Hi there, This is my first story, I'm not saying this because I want you to overlook my flaws and be nice to me, merely to let you know that I have no idea what I'm doing. For a long-winded explanation of why I'm bothering with posting stories at all, check out my profile but the short of it goes something like this: I like fiction, it gives people a chance to create a world where their own ideas are brought to life, That world can be a branch from an existing fandom or something entirely unique and that is a beautiful thing.
I watch alot of TV, Play more than my fair share of Games and read a book from time to time which means that I have a lot of stuff in my head and sometimes my brain runs with an idea and it becomes a story, without an output the ideas bunch up and that just makes my head hurt so I figured why not give this a go, with that said though, I never said any of the ideas were any good. That is entirely up to you to judge for yourself.
Chapter 1
( In which a guy meets a girl )
"See, Now if you'd just told us where your camp is, we wouldn't have to be treatin' ya like this."
Fletcher Cross had always been a relatively patient man but if his captor decided to drag that knife across his skin one more time... He'd do nothing. There is very little a man can do when bound to a chair with multiple lengths of rope. As a pragmatist, Fletcher is aware that his current predicament is a bit of a tough one and that regardless of how strongly he wishes it to be otherwise, for the moment he is trapped.
"But if I were to tell you where my camp was, I'd be dead as would anybody you may or may not find there so considering the fact that I'm still kicking, I'm going to chalk this one up as a win" It hurt to smirk. Actually, at this point it hurt to do a lot of things but the glint of barely contained anger at being taunted in his captor's eyes made it worth it. Anger made people sloppy and Joe always was a pretty angry guy.
Joseph Cuttler had always been a despicable human being, the sort of guy you would lock yourself in a bomb shelter full of venomous spiders to avoid the displeasure of meeting. He always had some scheme running that would improve his own lot in life regardless of the detriment it could cause others. He was very charismatic and new the perfect way to gather the like-minded to back his current scheme at the time but he often felt he had to hold back to ensure that he wouldn't get caught doing anything that would be frowned upon by anybody who could do anything about it.
Now that the world had gone to hell and there was no longer a hierarchy Joe had discovered that holding back was no longer necessary and had therefore flourished to become the type of person that kidnaps people while they're out on a run getting formula for their neighbours newborn baby and then mercilessly tortured the aforementioned captive in an effort to discover the location of their camp so that he could go and garner more supplies and possibly (Though significantly less likely) gather more similarly psychopathic brethren to rally behind him on his path of greed and self preservation.
Fletcher was yanked from his thoughts to realize that he was being dragged toward the water trough in the corner of his current "Interrogation" room. This could be bad.
"I suppose you think you're funny huh" * dunk * "Hard to make jokes when you can't breathe isn't it" * dunk * "Ready to tell us what we want to know?"
" *cough**cough* No I'm good, I think I'll wait until I can breathe again. Like you said, It's hard to talk when you can't breathe"
It was the poor imitation of Joe's voice that actually broke then paper thin wall holding back his rage and Fletcher found himself on the floor being repeatedly kicked in any exposed area. This was the third night he'd been here and it always ended this way. It was almost tradition.
5 minutes into the usual 30 minute beating and things took an unpleasant turn as Joe's attention was pulled away by a scream from one of the other rooms in the small office building he and his goons were held up in.
"Ooooh.. That sounds like fun" Joe turned with a lecherous grin and stormed from the room ordering the goon, the one that Fletcher had affectionately began to refer to as 'Pork chop', who was stationed at the door to "Tie that worthless sack of dirt up again, I'll be back later to finish this"
That was the moment Fletcher realized that he was at a crossroad He could lie here and die and be done with everything or he could get up and fight his way out… It was a good thing he was comfortable.
As he lay there he mentally checked off his list of responsibilities and decided whether there was anything left for him outside of the room in which he currently lay.
1. The neighbours he was on a supply run for had probably moved on, Fletcher could hardly be angry though Considering he'd told them to leave if he didn't return within the day.
2. Mr Gibbs, He'd always taken pride in how well trained that dog had been. He'd been trained to hunt for himself so, assuming that Joe hadn't seen fit to chase him down and kill him for fun, Gibbs should be fine.
3...
Fletcher was a little bit discouraged to realize that he couldn't think of a third reason for bothering to get up. Three was a good number. All good things come in threes and such.
Fletcher's inner monologue was interrupted by the door opening to allow Joe's goon admittance. The door was only open long enough to let the gargantuan oaf inside but that was long enough for Fletcher to hear the voice from earlier.
"Please, Get away I just want my mom, please, I'll be good. Just let me go"
There was an edge to the voice, like the girl was on the verge of tears, This just caused her captors to laugh. They were enjoying this far too much.
Perhaps Fletcher's thoughts should have been more focused 6"4 slab of meat that had just entered the room but all he could think was 'It looks like I've found that all important third reason I was looking for ' and that thought alone left him feeling just a little bit giddy, so much so that he let out a bark of laughter. This confused 'Pork chop' who had just began to bend over to pick Fletcher up from the floor so that he could tie him to the chair again. In his confusion Pork chop paused midway into his crouch. This was the opening that Fletcher needed. So he took it.
A swift raise of his leg sent his boot directly into the side of Pork chop's jaw and sent him sprawling across the floor to land face down a few feet away in a slight daze, Fletcher took this chance to get himself upright and rolled up onto his knees and quickly stood up and realizing that his opponent was still down he struck, It was all over relatively quickly from the kick to the point he grabbed the oaf's head and twisted till he heard the tell-tale *snap* of the spinal chord breaking less than 10 seconds had passed.
Fletcher made quick work of searching the body and found two hunting knives and a pistol with half a clip, This he could work with. With that though in mind he made his way to the door.
The corridor outside was approximately 30 metres long and had 7 doors and flight of stairs connected to it finding the room with the girl wouldn't be hard, her screams could probably be heard from a block away in any direction, second door on the right. The door was ajar the opening was maybe an inch wide, just enough to look through. The girl was pinned to the floor underneath Joe who was straddling her stomach and holding her arms to her sides, His other two goons were also in the room one standing beside the doorway and the other standing across the room both laughing uproariously as their leader terrorized a child.
Fletcher adjusted his grip on the knife in his right hand and burst through the door immediately delivering a killing stab to the heart of the goon beside the doorway he then threw the blade across the room and into the neck of the other goon Joe was in the middle of jumping to his feet before he took a bullet in his left knee and fell to the side with a yell of pain. Fletcher quickly advanced on his prone form and delivered a quick strike to the side of his face to keep him from moving and then straddled him so that his arms were pinned to his sides and both of Fletcher's hands were still free Fletcher than began to rain blows to both sides of Joe's face to vent some of his rage before finally dragging the blade he still had tucked into his waistband across the man's neck.
As the red haze that clouded his vision began to dull and fade and his other senses began to return to him he heard a sound that he wasn't expecting a soft hitching cross between gasping and sobbing. He'd forgotten about the girl. He turned his head in her direction he got to his feet and began to approach hands out at his sides to show that he wasn't holding any weapons but this did nothing to ease her agitation and the sobbing only increased and she started muttering under breath something that sounded suspiciously lie "Please don't eat me". Great, she though he was some sort of monster that was just what he needed. Surely he didn't look that bad. He looked around for a reflective surface he could look into and found none, so he grabbed the blood coated knife from the floor beside Joe and wiped it off on the dead man's trouser leg and used that. He did look pretty terrifying, the cuts that Joe had made on his face had reopened during his escape and there was blood flowing down one side of his face and the incisions at the corners of his lips had split and it looked like he had blood flowing from his mouth and dribbling down his chin. His skin was pale and he had dark rings around his eyes from 3 days without sleep. Upon thinking about it, the kid could be right. Looking around the room he saw a pile of black cloth on the desk in the far corner, upon closer inspection they turned out to be two balaclavas, the goons must have taken them off and put them there after they abducted the girl. One mask had the outline of a skull across the front the other had a bright yellow smiley face he decide to wear the latter and put the former into his back pocket in case he needed it later.
In the time it had taken to find and don the mask the girl's sobbing had quieted and she was seemingly becoming more aware of her surroundings she looked around and saw that her tormentors were dead and that the man who had killed them was standing across the room in a bloodstained shirt and wearing a ridiculous smiley face mask. She giggled, there was a hysterical edge to it, a heady mixture of relief and residual fear at how surreal her current situation was. Fletcher decided to sit and wait it out so he lowered himself to the floor against the wall, one leg stretched out and the other leg bent at the knee with his left arm resting across the top and waited.
A few minutes passed with Fletcher sitting silently, head tilted to the side, watching in amusement as the girl seemed to get control of herself and the giggling tapered off and she began to gather her thoughts before she spoke.
"Thank you"
Fletcher just nodded. He was surprised, after all she had been through she still had the manners to thank him. She must have decent parents. As if she was on the same thought path as him her eyes widened and she suddenly jumped up and went to the door, Fletcher quickly jumped up to follow.
Out in the hallway Fletcher watched the girl check the door opposite, the room was empty she then proceeded to check every other room becoming increasingly panicked after each consecutive room didn't contain what she was looking for by the time she reached the final room, the room that Fletcher had begun his escape in, she was once again nearly hysterical, she opened the final door and dropped to the floor in tears, another room and still no parents to be found.
"Oh god what happened to them, look at all this blood what if they're hurt, oh god, oh god, oh god .."
"It's not theirs."
Shocked at having her mini-meltdown interrupted she stopped mumbling and looked up to meet Fletcher's eyes and asked "How do you know?
"'cause it's mine. Want to look downstairs?" with that said, Fletcher turned around and made his way slowly toward the stairs turning his head every few steps to make sure he was being followed.
That sentence alone effectively took the wind out of her sails and she stood up and began to slowly follow.
At the base of the stairs there was an exit on the left that led to the nearly empty lot outside and a door adjacent to the stairs emblazoned with the words Storage in block capitals. That looked promising.
"Hey kid wait here a sec' Okay?" with that said Fletcher approached the storage room intent to see what was inside. On his approach he heard a low bass line growling sound that rose in pitch as he got closer to the door but the room was too dark to see anything through the small window in the door which meant his only option was to open it. So he did.
3 things happened very quickly the first thing was Fletcher getting knocked to the ground as something large and grey barrelled into his chest, The second was that the kid (Fletcher should really ask her name when he next got the chance) let out a surprised yelp and the third was that Fletcher started laughing.
"Gibbs, Dude!, get off, You're dribbling all over me and it's gross"
The large dog that had just knocked him over immediately dropped to the ground which left him led with the front half of his body pinning Fletcher to the ground he then tilted his head and curiously stared at the girl who was sitting and watching them from her place at the foot of the stairs.
"Kid, this is Mr Gibbs. Wanna come say Hi?"
The girl cautiously stood up and made her way over and slowly crouched down to pat the dog on the top of his head this was all the invitation the dog had needed and he shuffled forward to rest his head on the girls knees and looked up at her through hooded eyes. Fletcher took the opportunity to roll away from the dog and head into the storage room calling over his shoulder as he went
"Introduce yourself kid, He's a good dog"
"Uh.. Hi Mr Gibbs, My name is Jenny Collins, I'm 12"
Jenny. Fletcher made a note of that as he fastened the various buckles on his kit that they'd taken off of him when he arrived here he then holstered his own pistols in the shoulder holsters and sheathed both his short swords into his scabbard that rested against his legs he then grabbed the ballistic vest that lay on the bench next to the other items and quickly put it on and finally he grabbed what looked like a grubby coverlet that was covered in an assortment of stains ranging from dark red to green, Most were black though, and expertly threw it over himself as a makeshift cloak. He then loaded up a gym bag with the other weapons and supplies he could see and pulled it onto his shoulder before leaving the room. In the hallway the animated chatting from Jenny to Gibbs stopped and he was met by equally curious stares from both of them. Great, they were making friends.
"I'm Fletcher by the way. Shall we carry on looking?"
It took Jenny a moment to realize what he was talking about and that made her feel a little bit guilty so she just replied with an affirmative nod and quickly got up and started shuffling down the hallway, Gibbs following her, leaving Fletcher standing there for a moment wondering about her sudden change in mood before he decided to follow.
A short while later they arrived at the final door and they still hadn't found anything and Jenny wasn't feeling particularly hopeful and judging by the fact that Gibbs was pacing in front of the door and occasionally releasing a low rumbling growl Fletcher had a feeling that the girl's day wasn't about to improve. In fact he was pretty sure it was about to get a lot worse.
As Jenny approached the door Fletcher placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her and turned her to face him.
"There's a shambler in that room" he was sure of it.
This shocked Jenny, How can he tell? She didn't realize she'd spoken until Fletcher replied.
"Gibbs knows, I think he can smell it."
Jenny realized that this short conversation was Fletcher's way of saying that he would be going into the room alone. And considering she had only met a handful of those things and was absolutely terrified, she didn't particularly want to go inside anyway so she acquiesced.
The room was dark and the smell of rot was overpowering and there on the far side of the room was a shambler knelt beside a corpse happily munching away, the zombie was a woman, she was pretty, or would have been if she weren't dead. She had blonde hair and defined cheekbones; Fletcher's first thought was 'she looks a bit like Jenny... Oh... damn. '
"Jenny?.."
a muffled reply came from outside the door "Yeah?"
"What were your parents's wearing last time you saw them?"
"My mom was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants and Jackson was wearing some jeans and a sleeveless blue shirt."
Fletcher turned back to the other occupant of the room. 'Let's see.. White t-shirt. Check. Yoga pants. Missing' It was then that he realized that the woman wasn't wearing anything from the waist down and that the t-shirt was ripped from the neckline down to the bottom hem in a way that made him want to walk back upstairs and kick Joe's corpse a couple hundred more times. 'Okay dead guy, Pretty sure that shirt is blue and those are definitely jeans'
"
Okay Jenny, I need you to stay out there okay? You don't come inside until I say okay?"
"Okay"
'Okay. Need to make this clean' Slowly approaching the woman from behind he reached around her he grabbed her bottom jaw and pulled her head away and pressed a knife into the back of her skull to sever the spinal cord. 'Efficient, No mess. I still need to do something about her face though.' With that thought in mind he set about cleaning the blood and gore from around her mouth using the corner of his cloak grabbing a bottle of water from the supply bag and set about washing the red smudges that remained after the actual blood had been removed. Once that was done he set about redressing her in the clothes that were thrown in the corner luckily there was a jacket in the pile it was a way too big to be either of the dead people's so it must have belonged to one of Joe's guys. Once she was redressed he closed her milky eyes and said a short prayer. There wasn't much he could do about Jackson though, Most of him was missing and what wasn't missing covered in enough blood and gore to make it nearly impossible to clean away. 'Guess I'll just have to cover him up then.' Fletcher quickly sliced the man's spinal cord before he pulled his cloak from around his shoulders and threw it over the body leaving just the head uncovered as it was mostly undamaged.
Fletcher walked to the door to find Gibbs sat across the hall, Jenny sitting beside him with her head nestled in his fur. As she heard him approach she looked up to him.
"My mom's in there, Isn't she?"
At the look of complete despair on the little girls face all Fletcher could do was nod.
"Can I see her?"
Once again, Fletcher nodded then turned to go back into the room Jenny following behind him.
A few minutes later Fletcher realized that he was woefully unprepared to deal with a crying child somehow he knew that no amount of patting her on the back and repetition of placating words would help so he left her to her grief and sat by the doorway. Gibbs however had no such qualms about tears and decided that he would try to help the crying girl and had shuffled over to her and was sitting beside her just in case she decided she needed a hug.
It took 10 minutes for the wailing to die down to sobs and a further 20 minutes for the sobs to die down to sniffles it was at this point Fletcher decided to speak.
"We need to leave."
Jenny looked down to the body of her mother and simply nodded.
"Do you want to bury her?"
Shocked, Jenny looked up to the raggedy man in the smiley face mask
"Do we have time?"
"We can make time."
And so it was settled and they got to work Jenny took Gibbs back to the storage closet to look for something to use to dig while Fletcher scooped up the mother's corpse and started towards the exit. As he passed the storage room he asked whether they were burying Jackson as well. The response he got was unexpected.
"No, It's his fault mom's dead. It's his fault that he's dead. It's his fault we were even here in the first place."
It was said with such conviction that Fletcher believed her but he still wondered how, so he asked.
"Him and the guys upstairs were friends, JC told him that this was a safe haven and that we'd live longer if we came to stay with him, Mom didn't want to, neither did I but he was the 'Man of the house' which meant that he knew best" Fletcher pretended not to hear the string of insults that followed but secretly, they made him smile. Only a twelve year old could call a man a stupid-idiot-poophead and mean it to be the worst insult imaginable to mankind. Still, The lady said no so he asked her to find something to wrap her mother in and continued outside. In the centre of the courtyard there was a large concrete planter with a large oak tree in the centre. The courtyard was enclosed by a large wall so Fletcher placed the body under the tree and headed back inside to help search for digging tools.
Less than 4 metres inside the doorway Fletcher knew something was wrong alongside the cluttering of crates being moved in the storage room there was another underlying sound of groaning and the tell-tale squelching of a body being eaten and it was coming from upstairs. Fletcher broke from his path to the storage closet and crept up the stairs and began looking through the rooms to find the source, all the rooms were empty until he reached the room where he had saved Jenny and there in the middle of the room munching on Joe's lower legs was Pork chop 'He must have been scratched or bitten before I killed him. It's a good thing these kills were bloody or he could've ended up downstairs with Jenny while I was outside' The lumbering brute had already eaten both legs of the goon who was just inside the doorway and the goon across the room was pretty much just bones at this point but Pork chop seemed pretty occupied so Fletcher crept into the room and severed the spinal chord of doorway goon, just below the skull and crept closer to Pork chop's back as he began to close the final meter Pork chop spun around and lunged, they both fell to the ground in a tangled heap with a loud thud. Above the sound of snapping teeth and groaning Fletcher absently realized that the clattering from downstairs had stopped. That was bad, if Jenny came upstairs and saw this she'd probably be worried and start crying then when he killed this gigantic oaf, again, He'd either have to comfort her or wait for her to calm down. The former he would be terrible at and the latter he didn't really have time for. So a quick fight was pretty much mandatory at this point. The fight was made a little bit easier by the fact that the lumbering brute couldn't hold his head upright 'Must have just broken his neck and left the spinal cord connected. Note to self: breaking necks doesn't stop the dead person coming back.' a swift punch to the jaw nearly dislodged the big guy's head and sent him tumbling to the side, Fletcher rolled with him and quickly jabbed a dagger into his forehead twice. Then he was up on his feet and rushing toward the door.
He'd just managed to pull the door shut behind him as Jenny mounted the final step of the staircase leaving them face to face, Fletcher panting and Jenny looking worried and confused.
"What happened in there?"
"What? Nothing.. I tripped on my shoelace.. I'm fine.. Please don't start crying."
'Smooth Fletcher. She suspects nothing'
Jenny just stared and pointedly looked at the shirt Fletcher was wearing that was now covered in a thin layer of blood spray before giving up and stating that she'd found a spade, two trowels and had managed to find a sheet as well so they both set off down the stairs and into the courtyard.
It took Fletcher an hour and a half to dig a hole that he felt was deep enough to protect the woman's corpse from weather and other shamblers and a further 45 minutes to manoeuvre the tightly wrapped body into the grave in a way that looked dignified and to refill the grave and he left Jenny to rearrange the flowers in the planter any way the saw fit while he went inside to grab his cloak and look for a grave marker. After donning his cloak he proceeded to the other end of the building, in the lobby there was a three foot tall statue of an angel with its head tilted back so that it was looking up and there was a small hole where the angel's lips were, it's feet rested in a basin of water and there was a cable coming from the back that connected it to the buildings power 'Probably a water feature or something to liven up the waiting area.' he quickly set about cutting the cable away from the statue and hefted it across his shoulder and made his way back to the courtyard. He found Jenny rearranging some yellow flowers of some sort and waited for her to finish her current batch before coughing to get her attention. She turned to see what he had brought back and noticed the angel on his shoulder and nodded with a smile. 'It was perfect' so Fletcher set about placing it at the head of the grave then sat down to watch Jenny finish organising the flowers, Gibbs lying next to him in the last light as the sun began to drop over the horizon.
"This has been a pretty crazy day, huh, boy?"
The dog looked to him let out a slow breath and dropped his head back to his paws. This made Fletcher smile as he continued his one sided conversation.
"Yeah, you're right dude, But it's over now"
With that said he decided he would lay back and rest until Jenny finished what she was doing, He needed a little rest anyway.
"Hoo-ee Darlena, looks like we found a gold mine in here. Look at all these supplies"
"Dammit Merle, I told ya not to call me that, now help me look around and see what we got here"
'On second thought, maybe my nap can wait a little while longer.'
