Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time, or characters from any franchise that might make cameos in this story.
Author's Note: This takes place in Season 1, the point at which Emma tries to run away from Storybrooke with Henry. It will be somewhat of a Regina, Emma and Henry heavy story, with considerable input from all of the other characters. This will not be Swan Queen. I haven't decided on Emma's pairing just yet. It will also be sympathetic to Regina's character but above all, it will be a Zombie Apocalypse story! It's meant to be taken with several grains of salt, with a good going dose of humour in the story.
Read and Review: Tell me what you loved about it and what you hated. Above all, tell me how I can improve it!
Zombies vs Fairytales
Day 1 of Shit Hitting the Fan
'The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.'
Walter Bagehot
Regina would never have believed it. It just didn't happen in real life like it happened in the movies. Apocalypses and end-of-the-world scenarios didn't just spring up on one – after all, in a world of e-mails and google, 24 hour news channels and text messages, what are the chances of something big, like the undead walking, happening without a hashtag on twitter or an update on facebook?
That's right. Regina would never have believed that the world could be so blind, people so self-involved, that a zombie apocalypse could occur without anyone realising it if it hadn't happened to her.
She'd be lying if she said she wasn't bitter about it. She was bitter, scared for herself, terrified for her son and more than happy to blame Emma Swan for the mess she now found herself in. If the blonde hadn't come back, tried to win Henry back and ended her run of rash, rude and largely foolish behaviour by kidnapping her son and leaving with him, Regina wouldn't have left Storybrooke for the metropolitan, only to find mass hysteria surrounding her and slowly threatening to take over her own emotions.
Her driving had always been civil, a strong contrast to her personality, but after getting stuck in standstill traffic and having her car scratched by an erratic, unnerved man as he drove off in the opposite direction, her civility (and maybe her sanity?) had snapped. Letting out a growl of frustration (because she had to find her son, she had to), she had left the roads completely, driving in the grassy areas that surrounded the roads, still travelling south-west towards the nearest large city.
She had aggressively driven her way into the city with no appreciation of the petrified frenzy that assaulted her eyes. In her defence, twenty-eight years of driving around Storybrook, with two excursions via public transport to Chicago, wasn't particularly educative about normal driving habits in normal, non-magical towns and cities. Either way, she had driven with blissful ignorance into a city that was imploding in upon itself.
She had somehow reached the downtown area, parked outside the police station and made her way in without seeing any of the zombies overtaking the city. Or rather, not noticing them, Regina corrected herself. She was honest enough to realise that her mind, occupied with fears of losing her son to the birth mother that had given him up so readily mingled with the awful realisation that she had come to love someone so completely again, was disturbed and hardly as focused as she liked to think it ordinarily was. The notion that she could lose the one person that she continued to love was enough for her to be wholly consumed by the internal nightmares that raged dramatically in front of her mind's eye.
It's the only explanation she can find for how she ended up in a police station, blood, guts, gore and god knows what else smeared across the walls and floor like an inglorious graffiti, facing a room full of zombies that had clearly worked in the roles of police officers. It took her several seconds to blink and take in the dripping red vision in front of her, and several more seconds for the synapses in her brain to fire sufficiently to comprehend what her eyes beheld. She had no time to scream – rather, she was dumbstruck, staring at the zombies making slow and steady progress towards her, her jaw fully slack.
Those seconds, however, were enough for her inherent survival instincts to kick in. Making a gargled, garbled sound that died barely before it left her throat, she turned around and ran out of the police station she had stormed into moments earlier.
She didn't regret her choice of clothing – her skirt was just fine for running. Kicking zombies might have been easier in trousers but she had no intention of getting close enough to kick one. Her shoes, on the other hand... Her heels weren't difficult to run in or uncomfortable. Twenty-eight years of wearing the same style of shoes had inured her feet to their arches and the pressure points. What hadn't occurred to her was the noise running in the heels would create, since she had never truly considered the possibility of being stuck around zombies. The pitter patter of her heels as she scuttled across the road attracted the attention of the zombies close enough to hear her, like moths to a light, and those that couldn't hear the sounds nevertheless followed the zombies that did.
Her muscles were burning with the lactic acid, her chest aching from the insufficient air she was able to breathe in as she ran, but she pushed herself. She had to live, if for no other reason than to make sure her baby boy was safe. She ran and ran, breaths feeling more suffocating than helpful and she thrust herself right around the corner only to skid to a horrifying stop. She saw another group of zombies, attracted by the sounds she had made, making their way towards her as the ones she was running from came up from behind her.
She was surrounded.
She swallowed back a sob and blinked away tears as she was stunned into silence for the second time within minutes. When her mind stuttered back into work, she was hit by the foolish thought that she shouldn't have wasted all that time and all those years watching the X-Files and Science Fiction about aliens. Maybe if she'd watched a zombie movie or two, read a few comics or books on it, she might have had a chance to survive today.
She took in a shuddering breath. She wasn't that person, the one that admitted defeat. She fought tooth and nail against every injustice done to her and sure, she'd dished out plenty of injustice in her own time. But she hadn't blackened her heart, lost both parents and a true love, given up her memories to love her son so fully and completely, only to die at the hands or teeth of some pathetic idiots who had managed to become zombies. Hell no – she was a fighter and she would be one to the very last second of life she had.
Standing up straight and jutting out her stubborn chin, she glanced behind her. The zombies were dangerously close to surrounding her and she wasn't sure going into any of the buildings would be safe. It might offer her shelter from the ones outside but she had no way of knowing how many of the undead were inside. There were a couple of roads diverging to the left and right in front of her, but she would have to go through the herd of zombies, which wasn't a particularly viable option.
She took in another breath, the stench surrounding her and filling her inside and out. It was sickening. She glanced across the road, her eyes catching a glimpse of a fire escape leading to the roof of the building. There were some zombies around there but, glancing briefly backwards and finding the walking pieces of rotting flesh much closer than she had realised, it was decidedly her best option.
She made a run for it, her heels clicking rhythmically on the tarmac. She managed to avoid the grabbing hands of two zombies coming behind her as she crossed the road. She eyed the stairs. There was one zombie between the walls of the building and the stairs, a further two to its right which had turned to face her and four behind the stairs. She disregarded the four – they were of little threat. And the one on the left hadn't turned to face her yet but the two on the right were slowly making their way towards her, inching their way into blocking a straight run at the stairs. She glanced around herself again – they were all slowly surrounding her and the stairs were her best chance.
Licking her lips, she wiped the sweat from her face with trembling hands. It was her only chance at this point.
For Henry, she thought and then ran towards the stairs, hoping to reach them without a scratch or a bite on her, now regretting choosing a skirt over trousers.
She was within arm's reach of the two zombies between her and the stairs when what she belatedly realised that the door on her left had opened. She didn't have time to utter a sound as arms grabbed and pulled her into the building, the smell of blood and dead flesh filling her lungs and the bile bubbling up her stomach.
She could barely mutter an 'ouch' as she felt the skin on her right arm break before darkness surrounded her.
'Henry, what the hell?' Emma was breathing heavily as she gingerly touched the right side of her face, where she was sure a bruise was in the process of blooming. 'What did you that for?'
'You're leaving town?' Henry posed his own question instead.
'Yeah. You said you wanted me to be your mum, didn't you? It's what I'm doing – this is the best for you.' Her thudding heart was gradually calming down as Emma took stock of the state her car was likely to be in, after Henry had forcibly turned the steering wheel, crashing it into a tree. 'Are you okay?' She added as an afterthought, her eyes scanning him for any obvious injuries.
'I'm fine. But...how can you leave Storybrooke? What about the curse?'
'Henry, none of that matters. All that matters is you. And I'm doing what's best for you.'
'But,' Henry started, trying to make some sort of sense of his jumbled thoughts and emotions without any success. 'You have to break the curse. You have to bring their memories back and let them have their happily ever afters.'
'Henry,' Emma sighed. 'The most important thing is-'
'Running away?' interjected Henry, glaring at her openly now. 'But what about everyone in Storybrooke? You can't just run away...' He didn't add again. He didn't have to – she saw it clearly written across his face.
'It's not running away, Henry. It's running towards something this time.'
'Towards what?' He questioned sceptically.
'Towards home,' she replied simply.
It felt like it sucked the air out of Henry's lungs. Home... But what was home? He briefly pictured his room, with the blankets his mum had carefully looked after, the toys she'd bought for him and the games he'd spent many hours playing with. He thought about the times she'd tucked the blanket around him or told him off for leaving his shoes everywhere, the times she'd complained about always having to pick up his dirty clothes and...even the times she'd read bedtime stories and books to him. Even if he didn't like or trust his mum...she was still his mum on some level. He didn't understand it himself, how he could think of her as the Evil Queen one moment, eager to escape from her to the mother that was good and the saviour and truly loved him, yet think of heras still his mum the next moment. It was too confusing so he shied away from thinking about it any further.
'But I can't leave home,' he'd said out loud without realising it until her saw Emma's face fall.
'Henry, home is people. It's you and me,' she pleaded, eyes desperate to see the acceptance on his face. She saw everything else instead.
'But what about Mary Margaret? And Granny? And everyone else?' He'd pleaded with her instead.
She stared at him, long and hard, and then made her decision. 'Storybrooke is home for you,' she said slowly and evenly, weighing out each word carefully. 'So we'll make our home there.'
His beaming smile was all the answer she needed to know that she'd done the right thing. 'C'mon, let's see if my car still works.' She turned the key in the ignition, once, twice and was very pleased to hear the sounds of the engine coming to life on the third turn. She did a not so legal U-turn and started a slow drive back home.
'Why don't you stay with me tonight and we can sort out how to get you away from Regina tomorrow, okay?'
Henry happily agreed, contentment and relief filling him. He didn't question where or why the relief was there; he just knew that Storybrooke was his home.