I found this was the first zombie apocalypse story for Victorious. I'm glad to be the first and I hope I do justice to the genre and the characters of Dan Schneider's wondrous mind. By the way, I hope no one thinks I'm a mentally insane freak with too much time on her hands (though I sorta am). And is this even an intelligent idea? Probably not; publishing a fourth multi-chaptered story while the other three aren't close to finished and two haven't been updated since the Stone age. But I feel as though the time is right, and that this'll never get uploaded should I not do it now. So please read, please enjoy, and please forgive me if you're reading another story you want a chapter of and/or this one is as involuntarily neglected. (BTW I'm trying to construct somewhat readable chapters for my other open stories, so I'll hopefully update - hopefully).
Trina had never strayed from the fact that she was the next Jennifer Aniston. Even early in the morning, she would replay Friends episodes and repeat word for word Rachel's lines until they were permanently stuck in her head. It was such a pity that she had to be born so late, or the already marvelous success of a TV show could've been even greater. And, well, David Schwimmer could've used a real woman on his arm, too.
While the clock glowed three and the lights in every house on the block were out, Trina practiced with her dinky black-and-white set. It was strenuous work to tell whether it was Rachel or Phoebe with the gray hues of the screen but Trina—always a trouper—did her best for the sake of future producers everywhere. Though the last time she rehearsed Tori complained about the loudness, Trina knew it had to be a phase her little sister was going through. Really, in a few years Tori would be begging to see a major motion picture by the Trina Vega and all that trivial nonsense about "waking up the neighborhood" would be a distant memory.
A fierce pounding echoed at the door. Trina angrily sighed and turned up the volume on her television. Joey and Chandler couldn't overcome the sound of someone knocking against her wooden door. Trina knew Tori could get annoyed but barging in during practice was still too low.
"Not now, Tori!" she screamed. The rapping of knuckles did not cease, leading Trina to again groan in aggravation. Since her sis just couldn't let Trina do her thing, she decided to confront her before going back to her set. She whipped the door ajar swiftly, a hand on her hip. She opened her mouth to speak but her speech about privacy was thwarted by a shriek as the heinous creature before her lunged.
Tori, who had been laying in docile slumber, was awoken by her sister's screams of terror. Not again, she thought in exasperation. Like every morning before Tori knew Trina would watch a Friends marathon to practice her line delivery and then relax by watching a late-night (or, in this case, early-morning) horror movie screening. The first time it happened she had woken up to see her sister in bed with her, shaking and clutching the garlic necklace she prepared in the kitchen. This time Trina didn't come running but Tori knew she would soon. So, as to avoid the rush, the younger Vega lifted herself from bed and headed down the hall.
"Is it a vampire or a werewolf this time?" she asked, half-asleep, as she walked to the room of her sister. No response but another screech came. Rolling her Latin black eyes, Tori quickened her pace to Trina's doorway. She stood in it, watching as Trina bounced up and down on her bed. Another figure was there too but it was hard to make out. Tori rubbed the leftover sleep from her eyes, and then looked up to scream herself.
Her father was reaching for his firstborn, moaning ominously. But this was not the father she knew and loved, oh no; this was a man with grayed flesh torn away from his face and blood dripping from every inch of him. A great big bloody chunk was bitten out of his leg; muscle tissue was showing and the torn veins dangled like ropes of licorice—thick, bloody ropes of licorice. His rotting skin stunk up the entire room but the smell was the least of Trina's worries.
"Kill it!" she shouted, not realizing (or caring) this was their creator she spoke off, "Kill it now!" Tori spun around wildly in search of something that could slay this undead demon. Trina wasn't sporty, so bats could be ruled out. She was losing hope with every glance at the room. Nothing was—wait…a baton! Trina had tossed the baton in the corner four years ago after be denied a spot on the middle school cheerleading squad and never had the want to move it. Tori couldn't be happier at her sibling's laziness.
She ran over to the corner where the baton lay. The zombie didn't give her a second glance for he had eyes (eye sockets would be the correct term) for Trina, who obviously had more meat on her bones. It gave Tori enough time to swing the baton into the side of the animated dead body. He stumbled but didn't fall to the floor; instead he looked to Tori with hunger, groaned, and dived in for the kill. Tori was smart enough to dodge the slow-moving monster's attack and smash his skull in before he had a chance to turn around. This time he fell to the floor and didn't move again. Tori, breathing fast and her adrenaline pumping like crazy, grabbed Trina and ran out the bedroom.
"What the crud was that?" Trina asked. Tori didn't reply to her sister's dumb question; she merely continued pulling her along down the stairs of their home. They had to get away before something else happened. As they rounded the bend that separated family room from kitchen, another zombie popped out, its teeth bared for biting. Trina screamed again but could barely open her mouth before Tori swung and delivered a blow to the cretin's head. This time it was female and bore a terrifyingly great resemblance to their mother.
Without thinking that she may've re-killed her parents, Tori led her sister out to the garage where their white SUV was parked. One side was caked with blood and the body of another unrecognizable zombie lay beside it. Tori assumed it must've been killed by one of their parents after they met their untimely demise but made sure to run over it again once they entered the car. Not bothering to buckle up, Tori drove out into the street. She wouldn't get her license officially until next week but she guessed no one would care now that the apocalypse had occurred.
If he wasn't already dating her, Beck would've found himself very attracted to Jade by now. Not only was she pretty when reading spine-chilling novels but she was a downright babe when using his toy lightsaber to slaughter zombies. Beck had gotten over the initial shock of the apocalyptic event of zombies crawling around California; now he and Jade were using every possible weapon from his RV to cut through the mob of them as they moved near the couple with the desire to eat their living flesh. There was no time to search for the keys to his car in the mess of clothes and dirtied plates on his bedroom floor and now they were trying to run past the hordes of undead creatures to get somewhere safe.
Previous to the discovery of the swarm, Jade and Beck had been relaxing on the edge of his bed. Jade was—not surprisingly—reading a Stephen King book. Beck was listening, rapt on her ability to create different accents and accentuate their dialogue and feelings. That was what made her a terrific actress. People didn't like her attitude so they let their loathing block out her talent. Beck knew one day she'd get out of Hollywood Arts and star in a smash hit, if possible one of horror. Like, perhaps a zombie movie.
Oh, how he hated the irony.
"Hey, babe," he said, putting a hand over her page, "let's skip the Cujo." Jade sneered at him but he just smiled in response, expecting such a reaction. It was her way of showing affection for him and others—which is why not many liked her. They couldn't understand if she liked them or truly hated them. Assuming it hate made things all the more easier.
"Why, too scary?" she mocked, squeezing his hand. Her black-painted nails dug into his tan skin and he winced, putting on a brave front as he pulled back before blood spilt. She grinned—a real grin, not one of evil—and put her eyes back on the black ink.
"I find your wickedness so stunning." he whispered, making a light shade of red come onto her white cheeks.
"And I find your interruptions so irksome." she whispered back, not raising her head to look at him. Beck walked over to the bulletproof windows of his RV and gazed into the darkness of dawn. He expected to see some fat jogger bounding down the road, acting like he did it every day. He did see a jogger, running fast-paced down the street, sweat dripping from his brow. But this runner looked like he was running from something. Craning his neck to peer behind the man, Beck saw a group chasing after him. He assumed it was just some friends jogging with him—the shadows covered their faces. As the others caught up with him, the jogger fell to his feet. He started screaming in fright as the others fell on top of him…and began tearing away at his skin.
Beck's mouth dropped open in horror as they ate him. The sunrise started to shed light on the sidewalk and the group; Beck saw that those on top of the jogger had decaying flesh and blood dripping off their mouths as they wolfed down the meat off his bones.
"Holy sh—" he began but Jade's interjection of "What?" silenced him. He didn't respond; instead he looked around for weaponry, calling for Jade to put the bleeping book down and get something.
And that's where they were now.
Jade wielded the lightsaber to hack the head of several zombies heading their way. They dropped like flies with her mad killing skills to fear. Beck knew it was from the mother-daughter fencing matches Jade's mom forced her to go to. She was an expert in fencing which made her an expert in killing too. Beck never took any kind of weapon-training classes but it wasn't all that hard to swing a metal bat into their brainless skulls.
"Boy, am I glad you're a covert geek." Jade said as she slashed another zombie in two. Beck let that insult slide because it wasn't the time for arguments. After all the monsters near them were slain, they began running faster down the abandoned road.
Cat biked merrily down the sidewalk. The wee rays of morning were peeking up over the housetops of her street. She'd left a Post-It for her mother saying she was going out bicycling to get some fresh air. She had been mocked in the past for her pink, frilly bike with the white, woven basket on the handles but she didn't care. This was who she was and no one was going to stop her.
The morning had been a little different from others. When she woke up and went downstairs to where her mother would be scrambling eggs, her father reading the paper ("Sleeping Beauty has awoken!" he'd joke before handing her the funnies), and her elder brother chowing down like a trucker, she found no one awake. The scrumptious aroma of breakfast didn't flow through the air, and the lack of it made her suddenly ravenous. She called out for her parents and sibling but nobody replied to her. She walked to the fridge, figuring they were still asleep, and snatched an orange. Then she went out to her bicycle while she ate her fruit.
She raised her head up to the sky to take one good last look at the stars in advance so when they went to take a nap as the sun came up she'd have gotten her fill. Because her eyes were distracted looking up and her mouth by the juicy orange, she had no time to react before a crunch came under her pedals. She stopped immediately; if she ran over one of Miss Miller's beloved kittens, she'd never forgive herself. But when she turned to see, there was no cat of Miss Miller's—instead it was Miss Miller herself.
Cat was so dumbstruck with guilt and horror she couldn't do anything but utter a squeak. As she processed the old woman's condition, she found she had changed since Tuesday. Her face was mottled and gray, her skin rotting, and her legs mangled. Certainly that couldn't be the work of one tiny girl's bicycle, could it?
"Nice going, Little Red." complimented a familiar voice, "You saved my life." Cat looked up from her neighbor's corpse to see André looking gratefully back at her. His right cheek was stained with a red sauce-like substance and in his hand was an equally red shovel. He wiped the sweat from his brow as he ran over to her. Had he been eating French fries? It seemed as though he was a messy eater with the red goop dribbling down his cheek, and it was known how much he loved ketchup.
"Let me drive." he said, coaxing her out of her seat, "You sit on the handles and tell me where we're going." Cat did as he said only because she was so startled she couldn't sort out what was going on. After he adjusted himself and handed the shovel to Cat (she moaned at the bulkiness of it), he patted the basket. She hopped atop it, and soon the wind was rushing through her hair (well, as much as it could with the helmet she was wearing) as she and André drove off. She almost fainted when the stench of dry blood plagued her nose.
"Think of a happy place, think of a happy place, think of a happy place," Robbie chanted as he backed up against the wall. It was moments ago that he found the mutilated cadaver of Mamaw. After crushing her dead again with puppet ("Yo, man, I ain't liking this!" Rex had complained as some of the blood got onto his face), he locked himself in with a bucket over his head and a meat cleaver in his hands. He thought the world would end with ice or a bomb…not some parasite that infected the world so that they'd become the living dead. He'd raided his grandma's fridge of all its contents—even the stuff he hated—and poured it into his backpack; he couldn't stay in Hollywood with zombies about. He needed to find someplace rid of them. Maybe Alaska?
"Dude, squirming here ain't gonna help us survive." Rex said. Even in the eye of an apocalypse Robbie kept his puppet near. Trusting that all his breathing friends were dead (or undead), he knew Rex would be the only one to keep him remotely sane in the insane new Earth.
"I know, I know, I know!" whispered Robbie, in dread something would hear him, "I can't help it, Rex! Facing death wasn't on today's to-do list!"
"Getting used as a bat to kill your zombiefied granny wasn't on mine, but tough monkeybutt!" Rex shouted. Robbie shushed him but Rex didn't appear to want to be quieted. What should he care, he was never alive to begin with.
Robbie's retorts to Rex's venomous slurs blocked out the sound of a door opening. They couldn't hear the footsteps following their voices into the dark kitchen. Once Robbie took a breath before retaliating, he was able to make out the sound of breaths coming from the doorway. His heart stopped as he slowly twisted his head to see two silhouettes staring back at him. He screeched as he stood, shakily handling the cleaver and dropping his best friend on the ground.
He heaved it over his shoulder, ready to strike, when his attackers flipped the light on and he found they weren't attackers at all, unless they'd become cannibalistic: they were the two Vega girls, looking harried and one waving a baton. Upon finding the screeching figure was purely the Shapiro, they sighed in relief and Tori rested the baton at her side.
"Thank Jesus!" Robbie whispered, dangling the cleaver at his side too. Tori raised one dark eyebrow.
"I thought you were Jewish." she questioned.
"I'll convert if it helps me survive," he said breathlessly, going to retrieve his puppet, who blasted even angrier remarks at being left to die. Once his dummy had shut up, Tori lifted her baton into the air and walked out to the main room. Trina followed, as did Robbie.
"Okay, so what's going on?" he asked, not daring to sit down in case they needed to make a speedy getaway. Tori shrugged while Trina just stared wide-eyed into space.
"Apparently our world is ending." said Tori, "What else is new?" Robbie didn't notice her dripping sarcasm. He walked over to her, already beginning to perspire from the panic. He'd been dropped off by his parents to help his grandmother fix the computer yet again. After walking up the countless set of flights to her apartment (not to mention the fact he was tired considering the time), it was a wonder he wasn't too out of breath to attack her before he became breakfast. The terrible thoughts about the fate of his parents had him almost sobbing but he didn't want the girls to leave him if they thought him too much trouble.
"What're we gonna do?" Trina whispered hoarsely. My sentiments exactly, Robbie thought, looking at Tori for an answer. It was obvious she was the strongest—both mental- and physical-wise—of the trio so that automatically appointed her leader. The adrenaline rush still hadn't worn off so Tori's leadership skills were at their best. Robbie prayed it wouldn't die down while they were driving in the streets or battling zombies wherever they may be.
"Well, we need to stock up on supplies first." she said, "Robbie, would you mind if we took a look in your freezer?"
"Uh, actually I kinda emptied all the food into my backpack already." he said shyly, "It's all kosher, in case you're Jewish." The girls weren't but Tori appreciated Robbie's sweetness about it. Well, she appreciated it later since right then she only cared that "kosher" meant "edible".
"Good, then we won't waste time." she said, "Do you have any weapons of some sort?"
"We have knives in the kitchen." he said, then brandished his meat cleaver, "And this."
"Hopefully we won't get so close to one that we'll need a knife, but good to know." she responded, pushing past him to enter the kitchen. Robbie nervously glanced at Trina, who nevertheless stayed immobile. His obsessive crush on her passed long ago but he did think the droplets of blood on her tank top made her look feisty and cute, like a rebellious heroine in a Terminator movie or something. Though, if he knew any better, Tori was the one doing the killing while Trina tried to keep her made-up face clean of zombie blood. His crush on the other Vega was small but still there, and when she returned with his grandma's entire collection of knives he thought she looked especially hot.
"Gimme the backpack." she ordered, and Robbie tossed it to her wordlessly. She put the knives in along with the food, leaving only two out. These she handed to the others, explaining that if she didn't get them with her baton, they were to slice the undead apart. Robbie hoped she'd get them all on the first try.
The three teenagers headed down the apartment house's many steps and outside where a blood-splattered SUV awaited. A few grotesque bodies were walking about but none too close. They all ran inside the car, revved up the engine, and drove off, making sure to hit any zombies they could.
No doubt about it: the apocalypse was upon them.
