My name is Lucy Quinn Fabray. I'm sixteen years old. I used to be a cheerleader at my high school, and the most popular, beautiful girl you would ever meet. Now, all I'm good for is starring on Sixteen and Pregnant. But right now, that's the least of my worries.

My dad is a zombie.

It all began a week ago. My boyfriend was coming over to have dinner with my family. It was going to be a great night, and maybe seeing how nice and gentlemanly he was would soften the blow when my parents found out that I was expecting. But my dad suddenly fell ill, and those plans had to be cancelled. We took him to the hospital, and his condition improved enough to be discharged. Then we brought him home.

I can hear him. Mum locked him in the basement. He likes to growl and groan and bang on the door, and I don't think either of us have slept well in ages. My grades are going down. I can barely sing in glee club, my throat is so dry. I'm a wreck. This isn't how my life was supposed to be.

But that still isn't the only weird thing that's going on around here.

Yesterday, I saw a blue police telephone box on the corner of our street.

If you don't know what's wrong with that, let me dish out some hard, concrete facts for you. We don't have police telephone boxes in America. What's more, I don't think any country has used them since the nineteen-sixties. To add onto that, I know what our street looks like, and it's never had a police telephone box on its corner before. I tried to go inside it, but the doors wouldn't budge. I walked round and round it, but that was about as useful as it sounds. I was so frustrated. Nothing about it made any sense.

Most especially the man who flew it.

Yes.

Flew it.

He calls himself the Doctor. Doctor who? I honestly have no clue. On top of being sixteen and pregnant and my dad being a zombie, I have to take care of a madman with a box. See, what my mum doesn't know, is that Dad isn't the only one moaning and groaning in the basement. And I'm really not sure how well she'll react to a complete stranger living in the same house as us, but for some ridiculous reason, I trust the guy. Maybe his head isn't completely screwed on straight, but there's something about him. Something sad, and something old. Older than both of my parents combined, even though he looks as though he's still in his late twenties. Also, I can't help but say it - he's pretty cute.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right. Something sad, and something old. He looks as though he's seen way too much loss in his lifetime. He also seems like he knows what's going on with my dad. He didn't actually want to help me out, though, no matter how nicely I asked him to. That kind of pissed me off.

See, he isn't locked in the basement because he volunteered.

I, um. Put him there.


Quinn set the pen down in the folds of her diary and twisted in her seat to peer towards her bedroom door. Her mum should have been fast asleep, which left no obstacles between her and the Doctor. I've kidnapped a grown man, she thought glumly to herself. Then she repeated the thought and couldn't help but crack a droll smile. She, Quinn Fabray, sixteen and pregnant, had kidnapped a grown alien man.

A grown alien man.

"Alright then, Doctor," she muttered, pushing herself to her feet and making her way out into the hall. "Let's see if you've changed your mind."

You couldn't call Quinn Fabray a cruel captor. She brewed a nice, steaming cup of tea before she picked her way daintily down the stairs to the basement. She'd have to be careful. Her mum had been extra antsy and chained Mr. Fabray down pretty close to the door, which meant that whoever opened it had a good chance of being grabbed and shaken around. Quinn stepped to one side of the door and nudged it open a crack. When there was no immediate commotion, she opened it wider and bent her head around into the dark room.

There was most definitely her dad, pawing at the floor and smacking his lips together contentedly. The Doctor was chained opposite him, his head leaning back against the wall languidly. For a moment, Quinn panicked and wondered if the zombie had managed to reach the strange man and maybe, I don't know, snack off his foot. Closer inspection revealed, however, that her dad was preoccupied with a rat.

"Oh," the Doctor said, sitting up straighter. "You."

"Yes," Quinn responded shortly, steering quite clear of Mr. Fabray as she delivered the tea to the madman. "Me. Are you okay?"

"That's a funny thing to ask a man you're keeping prisoner," came the sullen response. Quinn rolled her eyes and set the cup of tea on the floor before unwrapping the chains around the Doctor's wrists.

"I'll let you go as soon as you promise to help my dad," she said lightly. "There. Drink this up."

Silently, the Doctor picked up the cup of tea and took a long sip. Instantaneously, his face lit up. "Did you make this? Mm, it's delicious."

"I guess some stereotypes are true," Quinn observed amusedly. The madman cocked a wary eye at her.

"What stereotype's that?"

"Well...you know. The English and their tea."

"I'm not English. I'm Time Lord. Came from the sky, remember?"

"You have an English accent," Quinn pointed out.

"Oh, bloody humans. You all think everything started off on Earth, don't you?"

"Yeah. Sure." How else was she supposed to respond to that? A few seconds later of staring at each other distastefully, the Doctor suddenly set down his cup and tilted his head at her.

"What was your name again?" he asked, almost kindly, but then again, not quite there. He was her prisoner, after all. She'd hit him round the head with a baseball bat after inviting him home for a cup of tea that she'd only just now made for him.

"Quinn Fabray," she answered. "And that's my dad eating that rat right there. Just to put things in perspective for you."

"I figured that much out for myself. How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

His mouth downturned sharply. "Sixteen and pregnant."

"Wha - " Quinn's eyes widened. "How did you know? I'm not even showing yet!"

"I know many things." His eyes measured her face carefully. "You're quite smart for your age, aren't you? Quite pretty, too. Pretty and smart, that's two good things going for you. Why don't you just let me go, Quinn Fabray? You know I can't help you."

"No. No, you're wrong. You can help me. You took one look at my dad and you knew what was wrong with him. You got this...this look on your face. He's my dad, Doctor - please."

His lips turned down again, but this time it was in a sadness and anger towards himself. He looked away from Quinn, gazing dully at her father as he tore apart the rat. "I would've helped you in the past," he mumbled like a broken child. "But not anymore, Quinn. I've given that all up now."

"Why?" she demanded. "Why would you give up helping people? Especially when they really need it?"

"Because people die," he said. "They die because of me."

"What do you mean?"

His eyes faltered to the floor. "I had friends who travelled with me. Good friends. Wonderful friends. And if only I had left them alone, they would have lived out such beautiful, promising lives."

Quinn shook her head. "I'm not asking you to kill me. I'm asking you to help me. What if my dad's not the only one like this? What if Lima's full of things like him? If you can stop it, wouldn't you want to at least try?"

"It's not that simple."

"Yes, it is. Think really carefully about what you're going to say next, because that's my dad. That's my dad. On all fours, drooling pus, eating a rat. And I still have that baseball bat handy."

The Doctor raised his head, gazing at Quinn long and hard. A sad smile lifted up the corners of his mouth, and she wished he'd kept on pouting. It was less painful to look at.

"You're a very passionate girl, aren't you?" he said. "You really love your father."

"Of course I do," she managed. She hated that she felt as though she was about to burst into tears, all because the Doctor was being such a frustrating, nonsensical idiot. He kept watching her, as if all her thoughts were written out on the front of her face. Then he wiggled his knees, and the smile widened into a small grin.

"Unchain the rest of me, Quinn Fabray. We have a zombie apocalypse to stop."

That was most definitely one line Quinn had never expected to hear in her entire lifetime. A few minutes later, the chains were loosened and piled next to where the Doctor sat, while he shook out all his long, skinny limbs, claiming that he needed to get some feeling back into them. Quinn knew well enough that the chains had hardly been tight, and that he could have squeezed himself out whenever he wanted to. Maybe that was why she'd known he would help, in a way. He hadn't seemed very dead-set on leaving.

"Okay," she said, having had enough of his boyish shenanigans. "How exactly are we going to stop a zombie apocalypse?"

"Oh, that's easy," the Doctor retorted carelessly, waving a hand at her. "We find what's causing it, have a little chat, maybe a little...physical force, come to an agreement - everybody lives happily ever after, and the merry Doctor can be on his way."

"What way's that?" Quinn asked dubiously.

"The universe. The stars. You don't think the universe is empty, do you? There are so many more things out there, Quinn Fabray, and they're all calling to me."

"That sounds...completely crazy."

He grinned widely at her. "Well, there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Aha! There we go. All arms and legs back in order - oh..."

As he hopped up onto his feet, he paused and swayed over Mr. Fabray's head. He was growling in a low, guttural, zombie-ish way, and Quinn was trying her hardest not to look at him.

"You're a right mess, aren't you?" the Doctor murmured, bending down so that he was eye to eye with the zombie. "Are those chains properly tight? I could have easily gotten out of mine, and we wouldn't want that happening with your father."

So he knew, Quinn thought to herself. "My mum did that," she said quietly. "She's a lot stronger with her hands."

"Oh, that's good. Good." The Doctor swung away from her dad, peering at Quinn. "And does your mother know that there's a...company of two in her basement?"

A simple shake of the head and, instead of looking anything like apprehensive, the Doctor appeared to become even more excited. "Oh, that's naughty. I bet she doesn't make as good a cup of tea as you do, though."

"She makes a nice one," Quinn supplied blankly. She was finding it hard to engage in small, inconsequential talk when her father was only a few feet from her, drooling and groaning and resembling a corpse that had been bleached at least twice. She thought she could see a spider crawling through his hair, but she dared not look closer. The Doctor studied her for a few moments before reaching out to hold her hand gently.

"Quinn Fabray," he said slowly, his eyes darting between the both of hers. "Why don't you make yourself a cup, too? Or I could make one for you. I've been told I give it quite the taste. Then you can sit down and tell me about what your father was like."

Her forehead twitched in a minuscule frown. "You don't want to know that," she said. "Why would you even care?"

"Oh, I care," the madman said sadly. "I always care. Come along now."

It turned out that the tea he made really was quite delicious. But then again, wasn't all tea? Quinn sat at the crisp and clean white kitchen table and sipped at it as quickly as she could without burning her tongue. The Doctor sat opposite her, blowing across the surface of his own tea and watching her, still.

"I'm going to tell you a little secret," he said. "I came here for more than just a visit, and you were quite right - your father isn't the only one in the state that he is. He was the first, of course, but definitely not the last."

"I thought you'd said you'd given up on helping people," Quinn pointed out.

"Oh, I had. I have. But...sometimes I can't resist. My...conscience gets the better of me."

She smiled wryly. "I know that feeling," she said softly before filling her mouth with more tea.

The smile was returned briefly before the Doctor found another subject to latch onto. "So," he proclaimed. "Your father. Tell me about him."

"Um. Well, he's...like any other father, really. Protective and...fussy, and likes to sit at the head of the table and talk really loudly." She smiled again at her own words. "He's...very keen on perfection. My whole family is. Sometimes it gets annoying, but...when things like this happen, I can kind of understand why. Chaos is so...chaotic."

"But it can be beautiful, too." The Doctor was leaning back in his chair, one ankle crossed over the other. "I've come face to face with a lot of chaos, and it's so much fun. If everything in life was perfect, well...might as well give up early on."

Quinn couldn't help but laugh. "You sound exactly like the sort of person my dad would hate."

"Would he hate the sort of person that knocked you up?" the Doctor asked mischievously, his eyes sparkling over the top of his cup. Quinn drew in a sharp breath, hesitating on the answer.

"No," she finally said. "No, he would love Finn. He's met Finn already, briefly. We were all going to have dinner together last week, but...well, this happened."

The madman's eyes narrowed at her shrewdly. She thought he might catch onto her lie - he seemed eerily skilled in that way, knowing everything that he shouldn't - instead, he took a large swallow of tea and scoffed aloud. "The human race nowadays," he said to himself. "Babies at sixteen, break-ups over Twitter...not to mention you were all practically asking for a zombie apocalypse. Some people would think you lot really want to perish in a massive explosion of...walking corpses."

She couldn't help but think of Puck when he said that. Puck, the cocky, mohawked adaptation of every Fabray's worst nightmare. Puck, with his rough, olive skin and hardened football muscles. Puck, with his love for video games and pop culture and, most of all, zombies. Puck, she wryly thought, the father of her baby.

"Trust me," she said, "I'm not one of that 'lot'."

"No," the Doctor mused. "You're far from it. I can tell. A bit of an old soul in a young body."

"Funny. That's what you look like to me."

"Oh, that's because I am. Literally. Old soul, young body. Hard to explain to someone I've just met. Very complicated."

Quinn leaned forward over the table with a daring smile. "How about to someone who's had you locked up in her basement for a day going on two?"

A beat later, the smile was returned with a wider replica. The following hour did not consist of splendid plans about how to put a swift end to the zombie apocalypse. Instead, sixteen and pregnant Quinn Fabray was regaled with the greatest and most select stories of the Doctor's adventures through space and time, and how, infrequently, he regenerated into a different body. She was amazed that he would ever want to know about her dull, teenage life when he had so much more to look back on as well as forward to. And yet, by the end of it all, he still breathed in very deeply and smiled brightly at her and said, "Maybe I could show you - after all this zombie business. What d'you say?"

She was stunned. "And leave my family and my boyfriend behind?" She shook her head. "It's...great to hear all those stories, but...I don't think I could actually live them out." When she saw his smile fade, her heart ached. "I like it here," she added on gently. "Once I get this baby out of me, everything will go back to the way it should be."

"And what's that?" the Doctor asked her. She lowered her head shyly.

"Where everybody stops looking at me like I'm some kind of warning sign," she finally said. "You said that I was smart, and pretty. You're not the only who's noticed that. Smart and pretty gets you far in this world, and far's what I'm aiming for."

"Oh, Quinn Fabray. You don't even know just how far you can go."

She looked up at him quickly, and she realised that he wasn't looking at her as though she was a warning sign. He seemed to see right into her, actually. Right down into the depths of her soul. It alarmed her.

"Weren't we supposed to be working out how to stop the zombie apocalypse?" she asked brusquely, sitting up straighter and smoothing down her skirt.

The sadness returned to his face. "I lied," he said. "I'm not going to help you, Quinn Fabray. There is nothing to help. Rule number one - the Doctor always lies."

Her heart dropped. "You can't do that," her voice rose. "You can't just sit there and get my hopes up and then lie to me like that."

"I'm a thousand-year-old Time Lord." He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. "I can do what I want."

He'd made a bad mistake. Quinn Fabray might have been small and young and messed-up and naïve, but one you got her angry, she was a furious fireball that could barrel you into the next galaxy and beyond. She flew to her feet and then right up to him, jabbing a fingertip into his chest.

"You listen to me!" she snapped. "I don't care how many friends you've lost helping other people, but you know what? If that's reason to give up on doing so much good, then you have no right to criticise humanity. We have soldiers abroad, fighting wars for us and losing their friends, but do they ever stop because it hurts? No! What about Jesus Christ? Huh? My Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ! He sacrificed himself for humanity, he died for us, and he would do it over and over again, no matter how many of his friends died! So don't you stand there and say oh, I'm a Time Lord, I can get away with anything - what even is a stupid Time Lord?"

The Doctor silently gaped at her, but from somewhere above, her mother's voice floated out. "Quinnie? Quinnie, is everything okay?"

"What do you think, Doctor?" Quinn gritted out. "Is everything okay?"

A shadow dropped over his face, and he bent down to her level. "You have no idea what happened to them," he hissed. "I had to watch them - all of them - as they all left or died, and it's all because of me."

She laughed in his face. "So is that what it all comes down to? You? How could you be so selfish? They didn't die for you. Not if what you told me is true. They died for something so much more than that. Don't you think that's pretty far?"

The sound of hastled footsteps came down the hall outside the kitchen. A moment later, the door flung open and Mrs. Fabray stood in its wake, gawking at the stranger standing opposite her daughter. Her hand began to grope for something blunt and heavy.

"Who are you?" she squeaked. "Quinnie, get away from him."

"It's okay, Mum," Quinn retorted without looking. "He's just a crazy man I've been keeping in our basement."

"Wha - "

The Doctor's face magically transformed yet again, turning into a bright, friendly shade of reassurance and joy. "Mrs. Fabray," he declared, and he swept across the kitchen floor to stop short of her and apply airy kisses to both of her cheeks, despite her stuttering and stammering. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a, um...friend of your daughter's. Lovely place you have here - sorry about your husband - I'm going to try and fix that, mind you." He looked over his shoulder at Quinn. "It only seems fair."

"Wha - what do you - " Mrs. Fabray looked between the two of them, mouth opening and closing. "Somebody please explain to me what is going on."

A slow smile crept across Quinn's face.

"Mum," she said, "the Doctor and I are going to stop the zombie apocalypse."