A/N: Augh, can anyone else tell I'm way too obsessed with both traught and zombie AUs?
Death Do Us Part
Summary: He meets her ten minutes into the first zombie attack and decides then and there that he'll never leave her side. Not even after he's bitten. [Zombie Apocalypse! Traught]
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It's pandemonium in the halls.
Kids are running from one end to the other trying to find an exit and the adults aren't helping either. Some teachers have already locked themselves in their own offices, downing what little alcohol they had left, trying to forget the hopelessness of the situation. Others just gave up on everything and those are the ones Dick's trying to forget about. Sure, he'd hated his literature teacher with for threatening to fail him cause of one little missed paper, but not enough to enjoy the sight of the guy's brains splattered across the chalkboard.
The pink of the grey matter mixed with the red of the blood and the white of the chalk and for a moment he could pretend it was all a prank, that some kind of authority figure would come on the loudspeakers and tell everybody how to evacuate in an orderly fashion like with fire drills.
Except for the fact that all the exits are being broken down by hordes of zombies attracted to the noise a thousand screaming students were making.
Dick really wishes he wasn't one of them.
He wishes a lot really, all pretty much the usual post-zombie attack fare. That he'd convinced Bruce to just let him sleep in today, take a day off, hey, maybe relocate to a deserted island off the coast of Florida for laughs. Bruce would've bought that story, right? Or at least he could've managed to make him buy it. He just needed time. More time. That was all.
But then again, he also wishes he could stop wanting to puke from the sight of his teacher's face the moment he pulled the trigger, that his stomach would stop clenching painfully even though his lunch and breakfast were already laying on the linoleum floor of the pristine bathroom, that his feet would stop moving, that he could remember how to make them stop moving cause right now there's only panic and fear and a determination to run until you find—
Swerving to race around the corner, Dick lets out a cry as he crashes into another body. Limbs flailing, he sends out a mental apology to his gymnastics instructor because balance is not something he seems to be able to summon anymore. Untangling himself from the girl, he manages to say, "Sorry, sorry, I—I'm—"
"There's no time for that. Get up."
Somewhere in the back of Dick's mind it registers that this girl sat behind him in Calculus and History and was failing both, but that doesn't matter anymore.
Because her eyes are grey and calm.
Her hair is messy, strands of blonde making it out of her usual ponytail and hanging before her scruffy face. One of her lips is split and he feels bad for a split second before he remembers that she always had weird bruises like that. Her mouth has stretched into a thin line, a straight white gash across her dark face. But her eyes are grey and they're calm.
"Come with me," she says roughly, grabbing him by the hand and making her way through the mass of panicking students easily, like she's been doing it her entire life. Their faces are screaming and crying and blurry but she's clear and silent still despite her fast pace.
Like the eye of the storm, she radiates control and perfection and safety.
Dick decides then and there that he's never going to leave her side.
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While the kids struggle to find shelter before the zombies make it through the last set of doors, the girl leads him down the set of stairs leading to the boiler room. Her hand is still clutching his, her fingers digging into him like she thought he would try to pull away and make a run for it.
"C'mon, I know another way out," she says, her steps light even on the metallic grating. Dick struggles to copy them but fails, his mind too busy processing everything that's going on that his body just can't keep up. He's so caught up in remembering the chalk and red and pink and black that by the time she's prying the grating up he doesn't even know how they got there.
But he's shocked back into consciousness by the realization that her hand isn't in his anymore.
Staring in confusion at the tunnel beneath him, Dick says lightly, "Uh, sorry to pop your little escape bubble, but do you even know where this thing leads to?"
She stares back at him, her gaze intense. "Outside. By the shed for the soccer equipment. Now let's go." Grabbing his hand again, she starts to pull him down; trying to make sure he doesn't land too badly. He smirks and takes a few steps back before launching into a running start, flipping at the last second and landing neatly before her.
Smirking, Dick really can't help crying, "Ta-da!"
She rolls her eyes and his heart starts beating strangely in a way that has nothing to do with his gymnastic display or the zombies undoubtedly walking around on the floor above. It has been a couple minutes and none of the doors to the school are that reinforced.
So the pace she sets doesn't seem so much grueling as totally and completely necessary.
And of course he knows better than to ask why they don't tell the other kids about the escape.
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It's raining outside.
During the middle of the zombie apocalypse, this seems strangely apt.
Dick takes a deep breath of the cool, decomposing air and proclaims, "Ah, cloudy with a chance of horrible, brutal death by being chomped on while you're still gooey and screaming." He shoots her a grin. "My kinda day."
She looks a little less than impressed as she wipes black grease from her face. "Please tell me you're not always like this."
"I'd lie, but you seem like the type not to like that," he says, kicking the grass of the field so that a tuft of it goes flying forward. Dick figures he won't get into too much trouble for this, figuring as how the zombies currently moseying around are doing much more to lower the field's integrity than he is. It's actually a little disappointing, pride-wise.
"You're right."
Dick looks at her, suddenly all too aware that she's currently hefting up two large and dangerous looking shovels. Her eyes are hard now as she says, "If you lie to me, I promise you won't live long enough regret it."
"I'd never," he quickly replies, the words out of his mouth before he can shove them back in and oh god they keep coming out, "Lie to you. I mean, I'd joke around and, uh, that's kinda an occupational hazard if you haven't guessed by now but I won't lie. Not to you."
Dick most fervent wish at the moment is not for world peace or the disappearance of the zombie menace, but for the ground beneath his feet to open up and swallow him whole. Great. Now she was gonna think he had a big whopping crush on her. Not that it isn't totally beginning to be true, but he would've liked for it not to be so obvious.
She stares at him for a few precious moments they really should be spending running away from the shambling zombies on the soccer field, but instead of pointing that out he's fixed in place by the intensity of her gaze. Her eyes are a weird grey color that mirrors the sky above them.
Or maybe it's the other way around, he thinks as she finally moves.
Holding out a shovel that she seems to be waiting for him to take, the girl says simply, "Artemis. My name's Artemis."
He grabs it with no hesitation. "Dick."
She raises her shovel high, snarling.
"No, no, wait! It's really my name!"
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They abandon the shovels the moment fighting their way out ceases to be an issue. Eyeing each other from their perches on the fire escape, Dick's pretty sure even she doesn't have enough swing in her arm left to beat down that many zoms. Besides, the shovels were getting kinda heavy.
Low groans sound out from the street below them, the zombies too busy shambling around to notice the two kids climbing up the side of a building. Even Dick has to marvel at just how many of them there are, so much that the street itself is packed with the mess, some chewing lazily on themselves in the absence of people. He watches one rip off pieces of its forearm again and again, like it couldn't even feel the pain, crunching loudly on a bone when it got deep—
"Hey."
Broken out of the strange trance-like effect of seeing the world go to shit, Dick stared blankly at the girl sitting next to him. They're on the roof now. It's starting to drizzle. He can still see Gotham Academy in the distance, so can't have gotten too far, a couple blocks at most. He doesn't want to look at the street anymore so he just focuses on her so hard that his eyes start to water.
She breathes in a couple times before continuing, "It looks like it gets worse the deeper in the city you go. We should try to find someplace to rest for the night, except…"Artemis trails off with a suggestive look towards the view below them that he refuses to look at, "Making it on foot's gonna be hard."
The look that flickers across her face scares him more than any of the zombies. He needs to fix this. "We can use the rooftops."
"Huh?"
He's alive now, jumping up and plastering a smile on as he says excitedly, "I think I can make it onto the next roof, I mean, I didn't get that gold in gymnastics for nothing. I'll get there and then throw something over, like—like," he grabs an iron chain from the ground that appeared to have been used to lock a grill down, "this! Then you climb over and we do it all again with the next roof."
Artemis looks disbelieving, scoffing, "It's too danger—"
Dick leaps off the edge of the roof before she could even finish the sentence. Snagging the stairs of the fire escape with a hand, he uses it to leap off to the window sill before the zombie below him could grab his ankle. He winces as he hits the wall of bricks with his shoulder, wishing he'd thought to change from his uniform before the zombies had attacked. A formal tie and jacket really weren't the clothes you wanted to try your hand in parkour in.
Too late for that now, though. Knocking the potted plants off, he makes his way to the side until he could climb off at the next fire escape level. From then on it's an easy trip up. He has to jump a little to reach the roof, but it was nothing with a running head start, however short.
Huffing more than he should be, Dick straightens up quickly to look back to her and make sure Artemis didn't do anything really stupid, like follow him. He flinches when he catches the look on her face. Okay, next time he should probably put her at ease before trying something like that. But at least seeing her face all contorted with fury, mouth a snarl and eyes burning in their sockets, was better than seeing the expression she'd made at the thought of being stuck.
He'd known her for an hour at most, but even he could tell intuitively that fear isn't an expression people like her are supposed to have.
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After being yelled at so loudly that several zoms came investigating and subsequently got their heads beat in with an iron chain Artemis would not stop brandishing at him, Dick got the picture. Risky moves were okay. Suicidal moves got you pummeled until you couldn't even move a finger.
But at least she got adjusted to his plan. To an extent. After a couple more rooftop dives.
Sort of.
"I can make it."
Her grip is unyielding. "No."
Dick runs a hand through his hair, trying to keep calm because interacting with Artemis was hard enough without losing his cool on top of it. He'd learned the long way that she wasn't the type to apologize and was too much the type to blame herself for even the smallest outbursts. Fixing on his most charming grin, he says casually, "I've gotten the hang of avoiding them, 'Mis. Did you see that last jump?"
Judging by the way her eyes suddenly flared with concern, she remembered it all too well. Mouth a bitter line, Artemis retorts, "That was already the most stupid thing you've done so—"
"That was the most stupid thing I've done?" he muses, arching a perfect brow. "I thought I'd done much worse than that. Besides, did you see the look on that zombie's face when I used its head as a kickstand? It was perfect!" He let out a snicker, wishing someone had gotten that on tape.
Artemis doesn't look impressed. In fact, she looks like she's thinking about tying him down again with that lovely iron chain of hers. Dick can't help but let his grin widen sat the thought. Yep, she's definitely gotten a tad too much attached to that thing.
But she still doesn't look like she's budging. Sighing deeply, Dick gestures towards the sport shop below them again and says softly, "You know we need some more stuff to fight with. They might even have a couple guns we can use."
Her eyes flick towards the chain and he retorts before she can even say it, "You know that thing's not good for more than two zombies at a time. Plus, it's rusting."
That may have been the wrong thing to say, as now Artemis looks affronted both on her and the chain's—he'd lovingly christened it 'Chainy'—part. Dick realizes suddenly that he's just reduced his lifespan more than if he'd just covered himself in hot sauce and thrown himself into a pile of zombies.
He flinches a little as her eyes narrow and she says, "Fine."
There's a moment of silence.
"Fine," Dick echoes.
She lets go of his wrist. "Fine."
Screw the zombie apocalypse, Artemis is being reasonable. Now is the appropriate time to scream 'the world is ending' at the top of your lungs. Instead of doing just that, Dick blinks. "Uh, okay, I'm pretty sure you just said a four letter word that begins with 'f' but I think I heard the wrong one do you mind repeating—"
A growl rips from her throat and Artemis is clearly rolling her eyes as she's gathering her chain. Something clicks in the back of Dick's mind and he smacks his hand against his head and just nearly resists saying 'Hello, Megan' like in that show on tv he swears up and down he never ever watched.
"And you're coming with me."
She throws the chain over her shoulder and he knows that it had to have hurt, it's a huge iron mass of metal that he's carried too many times not to know it's heavy as shit, but Artemis doesn't even flinch. Her face is a mask of determination that's just daring him to say something.
It takes a little effort on his part not to bang his head against the concrete floor of the roof.
Or do something even more stupid, like kiss her.
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The store looks like a tornado tore through it, or someone with far too much minced meat on their hands.
Dick whistles lowly. "Wow. Must've been one hell of a sale." From his place at the counter, he can still see Artemis rolling her eyes in resignation before continuing her search. He trailed after her, hands clasped innocently behind his back as he peaked over her shoulder to look at the, surprise, surprise, empty stands. "Uh, 'Mis, unless you've suddenly got a craving for tennis ball stew, I don't think we'll be finding much here. Mis?"
She's quiet, shrugging him to the side as she scoped the rack of pillaged sports equipment. Dick frowns. "Artemis?" She lets her chain drop to the floor with a clatter as she starts digging through the pile of mixed up clutter on the floor. A flash of panic shoots through him. "Artemis, c'mon, let's just get gone before anything comes searching for a snack. Artemis. Artemis." He runs a hand through his dark hair, which is quickly needed to be re-gelled. "Look, you were right, this was a stupid risk, now let's go before it becomes a suicidal—"
Dick barely has time to move back before she turns around, eyes narrowed and saying, "Duck." He follows her order automatically, just in time to avoid the arrow zooming above his head and towards that of the zombie shambling through the doors. Judging by the sound, it's a dead hit. He blinks in surprise before he looks up at her.
Artemis is frowning, her hands working quickly on the compound bow in her hand as she mumbles, "It's leaning a little too much to the left…"
"You can shoot that thing?" Dick manages to say after several attempts that result in him opening and closing his mouth like a guppy out of water. She just raises a brow at him and looks pointedly towards the zombie currently twitching on the linoleum floor. He lets out a gasp of a laugh. "Okay, stupid question. But wow."
Falling back on the pile of foam fingers and dirty caps, Dick snorts and shakes his head as he continues disbelievingly, "Just when I think you can't get any more cool, you take out a zombie with a pointed stick." He slings an arm around her shoulder and winks. "My hero."
Then it happens.
It's nothing more than small twitch of her cheek, so fast that he could barely catch it, but it was real and it was there.
Even if he's all too aware that he's gaping like a fish again, albeit one with a flushed face, Dick just ignores that in favor of focusing on that fact that he made Artemis smile.
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"We need to get out of the city," she says without preamble, stepping into the changing rooms and leaving him to flounder in the hallway.
Dick frowns. "Uh, that's great. Got any idea where we should go?"
"Out."
"I'm sure you get this a lot but you just have this way with words that is, dare I say, enviable—"
Artemis pushes the door of the changing room opens to stick her head out and glowers at him, asking quickly, "Do you know what Gotham's population is?"
He actually tries to remember it before giving up and leaning against a blood-streaked mirror in the hallway. She's still glaring at him, a small sulky disembodied head waiting for an answer. Dick sighs and guesses, "Lots of people?"
"Lot of zombies now."
Quick to the point as ever, her royal bluntness corrects him swiftly and then ducks back into the changing room. She doesn't even seem to notice the way his face falls and his fists clench so tightly they're white and pink and he remembers colors on black with chalk streaked and ha isn't the education system a hoot Bruce shoulda taken me out when you had the chance and life—
"Fuck."
There's a sudden burst of noise in the changing room and Dick shoots a worried glance towards the edge of the hallway, hoping no zombies caught that. "What happened?"
She's silent for a moment. Then a pained hiss makes its way out from below the changing room door, "I stubbed my toe. It's nothing."
Dick may be facing a zombie invasion while he's barely into puberty, but even he's old enough to realize that Artemis would claim a broken arm as a scrape and a knife in her ribs as a scratch. He's pulling the door open before he even knows it, worried to see what she's hiding this—
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Artemis has always been larger than life.
At least, to him.
She just radiates this kind of, well, strength, y'know? Like she'll be damned if anything could take her down without her taking out at least twelve of its relatives. She's a force of nature, fists and feet darting out faster than he could see, taking out everything in sight like it didn't even matter, like anything that stood up to her might as well have been standing up to a hurricane for all it counted. She was amazing.
And Dick has never seen her look so small.
He almost doesn't recognize her at first, thinking that the figure in the corner of the small stall was a pile of clothes or something, and it's only when he takes a closer look does he realize it's not a stained blouse but bruised skin that's he's staring at. They start at her arms and continue to her ribs and stomach and fuck some of those are scars, puckered skin slightly lighter than the copper around it and there's so many but how?
"Get out."
Her voice is so low it's only a whisper.
Staring, Dick tries to think of something to say, something comforting to tell her except it's getting hard to breath now that he realizes the reason she's never taken off her blazer in class, even when it got so hot even he was rolling up his sleeves and cracking jokes that nobody really laughed at but everybody noticed, everybody noticed him, but she had always been in the periphery—
"Get the fuck out," Artemis hisses, louder, her arms curled around herself to protect what decency she had. He realizes she must have hit her side on the doorknob, with the way she's cradling her ribs and he wants to laugh because he's a genius and he didn't see this, didn't notice anything. She looks murderous, anger rushing in where shame had been and Dick wants to say something but he just walks out and closes the door gingerly behind him.
Because that's what she wants.
And he doesn't know what else to do except that.
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When Artemis walks out minutes later now decked out in camouflage pants and a green shirt, all she does is throw a pile of clothes at him and order, "Change."
Dick blinks and opens his mouth to say something or another about her sudden urge to see him undress to lighten the atmosphere, but her eyes tell him different. As in, 'I'll-kill-you-' different. So he gives her a quick salute before shuffling back into the same changing room. She was at least nice with her selections, a blue t-shirt and dark hoodie that he can zip up and tape down to make jumping around easier. Could have been worse, he thinks as he remembers that floral skiing parka in the front, could have been much worse.
He walks back out about to ask her why she didn't get him any nice jewelry like a good sugar daddy but she claps a hand over his mouth the moment he's in the hallway. Shushing him, Artemis looks pointedly towards the door at the end. There's something crawling on the floor.
Dick doesn't look too hard at it, his stomach already clenching at the blood stains the thing is leaving on the linoleum floors as it drags two red stumps that must be legs forward on arms that end in nails a bit too sharp for his liking. He looks away, choosing instead to focus on Artemis. She's staring the thing down, her lip curling in a snarl like she could will the damned thing away.
He says lowly, "We need to get past it."
Like it was her cue, she releases him and grabs a nearby plastic hanger. She snaps it quickly so that now she's holding two sharp plastic points. The thing groans loudly at the noise and she races forward. He can't watch. Not this time. Dick clenches his eyes shut and repeats the routine he had for his last gymnastic practice, over and over again.
A light touch on his wrist brings him out of the last perfect twist and he opens his eyes to stare into her grey ones, letting them anchor him back into the world. Artemis nods towards the exit and says, "Let's go."
Her hand closes over his, possessive and guiding and he doesn't even care that it's slick with blood, just like her face and eyelids.
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She tells him, "I'm not always going to be here."
"I know that," he lies.
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They make it to the parking lot before they realize they're going to die.
"Well," Dick says as he looks out at the horde before them, "fuck."
Only the clenching of her hand signals Artemis' own agreement, but before he can exchange looks with her she's tugging him forward into a run as the first few zombies begin to shamble towards them. Their groans signal the others and it isn't long before he has to stop looking back to check how many are on their tail because every single one is on their tail and he is not that good at math. His counting ability caps at around infinity, which is around the same amount that appear to be half a block behind them.
She races slightly ahead of him, making an even pace even as he struggles to put each foot forward on the concrete sidewalks, his brain too busy looking around wondering where to hide where to go when she suddenly stops. "There."
Changing course suddenly, Artemis grabs him again and pushes him towards the nearest fire escape on a shitty old building. He climbs up it like he was born to, moving nimbly in order to reach high enough or the first ledge, the rusted metal creaking under his slight weight but still holding. Moving quickly, Dick looks around in order to push the ladder down for her to get up but then he stops.
There's no ladder.
He looks down, but his fears are only confirmed by the hard look on her face.
"Go."
It's one of those moments that are supposed to stick with you, the brave partner sacrificing themselves in order to make sure the other is alright.
Fuck that.
Breathing hard, Dick jumps down and lands hard beside her, ignoring the way his knees buckle on the hard ground. He just brushes himself off and gives her a look, one that just dares her to say anything and it had better be effective because he learned it from her. He doesn't have time to see what emotion is flitting through those dark eyes of hers because there's suddenly a groan behind him and he's pulling her forward towards the alley.
They run, faster.
It's not good enough.
He can tell it from the way she holds his hand that she knows this.
Dick looks over at her one last time before something catches on his sleeve. Too close. He shoots Artemis a smile and says, "Find something. I'll keep them off you." He pushes her away before she can protest and throws himself back, running back into the swarm of zombies. They go after him, something he's making sure of as he screams at the top of his lungs, "You call yourself the walking undead? My dad's more cankerous than you bunch! And heck, I'm as heveled as could be. Ain't doing your jobs right, you—"
Nails rake across his arm and he suppresses a hiss. He dodges the grabbing hands around him, weaving around and telling himself that all he has to do is just avoid the faces, just the faces with the rotting and chipping teeth. There are only a couple of them now and they're slow, so all he has to do is buy time for an out. Dick does what he can, flipping and bobbing and running them in circles that get them tripping over in their hurry to eat him. But he's slowing and he's pretty sure they know it.
He races towards a wire fence and clambers up it, but not before something rips a good chunk from his pants. Wincing, he kept climbing, waiting until he was at the top to look down at the other side. Dick resists the urge to curse, barely.
More zombies there too. Unable to do anything else, he runs along the top of the fence, pretending it was just a regular balance beam from practice. Except thinner. And shakier, what with the bodies throwing themselves on it. And oh, did he mention the blood? Lots of blood. And moaning. He reaches the end and jumps, hands stretched out to grab the edge of the next stretch of fence.
He misses.
The edge of the fence slams into his stomach and he's falling, hoping in some part of his mind that his coach didn't see that. The ground is hard and he doesn't land easy, his palms bloody from the gravel but Dick forces himself to get up and run anyways. They're gaining on him.
Breathing so hard he can't even remember how it's like to have proper working lungs, Dick slips to the side when one zombie rushes forward, but he's more unbalanced than he thinks. He trips, hard. There's a crack as his head bounces off the pavement. He tries to climb back to his feet, trying to push away the dizziness rising, but something has him by the foot.
The low moaning grows louder as they close in around him and his throat closes up as he realizes that they're going to eat him. Dick fights, struggling to escape, but the energy seems to have left him the moment the next zombie grabs his arm and starts to bring it towards its teeth. He knocks it loose, arms flailing and he sees blood well up from where its nails had him except it looks like he's missing a fundamental sense cause he doesn't exactly feel it. Just this all consuming ache because what was the use in tallying wounds when all of him seems to be wounded?
More shamble closer, but he still can't kick loose from whatever has his foot. Damn. It hurts, everything hurts so much. He stares at the zombies grabbing messily at him, tearing a long strip from his stomach, and tells himself that just a little longer, he has to struggle just a little longer before it's over. He has to make her proud.
A loud noise rings through the street.
Dick finds that there's just enough left in him to recognize it as a car alarm. Adrenaline rushes back through his system and he kicks out one last time, the surprise and sudden blaring noise enough that he actually dislodges the thing. All grace lost, Dick just rams through the rest of the mess, not caring what gets him because the only thought in his mind is her and that he needs to get to where she is. They grab at him but he's stronger now because he doesn't care, lets them put his hoodie into shreds, drag their nails against his side, just knows he has to move and get past them.
When he finally breaks through from the crowd, he runs even harder towards the alarm. Dick knows that she's going to chew him out for ruining the clothes she'd picked out so carefully for him and this thought makes him laugh, and that sound echoes through the alleyways.
Standing on top of a car and picking out approaching zombies with a freaking bow and arrow, Artemis barely even glances his way. Dick grins and cries, "I missed you too!" The zombies start to shamble back towards him but hey, he's a pro at this by now and twists around to avoid them so easily the laugh that leaps from his bruised and bleeding mouth is natural this time. She leaps into the car and dodging quickly, he follows, slamming the door shut around him.
His smile fades when he glances at the driver's seat. "There's no key."
Artemis growls from her bent over position, "Thank you for stating the obvious." The zombies begin to slam against the window. He peaks over to see her messing around with some wires. His eyebrows go way up and he whistles.
"That's some quality hot wiring, 'Mis," Dick rambles, his hands still shaking so hard he doesn't so much flinch as shake harder when the zombie by his window presses its face up on the glass, "And I hope you don't take this badly when I say it'd be much better if you hurried it up a little."
The seconds are agony and he counts each zombies around them like they were question left on a test with no time left—one, two, three, four, five, six and a half cause that stump isn't gonna do much else but serve as the fleshiest road bump this side of the Mason-Dixon line—
A low rumbling starts to build up and Artemis shoots up. "Done." They're speeding forward before he can even think to buckle his seat belt, cause hey, safety first and Dick has a feeling that if she drives the way she glares, there are gonna be more than a little zombie shaped dents in the car by the end of this.
Hands scratch across the windows and Artemis presses her foot on what Dick knows is not the brakes. Basically the extent of his driving knowledge there. Chauffeurs do not a street-wise kid make.
Just as he's wondering whether they'd escaped getting munched on in a dark, dank alleyway just to get munched on in a dark, dank-smelling car, she turns to him and gestures down. "Hold it for me."
"Wait, what are you—"
She stands up abruptly, shoving her way up through the sun roof, bow in hand. He scrambles to take her place, wishing his arm wasn't throbbing so hard it was tough enough to reach the driver's wheel, much less turn it. Dick hears the low thwack of her taking out zombie after zombie, hardly pausing even as he struggled to drive and make sure they didn't do something really dumb and potentially life threatening, like oh, maybe hit a building.
Before long Artemis comes back down and shoves him aside just as he was trying to avoid the nearest mailbox. C'mon, it's pitch black out and he can't see that well out of one eye cause of, well, the blood. She gives the accelerator another go and turns quickly onto a larger street. Dick peers forward and finds that even in the dark he can still make out a blinking light in the distance. "What's that?"
Her face looks wild, but her eyes and voice are calm as she says, "The bridge out of the city."
"But wouldn't they have shut it down?"
"Maybe."
Dick decides quickly that this is probably the time to fasten his seat belt.
Artemis turns again and he slides a little to the side, bracing himself. He looks out again and sees something wrong. "Isn't this the wrong side of the street?"
She takes a deep breath and responds, "Everybody and their mother was taking that route to get out of the city." Artemis looks over at him long enough for him to catch the smirk on her face. "How many you think were trying to get in?"
Heart beating fast enough he's pretty sure that blood pressure will kill him if the zombies don't do it first, Dick shoots her a wild grin and says, "If we get out of this, I'm giving you my rations for a week."
"Is that your way of asking me out to dinner?" she asks sharply, an undertone of amusement in her cool voice.
"Depends." Dick winks. "Would you bring the bow?"
That gets a snort out of her, but he can't tell if it's a good or bad one because they're crashing through the first wave of orange cones and well hello traffic blockage. It's still pitch black out there and Dick counts that as a good thing because instead of screaming his head off, he starts to laugh in excitement.
If he's gonna die in a flaming wreck, he's gonna do it right.
After the first few near misses—who knew police cars were so flammable?—they begin to cruise down, albeit with more than a little panic in the fact they couldn't see more than three feet in front of them, even with headlights. One of which was broken, so it was really like they could only see three feet on their left side. Dick is pretty sure he owes some deity a whole lotta prayers.
By the time they were pretty sure they were near the end, both his nerves and vocal chords are a mess, but the subtle sound as they transition from metal to concrete floor is enough to make them both let a breath out in relief. Artemis still doesn't stop, driving far enough that his eyelids begin to close on their own despite his protests. Dick yawns and can't resist asking, "Are we there yet?"
Her foot slams down on the brakes. His head jerks forward, almost hitting the dash. He knew that seat belt was a good idea around her. Wincing only a little bit, Dick looks up to find Artemis staring at him like she was sizing him up.
Her mouth forms the words slowly, like she's testing them in her mind before giving them voice, "It depends."
"On what?"
She's blunt. "Where we're going."
"Huh," Dick responds simply, "That's a good point." They had the whole of the country around them, all swarming with zombies and bears and whatever else could eat them up for breakfast. "The beach?"
"The beach." Artemis is looking at him like he's insane. "We're trying to survive and you want to go swimming?"
"Of course not." He grins. "I wanna go sailing." Dick decides to elaborate as her fingers twitch towards her arrows. "There's a resort around Lake Champlain that Bruce and me went to a couple times. It's got Jacuzzis, wifi, and," he pauses for dramatics, "boats."
Artemis looks confused for a moment before understanding dawned. Folding her arms, she asks shrewdly, "So you're saying we steal a sailboat and escape? To where? A bigger lake?"
"Nah, just sail around 'till after this whole zombie thing blows over."
She looks at him for a long time before snorting. "I can't think of anything better, so fine." Rising, Artemis begins to move towards the back seat, grabbing a travel pillow from the floor as she did so.
Dick realizes quickly that she's just announced bedtime. "Wait, are you just gonna leave us here?"
"Huh?"
He gestures towards the car and the darkness outside, trying to impart as much attitude as he possibly can into the dramatic flourish of his hands. She shrugs. "I parked."
"In the middle of the road."
"Yes. Parked."
Dick almost hits himself in the head, because when has Artemis ever adhered to a little thing like logic or self-preservation or high probability of car crashes? She arranges herself quite nicely in the back and then shoots him an exasperated look. "Are you coming or what?"
Almost too late it hits him that's she's expecting him to sleep beside her. He tries, and fails, to hide his grin. "Yes!" Dick's almost leaps over the seat before his aching foot makes itself known again. He winces and falls back down. "Gah, wait, just give me a sec."
Deciding that he might as well check the damage before he sleeps it off, Dick rolls up the cuff of his pants until he gets to the part he has to gingerly peel away. The blood's matted so thickly that it's almost like shedding a second skin. From the backseat, Artemis sighs and turns to sleep, leaving him to stare at his red streaked leg. He wipes away what he can, cursing every now and then as he brushes over an especially sensitive part.
As his sleeve gets darker and darker, Dick gets the chance to stare fully at the mark on his calf. His blood freezes, ice cold. No. His breathing starts to quicken despite his best intentions. No, this wasn't right. The crescent shape dug into his skin speaks different. Fuck, there are teeth grooves, swollen and etched with red and green and no, this wasn't happening.
Hands shaking and clothes tattered, Dick stares at the bite mark on his leg and realizes he's already dead.
.
.
.