None-creative title is non-creative. -_-" Human Au, Zombie Au, human names used! Major character death, Yaoi, (maybe Yuri) blood, violence, and gore, and also Belarus and Romano's potty mouth.
"According to the map, we should be in Houston in three weeks. According to you, we should have been in Houston three days ago. I'm sticking with the map, dipshit," Natalia said with a note of finality in her voice to the spiky-haired Dane. Matthias grumbled slightly and shifted the pack on his shoulder, watching the blonde-haired woman bury her nose into the map she was holding.
Just his luck that there was a zombie outbreak about two months ago and he had found himself stuck with a moody and possibly bipolar Belorussian woman after a run-in at a supermarket a week after it all happened. Don't get Matthias wrong, he loved having a human being's company and all, and the fact that the two stuck together despite not really being able to stand each other must signify something. They were both headed to Houston, anyways, the location of a NASA base and also a possibility for a cure. They had agreed that it would be better if they stuck together-Travelling alone in times like these were unwise.
Nonetheless, they both had their differences. Such as Matthias being a loud, party-type who usually plunged into things without drinking and Natalia being a quieter, cold, and calculating type of person who thought before acting, yet acted harshly and in ways that some might consider a bit cruelly. Why the two had managed to be in one another's presence for so long was a great mystery that might be unraveled one day but now they weren't so sure.
Maybe they had stuck around for one thing and one thing only-The presence of another human being. Being surrounded by mindless cannibals who's number one priority was to feet on you as long as you were living and breathing made you long for somebody who most likely wasn't going to chew off your face as soon as they spotted you, and they were each other's only option.
Besides, the two got along occasionally. They would share misfortunes that had happened in the past and laugh at each other's expense- Though Natalia would usually laugh whenever it involved Matthias getting seriously injured by the end of his story and Matthias would usually laugh when it ended up with Natalia being rejected by her older brother again in her plea to hang out with him, so there was some bittersweet relationship there as well.
"Well, excuse me for trusting a GPS rather than stupid piece of paper," Matthias said sarcastically, "Maybe we just took a wrong turn, that's all."
"I swear, your almost as bad as an American. Always trusting your flimsy, unreliable electronics. Have you ever been taught how to read a map?"
"Who needs a map? I got GPS!" Matthias grinned, looking down at the small screen of his phone. Natalia scoffed slightly, nose an inch away from the paper of the map as her eyes scanned it, picking out the quickest route in her mind.
"The only good thing about the goddamn GPS is that we know that if the GPS is working, then the satellites are functioning, and if the satellites are functioning, then NASA must still be standing," The Belorussian said, adjusting the bow in her hair slightly.
"Yeah yeah, okay, whatever, just start walking faster, with the pace your walking at, we'll reach Houston in three months," Matthias grumbled, pocketing his cellphone once it became clear that Natalia wasn't going to be taking it's directions any longer. Natalia scoffed again but she did indeed continue to walk faster.
They were somewhere near San Antonio (or so they hoped-the GPS had screwed up their senses of direction) and were heading to Houston. What would be a nine to eleven hour drive into the city would be stretched into weeks as the two would scout for supplies and attempt to contact somebody through Matthias's radio, but they had had zero luck so far in the latter.
Matthias jumped over a large section of rubble that cluttered the road in which they were walking on and looked around for any sign of life in the Hill County, but not even a gas station was in sight. Sighing to himself, Matthias began to hum some song he had heard a few days before the outbreak happened,
It took him a few moments to realize Natalia was humming with him as well, though it might have been absentmindedly and without realizing she was doing it, for her attention was still focused severely on the map. They continued walking for hours and hours, until Matthias felt like his legs were about to give out from having walked fourteen hours with only brief pauses.
"I think it's about time we look for shelter," he noted, looking up at the sun in the west, the sky already turning orange in the evening light. Natalia nodded in agreement and folded the map and tucked it safely into her pack.
"There should be a gas station a few miles from here, if we jog we could make it before the sun sets and scout for any food and water while there's still light," Natalia said, and the two began to jog at a steady pace, "Then we can see if it's safe to hole up there for the night."
Matthias nodded at her words and began to pump his legs, ignoring the painful spikes that were shooting through them in protest. He winced slightly as he stumbled on his ankle and cursed when he knocked into a car. The sound sent a loud CLANG into the air and both he and Natalia froze.
After what seemed like an eternity, they continued jogging again, concluding that no zombies were going to be on their tail soon. After five minutes of jogging Matthias could spot a gas station in the distance and he grinned. It looked to be in fairly good shape, but one couldn't be too sure unless he was closer enough to get a real good look at it.
When they finally reached it, Natalia walked up cautiously to the sliding glass doors and tapped on the glass loudly with her fist. After a few seconds, a loud moan was heard from somewhere around the other side of the building. Nodding to one another, Matthias reached inside his pocket and extracted a knife, taking quiet and cautious steps around the side of the building. Peeking around the corner, he saw one zombie, or as he liked to call them, a walker, limping from a puddle of blood-Presumably his own.
As Matthias neared, it lifted it's head slowly, smelling him, and it's wet, gurgling breaths and disgusting, drooping skin made Matthias want to gag but he didn't, and instead raised the knife as it shuffled closer, glazed eyes dead and holding no light. After what seemed like years, the walker picked up it's pace before it full out lunged at Matthias and he stepped easily to the left. So many times he and Natalia had done this procedure that it felt almost natural.
He turned and plunged the knife into the back of it's skull, directly into it's brain. before yanking it out, watching the walker fall to the ground with a sickening 'splat.' Creeping closer, he nudged it with his foot to make sure it was dead before walking back around to where Natalia was. She had successfully opened the door to the gas station without making any noise or making any kind of alarm go off, and was now searching the shelves for anything salvageable.
Matthias's nose wrinkled as he stepped into the gas station-The smell was pungent, not only smelling like a normal gas station, but it also smelled like decayed food and dead bodies. Flies buzzed around as he began to search with Natalia, only coming up with a few crackers that were still good and a few bags of chips. Natalia had only managed to find a single water bottle.
"Who knew food could smell so bad?" Matthias asked, nose wrinkling again as they made sure the place was clear of any and all walkers. Natalia shrugged as she sealed the door shut, encasing them inside the dark gas station. Flicking on a lighter he had found, Matthias led the way into a back office of some sorts, looking at all of the papers on the desk before shoving them off and forming a sort of bedding with all of the papers.
Natalia pushed the desk against the office door, and looked around, checking to make sure no rodents or anything potentially harmful would disturb them. After concluding that all danger had been taken care of, she nestled herself down next to Matthias. Matthias took first watch as Natalia slept through the first three hours, clutching the knife and straining his ears for any noise that might come.
When his turn to sleep came he passed out gladly. When he awoke he checked the clock on his phone and saw that, yet again, Natalia had taken an extra two hours in shift.
"Nat, we talked about this. We switch every three hours."
"I just like to take longer shifts, that's all," The young woman said carelessly, shrugging her shoulders, but Matthias knew her secret- She took longer shifts in a bigger chance that she would hear something, and he knew she was hoping to be the one to find survivors. More specifically, her brother and sister, Yekaterina and Ivan.
Matthias had heard all about them (whether he wanted to or not, but in return, he got to rant on about his best friend since day one of his birth, Lukas Bondevik) and they had been mixtures of good things and bad things, but Matthias knew she wanted to find them no matter what. Family is family, after all. Matthias smiled a bit sourly. His own family had been mauled off in front of his own eyes, of course, so there was no hope there, but for Natalia it was a different kind of torture-She didn't know if they were safe or not, whereas Matthias knew his were dead.
They switched shifts anyways and Matthias waited until six thirty eight before waking Natalia up for her shift once again. Once it was finished, the two shared a brief meal of a slice of bread from the loaf they had gotten two days before at a supermarket and shared half a water of bottle together.
The meal did little to satisfy Matthias's rumbling hunger.
"According to the map, we should follow this road right here before we reach this little shopping center," Natalia said, jabbing at the map, "And once we hit the shopping center we make a direct line for the hills so we don't have to go through the shopping center."
"What if the shopping center is empty? Or mostly empty, anyways?" Matthias asked hopefully, "Then can we maybe see if there's some new clothes we can get or food? My shirt is starting to feel like cardboard, and don't even get me started on my underwear."
"I don't want to know about your underwear, you sick bastard."
Matthias laughed as they continued to walk, meeting no trouble for a solid four hours, until they reached a throng of abandoned cars that lay on their sides on the road and in ditches beside it. They walked right through them, not even sparing them second glances, too deep into their conversation of what they would do when this was all over and a cure would be found.
"Of course, I am going to find big brother and sister and we are going back to Russia, far, far away from this stupid American hellhole."
"I'm gonna move to Vegas and-"
But what Matthias was going to do in Vegas, he never got to say because at that moment a hand flew out from underneath one car and latched onto his ankle, causing the tall man to fall to his knees. Hands scraping against the rough pavement, Matthias reached for the knife he had strapped to his leg and unsheathed it, but the hand was yanking on his pant leg and caused him to lose his hold on the knife.
Natalia reacted at once and scooped the knife up, getting to her knees and severing the hand from the arm, pulling him back as the owner of the severed hand crawled slowly from it's haven from under the car, dead eyes lolling and jaw unhinged, glistening muscles shining and blood leaking from it's left eye and dripping into it's mouth. It should have been dead long ago, yet somehow, it wasn't. A hellish moan escaped it's jowls and the sharpened, bloodied fingernails of it's other hand clawed at them.
This was a horror known as a walker.
Matthias got to his feet, brushing his stinging palms onto his pants as Natalia lunged forward and planted the knife neatly in between the walker's eyes, watching it thump to the ground, truly dead now. Sliding the knife out of the wound, they turned only to see several more walkers stalking out of the woods, perhaps attracted to their scent and noise, erratic breathing and panicked gasps.
There had to be maybe a dozen, and the only thing the two had on them was a hatchet and a knife.
Fan-freaking-awesome.