Dead Island Tango

by Zombie Boy

What happens when you have a character lying around that like but really don't use very much and your friend plays Dead Island? This, of course.

1. Chapter 1

The

Dead Island

Tango

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Chapter One

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Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead?

Living Dead Girl, Rob Zombie.

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Peach closed the door to her hotel room and dropped her purse and carry on bag in a chair as she walked into her hotel room. Sitting down on the bed, she flopped backwards and let out a contented sigh.

"Finally." she thought as she closed her eyes. "After eight gorramed years, I'm finally on vacation. After the voodoo mess, getting my phd while working two jobs, I'm getting a break."

Peach's mouth quirked up into a smile when her thought's strayed onto the "voodoo incident", as she privately termed it. Specifically, it was the irony that if hadn't been for the "voodoo incident", there's no way that she would have been able to get her phd while simultaneously working two full time jobs- at least not while still being able to maintain a pulse.

Which was the one thing she lacked after the voodoo incident. To make a long story short, her sister had used voodoo magic to try and kill her and their parents in a bid to get their inheritance. Unfortunately, her sister had fucked up the spell in a most spectacular fashion and turned her into, well, something.

What that was, she had no idea. Neither did any of several witch doctors, voodoo priests, and other assorted experts she had consulted. The only thing they could tell her was that she was a zombie-ish entity.

The things she did know about her condition were few but definite: she was an undead: No pulse, body temperature, etc. She craved brains like a traditional zombie, but the magic that animated her healed her along with keeping the abilities that she'd had in life – intelligence, personality, coordination, etc.

She also never tired, didn't need to sleep, was unaffected by the weather, all the pluses of being a zombie. Those attributes came in handy when she was in college and afterward when she was saving for this vacation.

Now it was time for her kick back and relax, get some sun, and enjoy the three weeks that she was going to spending away from the bar and the store where she worked at.

The sudden chiming of the hotel's public address system jolted Peach from her reverie and she opened her eyes.

"Attention hotel guests-" a woman started to say in a New Zealand accent, but whatever she was saying was downed out by the pounding of footsteps and screaming outside her door.

Peach sat up, a scowl on her face. There was a raspy, feral, element to some of the screams that she didn't like. Getting to her feet, she walked to her hotel room door and listened. There was the same raspy feral screaming, along with the sound of fists pounding on breaking wood, then more screaming followed by the tearing of flesh and the spray of blood.

"Gorramit..." Peach muttered. She knew what those sounds meant. "First time I go on vacation in over a decade and what happens? A gorramed zombie outbreak."

Rubbing her eyes, she stepped away from the door and grabbed her carry on bag. While she was under no threat from the undead beginning to spawn throughout the hotel, there was going to be a lot of panicking people running around, and all it would take was for someone to do something stupid like throw a Molotov cocktail and then she'd be trapped in a burning high rise hotel.

That didn't mean she was in hurry though. At that moment, from the sounds coming through the door, it sounded like the hallways were full of panicking humans and zombies. Her best choice was to just stay put and assemble everything she'd need to get through her current situation while she waited for the humans to either get turned or hole up somewhere.

That wasn't much. A couple of changes of underwear, spare bra, swimsuit, (hey, you never know) two shirts, pair of pants, laptop and power cord, hairbrush, plus all of the amenities in the bathroom went into her carry on bag, plus her identification, passport, and cards.

"Okay." Peach told herself as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "Lets go."

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Death. The stench of washed over her in waves when Peach opened her hotel room door. It was mixed with the coppery scent of fresh blood and the rancid stink of raw fear. The hallway was dark, the only light coming from emergency lighting and the windows at the end of the hall. Some where on her floor she heard the muffled scream of a woman cut off in mid note.

"Okay." Peach said as she looked up and down the hall. "Where the hell are the stairs?"

Grumbling under her breath in irritation, Peach adjusted her bag's shoulder strap and headed for the end. As she walked past the room two doors down, she heard the crunch of cartilage and stopped. There, framed in the splintered remains of the door way was a woman in a bikini crouched over the body of a man, eating his face. Farther into the room she saw a woman's arm lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

"God, I hope it was quick for you." Peach said to the deceased in a low voice.

Moving on, she reached an intersection where another hallway crossed the one she was in. Stopping, she took a quick look around and saw a pictograph style sign depicting stairs with an arrow.

"Oh, thank goodness." Peach said as she turned in the indicated direction, and stubbed her toe on something.

Peach very slowly looked down and saw that her foot had contacted a child's backpack, with a teddy bear lying nearby, both spattered.

"Oh God..." Peach said quietly as she gently removed her foot from contact with the bag.

She might be a zombie like entity with a craving for brains, but she still had her humanity.

"I've got to get out of here." Peach muttered and hurried away from the bag.

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The rest of her journey outside of the hotel was alternated between quiet horror, sympathy for the dead, and irritation at the architect for how he laid out the hotel. Outside, the sun was shining, there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and four zombies were chowing down on a pizza delivery man by his vehicle.

"Well, isn't this lovely." Peach commented as she took in the scenery. "Now, to get some wheels."

"Raaaaahhhhh..." said a zombie that was shuffling in a aimless circle nearby.

"Really?" Peach asked it.

"Raahh..." the zombie answered.

"That way, you said?" she asked, pointing eastwards, down the driveway of the hotel.

"Raah!"

"Thank you, sir." Peach thanked the zombie.

"Raa-aah..."

Readjusting her bag, Peach set off down the driveway.

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Peach reached her destination an hour later, un- winded and in pretty much the same condition that she left in, thanks to her unique condition. Her destination, however, was much more relevant to the story: Peach was standing outside Bub's Pizzeria, where there was a Vespa delivery scooter and two corpses chewed down to bones and sinews in the parking lot.

Walking over to the scooter, Peach saw that the keys weren't in the ignition, which really didn't surprise her all that much. Who leaves the keys in the ignition?

Walking around the scooter, Peach saw that the scooter had a reflective sticker of the number four pasted to the front.

"That should make things convenient." she murmured to herself, then turned and headed into the pizzeria.

Inside the restaurant, she found a badly chewed delivery boy just inside the entrance way lying on his side, a set of keys in his hand. Crouching down, she tugged them free and took a look at them.

"Okay-" she looked at the delivery boy's name tag "-Shaun, thanks for the scooter." she added, looking at the "4" written on the key fob in marker.

She almost headed out to the scooter right then, but stopped and went back deeper into the restaurant. Skipping the register, she headed straight for the kitchen. She came out ten minutes later with a plastic bag containing a kitchen knife with a scabbard made out of card board and tape, the roll of tape she used to make the scabbard, dish soap, napkins, matches, and other assorted items.

Walking out to the scooter, she dumped the bags into the bags and slapped the helmet that was stored inside on her head, started the scooter and headed out.

"Okay... I remember that there are some old WW2 bunkers around here somewhere..." she thought as she puttered along.

Ahead of her, she saw a small crowd of shuffling zombies and slowed her speed. As she approached the crowd they turned and started to approach her, then they got a whiff of her scent and began to turn away. And that's when Peach got an idea.

"Excuse me..." she asked the nearest zombie, a woman in a tiger stripe bikini with a divot bitten out of her neck. "I'm looking for those old WW2 Japanese bunkers that are supposed to be around here. You wouldn't happen to know where they are?"

The zombie turned to face her and shook her head. "Raah." she moaned, her head swinging oddly from the severed muscles and tendons in the left side of her neck.

"Oh." Peach said. "Well, thank you anyways."

"Raah."

At this point another zombie dressed in normal street clothes joined the conversation. "Raa-aaah." he said, pointing at a road that looped it's way up along a hillside. "Raaaaaahhhrahh raaah..."

"Oh, okay..." Peach said as the sound of a roaring diesel motor faded up over te sound of her idling scooter. "What the hell?" she asked.

Peach got her answer a moment later when a bus erupted over the top of a hill, going full bore and careening wildly before reaching the first turn on the way down and bursting through the guard rail like a giant diesel coach version of a xenomorph from Aliens. It shot over the edge and tumbled down the steep, almost cliff like side of the hill before coming to a stop at the bottom, resting on it's side and neatly blocking the road.

"Well, shit." Peach said. "Is there another away around?" she asked as she watched the closest zombie shuffle towards the over turned bus.

"Raaah, raah raah rah raaaah..." the local zombie said, gesturing as it described the way. "Raaaaah rah raaaaah."

"Oh, okay." Peach said as she memorized the directions.

At that point a small car came tearing around the bend way too fast, the driver obviously in a panic. They saw the bus and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. The car plowed into the curious zombie before smashing into the fuel tank on the bus and exploding into a fire ball.

Peach grimaced at the impact and watched the now burning vehicles for a moment "Well..." she said to the local zombie "At least it was quick."

"Raaaah."

Blipping the throttle on her scooter, Peach threaded her way through the zombies and began to take the long way to the bunkers.

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Peach paused when she got to the top of a hill that over looked the ocean, taking in the majestic view of the coast that it offered and took a picture with the camera that she had stuffed into the hip pocket of her shorts. Then she considered the line gray black clouds that were on the horizon, riding the wind in towards the island.

She remembered from last time she had checked the weather forecast for Banoi Island that it was forecast to be hit by a monsoon shortly after she was supposed to arrive, but the rest of her time there looked to be sunny and cloud free. Still, it was a reminder that she needed to find secure shelter, and fast.

Revving her scooter, she pulled out and followed the road inland.

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Peach found the bunker the zombie had told her about two and a half hours later. It's entrance was just off of a jungle path, hidden by the over growth and unlocked. Turning on a flashlight that she taken from a wrecked para rescue truck, Peach swept the beam over the interior of the bunker and found it to be in one piece and surprisingly good condition.

"Okay." Peach said to herself as she began to explore the rest of the bunker "I think that this place might actually work. Gonna need to do something about the décor. Bare concrete is soooo last year."

Peach's exploration revealed that the rest of looked like the entrance, which was clear of debris, no plants or animals, and it looked like there were no water leaks or anything like that. Dropping her bag in a side room, she headed back out the front.

And ran right into two members of the local criminal element looking over her scooter.

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Peach stood there for a moment, watching them as they looked over her scooter.

"Who the 'ell parks a scooter in the middle of the bloody jungle?" one of them asked his friend.

"I do." Peach said, answering reflexively.

"KILL HER!" the first one's companion roared, and they both opened fire.

It took seconds for both men to run their guns empty as they shot at her, but their accuracy was terrible- out of the twenty six rounds from the two Berettas the men were carrying, only four hit their target, and in places that would not be immediately fatal to a human, and that would be down right non fatal to a zombie.

"Hey." Peach said as she looked down at herself. "I liked this shirt!"

"What the fuck?" the second man said as they began to back up. "Why isn't she dead?"

"Because I'm already dead, dumbass." Peach answered him as she began to stalk towards them.

"Oh shit, they talk now!" the first man said "RUN!"

At that, both men turned and ran. It didn't do them a lot of good though. One of them, the second man, went three paces and caught his foot on a root and twisted his ankle. His friend kept on going, making it almost thirty yards skidding to a stop and reversing course, trying to get away from the group if blood spattered humans running towards him, making the raspy, feral, screaming that Peach had heard earlier.

Peach looked down at the man who was desperately trying to crawl away from her while fumbling around in his pockets for something, probably a spare magazine for his pistol.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God..." the man kept repeating as Peach advanced on him.

"I honestly don't think he likes you all that much." Peach told him as she came up to him.

The man found what he was looking for, pulling a magazine from his pocket. Ejecting the spent mag from his pistol, he tried to insert it into the mag well but his hands were shaking so badly that he fumbled the insertion and the magazine slipped from his fingers.

"See?" Peach told the now hysterically sobbing man as he scrabbled around, trying to find it again. "Now don't worry, this wont take long."

The man screamed as Peach lunged for him, and kept on screaming as he wrestled with Peach, trying to throw her off him. He called out for his friend, who was likewise in his own struggle for survival. Bit Peach had the upper hand, being on top of him and having untiring undead stamina and strength, and soon his screams cut out as her teeth crunched through his skull into his brain.

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When she was done, Peach kicked herself. She had a bottle of hot sauce in her bag and she had forgot to bring it with her. But it was too late now, she'd already finished. Standing up, she looked down at her gun shot wounds and saw that they were already beginning to close, the bullets being pushed back out as the magic that animated her repaired the damage.

"Well, that's the end of this shirt." Peach muttered as she took in the bullet holes and blood soaked into the front. "Oh well."

Going through the man's pockets, she found a wallet with some cash, some loose rounds of 9mm, a candy bar wrapper, and some lint. She took the ammo along with the gun and magazines, leaving everything else.

Walking down to where that group of running undead were feasting on her meal's companion, she crouched down and tapped an undead on the shoulder.

"Excuse me." she said to it.

The undead made a squealing noise and moved aside for her, and Peach looted the other man's pockets, taking his spare magazines along with a pocket knife and his pistol. Standing up, she headed back to the bunker to clean up, deciding to take the guns with her to use as trade bait in case she ran into some friendly survivors.

"Though I wonder what's with all the running undead?" Peach thought as she walked along. "Never seen anything like that before..I had better ask one of them what's going on."

Twenty minutes later she had gotten herself cleaned up and was walking out to her scooter. Getting on it, she fired it up and pondered what to get next. Tapping her finger on the handle bar for a few moments, she glanced at the gas gauge and saw that it was on three quarters of a tank. That cemented it for her. She'd go for fuel next- and oil, as well, since her scooter was a two stroke.

Revving the throttle, she pulled away and headed back down to the beach.

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There was a station that Peach remembered passing by on her way to the pizzeria, so she headed there. Gas shouldn't (Theoretically) be a problem there, not with the speed that the out break was progressing. What she was worried that since it was near the beach, that it's inventory would be geared more towards tourists in rentals and not the locals.

When she pulled up to the station, there was about five or six cars parked in the lot, and three regular zombies chowing down on the corpse of one really unlucky attendant. Pulling up to one of the pumps, she killed the motor and put the kickstand down, then got off to go looking for a gas can (and a bottle of two stroke oil).

The front doors had been barricaded, but something had smashed through them and the occupants were dead, by about a couple of hours judging by the smell. Stepping over the bodies, Peach searched the store and came up empty for two stroke oil. However, she did score a map of Banoi island, along with some energy drinks, jerky, and power bars.

It was when she was putting the items she'd found inside the scooters box that she realized that the station had a repair bay in an outbuilding. Mentally kicking herself, she headed over to it and inside found what she was looking for, a whole case of two stroke oil along with a couple of gas cans.

She also found a positive sign- dead zombies. They'd been bludgeoned to death it looked like, and a couple outside had been run over repeatedly with a vehicle. Walking back out to the pumps, she filled the gas cans and tied them down in the cargo box of the scooter, then she went over to where the zombies were feeding.

"Excuse me, did you see some humans come through here?" she asked one of them.

"Raaaaahhh..." the zombie answered.

"You did? Where they in a vehicle?" she asked.

"Raaah." answered the zombie. "Raaah rah Raaaaaaaaah."

"Oh. So it was only the one person. Did you see where he went?"

"Raaaaaaah." the zombie answered.

"Okay, thank you!" Peach thanked the zombie before going back to her scooter.

Starting the scooter, Peach looked at the position of the sun in the sky. Mulling it over, she decided that she had enough time for one more run.

"Better get some lights..." she said to herself. "Don't know how long the power is gonna stay on..."

Flipping the kickstand up, she gave the scooter some gas and pulled out of the gas station.

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Peach dropped the fuel off at the bunker, and then headed back to the hotel with the aim of scrounging some flashlights and other assorted items. As she rode down the drive she noticed that there were a few more cars in it than before, and more zombie corpses.

"Well, that's a good sign..." she murmured as she rode past one that had gotten it's head caved in.

She parked up by the front of the hotel, next to a tour bus that she remembered just pulling up when she arrived at the resort. Curious, she took a look at the luggage piled up next to the bus and saw that it had already been partially searched through, again indicating that there was someone alive running around.

There was nothing really useful in the luggage and Peach decided to check out the bus itself. She stuck her head in, saw that it was a charnel house and stepped right out of it. Leaning up against the bus, she took a moment to compose herself.

"Fuck..." she said "Those poor people..."

Shaking her head, she straightened up and headed into the hotel lobby. There was no point in worrying too much about the people on the bus. They were dead, and not reanimated, and (she hoped) in a better place. Better to worry about those who might still be alive and uninfected-

Peach stopped. Someone was screaming.

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She found the source of the screams fairly quickly. It was in a block of offices off the main lobby, with the names of the people who worked in the offices on little placards with their jobs written underneath them. It was the office of Ashley Finnegan who was responsible for boat tours that she found a man wrestling with one of the running zombies.

When the man saw Peach, he shoved the woman off of him, sending her crashing into the wall.

"Ohgodohgodohgod..." the man panted as he watched the woman slump to the floor.

The man jumped when Peach pushed the door to the office open and scrambled around to put the desk between him and her.

"Whoa... I'm not one of them..." Peach said, holding her hands up so where he could see them.

"Oh thank God!" the man exclaimed, coming around the desk towards her. "Me and my wife-" he gestured at the woman lying crumpled on the floor "-we were trying to get away from all the crazy people and then she went nuts-"

"Nobody's crazy." Peach told the man as she noticed some blood on his hands. "They're dead. We've been dropped into some crazy assed Romero movie- the good Romero, not one of the pretentious lecturing Socialist ones."

The man looked at her in confusion for a few moments. "What?" he asked. "What are talking about? That's impossible..."

Peach shrugged. "It's very much a real thing, and you're gonna become one of them." she said, pointing at his left hand, which had a very clear bite mark on the edge of the palm.

"What?" the man asked, looking at his palm. "God, no, it's impossible, you're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding..." he begged.

"Peach shook her head. "Sorry." she said. "Wish I was. But, I got a pistol you can use, keep you from becoming one of them-"

At this point the woman in the corner let loose a raspy shriek and launched herself at the man. He only had time to scream before she was on him, latching her teeth into his pectorals.

"Huh." Peach said as she looked at the mauling going on at her feet. "She was only stunned... interesting."

Crouching down next to the couple, she tapped the woman on the shoulder. "Excuse me..." she said politely.

"RRRRRRAAAAAAH!" shrieked the woman before clamping down on the man's neck.

"Pardon my interrupting your meal, but what kind of zombie are you? I've never seen a infectious running zombie." she asked.

"RAAALALALALARRGH!" the woman screamed around a mouthful of flesh.

"Ohhhhh..." Preach said. "How does that work?"

"RAAAAAGGGHRRRrrrrrraaah!" the woman said before taking more bites from her gurgling, twitching, husband. "RRRAaaaaarrragggh!"

Peach blinked at what the zombie told her. "Oh. So you runners are the people who got infected but not killed when attacked?"

"RRRRRAAAAAAAH!"

"Okay... interesting. And the regular kind are the ones who were killed and reanimated?" Peach asked as the man went still.

"RAAAARRRGGGH!" the woman confirmed as she continued to feed. "RRRRAAAAARRRRAAAAGGH!"

Peach's eyebrows shot up when she said that. "So eventually you're either gonna mutate, or become a shuffler?"

"RRRAAAAEEEE!"

"I see..."

Peach looked at the man's corpse for a second. "Hey, I'm a sort of voodoo zombie. You mind if I chow down on his brains? I brought hot sauce." she asked, producing the bottle out of her pocket.

"RAAAAEEEEEEGGGGH!" the zombie said.

"Thank you." Peach said as she positioned herself at the man's head. "So, what brought you two here?"

"RRRAAAAEEEERARAAAA!"

"Surprise for your anniversary? How sweet!" Peach said before cracking the man's skull.

Opening her bottle, Peach poured a healthy dollop of sauce on and began to feed.

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End.

Author's note: Okay, first, I hope you all liked this. And now my motivation for this: Peach is a character of mine that I came up with on a whim a few years ago, and really haven't used her for much. And I watched my friend play Dead Island, and we were doing our running commentary, and then voila! We had a story plotted out.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a fun one to write. Anyways, thanks for reading and leave a review!

Zombie Boy.