Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, location, and plot lines belong to their legal owners; everything else is mine, through the international law of dibs. No profits are earned from this work of fiction.
Forty-eight!
Forty-nine!
Fifty!
Fifty-one!
My arms, streaked with the occasional faded line of red, telling of the less than fantastic day I'd had before this one, quivered in exertion as I hefted myself up and away from the garish school floor; its colorful, confetti-on-blue design stirring up memories from my own time in primary school.
Hated that place...
The memories of dissatisfaction sparked just enough anger in my gut to get me through 'fifty-two', but when my arms finally gave out and my face fell down against the ugly carpet, leaving a small rug burn on the tip of my nose and top of my left brow, there wasn't even enough energy left in me to verbalize the sting.
Any way you sliced it, I was fuckin' beat; but hey, clearing out an entire school's worth of walkin' corpses was serious shit. It'd taken me a week and a half of room clearing and, while the fact that the place had obviously been empty when the shit had hit the fan was a huge relief, don't know that I'd've been strong enough to hack my way through a sea of youngsters, even if they were still vertical post-mortem, by the end of it, after clearing nearly a dozen rooms and securing the admittedly small school, a small part of me wished that the corpses had been of the smaller kind.
It'd've messed me up, for sure, but fuck if my damn arms didn't still feel like they were 'bout to fall off. The shittiest thing about it all was, rather unlike my master-fucking-plan to nab myself a solid base of operations had hinged on, the whole area was still within the path of a horde, which as I'd come to find out made somewhat regular sweeps up and down the nearby stretch of interstate every two weeks or so. I'd effectively drained the water from a puddle that just so happened to reside within a riverbed, and fuck me if it wasn't the rainy season, as the incessant shuffling and moaning of corpses from just outside verbalized with crystal clarity.
Still, the building was clear, and while its candidacy as a long-term home had been revoked, it'd still serve as a suitable buffer against the undead and their insatiable hunger for a few weeks, maybe longer if I was careful. I knew that one day I'd slip up, everyone does eventually, which would've been fine, had a pack of two-thousand plus corpses not patrolled the area. Dropping a plate on the ground and attracting a handful of the shuffling bastards would be a lot different than getting swarmed by an endless sea of 'em, with no escape or defense of any merit to hide behind.
As I silently lay there on the classroom floor, absently rubbing the tip of my nose and doing my damnedest to ignore the rotted mass passing me by, I cursed my pathetically limited magical ability for the billionth time. One fucking impervious charm'd be all it'd take to make any shit shack I stumbled across impenetrable. I'd hunt down some blueprints and schematics and transfigure myself a whole laundry list of weapons, supplies, and whatever the hell else struck my fancy. I wouldn't have to worry about getting' swarmed by corpses, having already been in a similar situation before and seeing how effective a firestorm could be. Even- even just my broom would've been fine. I didn't need to be able to do magic, just bein' able to leave and be somewhere else whenever I wanted would'a been more than enough. But no, of course, when your ass is getting kicked through the Veil in a hilariously unjust, underhanded, shitty fucking scheme, the last thing on your executioners' minds is, 'Wonder if this chap'll need himself a few fixin's for the road...' A pathetically slow and simple bit of shape-based transfig, coupled with my singular bastardized legilimency technique and a limited animagus ability made up all of my combined wandless talents, and while being able to make things pointy was great, it took a good few seconds before any change was even noticeable and the finer skills required to reproduce a firearm were so far away it didn't even bear thinking about. The sensory boost my partial whatever-the-hell-my-animagus-form-is granted me wasn't negligible, but like all partials it hurt like a bitch the whole time I used it, which blew. My legilimancy technique consisted of being able to interpret immediate surface emotions while maintaining eye-contact, something anybody who was gifted at reading people could replicate already, which made the ability feel like it wasn't even magic.
Still, I reasoned, rolling over onto my back and letting my frustrations, which seemed to always be roiling just below the surface these days, ebb away into exhaustion, dismissible as the few talents I'd maintained through my one way trip across the dimensional pond may seem to the average wizard, or indeed even a below average wizard, the fact remained that I'd managed to make it as far as I had due in part to the last proof I possessed that I came from somewhere very different. And while admittedly, lying dead-ass-tired on the floor of an abandoned school, with dried flecks of old-ass blood clinging onto the ends of my messy black hair and all over the rest of me as well, surrounded by a seemingly endless horde of undead, and without any company whatsoever to keep me from descending into madness...
Actually, no, it wasn't better than it sounded. It was the single worst moment of my entire life up to that point, and the ever present frustration itching just beneath my skin made itself known again upon this introspection. I wanted to scream, but knew that I couldn't, which made me want to even more, so instead I just laid there, silently cursing a million and one people and things, angry and alone, all night long, until finally not even the uncomfortable hardness of the floor or the still flickering embers of anger in my gut could keep me from blessed sleep.
My rest was peaceful, as it consistently had been since I'd impaled Tom's head with a magnificent spear of ice on my seventeenth birthday, oddly enough, although my awakening was anything but.
"Clear!" a voice, male, with more than a hint of southern twang in it, called out lowly. The sound of footsteps, intentionally soft and with an even gait, best as I could tell, marked the movement of whoever the man had called out to as the two made their way deeper into the room adjacent to mine. I could feel my heart thudding painfully in my chest as the door across from me creaked on its hinges. It was then, I realized, that whatever I was going to do, I needed to do it quick. If whoever that was, was clearing rooms than mine was obviously next and the complete lack of corpses, coupled with all of the blood smeared on the floor, was plenty odd enough that the chances of the two looters not being on high alert was slim to none. With a total of two encounters with people during my entire tenure in this new world under my belt, both of which had been fucking disastrous, I'd come to appreciate the fact that those who've managed to hold on this long aren't usually the kind of folk I mix well with.
With the element of surprise gone thanks to the school's obviously recently cleared nature, I'd decided that running was my best option. Slowly, I stood up, wincing in soreness, and grabbed my gear, which consisted of a singular black backpack with an assortment of outside pockets and a bedroll on top. I slowly slid the straps over my still aching shoulders and crept towards the door. While the prospect of losing my new digs rubbed me the wrong way, I was hardly going to go to war for the place, especially considering the poor property value thanks to the horde, which judging by the silence outside, must've passed sometime in the night.
Still, I was smart enough to recognize that what I wanted rarely amounted to two shits in the real world, and so the whole time I was checking if the coast was clear for me to bolt, a .45 tactical, fully loaded with the safety off and my finger on the trigger, rested comfortably in my right hand.
Through the glass I could see into the next room, where the two I'd heard a second ago were cautiously checking the room for any hidden dangers while still grabbing the more valuable supplies they came across. There was a man, with darker brown hair that hung below his eyes in the front, around his neck in the back, of scrappy build, with a hunting crossbow, as well as a woman, with dark skin and dreadlocked hair, which was held out of her face with a faded blue cloth, probably a bandana. The katana on her back gave me pause, and made me reconsider my earlier plan of trying to just sneak out via the door. With what looked like a long time hunter and a swordswoman not fifteen feet from me, both of whom were sure to be on high alert, I decided that the better option would be to slide open a window and kick rocks from there. I'd rather've left out the back door, as all that blocked it from the woods, my current destination, was a small staff parking lot, but I'd rather having to sneak around the building to get where I wanted to be than never getting there at all.
Mind made up, I crept back from the door, still facing it, keeping an eye on the two. The sight of them beginning to head back out of the room made my heartbeat double and panic take hold; fuck, fuck, fuck! They were going to find me! They were going to try and rob me, or kill me, and then I'd have to kill them, and I just didn't think I could live a life where I was always alone except for when I was killing other people, but fuck I damn well knew that they were gonna be like the ones before, or before that, or way before that, and all of those people were awful to me, every single time, and I'd rather be the butcher than the cattle!
My whole face abruptly morphed into a scowl at that line of thought, and a sense of control returned to me. No, fuck that whole mess, Harry. Get a hold of yourself. Open the damn window and leave if you're so frightened of other people.
With my mini panic attack over and control of my limbs back, I quickly and silently turned around and sped to one of the large windows that ran along the left side of the room, facing the chalkboard. Quickly unlocking the hatch on the first window I reached, I then carelessly threw it open.
A horribly loud shriek rang out from the window, its metal frame rusted all to hell.
A thunderous bang was all I needed to know that the door behind me had been kicked and, while I'd still rather've run, I knew that I'd never've made it out of that window before a bolt would've found its home in my back. So, instead of trying to run, as soon as I heard the door bang open I was spun around with my .45 trained right between the blue-green eyes of the archer.
"Don't move!" I shouted, "If the woman comes in this room I'll fire."
I'd rather not've had to say stuff like that, but I'd had the drop on people before and lost it because there were enough of them to slowly move around and flank me. All it've taken was for me to dart my eyes in her direction once for the archer to have his opening and end me. Better to limit my targets unless I was ready to start firing, which I certainly was not.
"Daryl!" I heard the dark skinned woman cry out in alarm, although the man, Daryl, I supposed, remained focused on me entirely, save for a quick, "Don't," back to his partner.
"Let me make something abundantly clear here," I started, making sure to crush any quiver before it could reach my voice. The appearance of weakness was even worse than the truth of weakness, something I'd managed to grasp years and years prior, and which has served me well ever since. "You, do not want to be shot. I, do not want to shoot you. I do not want to hurt you, I do not want to rob you, fuck, I don't want anything from you at all, so why don't you ju-"
But the archer cut me off with, "Nothin'?"
I stopped talking and looked at him, confused, and a bit angry at the interruption.
"Well, I suppose if either of you have a nice cup of tea lyin' around, you can hand that shit over, but otherwise, no, I don't want anything from you two, except for you to lay down your weapons so I can leave out this window right here knowin' I ain't gonna find myself dead before I get outside. Fair enough, right?" I asked, although I hoped that the pistol trained on the man's head let him know that it wasn't really a question.
"No," he said after a moment of quiet tension, prompting me to begin using my legilimens technique, "how about, instead of that, you lay down your weapon?"
The cocktail of smug satisfaction and relief that swam beneath his eyes alerted me, just as much as the hammer being pulled back on a large revolver from outside the window did, to the fact that I'd been had.
"Fuck," I whispered out beneath my breath, slowly looking back until the cowboy hat clad man, his cleanly bearded face frozen in an angry scowl, was locking eyes with me.
"Drop the gun, kid," he ordered lowly, the tip of his large revolver shaking slightly, from either adrenaline or the revelation that I couldn't be a day over twenty, which I wasn't. Either way, neither his weapon nor his expression waivered any more, and thanks to my legilimency I could tell that he wasn't so at war with himself over my age that I'd be able to get out of this situation with my head still on my shoulders save for one way.
With that last nail hammering into the coffin, I had no choice but to drop my trusty pistol, the soft thud it made against the carpet singing out my surrender. Still keeping me in his sights, the cowboy climbed into the room, one leg at a time, until he stood barely two feet away from me.
I studied the man in silence, watching as his cautious blue eyes met the archers for a moment. When the archer, Daryl, gave a simple nod in response, the cowboy moved his gaze further to the side.
I was surprised to find the woman standing in the room, her wicked deadly looking katana, still stained red from an earlier encounter no doubt, balanced lightly in her hand.
It was then that I realized what a good thing it was that I hadn't decided to scrap with the two. I'd've been able to take the archer by surprise, but whether or not I'd have been able to move my aim to her before she'd drawn and divided me by two was up in the air.
"What's your name?" the cowboy asked lowly with authority, making me think that he may be the one in charge of the other two.
A sudden frog in my throat had me swallowing hard, and I caught the cowboy's heavy gaze tracking the bobbing of my Adam's apple, analyzing the tell and finding it less than comforting. His calloused hand gripped the big iron in his hand more firmly, and suddenly I could talk again.
"Harry!" I blurted out in mild alarm before recollecting myself. Illusion of strength, Potter, c'mon. "I'm Harry Potter. How 'bout you three? An archer, a samurai, and a cowboy, huh? I'm sure I know a joke where the three of you walk into a bar or somethin'…"
My joke seemed to fall pretty flat, but I could feel a fraction of the tension leave us, although I was still on my knees and the cowboy was still pointing his, if I had to guess, .357 magnum right at my face.
"Is there anyone with you?" the man on the safer end of the gun asked me, his eyes trailing off towards the busted up door ever so slightly before snapping back to me.
"No," I stammered out, my stressed brain suddenly needing to go over the last few days to make sure that I wasn't part of a group and just hadn't realized it or something, which was ridiculous of course, but I was feeling the full weight of the situation, which made thinking calmly and clearly rather difficult. "No," I repeated, more firmly and evenly, "I booked this place for one. Don't really do the whole 'group' thing that well. It's because I sleep walk, you see. Get into all kinds of trouble when you start moanin', stumblin' around, and not responding in the middle of the night. What luck, right?" I asked, reverting to my nervous tick: wisecracks.
"This whole place is clear," the archer, Daryl, I reminded myself, said to the cowboy. He turned his attention on me and skeptically asked, "You tryin'a say you cleared this place on your own? Or'd you find it like this?"
His eyes were narrowed and I didn't need my magic to recognize the noose he'd offered me to hang myself with. There was no way a hunter wouldn't be able to tell how fresh the blood smears on the floor were; he was giving me a choice between answering the less likely sounding truth or showing my deceitfulness and picking the more believable option.
Fuckin' mind games...
"Two rooms a day for the first two days, one a day for the next nine. I'm the kind of guy who likes to take things one step at a time, 'cept for with girls, of course," I answered back with halfhearted cheek, although the dark look that swept across the swordswoman's face had me stammering out, "N-not like that! Fuckin hell woman, it was a joke! I'm not even good with girls! Only ever kissed two in my whole life!"
Abruptly my face and cheeks heated up and I ducked my head, more embarrassed than I'd been in years, and frustrated with how poorly I was handling the situation.
A peal of laughter, light and short but still unmistakably laughter, rang out from the woman, and she casually sheathed her sword and pulled over a student chair, where she spun it around and sat down in it backwards. Apparently I wasn't the only one surprised by the woman's sudden change of mood, though neither of the two men standing looked quite as surprised as I felt. After a moment, the cowboy lowered his weapon and holstered it, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. Having myself done the same thing before, I knew he was trying to flush the last bit of adrenaline out of his system. A second later he too nabbed a chair, although he sat in it with widely spread legs which he rested his elbows on, letting his arms hang down.
Daryl, the archer, maintained his position standing and, if anything, looked to make himself more alert than before, as if to make up for the other two's relaxed stances.
A close knit group, then. Interesting.
"I'm Rick," the cowboy suddenly said, introducing himself as he sat up straighter in the chair. "This is Michonne," he continued, nodding towards the woman straddling her chair. She smiled widely in greeting, revealing a set of clean and straight teeth, which I found rather attractive. Her larger nose crinkled in amusement upon her noting my stare, and I quickly redirected my gaze, focusing on the archer in anticipation of his turn.
"Daryl," Daryl said, opting to introduce himself. The small amused grin it drew from Rick clued me in to his lack of offense taken, although his smirk was quickly hidden behind a more serious expression as he turned back towards me.
"Nice to meet you all," I tried, uncomfortable with the silence that had followed Rick's serious look.
My sentiment went unanswered, save for a quick smile from Rick that didn't even come close to his eyes and a scoff from Daryl. Michonne held her peace and continued to study me.
"Why'd you try to run?" Rick asked, his head cocked slightly to the side to show his curiosity.
"Seriously?" I asked with raised eyebrows, sparing an incredulous look over to Daryl's crossbow and Michonne's katana.
"No, no, no," Rick slowly replied, shaking his head from side to side with each 'no'. "You seemed plenty capable of handling yourself a minute ago. It just seems, to me," he continued with a dangerous smile, daring me to lie, "that after spending eleven days clearing this whole place out you'd be a little less willing to run off. Most people'd try and fight," he finished with a suggestive lilt in his voice, as if to suggest that I'd had ulterior motives.
"Yeah, well, in case you haven't noticed, most people are walking fuckin' corpses, and the way I see it, the only way to make it these days is to be smarter than most people," I said, angry at the non-stop accusations. I noticed Daryl bristle at by venomous tone, but Rick only raised an eyebrow and gave an ambiguous nod towards the floor. Not quite out of steam yet, I continued with, "I'd rather hit the road than get into a gun fight, which if you'd just say that out loud you'd realize how silly it is to even say something as obvious as that. I'd be lookin' for breakfast in the woods right now if the damn window had been oiled. Besides, I fucked up when I cleared this place out anyway. That damn horde on I-75 passes through here every other week or so. I was only gonna be here till I'd caught my breath; then I'd've booked anyway."
That caught their attention, and suddenly Rick was leaning in closer towards me, intently demanding, "A horde? How big? Which way were they headed? Was it south?!"
Realizing that my life may depend on my giving quick and competent answers, I tried to sound calm as I replied with, "Yes, a horde. I'd sized it around two thousand minimum. They seemed to just be following the interstate, near as I could tell, heading with it up and down. And yeah, it was south, but they've been doing this for a long time now. Unless you just moved somewhere you'd be in the clear, I'd figure."
That seemed to breathe some sense back into the three, although Rick still sounded just as rushed as he seemed to make up his mind on something and ask me, "How many walkers have you killed?"
"How many..." I started confused. "Oh, uh, well, tons, to be honest. Seems to be the kinder thing to do though I don't go outta my way or anything-"
"How many people have you killed?" he interrupted, and suddenly all three sets of eyes were trained on me. My mouth clicked shut and I couldn't stand but to avert my gaze off to the side, not having expected that question for some reason. "We're in a hurry," he pushed, leaning in closer to me. "How many?"
"At least seven," I whispered out with incredible reluctance, somehow unable to lie. "But maybe a few more that I don't know of..." I trailed off, never happy to go back to those places in my head.
"Why?" Rick asked with such gravity that the whole world may have been bearing down on me for all the pressure I suddenly felt. Completely unable to think up a single alteration I should make to my reasons, I just listed them.
"Self-defense, the first time. Was defending myself the next few as well. The last two," I ground out, the mere memory enough to make my blood boil in my veins till my skin itched and my teeth ached from clenching my jaw so hard, "vengeance."
A beat of silence passed by before Rick finished my abrupt interrogation with, "Did they deserve it?"
In retrospect I'd realize that he'd asked purely to dissect my answer, but at the time I'd taken it as judgment of my actions, something I didn't appreciate, thus my furiously whispered, "Every fucking one of 'em!"
With a blank face that shared no secrets, the cowboy hat clad Rick leaned back in his chair and stared at me in suffocating silence for an eternity, crushed down into just a few long seconds. When he decided he'd seen enough, he scooped my gun up from the floor and pinned the barrel of it against my forehead. I'd've frozen in fear, had I not still been feeling so angry. Two alarmed cries of, "Rick!" rang out from Michonne and Daryl, but the cowboy remained unflinching as he locked eyes with me.
"You're dangerous," he whispered out accusingly. I just stared back up into his eyes, seeing what I could see. "I can see it in your eyes, plain as day." Another long few seconds ticked by, before suddenly he pulled my gun away from my head and held it out towards me, handle first. "I can also tell you've got a lot of good in you. You need to understand now, though, that I've got people, who're more important to me than anything in the world, back where we're goin', and that, for as dangerous as you are, I'm more than that. I like you kid," he said with a shaky grin, clearly unsettled by something. "Please do not make me kill you."
His eyes hadn't moved from mine for the entire time, and, after another hard swallow, I found enough of a voice to say back, after I'd taken back and holstered my .45, "Yes, sir."
Then, with a nod to me and another to his two companions, who both still looked troubled, Rick walked toward the busted door and said, in a strained voice, "We'd best be back, then. Come on, kid."
"Yes, sir," I said, and then I followed him out.