A/N: Hurray! I finally got it up. It took me a week to write, but it's happening! My first VD multichapter fic! I'm so excited! Notice the overusage of exclamation points, that means that I'm excited! Yayayayayayayay! (Sorry. I'll stop.) Anyway, pariswindspeed wanted a happy fic. What did I give her? Mountains and mountains and piles upon piles of character death and hurt/comfort and vague endings. That stops now. What am I gonna give her instead? Oh, well, zombies and more death, of course. Duh *rolles eyes* the only way to write a happy fic. Yeah. My emotions are all scrambled up.

Pariswindspeed, darling, I hope you like, because you are like one of my bestest, most favoritest (IDK, is that even a word?) reviewers ever. And one of my only ff friends, so I, like, worship you. I'm always checking for your latest. Hopefully you like mine. (Am I pressuring you too much? Sorry.)

Disclaimer: If I owned Vampire Diaries, there would be Daroline and definitely more Candice and Ian interviews. *sigh* OMG and he would be shirtless more. *collapses at thought*

Summary: Damon, Stefan, Elena, Jeremy, Bonnie, and Jenna all take a roadtrip during the zombie apocalypse. They pick up Liz's newcomer daughter. Crazy stuff ensues. Daroline.

Note: Daroline is endgame, in my world. OTP.

Title taken from Awolnation's Kill Your Heroes.

Here, everybody's human. Just a heads-up. :)

in your world the strong survive

–The War Against Drugs, "Arms like Boulders"

"Seriously?" Damon asks, watching Stefan lock the door. "That's unnecessary. They will fucking punch through the door. Locks mean nothing to them."

"It buys us a few minutes," Stefan states, his tone panicked but forcibly calmed. He seems stressed, his forehead more lined and worried than usual. He bites his lip. "This sucks. The one time I don't go shopping for groceries, the zombie apocalypse starts."

Damon sighs. "You are seriously fucking complaining about the state of our fridge? Might I remind you that there are insane non-people outside eating other people? Shall I tell you that we are going to be fighting for our survival for the next foreseeable forever? Honestly," he grumbles, his anger dissipating as he goes up the stairs with Stefan. "By the way, I know you think that going up the stairs will help us, but high ground ain't gonna do shit unless we have guns. And, Mr. I-don't-hunt-so-you-don't-either, we don't have guns. You make me throw them away."

"I know, I know!" Stefan hisses.

(As though whispering will do us much freaking good, Damon thinks.)

"Well, then, what do you plan to do about it?"

"We need to get some things."

"I know that. Guns, food, water, more guns, medicine and bandages, a hideout, more guns, an awesome zombie-resistant car (preferably an SUV or something), every single zombie apocalypse movie we can find, more guns, radios, as much money as we can get, a crossbow or two or something, more g—" Damon says all in one breath before he's interrupted.

"I meant people," Stefan says, raising an eyebrow. "You know, my girlfriend and her family, maybe?"

Damon sighs. "Yeah. Right. Those. Whatever. You pick up your girly, I'll pack anything we need from here."

"Why do we have to leave so soon? We're in a small town, if we take down all the zombies here then we should be good for a while, don't you think?"

Turning to his brother, who is halfway up the stairs, Damon says in a bored tone, "Well, yeah, but seriously? We'd be better off on the road. Eventually this place is gonna run out of food, and I don't know about you, but I don't like the thought of turning to cannibalism and anything we can find in the woods. We pick up our people and our supplies and we go."

"Should we take Bonnie?" Stefan asks. "She's Elena's best friend, after all. Unless she's already a zombie."

"Yup, no zombies in the soon-to-be-ours stolen SUV," Damon says monotonously. "That's a rule, for sure. Now. So. To be clear, we're just taking Elena, her family, and possibly Bonnie if she hasn't become some brain-craving creature?"

Stefan shakes his head at his brother, sighing. "You forgot what Liz told us."

"As if I could ever forget that," Damon murmurs to himself as Stefan makes his way up the stairs. Damon lingers at the foot of the staircase, his mind unwillingly going back to that memory.

Liz sighed as Damon probed the wound on her shoulder, and then winced as he prodded one particular section of the bloody mess of flesh. "It's a zombie bite, Damon," she said, voicing the words neither he nor Stefan could say themselves. "It's fatal."

"I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

She cracked a smile. "It's okay, just—promise me that you'll take care of my daughter. She's coming in tomorrow. Please, just. Make sure Caroline's safe. Don't let her get bitten, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll protect her, I promise you."

"Thank you."

And then Liz pulled the trigger of the gun held up to her forehead.

Damon sighs again. Liz was a good friend, and though he's never met her daughter, he figures it won't be too hard to pick up some girl and take care of her until she's okay to be on her own. If she's anything like Liz, she can be all right by herself.

But for now, that means scanning the entrance to the town for a taxi.

He and Stefan leave the house together, both holding a backpack filled with any items (sentimental ones) that they might want. Damon carries a cooler full of ice, water bottles, alcohol, and some food. Stefan holds the duffel bag full of food, but it won't last them for long. They'll have to stop at a convenience store soon.

Damon first takes them to the gun store, insisting that they get guns first. Crime means nothing now, when nearly all of the population is eating brains. So they get guns. Two shotguns, two handheld guns, and a few others for emergencies. They also take as many bullets as they can carry.

They stop at Elena's house and pick up her, Bonnie, Jeremy, and Jenna. The four of them are each in different emotional stages. Jenna is angry and fierce and she's holding her shotgun like it's the last thing in the world that she can depend on. There's blood on her forehead and in her hair and Damon suspects that it isn't her own. Jeremy is, quite frankly, terrified, and he's clinging to the baseball bat he holds in his hands. Bonnie is mostly clearheaded, but she keeps muttering to herself, and she won't let go of the bloody butcher knife she took from Elena's kitchen.

And Elena. She's kind of depressed, but she seems mostly fine. She doesn't seem to be in any danger, and none of them have sustained bites. Stefan gives her one of their extra guns and shows her the basics of using it. They all climb into the SUV that Damon stole from the side of the road, ignoring the blood on the seats, and Damon insists on driving. Nobody bothers to argue with him.

Then they go to the entrance of the town and pull off onto the right side of the road into a ditch, to wait for Liz's daughter. Caroline.

They decide to take shifts while waiting for this girl, and Stefan is up first. Elena falls asleep on his arm and he sits in the back seat with her. He's on the left side, facing the road so he can see any oncoming cars. Elena is in the middle, slumped against him. Jenna snores on the right side of the backseat, leaned against the window, the blood wiped from her forehead but still looking like dye in her hair.

Bonnie and Jeremy are together in the middle seats on opposite sides, with Jeremy in front of his aunt and Bonnie in front of Stefan, both of them asleep. Their hands are just barely brushing, a small indicator, and Stefan suspects that they have a lingering romantic attraction. Which is odd, because isn't Jeremy like a little brother to Bonnie or something? Oh, whatever. Let them date during a freaking zombie apocalypse. Who cares.

Damon is "resting" up in the driver's seat, which is Damon's word for closing his eyes but not really sleeping. Of course, alternately, when Damon is in his "invincible" mood, "resting" could mean being dead to the world for ten hours. Whichever. But this time, Stefan thinks that Damon's not asleep, because if he were, he would be tossing and turning. His brother never sleeps that well unless he's so tired he's in one of those ten-hours-of-sleep stages. And he's not that exhausted, Stefan knows. He knows his brother's limits, and his sleeping patterns, and he knows that Damon is just pretending to be asleep to possibly make him feel better.

It's about ten o'clock when Stefan gets off of his shift and he hesitantly leans over past Elena's sleeping form and shakes Jeremy awake. They'd all agreed—except for Damon, who wanted to go first—on the schedule: Stefan, Jeremy, Damon, Jenna, Elena, and Bonnie. All in one-hour shifts. Bonnie put up a small fight on the sexism of the whole thing, but Jenna just asked tiredly and kind of monotonously if she wanted to take first shift instead, which made Bonnie stop talking long enough for them (Stefan) to decide.

It's weird, but Stefan is oddly taking more control of this situation than he thought that he would. He wonders about the whole thing as his eyes close and he hears Jeremy whistling to himself: "Hey There Delilah." The Plain White T's. A not-recent song, but he recognizes it anyway.

Delilah, I can promise you

That by the time we get through

The world will never ever be the same

And you're to blame…

Just like that, Jeremy switches over suddenly to "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by R.E.M. The tune cheers Stefan up suddenly (something that Damon would say rarely happens, and takes a miracle to cause, even before these "dark days of zombies and shit," and yes, Stefan's quoting his brother) and he holds back a smile as Jeremy hums the chorus.

He falls asleep to Jeremy alternating between a song about a girl from New York City and the well-known melody about the end of the world.

It's almost one o'clock by the time that someone spots something. It's Jenna's turn to be awake, nearing the end of her shift, and she sees a small flickering light in the distance. She leans past Elena, who's still out cold, and shoves Stefan's shoulder, effectively waking him. "There's somebody up ahead. Think it's Liz's girl?" she whispers.

He shrugs. "I'll go check it out. Get Elena off of me, would you?"

Jenna helps him tug Elena over until she's resting against Jenna's shoulder instead, and Stefan tells Jenna to go to sleep, too. Then he exits the car, small electric lantern in one hand and gun in the other.

The approaching light turns out to be a flashlight. Held by a seventeen-ish blond teenager with a duffel bag thrown over her shoulder and a gun in her other hand. She's got blue eyes and Liz's facial structure—not to mention her hair—so Stefan holds his hands up in surrender. "Hey, hey, don't shoot," he tells her, and she hesitantly lowers the gun after she hears him speak: zombies don't talk, after all. (Not anything more than "brains.")

"What do you want?" she asks unsurely, and she sounds nothing like Liz, but that doesn't mean anything.

"Your mom sent me," he says, trying his best to be calming and trustworthy-looking.

She snorts. "Yeah, right. Jesus, I feel like I'm in the beginning of a Law & Order: SVU episode. 'Your mommy sent me, get into my nice black van—'" she gestures with a toss of her head to the SUV "'—and I'll give you a free puppy and some candy for good measure.'"

A smile flickering on his lips, Stefan nods. "Yeah. I figured you'd say that, so I got my info ready. You're Caroline Forbes. Liz's daughter. You lived with her until you were, what, ten? And then you moved in with your dad. You just came back. But then the end of the world started. Great time to move, by the way. Nice decision there. I'm here with my brother, my girlfriend, her brother, her aunt, and her best friend. You don't honestly think that many people would be involved in some sort of kidnapping thing, do you? And besides, we're in the middle of an apocalypse."

Her amused expression disappears quickly. "Thanks for the reminder. But you've successfully squished my doubts about you knowing my mom," she says with a sigh. "One question: where is she?"

He swears her eyes pierce into his soul. "Caroline, I—" he doesn't go on. He can't.

"Yeah, I figured that must have happened." She closes her eyes, lets out a deep and shaky breath. "It was the only possibility I really didn't want to consider. Well. This officially totally sucks." Her eyes reopen, clear blue but a little blurry with the tears that he can see she's fighting off. "Wh-where is she? Officially."

He turns his head away, but she won't meet his eyes anyway, so it doesn't even really matter. "My brother and I buried her in her backyard. We set up a cross in the backyard. She-she ended it. She wanted to be the one who pulled the trigger."

"That sounds like Mom," she breathes, and he catches her swiping furiously at her eyes with one of her hands out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah. So." Her voice is a little shaky, but it's commanding, and he meets her eyes obediently. "What's your name?"

With a small smile, Stefan tells her. "Stefan Salvatore. My brother, Damon, and I moved to Mystic Falls a while back. You've been with your dad, which is why we don't really know each other."

She rolls her eyes. "Okay, yeah, that I figured out all by myself. Now could you please tell me who else is in the van? Names, please."

Because she said please, he rattles off the names. "Damon, my brother. Um. Elena Gilbert. Jeremy Gilbert. Jenna, their aunt. Bonnie Bennett. That's it." She startles a bit at the mention of Elena, but shakes it off and doesn't explain it. She doesn't show any other signs of astonishment at the other names.

Caroline eyes him. "Well, what do you want? I doubt six people piled into a car and waited for what was probably hours just to tell a visiting girl that her mom got bitten by some carnivorous zombie freak. Is there something else?"

"We want you to…" he clears his throat. "We want you to come with us."

She stares at him, kind of shocked and maybe a little impressed. (The last part he's just hoping for.) There might even bit a hint of a smile on her face. There's a slight pause. "Fine," she says finally. "But I got blood in my hair a while ago; do you think maybe I could wash it somewhere? Somebody's sink or something?"

Stefan's surprised that she gave in this quietly. "Yeah. Yeah." He points backward, in the town's limits. "There's a little house about fifty feet from here. Here, I'll go with you. Just let me tell somebody where I'm going; we stick together, now, okay?" he proposes when she eyes him curiously. "I'll go tell Jenna, she should probably still be awake."

He raps on her window and she rolls it down, and he can see the blood shining in her hair when he raises his lantern, but it's dried by now and they can't wash it off until they get somewhere with some kind of soap or something. Not to mention, they need someone here to be awake while he and Caroline are gone, and nobody else is, so she can't go. "Caroline's here," he says, and Jenna nods sleepily. "I'm just gonna take her down to one of those little cottages to wash off a little. I just want to check for bites, too, though I doubt that she has any. We'll be back in about ten, twenty minutes."

Jenna just nods again and rolls her window back up. He walks back down, his gun ready in case one of those things finds them, and takes Caroline down to some little cottage he noticed as they reached the town limits several hours ago. They break in—it's locked, which he didn't really expect, but that's easily fixable—with one of his shoes through the kitchen window, and they crawl in. There's glass on the floor and he can't find the light switch and it's freaking dark. He's never had a problem with the dark, really, but it messes with him that he doesn't know if there's anyone or anything else in there with them. Just to be safe, he keeps his gun at the ready in both hands, his lantern hanging by its handle on his wrist.

She stares at him for a second as they stand there, both eerily lit by the sick yellow unsettling glow of the lantern. For the first time, he really pays attention to her. Her hair is up in a messy ponytail and about half of it has come out and is hanging limply in front of her face, slightly curled by the humid air that's been threatening rain for several days. He can tell that her eyes are blue, and her hair is dark blonde with a few highlights of red—no, never mind, that's blood, and most definitely not her own—and she's wearing some comfortable jeans and a short-sleeved light pale (almost a subdued shade) blue top that's off-the-shoulder. Her sneakers are white and already are covered in dirt and maybe blood. He coughs and clears his throat and puts his shoe back on, checking the inside of it for shards of glass first. Then they maneuver around the kitchen until she finds the sink and submerges in it as soon as the cold water comes on. She shudders but doesn't come out from under it until he tells her that the blood's gone.

They search the house—her with her flashlight and handgun, him with his lantern and rifle—separately and come back later with a few different things. He's holding a video camera, a few maps, candles, and some CDs for the car. She has a few books for them all, some extra pairs of shoes, a few jackets, a box of matches, cigarettes, and a lighter. She's also wearing a new pair of gloves, black and fingerless that end at the first joints of her fingers, not going past the knuckles. He has a few more bullets and a bottle of wine, which she smiles at him for.

She holds up one more thing. It's a bottle of bourbon. "Does anybody drink this? 'Cause they'll have to share with me."

He smiles at her. "Damon is going to love you. Or fight you over it. I can't tell yet. Anyway. We have everything else, I think. Toiletries in the car, some extra clothes for you that are Elena's, I think, um, some hair stuff that she wanted if you need some, I think we have an extra toothbrush for you, uh—"

"Relax, Stefan Salvatore," she says, stretching out the syllables of his name like she's testing it out. And he likes that about her. "I've got all that stuff in my duffel. Don't worry about that. I—I had time to pack when I left my dad's."

"Can I—can I ask what happened there?" he asks hesitantly. He doesn't know if it's his place. She's Liz's daughter, Elena's old friend, Bonnie's old friend, Jeremy's old acquaintance. But she's not his friend and he's not hers. They're just stuck together in this mess of a world. And maybe it's not his question to ask.

She doesn't answer right away. "I'd rather just say it once," she finally says in one breath, sounding heavy and tired and old. He wonders how much she's aged in the past few days. He wonders how much he's aged in the past few days. "Maybe later, when everyone's awake?"

"Okay," he agrees immediately. No sense in pushing her. "Can I at least ask what happened to the taxi?"

"He has a family—had a family…I don't know," she says, stumbling over her words. "Anyway, we started getting reports on the radio and he wanted to go back to his family and we were already over halfway here and I had a gun my dad gave me before...before everything really started. So I told him to turn around, I'd walk the rest of the way, it would just take me a few hours and I had a light and everything. So he turned around." She sounds slightly wistful. "I hope he's okay. He was nice, you know, for a taxi driver. He didn't have hair growing out of his ears and he didn't chew gum annoyingly loud or anything. He didn't talk the whole time. The usual cabbie problems. He was all worried to be leaving me alone, said I was too young to have to walk all night alone in the dark with creatures or whatever prowling around."

Stefan shrugs. "I bet he's fine."

"Yeah. Me too. I hope so, anyway." She looks up at him, then back down at the handgun in her gloved hands. She seems unwilling to meet his eyes. "You know, you don't really have to do this."

"Do what?"

"Take care of me." Her eyes flash stubbornly and independently in the light of the sickly lantern light, all bright exotic-island-ocean blue being crossed with weak fading-gold yellow. "I don't need you to do that. I get that you're doing that out of—out of respect for my mother and her wishes, or whatever, or maybe because I'm Elena's old friend and Bonnie's too, but I don't need your help. You don't have to pretend that you want me with you."

He steps forward, reaches for her hand before he remembers that she's a fear-stricken girl with a dead mother and a gun, and pulls back at the last second before their hands would have touched. Which is probably a good thing, because she flinches anyway although he didn't even come close to brushing their skin together. "No, I…we do. Yeah, your mom asked us to, and we wouldn't have even known you were coming if she hadn't, but. Um. Look." He rubs the back of his neck, feeling suddenly awkward. Yeah, sure, he's more eloquent than Damon, but that doesn't mean he prepares speeches or anything. (No matter what Damon says.) "Caroline and Bonnie miss you. I'm sure of that. You guys grew up together before you moved away with your dad when you were—what, ten? Yeah. And Jeremy, he remembers you, and he'd like to have you here. Jenna remembers you, too, and she wants you here. Damon, well, Damon doesn't really care, but he made a promise to your mother and Damon doesn't break his promises. Ever. And I…would really like to have you here."

She looks up at him, surprised, and then hides it quickly. She's almost as good as Damon at concealing her emotions. Almost. "Thank you. Stefan." She steps back quickly, as if reminding herself of something, and expertly tosses her gun between her hands. "Did you hear that?"

"No."

"Oh." She smiles. "Just nervous, I guess. It's dark and we're alone and…" she seems to struggle to remember something. "…and there's a bunch of zombies out there," she finally finishes lamely. "Can we go back to the car now? I'd rather have safety in numbers."

He nods, and the moment feels broken and foreign, but he can't understand why. After all, they're standing in a dark kitchen and her hair is soaked as she puts it back into a ponytail and the flashlight probably makes him look like something out of a horror movie, but is that—attraction that he feels in the air?

Oh, no. Not an option. So he pushes it away and says, "Yeah, let's go back to the car."

And they do, going on their way through the broken window again.

A/N: Yeah, so, I know. No Damon/Caroline interaction just yet. Wait for the next chapter. And, yeah, I added a little Steroline tension. Because I wanted to. Really, I ship them more as friends, and I believe that Stelena is better than Delena and all that, but I wanted to add a little tension. Cuz honestly? Caroline is one of those people who has chemistry with, like, everybody. Don't know if anything will come of it yet. Really. But I have the ending planned, okay? It's just about getting there. :)

I hoped you enjoyed it. Really, I'm working hard on this one, but since my computer and phone are no longer working and I won't be getting a new laptop for a few more weeks (I'm placing my trust in my boyfriend for this one, letting him choose my new one, which is probably a mistake, but oh well, as long as it works), it might be a while before updates. But rest assured, THIS ONE IS GETTING FINISHED.

So. Review? Tell me your likes, dislikes? Who should I elaborate more on? Do you want more Steroline interaction? Stelena? Jeremy/Bonnie? Anything, really. I will give you Jenna and Caroline friendship if that's what you need. In order to make up for killing off Liz. Because I LOVE THAT WOMAN. And I barely even gave her any screen time. It makes me so sad.

Review and feed my addiction! If you do, I shall feed your addiction with cookies. :)

Next chapter should be up soon, at any rate, whether there's reviews or not!