken? Furious?
“I know,” she snaps without really meaning it. “Sorry. I just— we fought about this. Last night. I told Cal someone was going to get killed, I just didn’t think it would be like this. Like, it wasn’t for our lack of preparing, it’s because he was a fucking idiot.”
Ethan’s about to speak up when the radio crackles to life, her brother-in-laws voice filling the small space around them. “Raid unit, this is dispatch. Are you there?”
Lexi snatches the receiver from Ethan. “Fuck you Nate. Tucker’s dead.”
A pause.
“What do you fucking mean Tucker’s dead? You were told to sit tight Howard.”
Lexi gives Nate an undignified snort and feels the tears at the corner of her eyes start to well. “He decided not to listen. Now he’s a meal for a couple dozen zombies, and I bet your daddy is going to be thrilled to learn that.”
She doesn’t have to be in the same room as her sister's husband to know if looks could kill, she’d be dead right now. Lexi hears Nate swallow hard before he speaks across the line. “We got tracking on you, but it’s too late to send them in now, so stay the fuck where you are or evact is gonna leave your asses out there. Best be ready to spend the night in the convoy.”
Lexi tosses the radio back to Ethan as she crosses her arms over her chest and stares out the window. It takes a moment or two, but she finally recognizes where they are. The familiar sign of East Highland Certified Dairy casts a shadow over them, the convenience store she remembers riding her bike past a million times as a kid still standing eight years later, only a little worse for wear.
“Yeah man,” Ethan speaks into the radio. “We’ll stay here.”
F staggers away from the ravenous hoard, leaving the body of the boy he killed for whoever wants it. He feels sick, senses overwhelmed completely as he starts to come more alive than he’s been in years.
There’s no precedence for this, one of his kind turning back once they’ve been Infected, but maybe this Tucker guy had been like, some fucking test subject for some vaccine or cure or some shit, and F is feeling the residual side effects from it.
He’s managed to get some distance between himself and everyone else before he needs to sit down.
Tucker's memories of this girl are far too powerful, completely potent. F knows what she smells like. How her hair feels between his fingers.
Whatshe sounds like when she comes.
Usually he experiences some guilt over the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it memories he gets from his victims, but this shit is on another level.
The feelings run deep, but they don’t feel like love. There is love there, of course there is, but deep, true romantic love is something F has borne witness to in other people's minds more than he’d like to admit. This is warm and comforting, like a knitted afghan blanket tossed over your lap, but it’s not the intimate, passionate, all consuming feelings he’s gotten to experience before.
And nothing why it’s affecting him this way.
F has no idea which way they drove off, but it’s past sundown and the hoard is all starting to disperse in their own directions. He knows he’s gonna have a huge trek to make it back to his convenience store lair, but it’s the only place he’s going to be able to regroup, the only place he feels like he doesn’t have to be exactly what his zombie peers expect from him.
It’s a risk breaking into the convenience store, Cal and Nate will have her ass if they find out, but the water filtration packs are useless when they don’t have more water to drink and they ran out an hour ago.
“You need to stay in this truck, Lexi,” Gia begs as Lexi tugs the backpack firmly in place, her gun holstered at her hip.
Lexi turns back to give Gia a reassuring smile. “Five minutes. We’ve been taking watch all night, not a single sign of activity. We need water, who knows how long it’s going to take evac to get here?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Ethan warns as she slips out the drivers door. She gives her friend a salute before she closes the door behind her and does a once over of her surroundings, darting quietly across the empty parking lot towards the front door.
She gives a relieved fist pump when she realizes it’s unlocked.
Flashlight in one hand, gun at the ready by the other, Lexi pushes open the door to East Highland Certified Dairy, prepared to face… something. The storefront is surprisingly and pleasantly empty, and dead fucking quiet.
Somehow, remarkably the convenience store still has food on its shelves, Lexi jumping for joy when she spots a couple of cans of Spaghetti-O’s and packs of Instant Ramen. It’s not what she’s here for, but no one’s going to mind if she grabs them too.
She’s tossing the lukewarm waters from long forgotten fridges in her backpack when she hears it, the screams of her friends from outside the store.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Lexi peaks her head back up to look out the dirty windows and sure enough, a small hoard is gaining ground on the parked convoy truck that houses Ethan and Gia.
“Motherfucker,” she gasps as she fumbles with her backpack in order to take off running out the store and across the street.
Her timing is less than spectacular, the first of the zombies closing in on her as she reaches for the closed door of the truck’s passenger side. Ethan’s in the driver's seat now, engine turned on awaiting her to climb in so they can speed off to safety. Lexi’s fingers wrap around the handle of the door when a clammy, cold hand clamps down on her, and instinct tells her to throw her elbow back in an attempt to break free.
It’s successful, the zombie who had her in their grasp falls to the ground with a thud, but where there was one, there’s now two more. This is not the time to panic, because safety is right there, so she grabs the gun that sits at her hips and aims right between the eyes, once then twice as the bodies drop to the ground with disgusting sounding thuds.
She has just managed to yank the door open before she’s hauled bodily backwards by her backpack. Gia’s screams are ringing in her ears, and Lexi tries not to give into the impulse to do the same.
She fails, however.
Lexi’s never been particularly religious (who has time for God when there’s a zombie apocalypse going on around you?) she’s fairly certain this is the end of the line, and for a moment she’s compelled to pray. Accepting her fate, she closes her eyes and prays that whatever zombie managed to get her is nice enough to kill her before eating her brains.
As she lays and awaits her fate, the oddest thing happens.
Which is nothing.
Nothing happens.
Slowly she opens her eyes to see the same, it has to be the same— no one has blue eyes like that, alive or undead. The samezombie from yesterday crouched protectively over her. The shock of it all causes her to pass out.
Some fucker is pulling her - Lexi - off the door of her transport by her backpack when he comes across them outside his little hideaway.
F doesn’t know the chances of this being where the girl he was looking for would show up, but it sorta feels like fate or sumn.
Now F isn’t known for being particularly aggressive with his fellow zombies. Some people get really protective over their kills, and while the bloodlust (brainlust?) is real, F ain’t tryna deal with all of that. R shares with him and vice versa, but he don’t be expecting anyone else to do the same. So it must surprise the fuck outta this clown who thinks he’s about to kill his girl and eat her brains.
With a grunt he pushes the bastard off the human girl, planting himself directly over her as he growls at the small crowd gathering around them. He can feel two pairs of eyes staring at him, and he looks up slowly to see a shaggy blonde-haired boy and a girl that looks a lot like R eyeing him up from the convoy truck.
“Guhhhhh!” F tries to tell them, watching as their eyes widen. “Guhhhh ohhhhh!”
“I think he’s telling us to go?” he hears the boy say to the girl.
“But we can’t leave Lexi!”
The blonde haired boy looks out the window with a discerning expression, like he’s trying to take stock of F. In response he just crouches low and hisses at one of his fellow zombies tries to come closer to where Lexi lies prone on the ground.
“Maybe I’m crazy Gia, but I think she’s going to be safe with him.”
F nods at the blonde, points at his chest. “Sahhhhh ahhh fuuuuu.”
“Cassie is going to kill us,” the curly haired girl responds as she climbs into the front seat. F watched as the blood rushes to the boy's face, making his cheeks bright pink.
“We don’t have a choice.” A pause, something like a heartbeat’s space before the boy looks at him in resignation. “It’ll be fine. Lexi will get back to us.”
They drive off, leaving F alone with the human girl.
Lexi .
The first thing Lexi notices upon waking up is something sticky drying on her clothes and face. Pulling her fingertips away from her face in the dimly lit room she’s found herself in shows her a dark, almost black looking liquid.
Blood.
Checking herself for wounds, Lexi quickly realizes it’s not her blood, but someone - something - else’s.
“Hello?” she croaks, throat like sandpaper. She clears it the best she can before she tries again, louder this time. “Hello?”
There’s a shuffling noise coming through the wall that has her fingers reaching for her gun, terror gripping her as she realizes it’s not on her hip holster at all.
Whoever is holding her here has taken her only form of self defense.
More shuffling comes from behind the wall as Lexi is getting to her feet, looking for something, anything to defend herself with. She finds a handgun in an empty cereal box but quickly determines there’s no rounds in the chamber. It is heavy though, and worst case scenario she has to pistol whip a zombie.
“Who’s there?” she tries again, doing her best to hold the fear back from her voice.
The gun is held tightly in her hand as the doorknob rattles and swings forward. With a scream she lunges at the figure in the doorway, prepared to fight something that most definitely wants to eat her brains. The scream dies in her throat when her eyes connect with those same blue ones from yesterday, or well what she thinks was yesterday, the ones that are too intelligent for everything she’s ever been told of zombie kind.
Lexi stops short as her captor - hero? - doesn't even move into the room, just blinks slowly at her as he lifts his hand to hold something out towards her.
Blue Frost Gatorade - in all likelihood expired as fuck but she practically weeps at the sight.
She drops the hand holding her makeshift weapon to her side, leaving it hanging limply at her side. “For me?”
Lexi asks the question before she can think better of it, because she doesn’t know if zombies can actually like, communicate properly to begin with. All her interactions with Infected have been a kill or be killed situation, she’s never even tried talking to one.
“Druhhhh innnkuhh,” the zombie - man? - in front of her moans lowly, taking a staggering step forward to hold bottle out further.
Her brows knit together in confusion. Why on Earth is this creature being kind to her? Shouldn’t he be experiencing bloodlust right now? Is there something about her that’s not appealing enough to be his next meal?
The zombie just thrusts the drink closer to her, doing his best to nod at her. Lexi looks up from the bottle in his gray skinned hand to search his eyes again - the piercing blue seemingly never moving off her. It strikes her odd that under different circumstances - you know, one in which he was not rotting - she’d probably find him handsome.
There’s those eyes of course, but they’re framed by thick lashes and despite the gray hue to his skin, she can make out freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose and cheek bones. He has a ginger beard, trimmed tidy enough that she wonders how quickly into the apocalypse he was turned, and his head sports a closely shaved buzz cut, a curving scar adorning the left side. The wound is clearly old, pre-zombie even, given the fact that it’s properly healed. It’s curious, and she can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever learn more about it.
Lexi blinks herself out of whatever daze she was under as the plastic bottle brushes her fingers, whoever this peculiar zombie man is nodding in a jerky motion at her.
“Thanks,” she murmurs, accepting the drink and twisting the orange lid off before taking a sip.
She swears his eyes light up at her words.
“Yooooooo wuhhh ellll cuhhh muhh.”
The last two days have been completely fucked if you were to ask F.
Between the hoard outside the hospital and eating that kid’s brains only to get flooded with his memories of Lexi and then finding her being attacked by his own fuckin’ friends outside the convenience store, he’s hella fuckin’ tired. And zombies don’t exactly sleep, but a nap sounds just like the thing he needs.
The thing is, F might not be known as being aggressive with his fellow zombies, but they also know not to fuck with him either. For damn near an hour he stood over Lexi, passed out on the concrete, growling and hissing at anyone who dared tried to get closer. Eventually the remaining zombiesleft them alone, knowing F wasn’t giving up his prize.
He didn’t exactly have a ton of time to make a plan.(read: zero.)
Immediately he knew he needed to mask her scent, so with little shame he smashed the head of one of her victims against the asphalt and dug his fingers into the brain matter there to smear across Lexi’s torso. Thick, black blood had started to congeal around the gunshot wound of the other zombie she had taken down, so on a whim he decided to wipe it down the side of her face.
Zombie 101: Freshness matters.
The more recent a kill, the more ravenous his kind gets. That’s why you don’t see zombies going crazy for each other - they’re undead . Ain’t nothing fresh ‘bout ‘em.
After that he more or less dragged the poor girl across the road and into the back room of the convenience store. F has never had a need for a bed or nothin’ but there’s an old couch that’s pretty comfortable to watch his movies on, so while it’s a struggle, he manages to get Lexi up there - it takes a while.
And then he waits.
And waits.
And presses an ear against her chest to look for a heartbeat because it’s been a fuckin’ while she’s been out and he’s worried .
And waits some more.
He’s out in the store lookin’ for something edible to offer once she’s awake when he hears her stir. His own heart - starting to pump weakly in his chest, not enough to be alive but damn if he ain’t wonderin’ - joltsat the noise and in a moment of panic he grabs the first thing he can find.
Blue Frost Gatorade.
Three days.
At least that’s how long Lexi thinks it’s been, trapped in this little room with her zombie savior. Time hasn’t meant anything since she woke up, and while dust molecules float through the air in the light that sneaks in between the hastily boarded up windows, it’s kinda hard to regulate the hour still. Staying put for now is a fine idea considering every few hours she can hear moaning and shuffling outside the building, and the zombie she’s bunked down with freezes up at the noise almost as instantly as she does.
Being in such forced proximity has made Lexi have to get used to his presence in a way she never imagined she would with a zombie. Lexi’s never been one to let an awkward silence pass, always using her extensive collection of words to fill up the empty space around her - often to the annoyance of Cassie or Tucker or really anyone. But her companion doesn’t seem to mind. At first she thought she was mostly speaking for the sake of it when she started telling him about herself, but after he slowly and precisely asked her to continue.
He’s even told her about himself - as best he can in his halting cadence.
Here’s what she’s managed to learn about her new - title tentative - friend.
1) His name is F. At least that’s all he managed to tell her when she asked.
2) Zombies don’t need to consume real food, but F has kept Lexi in a constant supply of old and stale snacks. They are not good, but it’s better than nothing and he seems pleased.
3) The longer they stay in this room together, the more human-like F becomes. It’s intriguing and slightly terrifying all at the same time.
“It’s your turn to pick the movie,” she says as the credits roll on their most recent viewing. Lexi would have never guessed zombies would enjoy watching movies, let alone be able to figure out how to work a DVD player, but at this point there is little else left to surprise her.
The fact that this little convenience store in East Highland still has an electrical supply isn’t even that shocking - the push to solar power had been very popular here in SoCal before the apocalypse happened, and sections of town had started to run off a solar grid for years prior. If her calculations are correct, and they might not be, math has never been her strong suit, she’s approximately a six hour walk from the eastern edge of The Wall.
Honestly she’s kinda hoping she’ll be able to convince F to take her there.
He gets up slowly, though easier than last time it was his turn to pick, and ambles over to the box of movies he’s seemingly collected over the years. Immediately F picks one off the top of the pile, turning around to proudly show her the case to 28 Weeks Later. Lexi groans and chucks a piece of stale popcorn at the guy's head, lips turning up to match what she thinks is a smile he’s trying to give her.
4) F has a terrible sense of humor.
“Hilarious,” Lexi grumbles as she settles deeper into her corner of the couch. “The zombie picking another zombie related film.”
It takes him longer than average to open the disc, but she learned very quickly that F was determined to do these things on his own when she offered her help yesterday. The low warning growl from deep in his throat had been enough to startle her onto the other side of the room, F’s face appearing to instantly regret it as he gave her a slow and stuttered apology and explanation.
“Nuhh ohh huhh oww.”
After that, Lexi had been more than happy to allow F to do things at his own pace. He was a wonder to watch.
Once F makes his way back to his end after pressing play, Lexi leans her head against the back of the couch to observe him. She feels like he’s probably watched this movie a hundred times, but as the opening scene fills the small screen in front of them he’s simply mesmerized.
“Why this one?” she muses, flexing her toes into the cushion below her. “Are you like, trying to educate me on all things your kind?”
F’s lips twitch upwards momentarily. “Nah,” he says, turning slightly to catch her eye. “Issa clahhh sicccc Luhh exx.”