A/N: If those of you who are reading TCWAA and Abaddon have been wondering where I disappeared to, this fic is the culprit you've been looking for. Originally a drabble meme prompt given to me by Tumblr user hpbooklover4ever, what I had fully intended to be a manageable 1,000 to 2,000 word one-shot meant to give me a little break from my other works quickly spiraled into this 14,000+ word monster.
Set in a modern zombie au I've had stewing in the back of my brain for well on a year now, this fic is intended to exist in the same universe/timeline, though whether or not certain factors change if I ever end up with the time to write the main story is still up in the air. This fic is completed, but I've broken it down into five chapters to make it more manageable a beast to read and will be posting them every few days or so, depending on how busy real life keeps me.
Also as one last note to my readers of my other fics: I will be getting back to work on them shortly! You all know I'm a slow writer, but as I've said on multiple occasions, they will both be finished eventually, I promise! Please, PLEASE be patient with me - I have A LOT of things going on in real life atm which are putting a huge drain on any writing time I end up having during any given week, and the writing process itself is not a fast one. Especially since I want to make certain I give you all the best stories I can.
And finally, I hope you all enjoy! Please let me know what you think! :D
No Way Out - Chapter 1
It'll be an easy run. In, out, and back with enough time left before dinner to help Anders sort through whatever supplies she manages to find. They're running low on pain killers and disinfectant, and antihistamines soon enough too now that spring's finally decided to make an appearance and the annual Hawke family tradition of constant sneezing and watery eyes has started to kick in. Marian had been all too happy to offer to make the trip into Kirkwall; they've combed through the area around Sol's Pharmacy a dozen times already and haven't seen a single walker in near on a month, and if it means an afternoon free of Carver's stuffy-nosed grousing it's well worth the risk of having to deal with a stray or two.
She decides to take the new guy (Fenris, he calls himself, and how he'd ended up with a name like that she can't even start to guess) along with her on a whim and the off chance that some time away from the main group will get him to open up a little. In the three weeks since he joined up with them she hasn't heard him talk more than a handful of times. Not that he ever gives her much of an opportunity to strike up a conversation when the only time he seems to come out of that tent of his is for meals or to help with his share of the chores. Bethany thinks it's because "he's just shy, Mari" and "maybe a bit of an introvert". Marian's money is on it being a combination of that and leftover embarrassment from stumbling his way into the center of their camp bare-assed in nothing but an open-backed hospital gown.
She grins down at the ground, tongue darting out to fiddle with the hoop piercing in the corner of her bottom lip. Now that is a story she's just dying to hear more of. But later. She's more than half convinced that if she were to bring the subject up now he'd spin himself in the opposite direction, take off running and never look back. Better to save her curiosity for when they're on good enough terms to communicate in complete sentences.
"Is something funny?"
The question pulls her out of her thoughts with a start. Damn, but that voice of his still catches her off guard whenever he decides to use it. He doesn't sound anything like she expects him to: deeper and richer than any lanky bastard like him should, with a rough edge that makes the skin at the back of her neck prickle. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, oh no. Far, far from wrong.
She glances up from the cracked pavement to find him watching her, his eyebrow curving high enough to disappear behind a fringe of absurdly white hair. Something else to ask him about at some point, she notes quietly to herself.
"Nothing in particular." The fib comes easily, her smile widening as she pulls at the straps of her backpack to bring it higher between her shoulders. "Just glad to get away from camp and back into town for a while."
The brow goes even higher, and Marian has to bite at the inside of her lip to keep from laughing at how honestly confused he seems to be at the idea. "You enjoy being sent out on supply runs?"
"Love it, actually. Nothing beats pawing through broken glass and turning over bodies on the off chance they're sitting on a half-full bottle of peroxide, don't you think?"
A crease appears above his nose, the tattoos lining his chin twisting as his mouth pulls down into a frown. "You're a very strange woman, Hawke."
Would you look at that. Not even an hour in and he's already calling her by name. Her family name, but her name none the less. It still counts as progress.
"Eh, maybe a little. But you're not really one to talk, are you Fen? Can I call you Fen? I'm going to call you Fen," she says as she picks absently at the bandana around her neck, not bothering to give him the chance to protest at the nickname. "Mysterious stranger comes bumbling out of the woods looking like he's gotten himself ten different types of lost on the way to a comic book convention? I think that scores a bit higher on the oddity meter than enjoying a nice apocalyptic treasure hunt."
That earns her a fully-fledged scowl which no doubt would have had her cringing if it weren't for the pink tinge she spots creeping its way up the sides of his neck and along his ears. Instead she only shrugs, disappointed but unsurprised when he turns his attention back to the road, muttering something unintelligible beneath his breath.
The last leg of the trip passes in silence, Marian making every effort to distract herself from the increasingly awkward quiet by running her hand along her belt to check and re-check her gear. Hatchet on her left hip, the nine millimeter and radio Aveline had loaned her clipped into the waistband of her jeans at her back with the safety on. As many bullets as they could spare stuffed in her pockets and a bare essentials first aid kit in the bottom of her pack. Between that, Fen's machete, and the shotgun strapped across his back, it should be more than enough to get them through the afternoon, but if she's learned anything since being tossed on her ass into a living hell it's that you hope for the best and make damn sure you're ready for the worst.
By the time she finishes her fourth pass the street has narrowed enough to make it impossible to walk without stepping into grabbing distance of cars and other hiding spots. They stop for a moment just outside the first shattered storefront, Fen moving the duffle bag over his shoulder out of the way to pull his gun free as Marian turns the radio on, white noise and static crackling while she tunes in to the camp's frequency.
"Um, this is Marian. To base camp. Marian to base camp," she says haltingly. Jesus, she hates using this thing. "Is, ah, anyone there? Aveline? We're just about to cross into the, er..." Oh, what was it they decided to call it? "Hot zone? Dead zone? Whatever it is we're there."
She waits, counts to ten, but doesn't get an answer. "Hello? Anyone? This is Marian, checking in. We're about to hit Sol's, can you hear me?"
"—ve to take your finger off the button, Sweet Thing," a new voice which is most definitely not the police chief's purrs back when her thumb slips from the transmitter. "Can't get through if you're holding the channel."
"Oh, shit! Sorry, 'Bela!" she says with a grimace. There's a soft huff of a laugh, and she looks up in time to see Fen turn his attention back to the half-loaded cartridge against his thumb, a smirk curling the corner of his mouth. Well, at least now she knows he has some form of a sense of humor, even if it's at her expense. "We're, er, almost at Sol's now. If you, you know, didn't hear me the first time."
Isabela laughs over the other end, the sound of a booted foot knocking against wood coming with it. "Oh we heard you alright. What do you say, check-in in an hour and a half?"
"Better make it a bit longer. We picked the place pretty much clean last time. Might finally have to break into the storeroom if we're going to bring back anything more than toothpaste and SpongeBob Band-Aids."
"Right. Make it two hours then. Oh, and Varric wanted me to ask you to keep an eye out for some of those cleaning wipes for his glasses, he's almost run out apparently."
"Cleaning wipes, got it," she says with a quick nod. "We'll hear from you in two. Marian out."
"Good luck. And make sure Broody comes back in one piece, yeah? He's got the best ass out of the whole group – hate to lose the eye candy so soon."
"Goodbye, 'Bela," she says over the sound of Fen groaning, a muffled "byyye!" coming in as she tucks the radio back into place at the small of her back and takes hold of the pistol in its place. "What do you say?" she asks as she slides the clip free to make sure it's fully loaded before locking it back into place with a quiet click. "Ready to get started?"
"As I'll ever be," Fen says, sour-faced from Isabela's goading, his shotgun held out and ready in both hands.
The pharmacy is a block's walk away through streets cramped with rubbish and even more dead cars, some empty, some with what's left of their unfortunate occupants still strapped down inside. Thankfully the dead stay dead today, the corpses Marian does her best to ignore still and free of any signs of light in their eyes or buried in their skin that would mark a walker for what it is. The farther along the street they travel the more dilapidated the businesses lining either side of it become, most all of their windows already shattered – some by looters during the first few nights of the outbreak, others later on by surviving scavengers like them.
Sol's hasn't held up much better than the rest, the metal frame of its glass doors bent and crunched in on themselves with only a few shards left clinging around their edges. Its sign hangs off-kilter from its rod, one of the chains holding it in place snapped free to leave it swinging in the breeze. Inside is just as bad, aisle after aisle of over the counter medicines torn apart or knocked end over end, the floor covered in a layer of spilled ointments and loose pills that crunch under her sneakers.
"Find whatever you can out here," she says, bending down to start searching through the mess for any salvageable supplies. She makes a short gesture towards the somehow still-intact door of the pharmacy's stockroom with her chin as she picks up, frowns at and tosses aside a cracked package of vitamins. "We'll hit that room last if we need to."
Fen gives an agreeing grunt and turns towards the toiletries section, gun shifted to his left hand while he starts to toss what few bars of soap, deodorant and bottles of shampoo are left into his bag. Barely an hour later they've picked the place clean twice over, anything left either beyond salvaging or too cumbersome to be bothered with.
"Damn." She frowns as she peers into her bag, the few bottles and boxes she's managed to find barely enough to cover the bottom of her pack. "Looks like we might need to track down a new cache sooner than we though."
He tosses a disbelieving glance her way as he stuffs quite possibly the last roll of toilet paper in all of Kirkwall into his duffle bag. "You don't know that. We haven't even seen what's in the storeroom yet."
"No," she agrees as she starts to head for the room in question, slinging her backpack back between her shoulders before pulling her hatchet free of its holster, "but you haven't seen how quickly my family can go through a box of Benadryl." She steps to the door and gives it a testing push, unsurprised when it turns out to be locked. "Mind giving me a hand with this?"
Fen , his machete now freed and held ready in his hand, gives a short nod, Marian moving out of his way as he comes to stand in her place. "I'll go left," he says plainly with a quick glance in her direction. "You take the right."
"Got it."
She shifts to stand just behind him and to his right, her fingers tightening around the grip of her hatchet while he leans his weight back on one leg. He lifts the other into the air and kicks out, grunting with the effort as his foot collides full-force with the door just to the side of its handle. There's a loud metallic crack – the deadbolt ripped nearly out of the wall while the door swings into the room, bouncing back several inches after slamming into the opposite wall. It's shoved out of the way again and falls back into place behind them as they both rush into the room, skirting around its edges with their weapons raised in front of them. It's smaller than Marian expected, five rows of shelves about eight feet long taking up the space in its center and the back wall lined with unpacked boxes of paper goods and hair products, but at least it's fully stocked. They clear the space in less than a minute, meeting up in the middle of the center aisle without a single walker to be found.
"That was almost too easy," she says with a quick grin, her back straightening and shoulders relaxing. "Can't believe no one else has touched all this."
Fen makes a noncommittal humming noise in the base of his throat, wasting no time in turning towards the shelves to toss more supplies into his bag. "It's not surprising. Officer Vallen said this part of town was one of the first to be overrun, didn't she? I doubt people had enough time to bother with it – just grabbed whatever they could from the front and ran."
"Huh. Yeah, maybe," she says as she moves to do the same, slipping her arm behind a row of generic decongestants and sweeping them all into her pack.
A half hour of picking over their spoils later, they've found everything they needed, Varric's cleaning wipes included. Bags zipped and shifted out of their way, she takes the radio off of her belt to radio Isabela that they'd finished sooner than they'd expected, when someone –something – gives a low, guttural moan just outside the door of the storeroom.
For a moment Marian 's heart stops dead. Then it slams itself against her ribs like a hammer, pulse kicking into high gear while a spike of cold drags itself down the length of her spine. Her head snaps up towards Fen , no doubt looking the perfect picture of a deer in headlights if her eyes have gone as wide as they feel, only to find he's done the same thing.
Without missing a beat he brings a tattooed finger against his lips in a motion for quiet that is so far from necessary she might have even laughed if her throat didn't feel like it was coated in sandpaper. Instead she purses her lips and nods, holding her breath as she watches him slink his way towards the door. Pressing himself flat against the wall beside it, he slips the same finger into the gap between the damaged latch and the casing, pulling it open far enough to peer through.
He mutters something most definitely not in English, but if the way his shoulders tense up or his eyes narrow is any hint, she can tell she won't like whatever news he has for her. "Four of them," he says almost too quietly to hear while he slips his hand free of the door. "Two near the cash registers, one by the door to the restroom and another just outside on the sidewalk."
"Shit," she whispers while her heart gives another painful lurch. Then again, harder and hissing past her teeth. " Shit . Where the hell did they come from so damned fast?"
"Does that really matter right now?" he asks sharply as he turns back to face her. "Don't you think we should be more concerned with how to get ourselves past them?"
She gives herself a mental shake, pushing back against the anxiety that's started churning in her stomach and making her feel as though she might be sick. Right. Priority number one – get your ass off the boat before you start trying to figure out why it's sinking.
Her brow furrows, tongue prodding at her piercing while she tries to think of an alternate exit, but a quick glance around the room leaves her frustratingly empty handed. The only other possibility is a set of hopper windows set up along the edge of the ceiling nearly eight feet off the floor, too narrow for either of them to have any chance of fitting through – let alone their overstuffed bags – even if they could find a way to reach them. No, if they're getting out (and they are most definitely getting out, the irony of dying in a pharmacy is just too insulting to even think of) it's going to have to be through this door, walkers be damned.
She pulls in a deep breath, eyes closing while she holds it until the count of ten before letting it out slowly through her nose. "Ok," she says while her eyes flick open and back to Fen , far from thrilled with their predicament but at least marginally more calm. "Besides the ones inside and outside the door, did you spot any others in the street?"
"Not that I could see," he says with a shake of his head. "But—"
"But with our luck there'll be twice as many milling around," Marian interrupts with a sigh as she reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose.
"Exactly."
"Welp. What do you say, Fen ?" she asks as he hand falls away, a grin she doesn't doubt looks more like a grimace spreading across her mouth. "Think we can sneak past these bastards and run the walker gauntlet without having our asses turned into chew toys?"
That actually earns her a short huff of a laugh from him, and while it's far from enough to make her feel completely at ease with what they're about to do, it doesn't hurt, either. "Do we have any other choice?"
"That's the spirit." She smiles as she clips Aveline's radio into place on her belt, her hatchet back in her hand by the time she's crossed the room to stand next to him. "Tell you what – we make it through this mess and the next round of drinks comes out of my rations."
He chuckles again, this time pairing it with half of a smile which for some reason makes Marian 's poor overworked heart do an awkward sort of stuttered jump. "I'll be holding you to that, Hawke," he says without looking to her, his machete held ready in his left hand while he slips his right behind the door to peer out into the room again, then continues, his voice lowered: "They're far enough away for a clear shot to the door. We might be able to make it out without them noticing if we move now and stay quiet."
"What are we waiting for, then? Let's go ."
