The first time was a joke.
The second time, this time, no one's laughing now.
Hell, we've all forgotten how.
"Fuck!" There's a sodden thump to my left and I turn to look. A half-buried can sticks out from the snowmelt mud-too valuable to be there, sinking. Kenny, the offender, stoops to pick it back up at the signal of my look. Brown streaks his orange parka as he shines the tin with the old cloth. "Sorry, man-I wasn't even thinking."
In case you're wondering, it's just a can of green beans. Yeah, green beans. But, when supplies are low, a can of green beans is a meal more between you and starvation. And, besides, we had to fucking fight for that as it was. Our stores are nearly empty with everything except dust and cigarettes.
I shrug. Turn back to the fence. Regard the fingers poking through the chain-link and the clink-clink-clink of teeth gnawing on the thin, woven wire. "Whatever, dude," I say back, absent-mindedly adjusting the heavy belt around my waist. "Just don't fucking lose it. That's one of our suppers tonight. . ."
He looks at me like he's waiting for me to say something else. When I don't, he tosses the tin back in his pack with a shrug of his own. "Right, sorry." He adjusts his belt too, and the bag on his back rustles, half-empty, between his shoulder blades.
The fence lurches. A quick glance is all it gets before we head on down the dirt path, our heavy boots scuffing it a little deeper with each step.
Familiar faces are the hardest.
To see. To remember. To shoot.
We learned, out of necessity, not to care anymore.
It's not that hard, not if you don't remember them while you're pumping them heavy with iron. If you don't know who they are, you don't care. If you ignore who they are, the pain will sink in later, when you're feeling safer that another one is down. And then the guilt, because you just stuck your little sister in the forehead with a razor-sharpened knife, watched as her scalp split between her pigtails-ones you helped her put in Before-and her die again, one last time.
They're the Grey, the Reanimated, the Bewitched, the Soulless, the horde of mother-fucking Zombies trying to get you from the other side of the flimsy protection of fence-wire. . .
But you try telling yourself that when you see your mom there, shambling with the rest of the town, fingers broken, mouth preoccupied with moaning whenever she's not found an unlucky soul to tear into (and apart). You try remembering the good times Before, when he was your best friend and didn't want you for the meat on your bones, but for you to just sit there and half-ass listen as he bitched about his girlfriend's drama. You try to keep that gun steady as you're hooking back that trigger.
Go on. Or die trying.
You're probably wondering how it all happened, huh. How the entire town of South Park turned into a mass of undead. Well, join the rest of the fucking world, 'cause we-the thirty or so of us uninfected-don't know either.
Except one thing: it came from the west.
Randy Marsh thinks it came in our burgers, mad-cow disease that just broke down the human mind until they turned into the blood-hungry monsters that hunt us. Cartman thinks it came on the wind, some government thing gone way too wrong-it was supposed to be a closed test, but one or all of the subjects, those infected fuckers, got out, spread what they had to other people and caused everyone to get sick and die. Tweek thinks it came in our water; Wendy thinks it was a mutation sparked by all the chemicals used in our pre-packaged food; Mr. Stotch thinks we're just cursed.
Whatever it was, it turned our friends and family into the creatures on the other side of the fences. It made them want to eat us, to kill us. . .to infect us too.
We circle the fence six times.
One. Two. Skip a few.
Ignore the faces grinning as you go.
We only had to stop once, to mend a snapped wire whole again. Can't risk a weak spot, even one so small, not in these times. It fixed real quick though and we went back to town with all our limbs-
-and our humanity.
Orange stars led the way like the street lamps lined the path to home Before.
We all camp out around Town Hall.
Where fires burn continually.
Welcome Home signals if we make it back. . .
. . .alive.
Smoke burns my nostrils as Kenny and I cut through town to get to the Hall-the scents of decay always linger, but just above that is the stench of boiling laundry and metal, intermingled with the constant smoke. It keeps away the bugs; it lures the nastier things to strain even more against the barrier. We need heat, though. And purified water. And a way to heat up our cans of vegetables or soup. So the flames are always burning, always tended by the careful hands of Mrs. Marsh and Mrs. Tweak. Night and day, noon to noon.
A few faces smile at our return-Kevin grins at his brother and Stan and Kyle look up from their meager meals to wave him over. I get ditched. My dismissal is my food passed into my waiting hand and a simple "See ya, Craig." I don't mind. I have other people I'd rather sit with.
I get less smiles than Kenny, if you'd like to know. Just a couple, one from Mrs. Marsh (who smiles with relief every time one of us comes home, so that probably shouldn't count) and one from Tweek (who smiles with the same relief-well, almost).
The latter moves to greet me.
He stands up, nervously dusting off his jeans and touching each of his pockets to make sure he hasn't lost or dropped anything, and walks over to me. "H-h-hey." It's all that's said between us before he throws his arms around me and pulls me in close.
South Park gives us a few stares-'what about repopulating the world?' stares that neither me or Tweek can ignore. We pull back just quick enough to make the hug seem normal and chaste, though I deliberately graze my fingers across the knuckles of his leather-bond hands as we draw apart. I see his espresso eyes brighten and know he'll relish in that extra touch all night-up until my next rounds, six hours from now, when he'll fret about my well-being as long as I'm out of sight. No one else seems to notice.
He leads me back to his set-up-a small tent pitched up near a smaller ring of fire, one he chooses to care for himself. It's extra work, finding fuel to burn and being close enough to feed the flame when it wilts in hunger, but he manages. Probably from the help his mother offers him when he's gone, gathering up supplies for the rest of the survivors. I've seen her rake away the ashes and add new chair legs, still glossy with youth, into the dying hearth to maintain her son's fire, to keep it burning.
She told me once she thinks it helps him cope with what was happening beyond the fence. That that orange glow, and the heat and smokey-stench, helped him ignore the hungry moans of the Grey shuffling around our broken city.
"It's his hope," she whispered to me, a tarnished shutter dropping from her fingers on to the dimming embers, weeks ago. "As long as his fire goes, he'll go." Since then, I've helped keep it lit too-every now and then, when no one is paying attention, I'll chuck a few fistfuls of twigs and sticks I picked up during my rounds around the fence.
Seeing it comforts me; sitting next to it warms the death-chill in my skin and bones. Tweek sinks down beside me, close but not too close and forces himself to watch his hope burning at his boots. We really watch each other, in the corners of our eyes. That's why when he smiles, a twitch up of his chapped lips, I copy the action almost immediately.
"U-um. . .How-h-how was it? T-today, I-I mean. Any-"
I shake my head, the question murdered before it has a chance to be completed. "No. Not any better at all."
His smile wilts and he looks sick, sick that he even brought it up again. But, I know he'll repeat the question every day when I come back-and every day I'll cut him off before he can whisper it out into the air and ignite it with that unlikely possibility.
I want to reach out to touch his hand, to offer him some forbidden comfort-but I can't. We're being watched, in fleeting glances, by the rest of the town. Only Mrs. Tweak's and Kenny's and Kyle's stares are soft with understanding. The other pairs of eyes are hard. We have a duty, they scream, Don't forget what we have to rebuild.
I shove my hand in my pocket. Face the fire. Face the heat. I can't look at him and he can't look at me.
And it kills us both.
End, Chapter one.
I've had this idea for a while, this world of struggle and survival in the South Park universe and finally decided to pluck it from my brain and smear it down for you to view. In perfect time for Halloween, no?
I'm debating whether or not I should post this. . .yet. I don't have much too it and, like my Kenny fic and my Dip fic that are underwraps, I probably should wait to finish it to post it. . .
Well, fuck that. I want to see what everyone thinks.
Just don't expect updates left and right. I have another chapter ready and will have the third one completed soon. So, be patient. Be patient.
And, lastly, I hope you enjoyed this. It seems to be getting good reviews from my close friends HeBes and MotCn. Maybe it'll be enough to snag your good reviews too?
Till next time.
-Ele.
P.S. - oh, yes. You caught that didn't you? That Forest of Hands and Teeth influence. Good job. I'm both proud and totally in love with you.