hi guys! I am the absolute worst person ever for taking so long to write this oneshot, which is for the shmantasticlious LILY, who is awesome. (psst go read 'heartlines' by lily)
prompts: clam, zombie apocalypse, badass cam
words and stuff: this isn't very fluffy and it's not completely centered on clammyclamclamness, but i tried and i hope you like it! also, if you found this horrible, another clammy oneshot for lily will be up soon. which will be clammier(that sounded wrong).
Cam Fisher was silently crouching with his back to the base of a large tree, making sure not to make even a slight rustle. He was pretty sure there weren't any monsters lurking about, and even if there were he was well prepared to defend himself, but you could never be too careful. He knew that damn well by now.
After taking a moment to listen for any signs of a zombie, he peered around to make sure the area was clear before springing up and jogging to the partially-hidden entrance of a trail he had come to know by heart. When he got to it he slowed down, reaching for the dirty backpack he was wearing and taking it off, looking inside. Satisfied, he slid it back on and continued down the trail, heading for the small campsite he had come to know as home.
.:.
One ratty tent sat on the edge of a clearing, surrounded by tall trees that were easy enough to climb if necessary. A dirty-looking blonde girl was slumped on a rock right next it, absently stabbing a knife in and out of the soft ground. When she heard footsteps coming near she tensed, snapping her head up and yanking out her knife. She slowly reached an arm inside the tent, grabbing onto something inside, while holding her weapon firmly at her side. As the footsteps sounded nearer she looked around, scanning the trees for any zombies or wild animals or anything else that might want to kill and/or eat her. Once she caught sight of a familiar boy walking towards the camp she relaxed, letting out the breath she had been holding as a sigh of relief.
"Cam," she called out, springing up to meet him. "Thank God."
Cam raised an eyebrow, a hint of amusement on his face. "There's no need to call me 'God', Claire," he said as he hugged her. Claire Lyons rolled her eyes. "'Cam' works just fine."
"Oh shut up. How did it go?" Claire peered at his backpack. Cam shrugged it off and grinned. He thrust the bag at her before walking to their tent. As she inspected its contents a smile spread across her face. "Kay, canned food, bars, ohmygod you found chocolate, dried stuff, looks good. Wait, did you find any- Yes! I was almost out of tampons, thanks babe."
Cam cringed. "You're welcome. And I found like five bars of soap, they're under the...girl things." He looked so grossed out that Claire laughed.
"Oh, come on, Cam. You've killed zombies and gutted animals but you can't even say the word 'tampon?' You baby." Cam looked offended at her use of the word 'baby' and Claire giggled some more.
"I also found a few boxes of matches. In case-"
"A fire won't start?"
"I was actually gonna say in case we run into a group of zombies and it would be easier to just light them on fire. But yeah, that too." He walked over and took the backpack from her to store in their tent while she frowned.
"Cam, I don't think we're gonna be running into any zombie herds. We've been having this camp here for a couple months now and the most we've gotten in a week is fourteen single ones. And that was when we first found this place and it was empty of all people, only the residents that had gotten turned."
Cam didn't look pleased with this. "I'm just preparing for the worst, okay? You can never be too careful." He hated when this conversation came up. The one where he would expect the worst so they could be ready to face anything coming and she would get upset because even though they're trapped in a zombie apocalypse she's always seeing the brighter side of things. It always ended the same: Claire would get sad and maybe a little teary-eyed because Cam is all she has left so all she has left is a somewhat-bitter boyfriend who finds it hard to be happy and Cam would try and comfort her and things would be tense for at least an hour.
Claire sighed. "I know, I know, but can't you see that we're lucky, given the situation? Yeah, we're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. But we're surviving and we don't encounter tons of monsters and we almost always have food and water. We don't have to constantly be on the move, because we found this place. And there are abandoned stores nearby that haven't been cleared out. And we have each other," she said, looking at him with watery eyes. She had always been an easy cryer.
His eyes softened. "We do have all of that, Claire. I know. I just don't ever want to be caught of guard, because if we are, something bad could happen. We're lucky that we're getting by like we are, but something might happen, and we need to be ready for that."
Claire was clearly unhappy but nodded. "I know, something could happen, I get it..." Cam looked like he wanted to say something to comfort her, but she shook her head and offered him a forced smile before going to crawl inside their tent. Cam looked up and noticed it was getting dark, so he stuck his head inside and said, "I'll take the first watch." She only mumbled in response.
.:.
"Ahhhhh!"
Cam shot up, jolted awake by the high-pitched scream from outside the tent. His eyes widened when he realized that it was Claire, who had switched with him so he could sleep. He quickly grabbed the closest form of weapon he could reach - a long metal pipe they had once found while traveling - and scrambled outside to see what was going on.
As soon as he did he crashed into Claire, who was backing towards the tent. Cam almost puked when he saw the cause of her shriek: a horde of zombies no more than thirty feet from the clearing. All coming towards them. He spared about five seconds for a quick count and saw at least fifteen. Claire ducked into the tent and grabbed her knife, yanking it out of its covering and holding it shakily in front of her. "Cam..." she whimpered. "There's so many.."
"Why are there so much all of a sudden?!" he asked, looking at all of them. They were closer now, but moving slowly. But slow or not, there was still way more than they were used to. They had never encountered more than a few at a time, and it wasn't like they had any guns to get them from afar. They only had knifes and the 'weapons' they had found while traveling or sacking stores and houses. His rusty pipe and her knife probably weren't going to cut it.
"I don't know!" she wailed. "I fell asleep during the watch again because of the nightmares and only heard them just now!" Shit. He should've known she had been having nightmares again. One of the many things that made Claire not a great zombie survivor buddy was the fact that she got scared easily and had trouble sleeping because of bad dreams. That was probably why she always tried to be positive about the zombie apocalypse, she wanted it to seem less real. "There have never been this much here! There's barely been any since we started staying here!"
"Just start killing them!" he urged her, as the group was now upon their little camp. He ran to the nearest one and swung his pipe into its head, knocking it off. It fell to the ground and he started doing the same to others. Claire was slicing the heads off of any that got close to her, but her knife wasn't very long so she had to snake her arms around in a way that avoided their mouths. After the first few there were too much of them around to cut off each of their heads individually so she just stabbed and kicked around in an attempt to kill them. Cam was having trouble too, as there seemed to be a lot more than he had thought.
He was desperately trying to kill them, worried for Claire, who was terrified and looking like she was going to lose soon. Some of the zombies started going to her instead, as she seemed to be an easier target, so he ran over and pushed her behind him, fighting them. Suddenly he got an idea. "Claire!" he called out. "Get the matches!"
She scrambled to the tent, digging through Cam's backpack for the matches he had found. Once she got them she ran back and tried to hand it to him, but his hands were full trying to kill the monsters. After a second of debating, she yanked the pipe from him and shoved the box into his hands, swinging wildly with her new weapon. It seemed to suit her better than a knife.
Cam fumbled with the box. When he had a few matches in his hands, he yelled for Claire to go to the tent and get their stuff. He struck all of them at once, which probably wasn't very smart of him but he didn't care, and threw the bunch at the group of zombies. They quickly caught on fire and he ran to the tent, where Claire was rolling a sleeping bag into a cross between a roll and a ball. She strapped it to a large backpack they had stuffed with supplies and Cam took it from her along with his bag. He couldn't wear both on his back so he twisted his bag in front of him, thankful that it only had one strap. Claire had their other supply bag with her sleeping bag already on, and was anxiously fidgeting with Cam's pipe in her hands. Her eyes widened at the flaming clump of zombies, who were staggering around, not quite dead yet. She shrieked when one of them stumbled into a tree on the edge of the clearing and it caught on fire.
"Cam!" Claire screamed. The fire was quickly spreading. "We are surrounded by freaking trees! What the hell?!"
Cam didn't answer; instead, locking her wrist in a death grip before sprinting opposite the trees that were already burning. He waited till she transitioned from being dragged to running along with him before shooting back, "Would you rather be surrounded by freaking death?!" He didn't stop running, not when the trees thinned and they reached a road on the edge of the now-burning forest, not when he turned them onto said road, not when Claire gave up and let him drag her along while she panted, not when she caught some of her breath and stopped making him drag her, not till he had gotten them to a point on the road where the flaming trees were just a part of the background. At that point, he finally stopped, panting loudly and almost dropping to the ground from exertion. Claire did fall to the ground, landing quite ungracefully and heaving.
When they finally caught their breath, about ten years later, Claire flopped over onto her back and looked at Cam, who was staring at the forest with a blank face. Almost all of the trees were burning, a huge cloud of black smoke rising above them. After a moment he turned away and sat down next to Claire, looking straight ahead. Claire rolled up and stared at the fire. Her face crumpled into an upset expression and her blue eyes started to water.
She shut her eyes tightly, taking a deep breath through her nose. "Cam.." she whispered. He didn't respond. "What do we do now?" Still no answer.
A minute later he sighed loudly and turned to face her. "We find someplace else," he said solemnly. His face showed little emotion, save for a hint of sadness.
Claire gaped at him. "That's all you have to say? Of course we need to find someplace else! The freakin forest just burned down! Our home of the past two months, and it's just- gone." Her voice broke on the last word, and she whimpered. "This road is basically in the middle of freaking nowhere. The forest and little town next to it are the only things for miles." Her blue eyes watered over and tears began to run down her face. Cam bit his lip and started towards her, but she jerked away. "I hate this! There's always something bad going on and we always have to be serious and alert and the zombies are gross and everyone we know is dead and we can never just have a break and I hate it so much!"
"Claire-"
"And I know we have it good and we have food and water and each other but it's so freaking hard! Why are we even trying? What good is staying alive in this hell when everything sucks and we're just gonna die anyway?"
Cam's eyes widened. "Claire, don't say that. I-I know it's hard, but we can't just give up-"
"Why not?" Her voice was small and broken.
Cam sighed. He didn't know what to say, how to explain that they couldn't just kill themselves instead of fighting it out for as long as they could. "Claire.. We can't just, just die. We have to keep going, we have things to live for."
"Like what?"
Cam's different colored eyes widened, yet again. After a moment of gaping silently at her he said, "Each other," lamely and even he looked unsatisfied with the answer.
Claire sighed. She looked a little calmed down but tears were still rolling down her cheeks. She sat back down and looked at the forest fire. A huge cloud of smoke dominated most of the air around the trees. "We don't even know if there's anyone else alive. Even if there is, what does it matter? Everything's gonna die. Nothing can stay forever, just look at the trees." She gestured to the giant fire in the distance.
.:.
Three days later they were unrolling one of their sleeping bags at a bus stop outside a different abandoned town. Cam was staying awake for the first watch, as he had taken to doing since the fire. Things had been slightly tense between him and Claire since Claire's unexpected breakdown and he had been doing his best to make sure she wouldn't have another. Claire, on the other hand, was acting irritatingly unlike herself. The normally bright, optimistic girl was closed off and stoic. It was as if she switched places with Cam, who seemed unusually positive. There was a growing hint of annoyance with his every failed attempt at conversation, however, and the blonde wondered vaguely how far her stubbornness could push him before he gave up.
"Night, Claire," Cam said as she wiggled into his sleeping bag. Since only one of them would be sleeping at a time she just started using his. She nodded her head and gave a tiny smile in response, though Cam suspected the smile only appeared because she was tired and forgot she was being reclusive or whatever.
About two hours into the watch Cam heard a strange rumbling noise. He sleepily looked up, squinting at the surrounding area. And saw what looked like-
A car?
But that would mean there were more people still alive-
Holy shit. There were more people still alive.
Cam scrambled to get up and waved his arms wildly. Whoever was in the car, a black truck, jerked to a stop upon seeing him. The driver side door opened and a blonde man hopped out, staring at him warily. He was pointing a gun at him over the hood of the truck. "Who - Who are you? Are there any others?"
"I'm Cam.. that's my girlfriend Claire," he said, nudging her with his foot. She didn't wake up.
The man nodded. "I'm Derrick," he said casually, though his gun was still pointed directly at Cam's face. "What are you doing here? Have you been bit?" He glanced at something - someone? - inside his truck, then looked back quickly.
"What- No, we haven't been bit, what do you mean 'what are we doing here?' Where are we supposed to be?" Cam asked with slight annoyance. The question had brought up memories of the clearing.
Derrick looked surprised. "The camp? Of survivors? When's the last time you ran into any other people?" He was staring at Cam like he was a moron.
"There's a camp of survivors? What are you even talking about?"
"Yes, there's a camp of survivors! How did you not know? Someone drives out to search for others almost everyday," Derrick said as if it were obvious. "How long have you been in this area?"
"About three months."
"How could we have missed you?" Derrick said more to himself than to Cam. "Well, where have you been, then? Hibernating in the dirt?
Cam was starting to get irritated. "We've been living in the clearing!"
Derrick looked blank. "What clearing?"
"The one in the freaking forest! The forest, you know, the one that's been burning for the past week," Cam said, pointing behind Derrick to where there was still a cloud of smoke from the fire.
"I didn't know there was a clearing there. That's probably why we haven't found you yet," Derrick said.
"Yeah, probably," Cam snorted. Derrick looked slightly offended. "But there's really a camp of survivors? Can you take us?"
He got an uncomfortable look in response. "Well, I really need to get back.."
"What the hell? You said you were looking for other survivors to take!"
"I don't have any room in here! Listen, just stay here, and someone'll be back for you and your little girlfriend tomorrow," Derrick said, hastily climbing into his truck while Cam gaped at him. He wasn't serious, was he? He wasn't actually gonna leave them-
-Aaand he left them.
Cam sighed. He glanced at Claire, who was still sleeping despite the noise of his and Derrick's discussion and the grumbling of the truck's engine. He probably could have woken her up for her watch, but he wasn't getting any sleep now so he sat down next to her and waited, wondering if someone was really coming for them.
.:.
He woke up the next day to Claire poking his face. "Why didn't you wake me up for my watch?" she asked.
"I wasn't tired, and you probably wouldn't have woken up if I tried," Cam mumbled, rubbing his mismatched eyes. "Especially since you slept through the- holy shit guess what!"
Claire blinked at his sudden excitement. "...What?"
"There's a camp of survivors. Someone's gonna come and get us today," he said. Claire looked wary.
"What are you talking about?"
"Last night some guy was driving a truck down the road here and I stopped him, and he's from a camp of survivors in this area. He said he didn't have any room to take us so someone would come here and get us today."
Claire's eyes widened. "Cam, he could be crazy! What are the chances of an entire camp of survivors, with cars, let alone in the same area as us?"
"Apparently not that small, as there's a camp of survivors with cars in the same area as us," Cam said, slightly put out that Claire was reacting like this to what he thought was good news.
"Cam-"
"What's wrong? Claire, this is good. There are more people still alive. We have a place to go. This is a good thing," he insisted. She groaned.
"Yes, it probably is, but what if it isn't? You're the one who always tells me to be cautious, to be careful, that we need to be prepared for anything! And now you're just gonna go along with some guy you don't even know-"
"Claire, almost everyone is dead. Almost everyone in the world has been either eaten by zombies or is a zombie. Do you really think what little survivors there are will be trying to kill each other?!" he asked in an irritated, impatient tone. "God, Claire, you're the one who's always seeing the brighter side of things, always being positive, why are you acting like this? What happened?"
"I almost let us get killed!" she snapped, surprising the both of them. She looked angry now, more at herself than at Cam, and tears were threatening to fall down her face. "We were almost eaten, because I wasn't careful. All the traveling and training would've been for nothing, all this surviving and hoping would have been done, just like that, and it would have been all my fault! If I took you more seriously about being prepared, it wouldn't have happened. If I weren't so cheery and carefree about hiding from zombies, we might be better off. If-"
"So what if you tried to make things seem better? Yeah, you weren't super cautious or anything. Maybe if you were things would be different, we'd be 'better off.' But if you hadn't fallen asleep, if you hadn't noticed the zombies so late, we would still be in that clearing. We would still be camping out in the middle of some forest next to a road going through the middle of freaking nowhere. We would still be far from where anyone else would've run into us, we probably would've stayed there for a long time and never had any chance of finding other survivors. And I would've gotten more and bitter and paranoid and you would've kept trying so damn hard to make things seem better, but they wouldn't be any better. They would never get any better." Cam's voice softened a bit. "We would be camping out in that damned clearing till we died, and we would've been miserable because no matter how well we were doing there it would've been just us, just me being overly cautious and never being able to relax at all and you having no one but me to talk to try to stay sane."
Claire didn't say anything, just looked at him. Her blue eyes were shining and she was biting on her bottom lip, and at some point during his speech Cam had grabbed her shoulders with his hands, staring at her intently. "Cam," she began in a small voice. "I-"
"I'm not interrupting anything here, am I?" a dryly amused voice asked. Both of their heads snapped over to the road, where a few yards away from them was a rusty white truck that had somehow gotten there without their noticing, despite how loud it probably was. A man was standing with his arms resting on the window of the door. "Cause I can come back later if you want."
The man chuckled when both Cam and Claire didn't say anything. "You're the people Derrick met, yeah? He said I was comin' for some dude named Cam and his girl. I'm guessing that's you."
"Uhh..."
The man smiled good-heartedly. "I know, Derrick said you seemed pretty shocked to find more survivors, probably a lot to take in right now. Come on," he said, gesturing for them to get in. Cam walked over and, after a look from him that dared her to stay put, Claire followed.
.:.
"So where're you guys from?" the man, who they found out was named James, asked conversationally. They had been driving for almost twenty minutes, but James said it took about an hour at the least to reach the camp.
"The clearing, remember? We'd been there for maybe two months now-" Cam started.
"No, no, I mean where are you from? Hometown, all of that."
"Oh. Um. I'm from Westchester, and Claire moved there from Florida when she was a kid."
"Westchester? Think I've heard of that, maybe someone from camp's from there too..." James said, partly to himself. When he saw Cam's skeptical look in the mirror he said, "The camp's actually pretty big, we've got people from long ways away down there. I'm from England, so are a couple others. My friend Kemp is from Australia, I think, somewhere with an accent."
"About how many people are there?" Cam asked, slightly surprised. Derrick had given him the impression that it was just a small group of survivors, maybe twenty people at most, counting children.
"Oh, I dunno, but there's a lot. We've got a few little families, like the Harringtons - they might be from that Westmonkey whatever you were talking about - the Joneses, there're some married couples, like Kemp and his wife... Big group of kid cousins with a guardian, called the Gregorys... Derrick's girlfriend is pregnant, so there's another Harrington kid. That's why he didn't take you guys yesterday, he was worrying she'll squirt out his kid while he's gone. I don't really see how leaving you guys there helped with his time management, he probably got there later than he would've by talking to you instead, but that's no matter now."
Cam raised an eyebrow at him. "She's pregnant? Will they be able to take care of things all right? What with the zombies trying to eat everyone and stuff."
James laughed. "Oh, yeah, they'll be fine. Dylan's not the first one to get preggers at our camp. We train the little ones, teach 'em who to do stuff that's helpful, like cooking or cleaning. Who knows, now that you're joining us maybe you can pop one out, too," he said, wiggling his eyebrows at Cam. "Start a little herd."
Cam flushed. "Well, um-"
"Don't worry, I'm just saying, is all. What was your name again? Last name?"
"My last name is Fisher, Claire's is Lyons."
James nodded. "How old are you?"
"I'm around nineteen, and Claire's seventeenish," Cam said, looking down at the blonde girl asleep on his shoulder.
"Ah." They didn't really talk much after that, except for random things about the camp from James.
.:.
Their car ride ended at the outskirts of an abandoned city, where James left the truck next to two others, one being Derrick's black one from the day before, in a corner of a junkyard parking lot. He led them into the junkyard through a hole in the fence, then past all mountains of garbage to a large, factory-like building. One of the doors had been removed and covered with a big sheet of old metal, which James moved to the side before shoving Cam and Claire into it with a grin. "Welcome home!" he chuckled.
The door didn't open to a room, instead, they were in a long hallway that seemed like it circled the entire building before leading to anywhere. James nudged past them and they followed, stealing wide-eyed glances at each other every few seconds. Voices could be heard through the walls, making Claire gasp and Cam grab her hand in a tight grip. James smiled to himself every time they reacted to signs of people. After they had turned three times and walked along four long halls, they reached a doorway covered with metal, like the one the entered the building in. Light was peeking out from behind the metal 'door' and clear words and sentences could be made out from the voices.
James grinned wildly. "Well?" he said. "Go on." He nudged Cam toward the doorway with his foot. Cam stiffened, clearly extremely nervous and excited and just a little bit scared. Claire was the same. After about half a minute of Cam awkwardly reaching to move the metal then recoiling, James rolled his eyes and shoved past him, pushing the metal to the side and stepping dramatically through the door. "I've found some people!" he yelled, yanking both Cam and Claire in by their arms.
.:.
To say that their reception had shocked Cam would be an understatement. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting - weary groups of families, struggling to get by, stern fighters who didn't think twice about shooting the head off of a zombie, survivors who weren't thrilled about how they were living but didn't complain - but what he got was a bunch of kind people that welcomed him and Claire with mostly-open arms(some people were wary that the newcomers would be bringing in the zombie virus, since they were living in the middle of nowhere and had recently been attacked).
Cam had learned the way things worked around the camp; everyone had a job. Some people were the ones who drove around in search of survivors. Some people went out and guarded the camp from zombies. Some people hunted for food, some people looked for food that was grown, some just collected whatever edible things they found. The ones who didn't really leave the building basically just made sure things were okay around the camp; checking that nobody was sick, keeping things clean, taking care of children, doing head counts and lists and just trying to keep things running. Almost everyone, whether they stayed inside or not, raised and taught all the children, especially the few babies floating around.
He also learned that there were a lot of people, and that they all cared about each other. He felt a little strange knowing that; soon these people would care about him, too. He wasn't used to anyone but Claire doing that.
Claire. She had remained mostly quiet since they had arrived, responding softly when spoken to, not asking questions. She was now sitting cross-legged on her sleeping bag right next to him, tracing invisible patterns on the floor with her finger. They had been shown to an area that was now their space, meaning they would be sleeping and keeping their belongings there.
"Claire?" Cam said quietly.
"Yeah, Cam?"
"What are you thinking about?"
She shifted where she was sitting. "I dunno. It's just...its so different here. It's going to be so different here. Look at all these people. They all love each other and look out for each other and everything. I'm not used to doing that anymore. I feel like if I fall asleep, I'm gonna wake up in the clearing, and nothing will have changed." Cam didn't say anything. They both knew she was referring to the big speech he had given her while waiting for someone to get them.
"Claire, look at me." Cam waited till her eyes were locked on his before speaking again. "It is going to be different here. We're going to be living, not just surviving, we're actually gonna be happy here. We're not going back to the clearing. I know it wasn't bad there, and it wasn't perfect either, but we're not there anymore. We're here. With people. We're gonna be just fine, okay?"
Claire stared at him for a moment before reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. He looped his around her back comfortingly, hearing her sniffle. "I know," she whispered in his ear. "We're gonna be just fine."
gahhhk the ending was kinda weird but i like it. please tell me what you thought in the reviews, i know it wasn't really fluffy or clammy but still!
lily- LOOK I FINALLY POSTED IT. I'm sorry it took so long even though you said it was fine, ily, you better like this or i'll send a horde of zombies in to attack the camp. just kidding. but still.
byee,
-sarah:)