Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me.
A/N: So, the remake of Dawn of the Dead is so awesome! I just saw it, like twenty minutes ago and it was so awesome! Okay, sorry about that but, as you can tell, I thought the movie was...very awesome! Anyway, I planned at least three fics to go along with the movie, so here is the first one. Please review and enjoy.
Terry knew that he would find Nicole on the roof. He didn't know how he knew (well, it might have been because Michael said he thought he saw her go up the stairs leading up there) but he just knew that she would be on the top level of the Crossroads Mall. Nicole was standing with her back to him, arms crossed over her chest, staring down at the growing mass of zombies that had begun to loiter in the parking lot. For a long moment, Terry could do nothing but stare at her, at the way her gentle auburn hair flowed down her back onto her pale shoulders, brushed with freckles.
Finally, Terry cleared his throat and Nicole whirled to face him, startled; she didn't relax when she saw him standing there. Terry could see that her cheeks were streaked with tears and that there were more, still welled in her eyes. It had only been a handful of hours since her father had turned into a zombie and been shot, leaving her an orphan, alone in a nearly human-less world.
Nicole wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands before sniffing and crossing her arms again, straightening her posture. "What?" She snapped, a little too harshly to be sincere and Terry took a step closer to her.
"I just came to see how you were doing." Terry answered. "It's not safe to be up here alone." That wasn't exactly true, because Ana and the others had decided that the roof was pretty safe since zombies apparently couldn't climb, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.
Nicole studied him for a moment before shrugging and turning around again. "How would you be doing right now?" She questioned, though it was pretty much a hypothetical question from what Terry could tell. He chose not to answer, instead closing the few remaining feet between them, standing beside her.
More zombies had gathered in the parking lot, doing a lot of growing, gnashing their teeth and running into each other. More were coming from the distance, Terry could see them shuffling along and shuddered; how long would it be before he saw someone he recognized come into the parking lot.
"Look," Terry cleared his throat, uncertainly, "I'm sorry about your Dad." He hoped the words sounded genuine to Nicole, because they were genuine.
Nicole didn't say anything, staring at the gathering zombies; she finally turned to face him, tears having welled in her eyes once again. "It's not fair." She hissed harshly, trying to hold back the emotions that were surging inside of her. "Why is this happening? Why is this happening to us?"
Terry resisted the urge to put his arm around her shoulder and found himself unable to do anything but shrug. "I don't know." He answered helplessly. "But I do know that it sucks."
Nicole scoffed and turned away again. "Great, thanks for this little pep talk. It really helped." She snapped sarcastically and Terry narrowed his eyes.
"Look, I know you're upset Nicole but that doesn't give you a right to be a bitch to me and everyone else." Terry snapped, unsure of just why he was so upset. "Bad shit happened to everybody, not just you. I lost my family too."
Nicole stiffened, back still turned to him, the gentle breeze brushing her strawberry locks around her shoulders, and Terry wished that he hadn't spoken. Her father had, after all, just been killed, almost right in front of her and she didn't deserve to be yelled at. "Nicole, I'm sorry-" He stopped when she turned again.
"I'm sorry, Terry, you're right." Nicole murmured. "I'm just scared." He nodded in agreement. "I've never felt so alone."
Terry took a step closer to her without even realizing it. "You're not alone." He assured her. "I'm here and the others back in the mall."
"That's not what I meant." Nicole said and she gestured out toward the mass of zombies. "My family could be down there, my brothers, my mother and it doesn't matter that they're walking and almost look alive because they're not. And they wouldn't even recognize me if they saw me, they'd be too busy trying to eat my face. That's what I mean by being alone; I'm the only one left and even that doesn't even matter." Her deep eyes grew round with sorrow, growing watery again as she looked at Terry. "What good am I? I'm not good at anything, I won't be any help to the people that are here. I'm not any help to the people that are still alive; my brothers, they were good at stuff, one of them was a cop. I should have been infected instead of them." She broke down then, burring her face in her hands, tears spilling down her cheeks.
This time, Terry didn't resist pulling her against him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and holding her tightly. Nicole pressed her face against his chest, her shoulders hitching with her every hiccupping sob that escaped her lips; her fingers curled into uselessly fists as she allowed him to hold her, too lost and frightened to care. Terry stroked her hair gently, which smelled like strawberry shampoo, and rested his cheek against the crown of her head. He was drawing as much comfort from her as she was from him, it made him feel sane to be holding another person with those things below him. Those things meant the end of the world, Terry had already realized that, but it made him forget that to be holding Nicole; feeling her skin and smelling her hair made him feel like the normal person he had been before this thing started. Made everything else go away.
When Nicole's sobs began to subside, Terry reluctantly pulled away from her, meeting her red-rimmed, puffy eyes. "Don't say that Nicole, you can't think like that; they have been infected, whether they were useful or not. But you're not infected, Nicole, you're not. Do you think your brothers would want to know that their sister just gave up when she had a chance to fight, to live?"
Nicole stared at him for a moment, letting his words sink in, before she threw her arms around him again. Terry held her tightly once more, feeling her heart beat, fast and frightened, against his chest, matching his own. "Thank you." She whispered. "I really needed that."
Terry smiled and nodded, letting her slip from his arms once again. "We've got to stick together now, you know." He said and Nicole nodded. "Anyway, I'm sure you're good at lots of stuff." Nicole laughed and he felt his cheeks redden; he hadn't meant to be funny.
Upon seeing his embarrassment, Nicole stifled her laughter and said, "I didn't mean to laugh but that was...that was really cute." Terry's cheeks reddened even more but he tried to shrug nonchalantly. "But I'm not. Good at anything, I mean; I nearly flunked out of school and got fired from every job I've ever had. The only thing I'm good at is identifying planets and stars and stuff, but what good is that ever going to do in life?" She asked him, looking for an honest answer.
"It might not do any real good, at least not right now, but it's pretty neat." Terry told her, gazing up at the sky and seeing only a velvet mass of glowing stairs. None of it meant anything to him, but it was intriguing to know that to someone could make sense of the jumble.
Nicole smiled and followed his gaze, her eyes easily finding the North Star. "My father got me interested when I was little; he bought me a telescope." At the mention on her father, her eyes filled with tears again, and didn't disappear when she tried to blink them away.
Terry looked down at her once again and tried to think of something comforting to say about her father; nothing he could think of, however, seemed to fit. "Show me a constellation," he said instead. "I've never been able to find them myself."
Nicole looked grateful to have something to do other then think about her lost family and the thousands of things down below them. She searched through the sky before picking out Orion. "Right there, look at those stars," She pointed upward and Terry shifted his gaze. "Those stars make up Pegasus, the horse."
Terry squinted his eyes but didn't see any horse laid out in the stars. "I don't see it." He admitted after many minutes of squinting and attempting to connect the dots. He let out a sigh and looked down again, his head swimming from all the stars and staring. "I told you I've never been good at this."
Nicole stepped close to him again, until her shoulders where brushing against his chest and gazed up at the sky from where he had been standing. Once she had found the constellation, she looked away again and pointed it out once more; Terry stared for a long moment, trying to find what she was seeing and gave up once again. "Right there." Nicole said, taking his face in her fingers and directed his head in the right direction, studying the stars again.
With her fingers against his cheeks, Terry didn't even bother to look for the stars again; instead, he looked at her face, screwed in concentration, admiring the endless stars, millions of miles away from the troubles that plagued them down here. He noticed to her eyes were a gentle of emerald and that the freckles that covered her cheeks were as fine as dust.
Nicole looked at him, surprised to find him studying her so intently, beginning to take her hands away; Terry laid his hands on top of hers, keeping them in place and leaned forward, pressing his lips gently against hers. Nicole returned the kiss, tentatively at first but then with more passion, more conviction.
When the kiss was finally broken, Terry continued to stare deep into her eyes, which seemed to be glittering, much like the stars she had tried to show him. "I think I can finally see the stars." He whispered and Nicole laughed once more, kissing him again.
As they stood together on the roof, nothing else mattered and, for Nicole, everything else slipped away for a few precious minutes. Terry smiled when the kiss was finally broken, slipping his arm around Nicole's waist.
As they headed back toward the mall, Terry smiled again and said, "See, you are good at something."