Greetings everyone and welcome to the prologue of my Zootopia fan-fiction story 'Days Gone Bye'. The story itself is something i have been planning for a few months now alongside other Zootopia stories but so far this is the only story i've felt motivated enough to start. As you will see in this chapter there will be similarities with the games 'The Last of Us' and 'Days Gone' which serve as the main inspiration for this story but the name is not an attempt to rip off the title of the upcoming game as it was originally going to be used for another story i was writing a few years ago before i even heard of it. I hope that you all enjoy this story and will follow the journey of the story!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or the title 'Zootopia', they belong to the Disney corporation and their creators except for my o.c's!

Days Gone Bye

Prologue:

Welcome to the new world

Schwarzwald – lookout point,

Two kilometers from Zootopia

Outbreak +459 Days

"How much fuckin' further red?" the fennec fox growled over the two-way radio as he drove the heavily armoured battle van along the road, trailing behind the drifter bike that was zigging in and out between he wrecks that littered the roads ahead.

"Not much now little dude. Should be coming up over the next hill," the red fox on the bike replied through his short-range ear-piece radio, his voice muffled thanks to the rag wrapped around his muzzle to keep out the dust and insects. While many of the vehicles on the roads were long since abandoned some still housed their former owners. Nick managed to swerve his bike between two car that had smashed into each other, the mammals still in their seats leaning over the steering wheel and dashboards.

"Good, because we're just about outta gas and ammo. And I sure as hell wouldn't say no to sleeping in a real fuckin' bed for once," the fennec growled again as the van following behind him crashed through the damaged cars thanks to the snowplough mounted on the front of his vehicle.

"I could use a real bed too. Plus, I really need some more ammo. Kinda running short of ammo for my pistol," Nick said as he watched the road ahead through his tinted goggles as the sun started to appear over the hill top along with the peeks of several sky scrapers, "Okay, I seeing some of the buildings now. Let's pull over once we reach the top and see what we're dealing with."

"Copy that," Finnick muttered but never said anything more. It took the pair a few more minutes to navigate the road before they finally reached a rest stop at the peek of the hill. Pulling into the open parking area they found several vehicles still parked in designated area's along with a food truck with a lot of flies buzzing around it.

As Nick brought his bike to a full stop, the engine still rumbling beneath him in its frame, he removed his goggles and started scanning the area for any hostiles, infected or otherwise.

Finnick's van came to a stop beside him and the steel plating hatch beside him popped open and the muzzle of his shotgun poked out and another slit just open opened as well, and the fennec's eyes appeared and started scanning the area.

Nick already had his paw on his pistol but kept it holstered as he scanned around and sniffed the air for anything other than the dead. He couldn't smell anything though, whatever was in the old food truck kept distracting him and it wasn't a good thing either. Before when he used to ride on his bike and see a food truck he would always pull over when he was hungry and order either a bug burger or maybe even a fried chicken burger if he was lucky enough. But now whatever was in the vehicle stunk worse than a skunk's asshole.

Looking up towards Finn, he nodded over towards the truck and he saw the small fox's nose scrunch up as well, "Yeah, smelt it the moment I opened up. Fuck, that stinks," he growled.

"Safe to say we won't be looting anything from that. Got any molotov's?" Nick asked, turning off the bike's engine and steadily climbed off his drifter and stretched his muscles and rolled his arms and legs to get some feeling back into them.

"Yeah, got one in the back next to your spare tyres."

"Got any shit to make more, just in case?"

"Yeah, but you'll have to make 'em. Can't touch that shit with my paws," came a growl.

Nick sighed quietly to himself after yet another reminder from his fennec friend about the burns to his paws after their run in with the cultists a few weeks back. Nick's bike had suffered from a shot-up fuel pump after a run in with another group of survivors and the pair had needed to draw away the infected mammals that had been occupying a truck stop that happened to have an auto parts shop on site. Finnick had drawn away the creatures in his van while Nick had scouted the area and managed to get into the garage and find the part he was after, but not before he'd lost contact with Finnick on the radio.

After getting back outside the truck stop and fighting off several more infected mammals native to the region, Nick had heard Finnick howling and screaming. Fearing he was being attacked by the infected, he had had to run at full speed with his Desert Eagle at the ready and found a horrifying scene before him.

Finnick had been held down by several mammals, all dressed in filthy rags and scars all over their bodies with lost patches of fur, a mixture of prey and predator mammals supposedly calling themselves 'Night Howlers' held Finnick down on the ground as they burnt his arm with blow torches.

Furious, sickened and appalled with what was happening, he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger several times dumping high-caliber rounds into the pig cultist. The pig had squealed loudly as chunks of brain matter painted the ground which alerted the pig's friends who had dropped the blow torches and jumped to cover and opened fire themselves.

Nick remembered as he assembled several more cocktails in the back of Finn's truck that it had taken just seconds to scout around the vehicles separating him from Finnick and managed to get to small fox to safety while keeping the cultists suppressed with what little ammo he had left at the time before a horde of more infected mammals had been drawn towards them thanks to the gunfire alerting them.

Nick had gotten Finn back inside his van and had driven off, leaving the sick bastards to their deaths at the jaw's and claws of the infected while Finn had screamed "FUCKING HOWLERS!" at the top of his lungs before passing out.

That had been three weeks ago, they had rested up and Nick had attended to his friends' wounds as best as possible after scavenging supplies from a hospital, and nearly dying several times in the process, before they had been able to leave that area behind with the intentions of never returning to it.

"So, are you sure that this is a good idea?" Finnick asked as he remained inside the cab of his van and peered through the slat down towards the red fox.

"Well, I'm sure as hell not going to scout around with that damned smell interfering. For all we know it could be a fucking nest."

Even behind the armour plating welded to the van, Nick was pretty sure he just saw his friend shiver a little, "All right then. Just burn the damned thing and then let's get outta here."

Nick positioned himself, angled his arm for the throw and released the molotov. It sailed through the air and crashed against the broken wind shield. The fire quickly spread through the interior of the vehicle and soon small burning embers fell from inside the food truck…followed by a feral roar.

"Fuck!" Finnick hissed and loaded the shotgun and readied himself to blast apart whatever came from inside the vehicle.

The back doors both flew open, followed by a fast-moving blur with smoke and fire trailing behind it. Nick was already moving back towards his bike and Finn's truck, towards the killing field within range of the shotgun.

The infected mammal, stood on it's hind legs and roared towards them as it started racing towards them. Nick watched the furless creature as it sprinted towards them with a rabid and hungry look in its eyes. His pistol was already raised with one paw and he fired, a loud boom erupted from the muzzle of the weapon while the slide recoiled backwards as a shell casing was ejecting a new round loaded into the chamber from the magazine.

The .44 Magnum Hollow-Point round slammed into the infected caracal's chest and it lost all momentum and nearly came to a stumbling stop until another gun shot erupted. Finn cursed as Nick heard the small fennec fall over inside the van from his stand and lost grip of his trusty shotgun at the same time hearing it clatter against the door.

The last gunshot had done its job however. The buckshot had all been dumped into the caracal at point blank range, give or take a few feet, and it fell backwards onto the ground and lay sprawled out on the ground with its chest blown open and blood poured from the wounds. But not wanted to be side tracked, Nick brought up his pistol and scanned the area, flicking his ears and listened to more creatures that may either be hiding nearby or running towards them.

Sniffing at the air brought him nothing except make him wince as the smell of the burnt infected caracal on the ground nearby stunk worse than the smell had inside the food truck before.

"Jesus Christ," he growled as he moved towards the open doors of the food truck. Black smoke was still billowing out and into the sky but the fire didn't seem to be spreading any further. Plus, he just wanted to be thorough and make sure that none of these freaks were hiding away.

He lit and threw another molotov inside the truck. Whatever had been in the truck was now being burned away but Nick couldn't help think that maybe it hadn't been a nest, just a place the infected mammal had used to take cover and rest.

"Hey, Nick!" a bellow came from Finnick's van making the canid turn around and start heading back towards his bike. As he reached the vehicles the door to Finn's van opened and the small fennec appeared wearing his old and stitched bowling shirt and cargo pants while sporting a small .38-caliber snub-nosed revolver in his unbandaged paw.

Finn walked past him and over to the caracal where it lay on the ground, the body still twitching, and brought up the revolver and fired off two rounds into its head before spitting on the corpse and turned around and walked back towards his van.

"I'm gonna have a scout around the area quickly and take a look inside a few of these vehicles, see if we can't find anything useful," Nick said as he walked up to his partner.

"Okay. Have a look for some med's, anything to help take the pain off." Finn opened the door of the van and slowly pulled himself up into the truck with the other fox's help. Nick had learned quickly that Finnick liked to be independent and even more so after their run in with the Howlers a few weeks ago after he had been burnt. He had tried in the days that followed afterwards but Finn had just bared his fangs and told him to back off and leave him be.

"Will do brother. Just lie down for a while. I'll holla if I need ya," he said and started walking off towards the parked vehicles while remaining vigilante of his surroundings for movements, smells or noise. With his ears erect he walked over to the first car, a large feline-sized family SUV, the doors were all open as was the trunk but a quick search all the same brought up nothing of value except for a shirt that had been hidden under the drivers' seat still in it's plastic packaging.

'Could use this for bandages' he thought and placed the shirt inside his duffel bag and continued with his search. Checking the other vehicles brought up a few bottles of water, some aspirin, a few packets of painkillers which he knew Finn would happily take and chase them down with some whiskey later, and even a small pocket knife. He had found a flashlight as well but the bulb was smashed and was covered in dried gore indicating it had been used to bludgeon either one of those things or another mammal to death some time ago.

Before he returned to his bike though he found a small observation point near the peak of the rest stop which had a fence running around the edge that once was meant to stop mammals from falling over the edge. Walking towards it he found a small blue-painted telescope. He shrugged his shoulders thinking 'Meh, couldn't hurt to take a peek' and peered through the lenses but found it was blacked out. Looking around he found a slightly worn sign saying that it was pay-per-view and he needed a dime coin to use it.

'Robbing bastards' he thought, amused with the sign and because it was a silly little thing that brought back a memory from long ago back during his hustling days when he was still just a kit not long after he had met Finnick.

Even after all this time, Nick always kept some form of currency on his person whether it be either small gold nuggets or even dollars. But he always carried a few dime's or quarters. Slotting the dime into the telescope and turning the notch the scope opened and he had a clear view of the valley that led towards the Grizzly Falls that separated them from Zootopia.

From the hillside he could see all of the city, the sprawling metropolis had been his home for a few years back in the days when he was a kit and living in Sahara Square with his mother after she and his father had saved up enough money to get them out of Happy Town and into a safer a suitable environment they thought was best to raise their kit together. Just looking at the city from this distance old memories were starting to come flooding back to him; meeting with Finnick after the Ranger Scout incident, his mother working multiple shirts at the diner just down the street from their apartment while dad worked all and whatever hours he could down in the docks even at half the legal wage just because he was a fox.

And her…

But now as he looked through the old telescope and towards the city and all the different sectors; Tundratown, the Meadowlands and Sahara Square were visible but the other sections of the city he couldn't see. He could also just about see Outback Island to the south of the city and had to wonder whether or not there could be survivors there or if it was another lifeless piece of secluded land like so many others they had come across in the last year after leaving Gnu York.

Eventually the dime had run it's time and the telescope went black, the screen inside dropping back into place. Pulling away from the eyepiece and leaning on top of it Nick wondered if this had been a good idea. Coming all this way outta hope of finding her…

Reaching up towards his black leather cut vest that hugged his frame and reached beneath his black hoodie his paw caught a hold of the necklace hanging around his neck and the two gold engagement rings that hung from it.

"I'll find her, I swear it," he promised, speaking barely above a whisper, just hoping that his love could hear him as he gazed upon the ruins of the city of Zootopia, hoping that she was still alive.

Zootopia Police Department, Precinct One

Division One, Downtown

Lieutenant Judith Laverne Hopps was sitting at her assigned desk if the officer's cubicles, her feet sitting up on her desk as she stretched her paws and tried her best to try and work out some of the pain that was running through her. She was also trying, and failing, to battle against the fatigue she was experiencing and now matter how much of the horrible tasting instant coffee she tried to swallow she couldn't shake it off.

The last several days had been hell for the young rabbit. Across the Downtown and Savanna Central safe zones there had been a string of robberies on the food distribution facilities and against several clinic's as well with all of the prescription medication being taken and leaving barely anything for the survivors that really needed those meds.

Then ofcourse there was the usual murder, kidnapping or a rape that were becoming more common in these areas as of late and that wasn't including the infected.

Even after a year of government agencies trying to figure out what had caused more than half of the country's population to become infected, turn against their fellow mammal and attack, murder and in some cases eat them they had come up with nothing. There was no real way for the Z.P.D or any of the other remaining precincts in the city that were still operational to provide security to the surviving citizens and try to maintain order and fight the infected all at the same time.

Some days after coming off duty she would either come and sit at her old desk she had been working at for the last five years of her career in law enforcement or she would retire to the female officer's bunk rooms that were located in the old records room. At least during the winter nobody complained as they had been near the boiler room.

"What I wouldn't give to be back in that apartment," she muttered to herself quietly as she sipped her cooling coffee, "And have those annoying neighbours of mine back as well," she chuckled at the thought of the Kudu couple, Bucky and Pronx Oryx-Antlerson, and wondered where the couple were now. Back when she first met the couple she hadn't have the best opinion of them after their rude introduction after moving to Zootopia into the Grand Pangolin Arms when she became an officer.

She hoped that the couple were still alive, somewhere up north where she had overheard they were going to visit Bucky's family in the mountains and spend some time with them.

Taking another sip of her coffee she screwed he face up. The drink was now cold, unbearable and tasted worse than before. But she powered through it, knocking back the cold concoction and shuddered after swallowing.

She set down her small cup on her desk and looked towards where her computer had once sat. For five years she had worked on a specially made computer built specifically for her after she had passed her basic training and graduation as valedictorian of her year and been assigned to Precinct One. Like most prey mammals, especially bunnies because they were a species known not to take a job with such high risks, she had been the subject of prejudice the moment she had arrived and for nearly six months she had been assigned to parking duty where and dealing with mammals that wished her dead and then after every shift she had gone home back to the apartment with the greasy walls and noisy neighbours, taken off her uniform and lay face down in her bed ad cried her eyes out.

For six months she felt as though that everything she had been working towards, all the studying and training and researching for the last twelve years of her life had been a complete waste and her 'fellow officers' began to make her feel she would never amount to anything more than a simple meter maid.

All because she was a fucking rabbit.

If it hadn't been for an incident Downtown one afternoon where a car had run a red light and careened into another vehicle, resulting in both vehicles catching fire, she had leaped into action and despite her size she had managed to save the lives of two wolverines from the car that had been impacted along with their three years old kit and a drunken badger from the other vehicle before both vehicles were consumed by fire.

After being checked out in the back of an ambulance she had expected the large cape buffalo, Chief Adrian Bogo, to give her an earful about her abandoning her post and her vehicle, the Tuk-Tuk, in the middle of the road causing a back log of traffic. But instead the large buffalo commended her for her actions, performing her duties as he would expect of any officer and further surprised her a few days later after returning to duty to recover from smoke inhalation where he finally removed her from parking duty and had coupled her with her first partner and finally got her on the beat.

Fast-forward four years and here she sat alone, without her partner who had been killed in the line of duty weeks after the outbreak had begun to spread through the city and had the company of only thirty-eight officers of the original seventy-three that worked in several different departments of the building.

Her desk was littered with tactical maps of the city; the safe zones were marked and labelled with stick notes with pictures or news clippings of the buildings so she would remember where they were and other areas marked in the different districts where they knew of other survivors but none under Z.P.D protection but outlaws and bandits patrolled giving others protection, but for a price ofcourse.

In Savanna Central the Plaza, the DMV and the Zootennial Stadium were considered protected safe zones and the Z.P.D would travel in armoured trucks twice a week to deliver whatever food, clothing and medical supplies they had managed to get their hands on and in Downtown the Precinct and the surrounding buildings were also under their protection along with the few survivors that inhabited the fortified ZNN news building who were working daily to broadcast signals to the outside world and occasionally play music on the airways.

There were also many news clippings about the outbreak in the days after it had started to spread across the country before hitting the city itself until the day before the newspapers stopped being printed. There was also a police frequency scanner sitting atop of an old military HAM radio and both were powered from a car battery but she never left them hooked up for the sake of saving power and not wanting to cause a fire either.

But the most important thing that was at her cubicle were the photographs of her and her family in the large collection that were tacked to the wall. There were a few separate ones, some of her parents cradling some of her newborn brothers and sisters and a couple of her little niece Cotton…

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and she couldn't stop the sob that escaped her.

She missed her family so much. She missed parents annoying phone calls asking her every day after she finished her shift about how she was doing, what she had been doing and if she had caught any mean criminals and always ready to rely the information to her brothers and sisters.

She even missed Pop-Pop, despite him being a specist old bunny who had called many predators, fox's mainly, to be the work of the devil she still missed the old geezer.

She missed everyone; her parents, her two-hundred and seventy-five siblings, her nieces and nephews, her friends, her fellow officers how had fallen in the line of duty…all of them.

Using the back of her paw she wiped away the tears and managed to control herself but she still felt a few shudders run through her as she reached for the draw of her desk, opened it and produced a metal canteen from within and quickly uncapped the lid. She brought it to her nose and sniffed the contents; a small remaining portion of home-brewed moonshine her father had sent her a couple of weeks before the outbreak had hit the city and ever since then she had kept and savoured what little remained of the two-litre bottle she had received along with a care package of produce from the farm what felt like a life time ago.

She thought about it and figured 'To hell with it' and brought the canteen to her lips and could almost taste it when she heard her name being called from outside the office.

"Hopps!"

"Fuck," she muttered quietly, quickly replacing the cap and dropping the metal canteen back into her desk beneath several old police report files and slammed the desk shut before hopping out of her seat, stretching as she went and walked towards the open door where she found officer Frank McHorn standing in his full S.W.A.T gear and gripping hold of his trusty old shotgun.

"What's the matter Frank?" she asked as she reached the large rhino.

"We've been keeping an eye out up top but something's caught our eye off in the distance. Figured we 'ought to tell you and see what you think," the veteran officer replied as he turned and started walking off towards the rooftop access. She quickly followed after Frank towards the stairs which led to the rooftop of the precinct. She had known Frank since she had arrived at the Z.P.D five years ago and while the rhino had been a little cold towards her when she first started he gave her credit that she carried on with the 'assignment' that Bogo had given her day after day for over a year before she had been pumped up to being a beat cop and always provided a friendly smile.

Nowadays those smiles were non-existent, just like many things.

As they emerged onto the rooftop of the building, Judy took a moment to look around the area and allowed herself a brief smile. While most of the city around them was wrecked, derelict, infested with the infected life inside the walls of the protected area wasn't so bad.

Mammals, both predator and prey, working and living aside each other to survive day after day might sound depressing but they quickly adapted to it. She watched some kits playing soccer in the gardens nearby the fountain that stood across the road from the precinct while the adults worked in old stores around the square stitching clothes, repairing vehicles, manufacturing weapons and even growing food. In sections of the rooftop of the precinct there were also several plots for growing vegetables and they had even set up a rain catcher which provided a good amount of the drinking water by most mammals in this safe zone.

She continued to follow Frank across the rooftop until they finally reached one of the lookout points where two other mammals, officer's Pawson and Wolford, both decked out in S.W.A.T gear and body armour were using binoculars to scan a specific point somewhere off in the distance.

"What's the issue guys?" Judy asked as she leapt off the ground and landed on a table beside a set of binoculars and a spotting scope, looked to the distance and wondered what she had been called up for.

"Normally lieutenant we know we wouldn't bother you with things like this," Wolford began as he lowered his bino's, "But we've spotted black smoke off in the distance towards lookout point near Schwarzwald just past Tundratown."

"That's outside of the city," Judy said as she struggled to pick up the set of binoculars on the table beside her before Frank moved over, picked them up and held them in front of her, "Thanks Frank," she smiled up at the rhino before getting a grunt as she peered through the lenses.

Steadily, and with Frank's help, she maneuvered the binoculars around until she was able to get a clear fix on what she had been summoned for. As she had been told, there was a thin trail of black smoke rising off in the distance just outside of the city on the freeway that ran North-East past Grizzly Falls near the Beaverdam Bridge.

They hadn't seen any signs of life or activity from outside the city in several months aside from more of the infected to funnel into the city over the bridges from the east and west. Bit the signs of a fire meant that there had to be survivors out there.

"Think it's worth sending the drone out?" McHorn asked as he stood over the rabbit.

"No," she said quickly, "The drone doesn't have the range to travel that far without a boost in signal and even then, I doubt there's enough charge left in the battery to get it that far before it'll fail."

The drone they were speaking about was an old police issue drone that had been in the service of the Z.P.D's EOD bomb squad and it would normally be used to inspect a device or a 'suspicious package' from a safe distance without putting any of the operator's or officers in any danger in case there was a genuine threat to life.

It had seen a lot of use when the streets had first been crawling with the infected before the Z.P.D and the National Guard managed to clear out the area around the precinct when searching for other survivors trapped in buildings around the area so they knew where to send officers without putting them in further risk by going to the wrong location. That and dropping explosives on herd's of the infected mammals that infested the streets when fighting an clearing them out of area's they built as safe zones soon after the outbreak began.

"So, what do we do for now lieutenant?" Pawson asks, the panther looking over to his superior officer.

"Keep an eye on it for now Felix, and let me know if there's any change," Judy replied as she turned around and hopped off the table and slowly started walking back towards the rooftop access to head back inside to her desk.

The canteen with her father's moonshine was calling her name as was her bunk.

After collecting the canteen from her desk, Judy had slogged her way through the mostly empty station towards the female bunk room in the basement. As she entered she heard a couple talking quietly to themselves but she was too tired to make out who the voices belonged to.

She quietly walked through the room, past the boiler and towards a small mattress towards the back with its own frame with some pillows and sheets and pulled herself beneath them. As she lay the canteen down beside her pillow and pulled a small rabbit doll she kept hidden to snuggle with as she slept along with a small photograph of her and her partner and looked at the male that had an arm around her shoulders as she blushed in the picture at the intimacy.

"I miss you," she sniffled as tears began to trail down her cheeks.

Author's Notes:

Well folks, i hope that you all enjoyed the prologue of the story and that it was enough to get your attention. Please favorite, follow and review if you would as i really want to know your thoughts. Next chapter we'll be going back to the days leading up to the outbreak and seeing the life of Nick and Finnick before the country was thrown in to chaos!

Take care and stay safe folks, peace!